A:N/ Tee hee, I feel like such a rebel. I'm sitting here updating this mere moments before my class starts...Sorry about this...It looks like things are getting worse before they get better in this chapter.

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All things considered, Chunji supposed that attending the talent contest had been a pretty good move on his part.

L. Joe had acted so cocky and disinterested in Chunji's attendance, when they'd spoken for a short while before everyone went home. But Chunji had seen the look in his eyes; he'd been really happy to see him. He might even have been a little relieved as well, though Chunji couldn't be certain of that. He had a feeling that he'd just passed through a test, that L. Joe had set up for him, but perhaps he was just too suspicious of L. Joe.

Then there was his other great success story from that evening; Niel. He couldn't be certain if it was because this was the second time they were meeting, or if his post-performance high just made him a little more reckless, but Niel had talked to him. A lot, actually. But then, Niel had continued speaking to him a lot since then as well. He spilled so much of himself, so easily, it was kind of a shock after all Chunji's encounters with L. Joe. He already knew almost everything there was to know about him, and he felt as though he'd already acquired another new friend.

He often found himself musing; wondering if Niel was as open and friendly and talkative with L. Joe. He hadn't seemed to be so, the time Chunji first met the boy, at L. Joe's school. But maybe he was just uncomfortable or shy? Maybe he was like this with L. Joe, whenever Chunji wasn't around. He was annoyed to find that the thought made him as unsettled as the thought of Ricky and L. Joe hugging had.

He shook his head, trying to dispel the effect of his thoughts, but it was as though that only wedged them in deeper. The picture he'd imagined in response to the thought was burned into his mind, and he couldn't make it disappear, no matter how hard he shook his head. He wobbled slightly, his world tipping sideways before his eyes, but still the image remained.

Why was he getting so worked up by the thought? Whenever he tried to think of anything to do with L. Joe and himself, he tended to recall their . He was wracked with guilt; he felt irresponsible. Now there was this. Now he found that he couldn't be happy whenever he even tried to consider the prospect that L. Joe was close with someone else. Now he was mad at the thought that L. Joe was closer and more open with other people, when he himself had to struggle for anything from the other boy. Now he couldn't even consider the idea that L. Joe might be seeing someone, or have feelings for someone else, because of the pain that shook through him.

What right did he have to feel that way? Whenever he was reminded that he was the elder of the two of them, he could barely manage to look L. Joe in the eye. He could hardly consider himself a suitor, vying for L. Joe's affections. And yet, that was exactly what he was realising his feelings seemed to indicate. The moment the thought occurred to him, his stomach flopped, and he pushed himself away from his desk in disgust.

What was he thinking! Sure he was gay, so it kind of made sense that he'd like L. Joe. But L. Joe, for all his attitude was a boy; a child. He was still in school, while Chunji was an adult. He may have been a student as well, but he didn't go to school, he attended tertiary education. He was mature; an adult. For an adult to have feelings like that for a child was.... unforgivable. What would everybody say if they were to find out? What would L. Joe say if he found out?

No, no, this all had to be a mistake, he tried to rationalise to himself. He didn't want to be dirty and disgusting. He didn't want society to shun him any worse than they already did. He didn't want any of this; any of the consequences that would follow his feelings for L. Joe. He must have misunderstood. That's what this all had to be. A simple misunderstanding. L. Joe was a friend. Just a friend. That was all.

He was jealous and possessive of L. Joe because he was his first real friend, in over a year. He was the first person that Chunji could talk to, that Chunji interacted with regularly. He was the first person that bothered to find out anything about him, since he'd left school. Like a child, he was selfishly guarding his first friend. He wanted to keep L. Joe all to himself, because he wanted to be just as special to L. Joe in return. That was all. It was perfectly normal.

Immature, but normal.

He told himself to breathe more calmly. In. Out. In. Out. Everything was fine. There was nothing wrong with his feelings. His feelings were of friendship only, and friendship between the two of them was perfectly acceptable. It was what he'd been looking for when he started talking to L. Joe in the first place. That was fine.

He tried to push his thoughts aside, being granted a moment of emptiness; of nothing. He tried to look down at the page before him, but he couldn't focus on the page. All of the words blurred, and seemed to run into a single word, he could no longer read. He'd focus and re-focus on the page over and over again. But it was useless. He sighed, the realisation that he exaggerated how much younger than him, L. Joe actually was, popped into his mind. For all his drama, 6 months was nothing. In 6 months time, L. Joe would be a university student, himself.

The thought made Chunji lurch forward, thumping his head against the desk, an irritated groan slipping from between his lips.

More than anything, Chunji wished that he could look at a picture of L. Joe right now. He groaned again, realising that he didn't have any. He barely had any photos of himself, and he didn't have any of his new friends.

But Chunji crowed in delight at the memory of Ricky and his camera the night of the talent show. It had been over a week since then, surely the younger boy would have put his photos up by now. Although, to be fair, the young boy did take a lot of pictures that night. Still, he knew there must've been photos of L. Joe in amongst them. Perhaps he'd even have other photos of L. Joe as well.

Chunji paused for only a second before he logged into Facebook. At the time he'd made the account he hadn't thought that it'd serve any purpose. He had never really bothered signing into the thing. He couldn't see what all the hype about the website was about. But then again, he'd never gotten into Myspace either. But now, he praised his own forethought, at having made the account.

He found himself inundated with friend requests, noting pleased, that the other guys were online at that time. The moment they'd realised Chunji was there, they sent him friend requests, and he accepted them all. CAP. L. Joe. Niel. Ricky. Changjo. He made sure he accepted them all. He was really grateful for them doing that, he wouldn't have been able to find their pages, if he'd been left to his own devices.

He hadn't really thought out this plan very well.

Now that they were friends, he clicked onto Ricky's page, immediately going for the icon that said pictures. He paused in horror, at the realisation that the boy had well over 1000 pictures up. What was with his obsession with pictures? They were all arranged into different folders, whose titles only sometimes made any sense to Chunji. There were some easy ones like Talent contest. Drama class. Lunchtimes. And others that made reference to other people's birthdays and parties, that he guessed the younger boy must know.

He pushed aside his awe, clicking on the talent contest photos first. Sure enough, there were a good 100 photo thumbnails that popped up on his screen. From what he could gather, there was no particular order to their arrangement, but he didn't really think about it too much. He clicked on one, to blow the picture up, figuring he could just cycle through the images in this way.

The sight of L. Joe's shock of blonde hair peeking out from his hoodie, with Niel and Ricky clambering all over him at the doorway and out on the lawn, made him smile. His eyes were locked onto only one boy, and just seeing him brought a little sigh from between his lips.

He'd be concerned about the fact that he was stalking L. Joe through Ricky's Facebook photos, later.

He cycled through, one photo after another, laughing at how crazy and silly L. Joe looked in some of their photos. He could see comments on Ricky's photos where L. Joe was threatening to murder and maim the younger boy, but he doubted the young boy took his friend seriously, since the photos were still up, several days later.

Then the photos went backwards, seemingly showing shots from behind the scenes of the talent show. The boys in costume, waiting nervously in the wings, looking out onto the stage. Or behind the stage, with all of the other performers bustling around them. L. Joe still looked so adorable, that Chunji couldn't help feeling pleased.

Then he spied a photo of L. Joe half as he was getting changed. Chunji froze at that image for a moment, his eyes sliding over L. Joe's form, hoping to take into his memory every single detail of his friend's physique. He hadn't realised that the boy was so thin.

But then the realisation occurred to him that for Ricky to have this photo, meant that Ricky was with him when he was getting changed. That thought immediately wiped the smile off of Chunji's face. L. Joe didn't look particular annoyed at the camera person in the shot. Did that mean he was okay with Ricky seeing him like that? Flashes of the way Ricky draped himself all over L. Joe and clung to him, came back through his mind, and he wretched himself away from the computer screen.

He couldn't look at images like that anymore.

He tried to calm his breathing again, to slow his heart beat. He was over reacting. This was one photo. This was nothing to be getting worked up over. The boys were friends, besides, L. Joe probably didn't know that Ricky was planning on putting the photo on Facebook. Besides, it wasn't even a suggestive shot or anything. So his shirt wasn't on properly, so what!

He moved back over to the computer, chiding himself for being so childish; for having such an exaggerated reaction to nothing. All the same, he left those photos alone. He flicked through some of the other folders, looking for pictures of L. Joe.

All the ones in class tended to have Changjo in them. He guessed that he and Changjo were the same age, whereas Niel and L. Joe were older. He saw photos of the whole group together hanging out at the beach or the park. He saw them all at a Sports Carnival, and another one of them at a swimming carnival. Nothing particularly extraordinary, although these ones also contained CAP with the younger boys. Ones at lunchtimes, tended to feature L. Joe quite prominently. He and Ricky tended to be hugging or sitting together or making faces or something in every shot.

Although he was looking for pictures of L. Joe, he found that he was strangely dissatisfied at finding them. He supposed that served him right. Now he was feeling kind of jealous again. Sure there were other photos too, ones of L. Joe doing those sorts of things with Niel or Changjo or CAP, but they too only made Chunji grumpy.

He was starting to think that he might be a masochist, what with the way he was seemingly searching for images that would hurt him.

Then he found one picture that made him pause. He felt pulses of pain, radiating throughout his body with every beat of his heart; every breath. The pain only grew stronger the longer he stared at the image on his screen. He stopped breathing trying to quell it, as his eyes started burning viciously, as he realised the picture wasn't going away. It hurt to see this. It hurt to see L. Joe kissing Ricky.

All the photos together had irked him. All of the hugging and touching bothered him. But this, this hurt. This ached and stung at the same time. This was emotional and yet so strong as it washed over him, that it seemed to turn physical, dragging his whole body with it. He choked on his tears, his mouth going dry.

It all made perfect sense. L. Joe and Ricky liked one another. Perhaps they were even seeing one another secretly. As if the fact that the two of them are boys, wasn't bad enough, Ricky was too young. A minor? Or barely legal? Chunji wasn't sure, and he didn't think finding out would make any of this better.

He should've known.

He'd known for ages that L. Joe didn't really need him. That was part of why he'd been so pleased when L. Joe had reached out to him; had decided to befriend him. Or had he befriended L. Joe? Were their parents in on it? Were they organising this to ease the way for L. Joe to announce his relationship with Ricky in a few years time, by outing him as gay now? Did they only ask Chunji because he was the only openly homoual teenage boy they knew of in the area?

Did no one think that knowledge like this should have been conveyed to him too? Did no one think that he might be hurt when he found out about this? Did no one care?

Because it certainly hurt now. It hurt enough that Chunji knew, he might not be able to explain his feelings away as easily as he'd tried to do only a short while earlier. Not that owning up to them now would do him any good. He was only supposed to be doing L. Joe a favour, maybe making a friend out of the whole arrangement, nothing more. He had allowed himself to get too invested; for his feelings to morph. He didn't even known what he felt for L. Joe anymore. He wasn't sure if there were even words that could describe what was going on now.

But with that image of L. Joe carelessly kissing the younger boy, all he could think about, was how much it hurt. He clutched at himself, nails scratching and biting into his skin a little too roughly, but in a way the pain only made him feel better. It added a burn to the ache, that flattered and complimented his suffering. But simultaneously overrode his emotional pain.

This was probably his just desserts for going looking for something more on Ricky's Facebook pictures. But that didn't mean that it had to hurt so much, just to teach him a lesson.

Fine. He clearly cared about L. Joe more than he thought he did. He was jealous of the other boys when they touched him or hugged him. He was jealous. He could admit it! He was a mature, responsible adult, who was going crazy over an indifferent teenage boy, who was clearly more interested in his friend.

He could deal with this. He hoped.