The homework wasn’t as bad as Jongin expected it to be. Kyungsoo had told him that it was brutal and he had to pull all nighters way too often.

            Then again, Kyungsoo took three more classes than he did.

            “Why do you push yourself so hard?” Jongin asked him one night, as they did their homework in the living room, because it was air conditioned.

            Kyungsoo shifted some papers to find the solution manual for one of his textbooks. “Well, I’m not going into acting, and MCing isn’t a very reliable career. I want to have other options open just in case.”

            “I thought you wanted to be a chef?”

            “That’s just one option. I want more than that.”

            Jongin stared at the piles of papers in front of Kyungsoo. “Oh.”

            Kyungsoo shuffled more papers before he asked, “What made you go back?”

            Jongin was confused. “What?”

            “What made you go back?” Kyungsoo repeated. “To school.”

            Jongin shrugged. “I guess, I mean we’re not going to be singers forever. And I kinda at singing.”

            Kyungsoo laughed. “I didn’t realize you knew.”

            Jongin smacked him. “Just because you’re perfect doesn’t mean the rest of us are.”

            Kyungsoo looked up. “Since when was I perfect?”

            Jongin reached over and plucked the solution manual from underneath a stack of papers. “Here’s the manual.”

            Kyungsoo took it from him, and said, “Thanks.”

            They were silent for a couple minutes, the only sound being Jongin’s pencil writing.

            “So, are you going to tell me what made you go back?” Kyungsoo asked again, flipping through the manual.

            Jongin rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand. “Remember two years ago?”

            Kyungsoo looked at him. “Jongin, lots of stuff happened two years ago.”

            Jongin laughed. “Two years ago, when we went to Los Angeles?”

            “We’ve been to Los Angeles more than once though,” Kyungsoo said, frowning.

            “We went on that tour, remember? Tour of Stanford.”

            “So?”

            “I met this guy there.”

            Kyungsoo looked up. “I have absolutely no idea where you’re going with this, but continue.”

            Jongin rolled his eyes. “I didn’t hook up with him, if that’s what you were thinking.”

            “It was, actually,” Kyungsoo said, under his breath.

            Jongin chose to ignore him and plowed ahead. “Well, I was wandering around by myself, because there was no one there and it was nice. Peaceful. But I wasn’t watching where I was going, and I ran into this guy. He was Korean, so I apologized and helped him pick up his books and stuff, and he recognized me. He didn’t recognize me as Kai, but Jongin. And I recognized him. We were trainees, back when I was new. For my first year, we trained; not together, because he was a couple years older than me. But then he debuted. He was under a different company, though, not SM. But then after about a year and a half, he quit the band. His band was actually pretty popular, and he had a lot of fans, from what I remember. I didn’t hear about what he did afterwards. So I asked him why he quit, and he said that celebrity life wasn’t what he signed up for. He wanted to make a difference; to impact people’s lives. And the airports and hotels and security guards wasn’t how he wanted to do it. So he quit and studied his way to Stanford, and he graduated this past spring. He’s somewhere in the Ivy League now, I think. I asked him if he regretted it, giving up celebrity life, and he told me no, he wasn’t. He said it wasn’t for him.”

            Kyungsoo put his pencil down. “That’s good for him, but I don’t see what this has to do with you. You like celebrity life, right?”

            Jongin shrugged. “It’s okay. I mean, I like performing and dancing, but I don’t like the cameras everywhere. I just want to blend in sometimes.”

            “So you’re going to school?”

            Jongin fidgeted with the corner of his piece of paper. “Do you ever wonder what you missed? What we would have done if we went to college normally.”

            “Not really, no.”

            “I do.”

            “Jongin–”

            “I don’t regret joining SM. I just wanted to go to school. I just…I just want to be normal.”

            Kyungsoo looked almost sad. “So that’s why?”

            Jongin nodded.

            “And where did Sehun come into this? You didn’t bully him into it, right?”

            Jongin laughed. “No one can bully Sehun into doing anything, you should know that by now. And he wanted to know what it was like to be a college kid, too.”

            “But you’re missing all the frat parties. They’re the life of college.”

            “How would you know? You’re missing all of them too.”

            Kyungsoo didn’t say anything, just smiled down at his textbook. Jongin stared at him.

            “Wait, you did miss all of them, right?”

            Kyungsoo flipped through his solution manual again. “Do your homework, Jongin.”

            “But–”

            “Homework.”

            A couple months after Jongin and Sehun started college, Joonmyun called them all to the living room.

            “Well, we’re going to record another album.”

            Sehun froze. “Wait, what?”

            “What’s going on?” Luhan walked in with the rest of the members.

            “New album,” Joonmyun said, motioning to them to sit down.

            “And why is that such a surprise to Sehun?” Luhan asked.

            “I–because–well we have school!” Sehun sputtered.

            Luhan nodded. “And this is where you have to be absolutely charming. You have to let the head of the school know that you really don’t want to take a break from school, but you have to. And if you didn’t, your school work and performance will both be unsatisfactory, so it’s better to concentrate on one at a time.”

            Jongin snorted. “You sound like you’re very experienced in this kind of thing.”

            Luhan smiled. “It helps that I still had an accent when I spoke Korean back then. My teachers thought it was adorable.”

            “You’re evil,” Sehun decided. Joonmyun laughed.

            Their teachers took it surprisingly well, Jongin thought. He had been expecting reprimands and scoldings, but instead, he got pats on the back.

            “Win an award, okay?” was what his Language and Comp. teacher told them. Jongin was surprised, but managed to nod.

            Jongin started to spend hours in the practice room again. The last few months, he hadn’t been able to dance for more than an hour or two a day, but now it was four, five, even six. Their new choreography was hard, even for Jongin, and he wanted to perfect it.

            Sehun practiced by himself too, and when Jongin found him, he was struggling with a part of the choreography.

            “Snap your arms quicker,” Jongin suggested from the doorway. Sehun whirled around, his sweaty hair flying into his eyes.

            “What?”

            “You’re missing the next beat because your arms are too slow,” Jongin said, coming in the room. “You just need to move them quicker.”

            Sehun sighed, running a hand through his hair. “Can you show me?”

            Jongin did, and Sehun mimicked him, trying to get all the details.

            Jongin found that he had missed the hours of practice. He missed the satisfied feeling he got when he finally perfected a piece of choreography. The feeling of pure exhaustion after a practice session. The feeling of performing.

            Sehun wiped his face with a towel and leaned against the wall.

            “I almost forgot what it was like to practice,” he said, opening a bottle of water, and tossing one to Jongin.

            Jongin caught the bottle and opened it, taking a couple mouthfuls of water. “Remember how our trainer made us do those exercise?”

            Sehun groaned. “The pushups and sit-ups and crunches and wall-sits? Never going to forget that, ever.”

            “At least you didn’t collapse halfway through, like Baekhyun.”

            “Didn’t Chanyeol carry him home?”

            Jongin laughed. “Yeah, and Joonmyun almost had a panic attack, he was so worried.”

            “Was that seriously four years ago? We’re so old.”

            Jongin snorted. “So 22 is now old?”

            “When Luhan was 22 we called him old.”

            “Luhan is old regardless of his age. And face.”

            Sehun choked on his water.

            The six of them practiced together for at least four hours a day as the date of the music video filming loomed closer. Baekhyun and Kyungsoo didn’t talk to them most of the time, because they didn’t want to lose their voice before the recording. Even Chanyeol looked exhausted.

            Baekhyun caught Jongin one day as he was heading out. Jongin turned, and Baekhyun said, “Can you stay? Just for an hour or so. I just wanted to work on the choreography.”

            Jongin nodded. “Sure. Which part?”

            They went over the dance again and again until Baekhyun was sure he had it down. They leaned against the wall of the studio, wiping their wet faces with towels.

            “How’s the break from school going?” Baekhyun asked.

            “Fine, I guess. I kind of miss it though.”

            Baekhyun laughed. “I know what you mean. When I first joined SM, I missed school like crazy.”

            “Why?”

            “School was almost carefree. I mean, you had to study and get things turned in on time, but for the most part, you were your own person. Here, there’s always restrictions, regardless of what you do.”

            “You don’t regret it, do you?”

            Baekhyun shook his head. “But I should really stop talking now. See? Restriction.”

            Jongin laughed. “Let’s go home, hyung.”

            Jongin closed his eyes as his makeup artist applied the foundation, eyeliner, and whatever else he needed. He was never good at this makeup stuff.

            Sehun was sitting next to him, trying not to make a face as the powder covered his skin.

            “This is one thing I hate about being a singer,” Sehun said under his breath, so only Jongin could hear.

            The music video filmings took up almost a week, because they had to drive to different sets to film. There was one scene where Jongin had to sit on a rock on a cliff, overlooking a beach. Then he had to jump.

            “I have to jump?” Jongin shrieked, trying to keep the panic from his voice. It didn’t work.

            “We have medics on hand,” the director said, obviously trying to calm him.
            “So I might get hurt?!”

            “No, you won’t. Just make it artistic looking.”

            Jongin took a deep breath and looking over the cliff. It was about fifty meters to the water, but there weren’t any rocks in sight.

            “Are there rocks under the water?”

            “No,” the director said, soothingly. “The water is about ten feet deep, there’s nothing you can hit.”

            “Are you sure?”

            “We’ve checked at least ten times. You’ll be perfectly safe.”

            Jongin closed his hands into fists to keep them from shaking. “Okay. Okay, I think I’m ready.”

            He sat on the cliff, his legs dangling over the edge, trying not to think about jumping. He was supposed to act like he was trapped in his own thoughts and tortured by them. I don’t have to act to look like that, Jongin thought, a little bitterly.

            The director gave him the cue to jump, and Jongin tried to look as tortured as possible. He hoped that his eyes weren’t crossing, and jumped.

            The wind whistled in his ears and whipped through his air. He could see out of the corner of his eye the cameras desperately trying to capture the moment as well as possible. He closed his eyes, and let himself become lost in the moment.

            The water was cold, and a shock went through his body when he submerged. He opened his eyes, even though he knew he wasn’t supposed to. There really were no rocks, and it was almost crystal clear. I could stay down here, he thought. Just stay down here. It’s peaceful. It’s nice. I like it here.

            The black underwater cameras surrounding him brought him back to reality. He kicked his way to the surface, and tried to look as artistic as possible as he broke the surface and gasped for air.

            “And, cut!” the director yelled. “Excellent job, Kai! We’ll review the tapes and see if we have to do a retake.”

            Jongin, numb from the cold water, just nodded and paddled to the shore, where his coordinator was waiting with a towel. Sehun was standing next to her, smiling a little.

            As his coordinator fussed with him and fixed his air and wrapped him in the towel, Sehun said, “Impressive. You looked like you were in a movie.”

            Jongin rubbed a towel in his hair. “You should jump too. It’s not so bad.”
            Sehun laughed. “I don’t think that would be such a good idea.”

            Jongin rolled his eyes. “Why are you here, anyway? Don’t you have a scene to film?”

            “Yeah, but it was this morning. I’m done now, so I thought I’d come and watch you.”

            “Oh.”

            Sehun reached forward and brushed away a couple grains of sand on Jongin’s cheek. Jongin froze. Sehun hadn’t touched him like this since…

            “There’s sand on your face,” Sehun said, softly, breaking Jongin’s train of thought.

            “Wh-what? Oh,” Jongin said, trying to keep his voice even. “It’s fine, no big deal.”

            “Don’t say that. You always say it’s not a big deal.”

            “Because it’s not, Sehun. It’s just sand.”

            Sehun dropped his hand. “Not just about sand. About everything.”

            Jongin opened his mouth and closed it again, when their manager came and said, “Jongin, you’re done for today. They were able to get enough shots to put together a scene.”

            Jongin nodded, silently.

            “Let me just get our stuff and we can go back to the dorm,” their manager said, turning.

            Sehun handed Jongin another towel. “You must be cold,” he said, not looking at him. “You should probably take a shower when we get back.”

            Jongin wrapped the new towel around himself. “Since when were you the health expert?”

            “Since you decided that you’re immune to everything.”

            “I’m not–”

            “You act like it.”

            Jongin wanted to reach out and turn Sehun’s face toward him.

            “Sehun?”

            Sehun looked up, his lips parting. “Yeah?”

            Jongin swallowed, but his throat felt like paper. “I–nothing. Nothing.”

A/N: oookay so I didn't realize the four year thing was so abrupt in the last chapter until I read your guys's comments OTL

but anyway.

aslkfadj you guys are too sweet in the comments sobs what did I do to deserve such sweetness ♥◕‿◕