“DON’T EVER SCARE me like that again!” Sandeul reprimanded Jin on Wednesday evening.

It was just before sundown and Jin was folded into the Sword & Cross phone cubby, a tiny beige confine in the middle of the front office area. It was far from private, but at least no one else was loafing around. His arms were still sore from the graveyard shift at yesterday’s detention, his pride still wounded from Taehyung’s fleeing the second they’d been pulled out from under the statue. But for fifteen minutes, Jin was trying hard to push all that out of his mind, to soak up every blissfully frantic word his best friend could spit out in the allotted time. It felt so good to hear Sandeul’s high-pitched voice, Jin almost didn’t care that he was being yelled at.

“We promised we wouldn’t go an hour without speaking,” Sandeul continued accusingly. “I thought someone had eaten you alive! Or that maybe they stuck you in solitary in one of those straitjackets where you have to chew through your sleeve to scratch your face. For all I knew, you could have descended into the ninth circle of—”

“Okay, Mom,” Jin said, laughing and settling into his role as Sandeul’s breathing instructor. “Relax.” For a split second, he felt guilty that he hadn’t used his one phone call to dial up his real mom. But he knew Sandeul would wig out if he ever discovered Jin hadn’t seized his very first opportunity to get in touch. And in a weird way, it was always soothing to hear Sandeul’s hysterical voice. It was one of the many reasons the two were such a good fit: His best friend’s over-the-top paranoia actually had a calming effect on Jin. He could just picture Sandeul in his dorm room at Dover, pacing his bright orange area rug, with Oxy smeared over his t-zone.

“Don’t Mom me!” Sandeul huffed. “Start talking. What are the other kids like? Are they all scary and popping diuretics like in the movies? What about your classes? How’s the food?”

Through the phone, Jin could hear Roman Holiday playing in the background on Sandeul’s tiny TV. Jin’s favorite scene had always been the one where Audrey Hepburn woke in Gregory Peck’s room, still convinced the night before had all been a dream. Jin closed his eyes and tried to picture the shot in his mind. Mimicking Audrey’s drowsy whisper, he quoted the line he knew Sandeul would recognize: “There was a man, he was so mean to me. It was wonderful.”

“Okay, Mr., it’s your life I want to hear about,” Sandeul teased.

Unfortunately, there was nothing about Sword & Cross that Jin would even consider describing as wonderful. Thinking about Taehyung for, oh, the eightieth time that day, he realized that the only parallel between his life and Roman Holiday was that he and Audrey both had a guy who was aggressively rude and uninterested in them. Jin rested his head against the beige linoleum of the cubby walls. Someone had carved the words BIDING MY TIME. Under normal circumstances, this would be when Jin would spill everything about Taehyung to Sandeul.

Except, for some reason, he didn’t.

Whatever he might want to say about Taehyung wouldn’t be based on anything that had actually happened between them. And Sandeul was big on guys making an effort to show they were worthy of you. He’d want to hear things like how many times he’d held open a door for Jin, or whether he’d noticed how good his French accent was. Sandeul didn’t think there was anything wrong with guys writing the kind of sappy love poems Jin could never take seriously. Jin would come up severely short on things to say about Taehyung. In fact, Sandeul’d be much more interested in hearing about someone like Jungkook.

“Well, there is this guy here,” Jin whispered into the phone.

“I knew it!” Sandeul squealed. “Name.”

Taehyung. Taehyung. Jin cleared his throat. “Jungkook.”

“Direct, uncomplicated. I can dig it. Start from the beginning.”

“Well, nothing’s really happened yet.”

“He thinks you’re gorgeous, blah blah blah. I told you the cropped would look good on you. Get to the good stuff.”

“Well—” Jin broke off. The sound of footsteps in the lobby silenced him. He leaned out the side of the cubby and craned his neck to see who was interrupting the best fifteen minutes he’d had in three whole days.

Jungkook was walking toward him.

Speak of the devil. He swallowed the horrifically lame words on the tip of his tongue: He gave me his guitar pick. He still had it tucked in his pocket.

Jungkook’s demeanor was casual, as if by some of luck he hadn’t heard what he’d been saying. He seemed to be the only kid at Sword & Cross who didn’t change out of his school uniform the minute classes were over. But the black-on-black look worked for him, just as much as it worked to make Jin look like a grocery store checkout boy.

Jungkook was twirling a golden pocket watch that swung from a long chain looped around his index finger. Jin followed its bright arc for a moment, almost mesmerized, until Jungkook clapped the face of the watch to a stop in his fist. He looked down at it, then up at him.

“Sorry.” His lips pursed in confusion. “I thought I signed up for the seven o’clock phone call.” He shrugged. “But I must have written it down wrong.”

Jin’s heart sank when he glanced at his own watch. He and Sandeul had barely said fifteen words to each other—how could his fifteen minutes already be up?

“Jin? Hello?” Sandeul sounded impatient on the other end of the phone. “You’re being weird. Is there something you’re not telling me? Have you replaced me already with some reform school cutter? What about the boy?”

“Shhh,” Jin hissed into the phone. “Jungkook, wait,” he called, holding the phone away from his mouth. He was already halfway out the door. “Just a second, I was”—he swallowed—“I was just getting off.”

Jungkook slipped the pocket watch into the front of his black blazer and doubled back toward Jin. He raised his eyebrows and laughed when he heard Sandeul’s voice growing louder from the earpiece. “Don’t you dare hang up on me,” Sandeul protested. “You’ve told me nothing. Nothing!”

“I don’t want to piss anyone off,” Jungkook joked, gesturing at the barking telephone. “Take my slot, you can get me back another time.”

“No,” Jin said quickly. As badly as he wanted to keep talking to Sandeul, he imagined Jungkook probably felt the same way about whomever he’d come here to call. And unlike a lot of the people at this school, Jungkook had been nothing but nice to him. He didn’t want to make him give up his turn at the telephone, especially now, when he’d be way too nervous to gossip with Sandeul about him.

“Sandeul,” he said, sighing into the phone. “I gotta go. I’ll call again as soon as—” But by then there was just the vague buzz of a dial tone in his ear. The phone itself had been rigged to cap each call at fifteen minutes. Now he saw the tiny timer blinking 0:00 on its base. They hadn’t even gotten to say goodbye and now he’d have to wait another whole week to call. Time stretched out in Jin’s mind like an endless gulf.

“BFF?” Jungkook asked, leaning up against the cubby next to Jin. His dark eyebrows were still arched. “I’ve got three younger brothers, I can practically smell the best-friend vibe through the phone.” He bent forward as if he was going to sniff Jin, which made him chuckle … and then freeze. His unexpected closeness had made him heart pick up.

“Let me guess.” Jungkook straightened back up and lifted his chin. “He wanted to know all about the reform school bad boys?”

“No!” Jin shook his head to deny vehemently that guys were on his mind at all … until he realized Jungkook was only kidding. He blushed and took a stab at joking back. “I mean, I told him there’s not a single good one here.”

Jungkook blinked. “Precisely what makes it so exciting. Don’t you think?” He had a way of standing very still, which made Jin stand very still, which made the ticking sound of the pocket watch inside his blazer seem louder than it possibly could have been.

Frozen next to Jungkook, Jin suddenly shivered as something black swooped into the hall. The shadow seemed to hopscotch across the panels in the ceiling in a very deliberate way, blacking out one and then the next and then the next. Damn. It was never good to be alone with someone—especially someone as focused on him as Jungkook was at the moment—when the shadows arrived. He could feel himself twitching, trying to appear calm as the darkness swirled around the ceiling fan in a dance. That alone he could have endured. Maybe. But the shadow was also making the worst of its terrible noises, a sound like the one Jin had heard when he’d watched a baby owl fall from its palmetto tree and choke to death. He wished Jungkook would just stop looking at him. He wished something would happen to divert his attention. He wished—

Kim Taehyung would walk in.

And then he did. Saved by the gorgeous boy wearing holey jeans and a holier white T-shirt. He didn’t look much like salvation—slouched over his heavy stack of library books, gray bags under his blue eyes. Taehyung actually looked kind of wrecked. His blond hair drooped over his eyes, and when they settled on Jin and Jungkook, Jin watched them narrow. He was so busy fretting over what he’d done to annoy Taehyung this time, he almost didn’t realize the momentous thing that happened: The second before the lobby door closed behind him, the shadow slipped through it and into the night. It was like someone had taken a vacuum and cleared out all the grit from the hall.

Taehyung just nodded in their direction and didn’t slow down as he passed.

When Jin looked at Jungkook, he was watching Taehyung. He turned to Jin and said, more loudly than he needed to, “I almost forgot to tell you. Having a little party in my room tonight after Social. I’d love for you to come.”

Taehyung was still within earshot. Jin had no idea what this Social thing was, but he was supposed to meet Ken beforehand. They were supposed to walk over together.

His eyes were fixed on the back of Taehyung’s head, and he knew he needed to answer Jungkook about his party, and it really shouldn’t be so hard, but when Taehyung turned around and looked back at him with eyes he swore were mournful, the phone behind him started ringing, and Jungkook reached for it and said, “I’ve got to take this, Jin. You’ll be there?”

Almost imperceptibly, Taehyung nodded.

“Yes,” Jin told Jungkook. “Yes.”

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“I still don’t see why we have to run,” Jin was panting twenty minutes later. He was trying to keep up with Ken as they scrambled back across the commons toward the auditorium for the mysterious Wednesday Night Social, which Ken still hadn’t explained. Jin had barely enough time to make it upstairs to his room, to slick on his better jeans just in case it was that kind of social. He was still trying to slow his breath down from his run-in with Jungkook and Taehyung when Ken barged into his room to drag his back out the door.

“People who are chronically tardy never understand the many ways in which they screw up the schedules of people who are punctual and normal,” Ken told Jin as they splashed through a particularly soggy portion of the lawn.

“Ha!” A laugh erupted behind them.

Jin looked back and felt his face light up when he saw Jimin’s pale, skinny frame jogging to catch up with them. “Which quack said you were normal, Ken?” Jimin nudged Jin and pointed down. “Watch out for the quicksand!”

Jin sloshed to a halt just before he’d have landed in a scarily muddy patch on the lawn. “Somebody please tell me where we’re going!”

“Wednesday night,” Ken said flatly. “Social Night.”

“Like … a dance or something?” Jin asked, visions of Taehyung and Jungkook already moving across the dance floor of his mind.

Jimin hooted. “A dance with death by boredom. The term ‘social’ is typical Sword & Cross doublespeak. See, they’re required to schedule social events for us, but they are also terrified of scheduling social events for us. Sticky predicky.”

“So instead,” Ken added, “they have these really awful events like movie nights followed by lectures about the movie, or—God, do you remember last semester?”

“There was that whole symposium on taxidermy?”

“So, so creepy.” Ken shook his head.

“Tonight, my dear,” Jimin drawled, “we get off easy. All we have to do is snore through one of the three movies on rotation in the Sword & Cross video library. Which one do you think it’ll be tonight, Kennyloafer? Starman? Joe Versus the Volcano? Or Weekend at Bernie’s?”

“It’s Starman.” Ken groaned.

Jimin shot Jin a baffled look. “He knows everything.”

“Hold on,” Jin said, tiptoeing around the quicksand and lowering his voice to a whisper as they approached the front office of the school. “If you’ve all seen these movies so many times, why the rush to get here?”

Ken pulled open the heavy metal doors to the “auditorium,” which, Jin realized, was a euphemism for a regular old room with low, drop-paneled ceilings and chairs arranged to face a blank white wall.

“Don’t want to get stuck in the hot seat next to Mr. Lee,” Jimin explained, pointing at the teacher. His nose was buried deep inside a thick book, and he was surrounded by the few remaining empty chairs in the room.

As the three boys stepped through the metal detector at the door, Ken said, “Whoever sits there has to help pass out his weekly ‘mental health’ surveys.”

“Which wouldn’t be so bad—” Jimin chimed in.

“—if you didn’t have to stay late to analyze the findings,” Ken finished.

“Thereby missing,” Jimin said with a grin, steering Jin toward the second row as he whispered, “the after-party.”

Finally they’d gotten down to the heart of the matter. Jin chuckled.

“I heard about that,” he said, feeling slightly with it for a change. “It’s in Jungkook’s room, right?”

Jimin looked at Jin for a second and ran his tongue across his teeth. Then he looked past, almost through, Jin. “Hey, Jung Hwan,” he called, waving with just the tips of his fingers. He pushed Jin into one seat, claimed the safe spot next to him (still two seats down from Mr. Lee), and patted the hot seat. “Come sit with us, J-man!”

Jung Hwan, who’d been shifting his weight in the doorway, looked immensely relieved to be given the directive, any directive. He started toward them, swallowing. No sooner had he fumbled into the seat than Mr. Lee looked up from his book, cleaned his glasses on his handkerchief, and said, “Jung Hwan, I’m glad you’re here. I’m wondering if you can help me with a small favor after the film. You see, the Venn diagram is a very useful tool for …”

“Mean!” Ken popped his face up between Jimin and Jin. 

Jimin shrugged and produced a giant bag of popcorn from his carpetbag. “I can only look after so many new students,” he said, tossing a buttery kernel at Jin. “Lucky you.”

As the lights in the room dimmed, Jin looked around until his eyes landed on Jungkook. He thought about his abbreviated dish session on the phone with Sandeul, and how his friend always said that watching a movie with a guy was the best way to get to know things about him, things that might not come out in a conversation. Looking at Jungkook, Jin thought he knew what Sandeul meant: There would be something sort of thrilling about glancing out of the corner of his eye to see what jokes Jungkook thought were funny, to join his laughter with his own.

When Jungkook's eyes met his, Jin felt an embarrassed instinct to look away. But then, before he could, Jungkook’s face lit up in a broad smile. It made him feel remarkably unabashed about being caught staring. When he put his hand up in a wave, Jin couldn’t help thinking about how the exact opposite had happened the few times Taehyung had caught him looking at him.

Taehyung rolled in with Seo-joon, late enough that Bo Young had already taken a head count, late enough that the only remaining seats were on the floor at the front of the room. He passed through the beam of light from the projector and Jin noticed for the first time a silver chain around his neck, and some sort of medallion tucked inside his T-shirt. Then he dipped completely out of his view. He couldn’t even see his profile.

As it turned out, Starman wasn’t very funny, but the other students’ constant Jeff Bridges impersonations were. It was hard for Jin to stay focused on the plot. Plus, he was getting that uncomfortable icy feeling at the back of his neck. Something was about to happen.

When the shadows came this time, Jin was expecting them. Then he started to think about it and counted a tally on his fingers. The shadows had been popping up at an increasingly alarming rate, and Jin couldn’t figure out whether he was just nervous at Sword & Cross … or whether it meant something else. They’d never been this bad before.…

They oozed overhead in the auditorium, then slithered along the sides of the movie screen, and finally traced the lines of the floorboards like spilled ink. Jin gripped the bottom of his chair and felt an ache of fear swell through his legs and arms. He tightened all the muscles in his body, but he couldn’t keep from trembling. A squeeze on his left knee made him look over at Jimin.

“You okay?” Jimin mouthed.

Jin nodded and hugged his shoulders, pretending he was merely cold. He wished he was, but this particular chill had nothing to do with Sword & Cross’s overzealous air conditioner.

He could feel the shadows tugging at his feet under his chair. They stayed like that, deadweight for the whole movie, and every minute dragged on like an eternity.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

An hour later, Jimin pressed his eye up against the peephole of Cam’s bronze-painted dorm room door. “Yoo-hoo,” he sang, giggling. “The festivities are here!”

He produced a hot-pink feather boa from the same magic carpetbag the bag of popcorn had come from. “Give me a boost,” he said to Jin, dangling his foot in the air.

Jin hooked his fingers together and positioned them under Jimin’s black boot. He watched as Jimin pushed off the ground and used the boa to cover the face of the hallway surveillance camera while he reached around the back of the device and switched it off.

“That’s not suspicious or anything,” Ken said.

“Does your allegiance lie with the after-party?” Jimin shot back. “Or the red party?”

“I’m just saying there are smarter ways.”

Ken snorted as Jimin hopped down. Jimin slung the boa over Jin’s shoulders, and Jin laughed and started to shimmy to the Motown song they could hear through the door. But when Jin offered the boa to Ken for a turn, he was surprised to see him still looking nervous. Ken was biting his nails and sweating at the brow. Ken wore six sweaters in the swampy southern September heat—he was never hot.

“What’s wrong?” Jin whispered, leaning in.

Ken picked at the hem of his sleeve and shrugged. He looked like he was just about to answer when the door behind them opened up. A whoosh of cigarette smoke, blasting music, and suddenly Jungkook’s open arms greeted them.

“You made it,” he said, smiling at Jin. Even in the dim light, his lips had a berry-stained glow. When he folded him in for a hug, he felt tiny and safe. It lasted only a second; then he turned to nod hello at the other two boys, and Jin felt a little proud to have been the one who got the hug.

Behind Jungkook, the small, dark room was crammed with people. Seo-joon was in one corner, at the turntable, holding up records to a black light. The couple Jin had seen on the quad a few days before cozied up against the window. The preppy boys with the white oxford shirts were all huddled up together, occasionally checking out the girls. Jimin wasted no time shooting across the room toward Jungkook’s desk, which looked like it was doubling as a bar. Almost immediately, he had a champagne bottle between his legs and was laughing as he tried to pry off the cork.

Jin was baffled. He hadn’t even known how to get booze at Dover, where the outside world had been a lot less off-limits. 

Jungkook had been back at Sword & Cross for only a few days, but already, he seemed to know how to smuggle everything he needed to throw a Dionysian soirée the entire school showed up to. And somehow everyone else inside thought this was normal.

Still standing at the threshold, he heard the pop, then the cheers from the rest of the crowd, then Jimin’s voice calling out: “Seokjin, get in here. I’m about to make a toast.”

Jin could feel the party’s magnetism, but Ken looked much less ready to budge.

“You go ahead,” he said, waving a hand at Jin.

“What’s wrong? You don’t want to go in?” The truth was, Jin was a little nervous himself. He had no idea what might go down at these things, and since he still wasn’t sure how reliable Jimin was, it would definitely make him feel better to have Ken at his side.

But Ken frowned. “I’m … I’m out of my element. I do libraries … workshops on how to use PowerPoint. You want a file hacked into, I’m your guy. But this—” He stood on tiptoes and peered into the room. “I don’t know. People in there just think I’m some kind of know-it-all.”

Jin attempted his best give-me-a-break frown. “And they think I’m a slab of meat loaf, and we think they’re all totally bananas.” He laughed. “Can’t we all just get along?”

Slowly Ken curled his lip, then took the feather boa and draped it around his shoulders. “Oh, all right,” he said, clomping inside ahead of Jin.

Jin blinked as his eyes adjusted. A cacophony filled the room, but he could hear Jimin’s laughing voice. Jungkook shut the door behind him and tugged Jin’s hand so he’d hang back, away from the heart of the party.

“I’m really glad you came,” he said, putting his hand on his back and bending his head a little so he could hear him in the loud room. Those lips looked almost tasty, especially when they said things like “I jumped up every time someone knocked, hoping it’d be you.”

Whatever had drawn Jungkook to him so quickly, Jin didn’t want to do anything to mess it up. He was popular and unexpectedly thoughtful, and his attention made him feel more than flattered. It made him feel more comfortable in this strange new place. He knew if he tried to respond to his compliment, he’d stumble over the words. So he just laughed, which made him laugh, and then he pulled him in for another hug.

Suddenly there was no place to put his own hands but around his neck. He felt a little light-headed as Jungkook squeezed him, lifting his feet slightly off the ground.

When he put him back down, Jin turned to the rest of the party, and the first thing he saw was Taehyung. But he didn’t think he liked Jungkook. Still, he was sitting cross-legged on the bed, his white T-shirt glowing violet in the black light. As soon as his eyes found him, it was hard to look anywhere else. Which didn’t make sense, because a gorgeous and friendly guy was standing right behind him, asking him what he’d like to drink. The other gorgeous, infinitely less friendly guy sitting across from him should not be the one he couldn’t stop looking at. And Taehyung was staring at him. So intently, with a cryptic, squinting look in his eyes that Jin thought he’d never decode, even if he saw it a thousand times.

All he knew was the effect it had on him. Everyone else in the room went out of focus and he melted. He could have stared back all night if it hadn’t been for Jimin, who had climbed on top of the desk and called out to Jin, his glass raised in the air.

“To Jin,” he toasted, giving Jin a saintly smile. “Who was obviously zoning and missed my entire welcome speech and who will never know how utterly fabulous it was—wasn’t it fabulous, Joon?” he leaned down to ask Seo-Joon, who patted his ankle affirmatively.

Jungkook slipped a plastic cup of champagne into Jin’s hand. He blushed and tried to laugh it off as the whole rest of the party echoed, “To Jin! To Meat Loaf!”

At his side, Yoongi slithered up and whispered a shorter version in his ear: “To Jin, who will never know.”

A few days before, Jin would have flinched away. Tonight, he simply rolled his eyes, then turned his back on Yoongi. The boy had never said a word that didn’t leave Jin feeling bitten, but showing it seemed only to egg him on. So Jin just hunkered down to share the desk chair with Ken, who handed him a rope of black licorice.

“Can you believe it? I think I’m actually having fun,” Ken said, chewing happily.

Jin bit down on the licorice and took a tiny sip of the fizzy champagne. Not a very palatable combination. Kind of like him and Yoongi. “So is Yoongi that evil to everyone, or am I a special case?”

For a second Ken looked like he was going to give a different answer, but then he patted Jin on the back. “Just his usual charming demeanor, my dear.”

Jin looked around the room at all the free-flowing champagne, at Jungkook’s fancy vintage turntable, at the disco ball spinning over their heads, casting stars on everyone’s faces.

“Where do they get all this stuff?” he wondered aloud.

“People say Seo-joon can smuggle anything into Sword & Cross,” Ken said matter-of-factly. “Not that I’ve ever asked him.”

Maybe this was what Jimin meant when he said Seo-joon knew how to get things. The only off-limits item Jin could imagine wanting badly enough to ask about was a cell phone. But then … Jungkook had said not to listen to Jimin about the inner workings of the school. Which would have been fine, except so much of his party seemed to be courtesy of Seo-joon. The more he tried to untangle his questions, the less things added up. He should probably stick to being just “in” enough to get invited to the parties.

“Okay, all you rejects,” Seo-joon said loudly to get everyone’s attention. The record player had quieted down to the static between songs. “We’re going to start the open-mike portion of the night, and I’m taking requests for karaoke.”

“Kim Taehyung!” Jimin hooted through his hands.

“No!” Taehyung hooted back without missing a beat.

“Aww, the silent Taehyung sits another one out,” Seo-joon said into the microphone. “You sure you don’t want to do your version of ‘Hellhound on My Trail’?”

“I believe that’s your song, Seo-joon,” Taehyung said. A faint smile spread across his lips, but Jin got the feeling it was an embarrassed smile, a someone-else-take-the-spotlight-please smile.

“He’s got a point, folks.” Seo-joon laughed.

“Though karaoke-ing Robert Johnson has been known to clear out a room.” He plucked an R. L. Burnside album from the stack and cued the record player in the corner. “Let’s go down south instead.”

As the bass notes of an electric guitar picked up, Seo-joon took center stage, which was really just a few square feet of moonlit empty space in the middle of the room. Everyone else was clapping or stomping their feet in time, but Taehyung was looking down at his watch. Jin kept seeing the image of him nodding at him in the lobby earlier that night, when Jungkook invited him to the party. Like Taehyung wanted him there for some reason. Of course, now that he’d shown up, he made no move to acknowledge his existence.

If only he could get him alone …

Seo-joon so monopolized the attention of the guests that only Jin noticed when, midway through the song, Taehyung stood up, edged himself around Yoongi and Jungkook, and slipped silently out the door.

This was his chance. While everyone around him was applauding, Jin slowly got to his feet.

“Encore!” Jimin called out. Then, noticing Jin rising from his chair, he said, “Oh, snap, is that my guy stepping up to sing?”

“No!” Jin did not want to sing in front of this roomful of people any more than he wanted to admit the real reason why he was standing up. But there he was, standing right in the middle of his first party at Sword & Cross, with Seo-joon ing the mike under his chin. Now what?

“I—I just feel bad for, uh, Jung Hwan. That he’s missing out.” Jin’s voiced echoed back to him over the speakers. He was already regretting his bad lie, and the fact that there was no turning back now. “I thought I’d run down and see if he’s done with Mr. Lee.”

None of the other kids seemed to know quite what to do with this. Only Ken called out timidly, “Hurry back!”

Yoongi was smirking down his nose at Jin. “Geek love,” he said, fake-swooning. “So romantic.”

Wait, did they think he liked Jung Hwan? Oh, who cared—the one person Jin would really not want thinking that was the one person he’d been trying to follow outside.

Ignoring Yoongi, Jin scooted toward the door, where Jungkook met him with crossed arms. “Want company?” he asked hopefully.

He shook his head. On any other errand, he probably would have wanted Jungkook’s company. But not right now.

“I’ll be right back,” he said brightly.

Before he could register the disappointment on his face, he slinked out into the hall. After the roar of the party, the quiet rang in his ears. It took a second before he could make out hushed voices just around the corner.

Taehyung. He'd recognize his voice anywhere. But he was less certain who he was talking to. A guy.

“Ah’m sorrrry,” whoever he was said … with a distinctive southern twang.

Hoseok? Taehyung had been sneaking out to see blond and airbrushed Hoseok?

“It won’t happen again,” Hoseok continued, “I swear to—”

“It can’t happen again,” Taehyung whispered, but his tone practically screamed lovers’ quarrel. “You promised you’d be there, and you weren’t.”

Where? When? Jin was in agony. He inched along the hallway, trying not to make a sound.

But the two of them had fallen silent. Jin could picture Taehyung taking Hoseok’s hands in his. Could picture him leaning in to him for a long, deep kiss. A sheet of all-consuming envy spread across Jin’s chest. Around the corner, one of them sighed.

“You’re going to have to trust me, honey,” he heard Hoseok say, in a saccharine voice that made Jin decide once and for all that he hated him. “I’m the only one you’ve got.”