Even though he had never seen Jongdae’s new bedroom before, Baekhyun knew exactly what it would look like. It would be a big room with minimal furniture, just like all the others. A huge bed with no bedside tables because Jongdae was afraid that he would fall in his sleep one day, smash his head against them and die. A single couch in one corner because Jongdae likes to sometimes sit in his room and do nothing and stare at nothing. There would be no en-suite bathroom, because Jongdae hated having a toilet so close. “Should have its own space,” he had said. “With a big window for maximum exposure to sunlight.”

 

A huge walk-in wardrobe was a must for Jongdae, even though Baekhyun, for the life of him, couldn’t figure out why Jongdae was so hell-bent on having it, considering how spectacularly horrible he was at dressing. And last but not least, a set of black-out curtains that were fifty shades darker than Baekhyun’s future because Jongdae liked to be a creepy guy with a dark room.

 

The only reason he saw the shape of the body by the foot of the bed was because there was some light coming in from behind, illuminating a pair of long legs and some stomach, clad in all black, and unmoving.

 

“Jongdae,” he said. “There’s a dead body on the floor?”

 

“What?”

 

“I’m not a dead body,” the dead body said politely. “Please don’t turn on the light, my head hurts.”

 

“Fine,” Jongdae entered the room, ing his shirt. Seulgi closed the door behind them and they were engulfed into (creepy) complete darkness. The music playing all around the house was now a barely heard whisper.

 

“Wow,” Seulgi whispered. “I can’t see anything. Hey, what’s wrong with you? How do you sleep in a room like this?”

 

“Happily,” Jongdae said. “And how do you sleep in that morgue you call your bedroom, hmm?”

 

“Like I’m dead,”

 

A short snicker came from the floor.

 

“Hey, guy on the floor,” Jongdae called. “Who are you?”

 

“Kim Jongin,” the dead body said. “Kyungsoo’s friend?”

 

“Oh yeah, I heard about you. Welcome to my home! How do you like my par — —” there was some banging. Apparently Jongdae was having trouble with his closet. “. How does this open again?”

 

“Ughhhhh. Just find the gap! The gap … and then gently pull,” Seulgi sounded like someone who had had to say the same thing numerous times. She walked past Baekhyun (patting his stomach gently — much appreciated) to help her stupid cousin.  “Seriously, how many times — why did you even get it if you can’t use it?”

 

The dead body on the floor chuckled. “Kyungsoo was right.”

 

Jongdae’s reaction was immediate and (ofcourse) over the top. “Right about what?” he demanded. “What did he tell you? Which one was it? The raccoon? That mountain trip? Because believe me whatever he told you about me, I can top it. Don’t be fooled by his face. Don’t think Kyungsoo didn’t do some that keeps him awake at night. What was it? Middle school? High school? It was kindergarten, wasn’t it? Look, it’s not my fault that nobody told me the difference between worm-shaped jellies and actual worms!”

 

“You ate worms?!” Seulgi shrieked. Her words were followed by the (ever so delicious) sound of a skin getting smacked.

 

Jongdae yelped. “Ya! What was that for? You hit my chest!”

 

“Sorry, I was going for you arm —”

 

“That doesn’t make it better! What, my arms don’t feel any pain? Unlike you, Miss Kang Seulgi, I feel stuff. You see, I’m a human.”

 

“Shut up, you ate a worm.”

 

“Not the whole thing! Just … just a bit of it.”

 

“More than half of it,” Baekhyun (kindly) corrected his friend, and was pleased to hear the dead body on the floor whisper (very softly) “Oh my god,”

 

“You stay out of this, you dip!”

 

Baekhyun wasn’t going to stay out of it. He remembered the event vividly; it was one of his few earliest memories. Jongdae finding a worm in the park, Jongdae eating it, Jongdae getting violently sick, Jongdae puking on the shoes of (a very small and cute) Baekhyun. Jongdae crying, the teacher rushing to get him to the hospital.

 

“You puked on my shoes!”

 

“Is this —” Jongdae exclaimed loudly, the message of ‘I don’t believe you!’ plastered all over his tone. “ This is about your yellow shoes?”

 

“Yellow shoes?” the dead body — Kim Jongin — whispered.

 

“I had yellow shoes,” Baekhyun whispered back.

 

“Yellow shoes,” Seulgi repeated. “That’s so cute!”

 

It was. Baekhyun had some pictures of those days, and his yellow shoes had multiplied his adorableness by at least three hundred.

 

“My mom bought you new shoes!” Jongdae snapped. “The exact same one.”

 

“They weren’t the same! Well, yeah, fine, they were identical, but they could have never been the same!” Baekhyun resisted the urge to stomp his foot on the floor, like the toddler he once was. “In my memory, I grew up wearing my yellow shoes . They were old and soft, and I fought tooth and nail to keep it from getting thrown away! And then you!” he hissed out, “you oaf, you junk, you nasty, ate a worm and killed them with your vomit!”

 

“I was three!”

 

“So was I!”

 

Jongdae apparently had nothing to say to that, or he was coming up with something to say. Perhaps something equally awful that Baekhyun had done to him, so he could throw it in his face.

 

“But wasn’t it suspicious when the worm wiggled?” Kim Jongin said thoughtfully. “I mean, even you must have noticed that none of your jellies ever moved.”

 

Baekhyun decided there and then that he liked Kim Jongin. He liked how soft but sharp his voice was. He liked the long and lean legs he got to see briefly. He liked how he was odd enough to come and lie down on a stranger’s bedroom floor. And he especially liked how he had said even you to Jongdae, whom he had met a minute ago in total darkness. Anyone who dismissed Jongdae’s intellect — by the way, the earlier the better — was someone Baekhyun found worth dying with.

 

Jongdae sighed. He sighed again, louder and deeper. And then he groaned like a supermarket cart with only three wheels getting pushed around while carrying enough food to feed a family of fifty. “It was dead.”

 

“What?” Seulgi sounded horrified.

 

“I didn’t know! I was three!” wailed Jongdae.

 

Jongin was the first to laugh, Seulgi joined right after. Even Jongdae cracked a dry laugh.

 

Baekhyun stood, feeling sheepish and old (thanks to the bittersweet memory of his yellow shoes), and was glad that nobody could see the heat creeping up to his face.

 

Jongdae cleared his throat. “Did Kyungsoo actually say anything about me?”

 

“No,”

 

“Really?”

 

“Actually, he did. Sorry,” Kim Jongin said, not sounding sorry at all (as you do).

 

“What? Really? What did he say?”

 

“Actually, that was the joke. He really didn’t say anything. He doesn’t talk about you much, actually.” Kim Jongin then added another (unapologetic) “sorry”

 

“Why are you doing this to me?”

 

Baekhyun smiled, delighted to hear the tortured soul within Jongdae.

 

“I heard you were a good kid. Kyungsoo kept saying how kind you were. How humble you were… wait, you’re a year younger than him, aren’t you?”

 

“Yes?”

 

“I’m two years older than you!” Jongdae said triumphantly. “Show this hyung some respect and maybe, please, don’t make a fool out of me in my own bedroom, will you? Girls do that enough already.”

 

“Who made fun of you?” Seulgi asked eagerly. “And how?”

 

Jongdae said something insulting to her, and of course she insulted him back. With furious whispers, the Kim cousins started a war. Baekhyun had learned to build a block around his ears for that. He had no desire to get into that again.

 

Instead he felt like getting down on the floor and talking to Kim Jongin. Maybe it was the darkness, maybe it was the little bit of booze in his system, or maybe it was just because he had missed being with people.

 

He took tentative little steps, kneeled down and felt the floor around with his hands.

 

“Hello,” Kim Jongin said when Baekhyun laid down next to him.

 

“Hello, why are you here alone? Are you okay?”

 

“I’m okay,” Kim Jongin said easily. “I just got … tired from all the noise and all the booze.”

 

“Oh, did you drink much?”

 

“Not a glass. I don’t drink. But you know how when you’re around so many people who are drinking, it feels like the alcohol is, like, in the air? And you start to feel wobbly and floaty…”

 

“I hear ya,” Jongdae sounded alarmingly close.

 

Baekhyun hadn’t noticed the Kim cousins going silent. “Go away,” he told him. Kim Jongin laughed softly next to him.

 

“It’s my room.”

 

“You invited me,”

 

“For a party, not to —”

 

“I call the bed! Alone!” Seulgi said happily, and she only stepped on one of Baekhyun’s hands on her way to get there.

 

Jongdae tutted and grumbled and mumbled curses, and was left to sit on his couch.

 

“So, Jongin-ssi,” Seulgi said, patting up some pillows. “Maybe you can also tell us something embarrassing you did as a kid?”

 

 

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For someone who's extremely anxious about everything, especially how to survive in the future, I sure do spend a lot of time doing nothing.