Two minutes past seven in the morning, it marked the twenty-fourth hour since the last time Jongin drifted off to sleep.

Jongin tried everything to make himself feel sleepy. From practicing slow-paced breath. Counting the sheep. Reading his most boring academic textbook. But his mind wouldn’t cooperate by kept echoing the two highlights from that day.

The ed-up conversation between him and his Dad, and the cherished memory of him danced and hugged Seulgi afterward.

The ambivalence of those two events was intense enough to keep his brain awake, no matter how tired his body was.

At 4 AM, Jongin gave up. He thought maybe during the day, he would finally be able to sleep when his body wanted to shut down. He went through his closet next to his room to try on many outfits, put on light makeup, and took some pictures of himself. At least, he still can feel good about his appearance amid the swirling chaotic emotional state he was in.

Jongin was about to head downstairs to refill his water bottle in the morning. He was two steps into the stairs when he heard his parents conversed in unpleasant intonation in the dining room.

“When will you take the car?”, Jongin heard his Mom’s voice, almost inaudibly.

He stepped back from the stairs and sat on the corner, his back facing the wooden fence while he eavesdropped.

“You go with him this afternoon to the dealer”. That was his Dad. The metal spoon and fork clattered with the ceramic plate after that.

For the next ten seconds, no one voiced something. Then Jongin heard his Mom replied,

“Is it really hard for you to understand that he is sensitive? He’s been holding everything back because he was scared. The least you can do is being a father that he resents”.

Jongin tightened his clench on his water bottle.

“We already have this conversation too many times. I just want him to be normal and good, nothing else”.

“He is my son too, and I have the right to say he is perfectly normal. He is talented, he is kind, and he is the most perfect son we could ever have”, an austere tone can be heard from his Mom’s sentence. “I’ll take him with me if you don’t change your mind”.

Everyone in the house froze right after that statement slipped from Jongin’s Mom’s lips.

“Which part of wanting the best of himself that you don’t understand?”.

“While dismissing what he really feels? It’s not the best for him, it’s the best for you. How selfish you could be as his father?”. She then continued, “Do you think he keeps it as a secret for his whole life because he trusts us? No. He didn’t. He was afraid to get rejected, to get screamed at, yet you’re making his worst fear come true”.

His Dad stayed wordless.

“I’ll go from this house and take him with me if you don’t do anything about this. My decision is final”.

His Mom didn’t even scream her lungs out saying those words, and that’s where Jongin found the irony. A calmer voice from her Mom made him horrified to the bone more than the yell of his Dad a few months back.

He thought his forced coming-out moment to his parents was the worst aftermath that could happen. But to have his parents separated because of him? Even worse.

Jongin didn’t feel so thirsty suddenly. He came back to his room and threw himself to the bed, curled his body under the blanket. This time, no tears were coming—maybe he was too damn dehydrated or exhausted to produce some. It was just slow breath and some heavy sighs in between.

How Jongin really wished that the accident five months ago would just kill him instead.

~***~

Coming back to the dance studio gave Jongin a double amount of nervousness. First, he had to have many people lay their eyes on him when he danced again, after five months of not doing so.

Second, Oh Sehun. The source of his uneasiness wasn’t coming from his own feelings but from his inability to calculate Sehun’s possible moves. Would Sehun just ignore him? Or to act like nothing ever happened? Or to act friendly towards him? No single clue was available for him to digest.

Many of Jongin’s friends greeted him with an excited high-pitched shout and swarmed over him in an instant when he first stepped into the room. Their energy was contagious to him. Jongin found himself laughing along with them while answering some questions, are you really okay now? Will your legs be broken again? Why it took you so long to recover?

There were some new ones among all the faces, seen from how they just sat while whispering to each other during the noisy welcome-back moment. But none of them was Sehun. Maybe he is late.

Right after he assured himself, the door was opened to unveil the face he had been looking for.

Sehun.

His hair was a bit longer than what Jongin last remembered, and his cheek was getting chubbier.

Jongin and Sehun were merely best friends in their friends’ eyes. And Jongin didn’t want to give them the opposite idea.

So, when Sehun smiled and approached him, Jongin had to smile back. When Sehun pulled him into a hug and patted his back a few times, Jongin had to return it back too.

He could hear his throbbing heartbeat while wishing that Sehun couldn’t.

“Welcome back”, Sehun’s smile matched with the friendly tone in his voice.

Jongin gulped.

Sehun used to have the same scent with him due to their matching perfumes, and now he didn’t, anymore.

Before it went too far, Jongin split their hug. He didn’t reply to Sehun’s greeting with words. Only with a smile.

Jongin hated how his short interaction with Sehun meddled with his concentration during the training afterward. It was easy for him to remember which body part he should coordinate, but then he would get distracted and ended up lagging behind. He randomly remembered that he and Sehun were placed in the center of the formation one time in the competition. There was a part where the other dancers paused, so Sehun and Jongin’s movements were the only ones that can be seen. Jongin still could hear the blaring cheer from the spectators and see the smirk Sehun threw at him when they had to face each other at the end.

That freaking smirk, the same one that he witnessed before Sehun tickled him aggressively during that one movie night—

Shut up, shut up, shut up.

It was a long day of practice with their coach. The sun had already down when it was over. Jongin straight off grabbed his sling bag as his mind was fully occupied with his next mission: talking with Sehun. But the guy he was looking for was already nowhere to be seen. Pacing his feet as fast as he could, Jongin escaped from the room.

His head was busy rotating to left and right, only to be interrupted by a voice so recognizable from behind his head.

“Jongin-ah”.

There he was, the one that he had been waiting to talk for since this afternoon. Turned out that Sehun was waiting for him too, back rested on the wall, arms folded in front of his chest.

“Hey”, Jongin greeted him. Sehun smiled and patted Jongin’s arm a few times. They walked side by side, shoulders nearly touching each other. “You good?”.

As much as Jongin hated small talk, he didn’t have any other option. What kind of conversation should he have with his ex, who hasn’t talk with him for a few months? A dialogue of how ed up he felt for the first month after they broke up? Absolutely no.

“I’m good”. Sehun turned his face to Jongin. “Exam just ended last week. I have more time to do more useless things”.

“Like...counting how much the word ‘and’ appeared in your textbook?”.

Sehun laughed along with Jongin. “You still remembered that one, huh”.

“No way I could forget that”.

“Nah, I’m more into sleeping now. I can’t fight the biological process of aging”.

“So you just admit how old you’ve become”, Jongin put both of his hands into his pants pocket.

“Said the one who was born three months before me?”, Sehun raised one of his eyebrows when he looked at him. Jongin pulled his right hand out to the air to pretend he yanked him, which gained another chuckle from Sehun.

“Jongin-ah”.

“Yes?”.

“Are you...really alright now?”. Sehun diverted his eyes down to Jongin’s legs.

Jongin smiled, before he raised his left leg and shook it a couple times. “Didn’t you see me before? While practicing? I’m ready to sweep your name down and snatch the top dancer title again. Watch out for that”.

A tiny smile molded upon Sehun’s visage.

“I was wondering if we can catch up on our lives this weekend”.

There he went, another knot in his gut. Jongin stopped walking in the middle of the lobby, and Sehun followed his gesture.

“I know things had been rough between us”, Sehun stated. “I just want to hear how you have been when we’re away”.

“Why did you never text me, then?”.

“It’s...I feel bad for us, Jongin. I was afraid that you resent me...and I’ll just make things worse by jumping into your life again. The safest way I could think for us is to give you space”.

The part when Sehun assumed that he resented him was wrong. He didn’t hate Sehun. He just hated the way that both of them were not intended to be together. But the latter part when Sehun told him that space is what Jongin needed was right. He thought that the best way to hasten his move on progress was to avoid contact in any form with Sehun.

“Let’s talk about it in more detail later”, Jongin finally answered after having some thoughts for himself. “Text me the location. This Saturday, right?”.

“Right”.

“Alright, good”.

Just as Jongin turned his back to Sehun to walk away, he caught Sehun’s voice shouting his name once again.

“Jongin-ah!”.

Jongin looked back at Sehun. “What?”.

“See you this Saturday”.

Sehun smiled at him, and both of his eyes were crinkled up into fine lines. He hadn’t seen that smile for a while, and today he was reminded again of how he used to do anything to make Sehun smiled. Because he loved to see him happy.

But it was all in the past, and Jongin knew he didn’t have any obligation for Sehun’s happiness anymore. It was just a mere smile. An expression of politeness. Nothing else.

So, he smiled back and waved his hand at him.

“See you too, Sehun”.

~***~

What was the best-unexpected thing that could happen to anyone?

If Seulgi was asked that question, her answer would be waking up to have 10 million dollars in her bank account.

But that answer only lasted until the second weekend of July.

She was walking in Itaewon after meeting some of her friends and intended to take a subway to her flat. It was nearly 10 PM. Her friends offered her to hop into a bar and have a couple drinks, but Seulgi refused. She didn’t really feel like drinking that night. So, she bid goodbye and went a separate way from her friends. The night was getting colder. Her crop top with her mini skirt didn’t help to ignite heat at all, indeed.

At first, Seulgi thought the person she saw was just another 6 feet man with perfect posture, broad shoulder, and tanned skin, walking beside a man with a similar height to him. There should be a lot of men with the said physical characteristics in South Korea, right? Coupled with the fact that she was in Itaewon, the melting pot district in Seoul.

But when their gap was narrowed down, and she saw his face, she brushed off any other possibilities she formed two seconds ago.

“Jongin!”.

Meeting her crush so suddenly without any appointment or such beforehand was the best-unexpected thing that could happen to her at that time.

Jongin stirred his gaze to Seulgi before he widened his eyes, face lightened up with a wide grin.

“Seulgi!”, he stopped walking to face Seulgi. “Hey, what’s up? Having a great night?”.

“Yeah, of course. Just hanging out with my friends”,