Apparently everyone hated how Game of Thrones ended. There was a pour of angry shouts and heavy insults, mostly at the writing.

 

“It was so good ,” someone moaned. “A masterpiece. But then they had to it all up.”

 

“Bricks … man, they finished it with bricks. Bricks. All those countless creative methods to kill someone off, and they chose bricks.”

 

“I have so many complaints, but I’ll just say this one: Varys deserved better.”

 

There was a murmur of agreement around the room, and the someone said, “I hope that old man doesn’t die before finishing the books,”

 

“The deities must intervene,” someone else said resolutely. “Even they must be curious.”

 

“The writing was supremely ty, we all agree,” a girl said. “But I can’t be the only one who couldn’t see in the last battle, right?”

 

As the people around them continued to complain, exchange theories, argue over endings, and preach to people to read the books, Baekhyun and Kim Jongin had a little talk of their own.

 

“I never watched the show,” Kim Jongin admitted. “It even took me a while to realise how big the show was in Korea — in the world. Did you watch it?”

 

“Yeah, I watched it. Although I was a bit late. I read the books, too.”

 

“Do you think I should watch it?”

 

“Well, it really is very good,” Baekhyun said. “But I say, read a book and watch a season. It’s always better if you read the books. Like you heard, it went downhill ever since the show caught up with the books, but the acting never did. The costume designs and the props and the music, they're all amazing.”

 

“Okay, I’ll do what you said. Read a book per season.”

 

Baekhyun wondered, “You’re convinced that easily?”

 

“Well, I figured you had a good taste,”

 

“How come?”

 

But he didn’t get to hear Jongin’s reasoning because of Jongdae — typical — who shushed everyone, going “SSSSHHH!” When everyone was silent, he said, “Let’s have a moment of silence, for the writer,”

 

“You don’t have a moment of silence for an alive person,” a girl said, “do you?”

 

“No, you don’t,” a very deep voice said.

 

“You don’t, or you shouldn’t?” a husky voiced girl asked. “There’s a difference. Maybe we can but just don’t know,”

 

“I think it’s only for someone dead or something …” — the guy sneezed — “... lost.”

 

“Bless you, where does it even come from anyway?” a girl asked, she had a very clear voice and precise pronunciation. “Is it a religious thing? If so, which one?”

 

“I think it’s just a common cultural thing with no particular origin that we know of?” another girl suggested. “Maybe some ancient people used to do it and then it was lost and then came back around again?”

 

The sneezing guy sneezed again.

 

“Bless you,”

 

“Stay healthy, my friend but if you die — can I get your vintage leather jacket?”

 

“No, off,”

 

“We’re having a moment of silence!” Jongdae tried again. “I don’t care how it’s used. Tonight we’ll have a moment of silence to wish for … for — what was his name again?”

 

“Are you kidding me?”

 

“A letter, a letter, a letter and Martin,” a girl laughed. “That’s all I remember.”

 

“Wait, wait, I know this,” Seulgi said. “J.R.R?”

 

“Nah, that’s Tolkien, baby,” Baekhyun said.

 

“Oooh, I love Lord of the Rings,” Jongin said.

 

“Legolas,” Seulgi sighed dreamily. “I had the biggest crush on him.”

 

“Get in line,”

 

“Who didn’t?”

 

And they started to talk about just how dreamy and hot Legolas was. Evidently, pretty much all the girls in the room had a crush on him and thought Aragorn was pretty okay until they grew up, watched the movies again and was like holy  , damn, how many hot people did I miss because I was too young? But they still liked Legolas better. Twenty year old Orlando Bloom was a damn sight.

 

“My one and only ideal type to this day,” the ‘Letter Letter Letter Martin’ girl said with a dreamy sigh. “Gorgeous, calm and so cool,”

 

Seulgi giggled loudly. “You know, when The Hobbit came out I was stunned. I never read the books so I didn’t know he had a dad and that his dad looked like that …” she trailed off, probably thinking she said too much.

 

“Like what?” Baekhyun asked innocently.

 

“You’re so mean,” Kim Jongin whispered. Baekhyun gave him a tiny nudge with the back of his hand.

 

“He’s, you know,” Seulgi hesitated. “He’s a … dad but he’s a dad who, you know,”

 

The room fell silent. Baekhyun bit his lip. He knew what he was thinking. He knew everyone knew what he was thinking. Everyone knew what everyone was thinking.

 

And of course it was Jongdae. It was always Jongdae. It was Jongdae who ate a worm and ruined his little yellow shoes. It was Jongdae who pulled down Baekhyun pants in the fifth grade during gym. It was Jongdae who wasn’t wearing underwear when Baekhyun tried to take revenge on him in the middle of the third floor corridor. It was Jongdae who scarred him for life and almost got him kicked out of the school if it wasn’t for his incredibly wealthy family. It was always always Jongdae.

 

“Daddy?” he said.

 

In a second, the room was full of people groaning, as if they were in deep deep pain, or shame.

 

“Dude!”

 

“Can’t believe you’ve done this,”

 

“I can’t believe I heard Jongdae say ‘daddy’, I have to die now,”

 

Kim Jongin said something but Baekhyun missed it.

 

“Somebody kick Jongdae,” Kyungsoo said, from somewhere over Baekhyun’s head.

 

“You’re not supposed to say it!” some girl snapped. “I’m gonna die, oh my god…”

 

Jongdae’s homicidal cackle just made the situation worse. “Oh come on, we all knew it in our hearts — just say it out loud, man. Besides I blame the darkness. And the booze. And the fact that Baekhyun came tonight.”

 

“The darkness is oddly comforting,” a girl said begrudgingly. “But only because I’m not alone,”

 

The sneezing guy sneezed again. “Oh yeah, I definitely would have lost my if I was alone in here. What is wrong with you, Jongdae? How do you sleep in here alone?”

 

“Who said I sleep alone?” Jongdae said sleazily.

 

“You do,” the guy deadpanned. “You complain incessantly about how lonely and alone you are,”

 

The whole room laughed at Jongdae, who cursed and vowed to step on the sneezing guy’s balls before the night was over.

 

“Sure, go ahead,” the sneezer gave his blessing. “At least it’s some action for you,”

 

Jongdae grumbled about unthankful and needlessly-mean friends, as the room went oooooooooh at the insult.

 

“I don’t understand how your friend is still alive,” Kim Jongin whispered, “if he casually gets multiple burns like this in his own home,”

 

“It helps that he’s not human,” Baekhyun whispered back. “Fire can’t hurt you if your hometown is hell.”

 

A busy conversation had started in the room but Baekhyun ignored it. Kim Jongin was easy to talk to and never seemed to ask difficult questions.

 

“How did you meet Kyungsoo?” he asked, wondering why Kyungsoo had failed to mention Kim Jongin to him. Kyungsoo called him all the time. He barged into Baekhyun’s home all the time and complained incessantly about how much of a bad friend Baekhyun was being. But he couldn’t find a minute to tell him that he had a kind friend with a calming voice and long legs?

 

“Oh, me and my friend were just sitting on the lawn one day watching this squirrel run around, and this ball came, hit my friend in the face and knocked him out for a few seconds.” Kim Jongin said casually, as if it was a daily thing. “So I had to carry my friend to the infirmary while Kyungsoo ran along, apologizing. My friend kept trying to hit him and claimed that Kyungsoo ruined his beautiful face —”

 

“Is he beautiful?” Baekhyun said and immediately closed his eyes in regret; he hadn’t meant to ask that out loud.

 

But Jongin didn’t seem to notice his discomfort. “He thinks he is,” he said good naturedly. “Like the way he thinks he’s whispering when all he does is speak in normal volume, just with a slightly hoarse voice. He thinks he can whisper but he can’t. Got us into a lot of trouble because he tends to speak a looot of about people.”

 

Baekhyun hummed in approval. “Sounds like a handful.”

 

“He is. Anyway, the next day Kyungsoo and I ran into each other outside the sculpture department, and he asked if there was something Sehun — that’s my friend — liked so he could get it for him, as an apology. I told him that Sehun liked a blueberry and lemon cake that this cafe close to the campus makes, and he told me that actually it was his family’s cafe. Sehun got to have a free cake, and we became friends.”

 

“That’s nice,” Baekhyun said. “Maybe I should come and hang around with Kyungsoo for a day — sounds fun.”

 

“It is. We even have a cat at our school. It’s so chubby and fluffy,”

 

“Oh yeah, Gong Yoo, right?”

 

“You know her?”

 

“Nah, Jongdae mentioned it a long time ago.”

 

“I see. Maybe you’ll get to see her, too. She’s really nice and will sleep on your lap if you feed her enough.”

 

Baekhyun laughed. “That’s mighty big of her,”

 

“ NOOOO !” A furious voice of a girl rang through the room. Baekhyun and Kim Jongin stilled, wondering if there was something wrong. “Honest drunks are the worst! You think you know pain when your friend pukes on you,” she continued, “but just wait and see when they start spilling all of your secrets, even the ones you didn’t know they did. You’re lucky if you’re surrounded by strangers, but they’ll talk in front of your mother, too, don’t you have a doubt!”

 

A boy laughed. “I’ll take your honest drunks and raise you to take-their-clothes-off-for-no-reason drunks. You can’t say you’ve suffered until you’re trying to stop your best friend from taking his pants off in the middle of a dance floor. You pull it up, he pulls it down — it’s a war with no meaning, no victories, and the end only comes when you get kicked out or picked up by the police.”

 

The girl mulled it over for a moment. “Yeah, okay, you’re right.”

 

So the room was just discussing which drunks were the worst. “Did anyone talk about the friend who changes their phone and/or home passcode?” he said, and enjoyed the silence that followed. “Guess not.”

 

“Oh my god, who does that?” a girl whispered, obviously horrified.

 

“Kyungsoo,” Kim Jongin said. “Kyungsoo does that, right?”

 

“Yep. Last year he passed out at my place, woke up and couldn’t open up his phone. After he left, I went out to get groceries and got locked out of my own home. The next day he called me and said that he had changed his credit card’s pass — something he didn’t know how to do sober.”

 

“I’m learning so much,” Seulgi giggled.

 

Everyone was laughing and Jongdae shouted. “Wait, did you change my passcode, too? Bastard, tell me, was that you last month? It was you, wasn’t it?”

 

“I apologized,” Kyungsoo grumbled. 

 

“You did not,” Baekhyun grumbled back.

 

“Kyungsoo!” Jongdae yelled, clearly outraged. People laughed harder.

 

“I said I was sorry,” Kyungsoo ignored Jongdae.

 

Baekhyun ignored Jongdae, too. “You never said you were sorry, and throwing some food at me is not apologizing,”

 

“DO YOU KNOW HOW SCARED I WAS?” Jongdae was still after justice. “I live alone, I thought the place was haunted. HOW COULD YOU?”

 

“Is that why you kept crashing at my place?” Seulgi said.

 

Jongdae cleared his throat importantly. “Well … yeah, I had to … I mean, my passcode had changed on its own.”

 

“You said you missed me,” Seulgi said accusingly, clearly regretting letting Jongdae into her home.

 

“I had, a bit,” Jongdae answered, not even a drop of shame evident in his voice.

 

“You said you wanted some quality time together,”

 

“I did, a bit,”

 

“You said I was your favorite cousin.”

 

“That, is completely true,”

 

Seulgi cursed at him, but had softened enough because then she said, “Let’s play a game,”

 

“What game?” A girl asked, probably the Letter-Letter-Letter-Martin girl.

 

“Honesty game. It’s comfortable in the dark, so I feel like I can just pretty much talk about anything.”

 

“How does it work?”

 

“Well, let’s start with me,” Seulgi cleared . “So, I ask a question to the person closest to me and he or she has to answer honestly. You don’t have to answer it, but you’re out of the game if you can’t or won’t answer. If the question is deemed too inappropriate, too nasty, or too stupid, like the ‘would you rather have with your mother in your girlfriend’s body, or your girlfriend in your mother’s body — I will hit you if you do this. Also you’ll get kicked out of the room. Last person standing — or laying, in this case — wins.”

 

“Sounds fun,” the deep-voiced guy said. “I’m in.”

 

“Yeah, let’s gather some dirt!”

 

The room cheered and clapped, and so Seulgi’s little impromptu game began. Baekhyun howled along eagerly for a moment before he realized that the person closest to him was Kim Jongin. He gulped.

 

“Any fictional crush?” Seulgi asked the girl closest to her.

 

“Ha! So many,” the girl laughed. “Okay, okay, I’ll go with Kuuro Tetsuro,”

 

“Who is that?” Kyungsoo asked, as a different girl went “Whooo! He’s hot.”

 

“I answered the question,” the girl said slyly. “Okay, hang on — hmmmmm, first , accidental or intentional?”

 

Apparently the sneezing guy was closest to her because he answered, “Accidental. Found a CD in my hyung’s room. Most dangerous thing you’ve done in school.” he continued the game.

 

“Found our principal's wallet in the hall and I burned it. Took all the cash before, of course,”

 

“Wooooow,” Baekhyun laughed. Kim Jongin chuckled next to him.

 

“Why?”

 

“That’s wild,”

 

“How?”

 

“He was a head,” the girl answered coolly. “A bigot with a foul breath. Okay okay, my turn. This secret boyfriend of yours, is he in this room?”

 

“No, can’t believe you wasted your chance like that,” a girl with a hoarse and suave voice answered. “Is there anyone you would like to sleep with in this room?”

 

The game continued and secrets were spilled. Someone had lost his phone in middle grade and was too afraid to tell his parents, so he decided to tell them that he was robbed. He convinced his best friend to punch him in the face, got a nice bruised eye and went home, ready to get some major sympathy points and favorite meal for dinner. He explained what happened and got a smack in the head because his mother had come home after work and found his cellphone on the floor. 

 

Jongdae confessed to eating a cigarette for a dare. The L.L.L.Martin girl once accidentally saw seventy percent of her English teacher’s when the teacher bent down to get something from the floor, it was also the first time she saw a thong “in action”. “The low-hip jeans were all the rage back then,” she said. “All the butts were visible when you sat down.”

 

“It better never come back,” Seulgi said. “Here’s to high-waist jeans!”

 

“Hear, hear!”

Kyungsoo grudgingly admitted that he wrote a love letter in middle school. “Describe the person next to you with three words,” he said. “Jongin, that’s you. Your turn.”

 

“Had little yellow shoes when he was a kid,” Kim Jongin said (many people went awww ). “Let me know that you used to windows when you were a kid (people went awww at this, too. Drunk bastards). “And he’s hot, as far as I hear,”

 

“Holy ,” Seulgi said excitedly. “I made that happen!”

 

Baekhyun ignored the urge to shift in his place and waited; Kim Jongin had a question for him.

 

“Is there anything you have been craving to eat or drink these days?”

 

“What?” Baekhyun turned at him, even though he couldn’t see anything. "Why?"

 

“Because,” Kim Jongin said, the back of his hand was brushing ever so slightly against Baekhyun’s, “I would like to take you out on a date.”

 

 

I keep dreaming about this old crush of mine. Is this some sort of magical connection, with which we're supposed to create a bond and realize that we're meant to be, or am I just lonely lol