“Plan. We need a plan,” Donghae says finally. He is huddling under the covers with Hyukjae, a flashlight shining underneath his chin. His face looks ghost-like due to the lighting, but the unpleasant view Hyukjae gets of his nostrils keeps making him snort in laughter.

            “You still haven’t given up on your falling in love thing yet?” Hyukjae asks.

            “I am determined to see this through, Lee HYUKJAE!” Donghae dramatically stands up, struggling with the blankets weighing him down, but still manages to strike a pose.

            “YAH! KEEP IT DOWN IN THERE!” Hyukjae’s sister shouts at them from the hallway. Donghae instinctively ducks his head down, even though Sora isn’t even in the room. He still has traumatic nightmares of that time she flung a plate at him like a frisbee the last time she was pissed off.

            “She’s got you like a dog on a leash.” Hyukjae grins. Donghae sticks his tongue out.

            “Look who’s talking, oh whipped brother who complies to her every wishes and whims.”

            “She’s really scary when she’s upset. You already know that,” Hyukjae hisses, trying to defend his manly honor.

            “Anyway. PLAN.” Donghae glares at his minion as he settles back down on Hyukjae’s bed.

            “What? Why am I planning? You’re the one who came up with the idea,” Hyukjae whines.

            “You are not allowed to complain, Minion.”

            “Minion?” Hyukjae launches himself across at Donghae, knocking both of them down. “I’ll show you who’s a minion, SERVANT!”

            Donghae lets out a girly squeal as Hyukjae accidentally sits on his nether regions.

            “That hurt! Uncalled for!” Donghae flails his arms around, ‘accidentally’ knocking the breath out of Hyukjae’s stomach.

            “You want to play dirty! I can do that!” Hyukjae says, and counters with his deadly feet attack, which consists of his toes climbing up Donghae’s face.

            “…You guys.” A chilling aura originating from the doorway freezes both of them. Hyukjae’s feet is just getting up to Donghae’s cheeks, and he is intertwined with Donghae’s limbs so that they look like some kind of strange mutant human experiment. Sora’s voice is quiet but taut. “Last warning before I toss both of you out in the streets.”

            They scramble to sit in an orderly fashion and stare up at Sora with the countenance of scolded children, which they kind of are.

            “I will not hear another sound from the both of you until tomorrow morning, got it?” Sora is folding her arms and giving her best stony glare at the other occupants in the room. They nod obediently. Hyukjae lets out a ‘woof’. Donghae stares at him, but doesn’t question it.

            “I’ve been researching,” Donghae begins talking on their daily walk to school. Hyukjae just stops and kind of stares at him like his best friend has just transformed into a three-headed creature.

            “You. You have been researching,” Hyukjae says. “You, who ran from the classroom screaming of a bellyache the moment our 7^th grade teacher told us about a science research project.”

            Donghae sniffs. “The lack of faith my best friend has in me wounds me to my non-functional heart.”

            “Non-functional? If it was really non-functional, you would have dropped dead already.”

            “I meant it metaphorically. My heart is non-functional because it hasn’t fallen in love. God, Hyukjae. Use your monkey brain. “

            Hyukjae brightens up despite the insult. “Wait, does that mean you’re not going to try doing your idiotic mission to fall in love because your heart is ‘non-functional’?”

            “Noooo. Of course not. Why do you want me to quit so badly anyway? I just meant that my heart is non-functional. For now.”

            “So. Research,” Hyukjae says.

            “Right! So I was researching about the science of love,” Donghae says. “And I stumbled upon the James-Lange theory of emotion. It talked about how physiological reactions could cause emotions instead of the other way around.”

            “And?”

            “Don’t you see? That means that all I have to do is cause my body to THINK I’m in love and I’ll feel it!” Donghae beamed.

            “I can already see this ending badly.”

            “Ahh. I feel so good now that school has ended.” Hyukjae stretches out the kinks in his shoulders. “By the by, Donghae, where are we walking to?”

            Donghae flashes him a smile. “You’ll see.”

            “I don’t remember this path before, and – woah.”

            A bridge made out of hanging ropes is stretched out before them. There has to be at least a 20 feet drop down below to a river.

            “Is this even safe?” Hyukjae says cautiously.

            “It should be.”

            “Somehow, that doesn’t make me feel very reassured. Why are we even here anyway?”

            “I will fall in love on this very bridge!” Donghae is pushing Hyukjae toward the direction of the bridge, and Hyukjae is trying to dig his heels in.

            “Are you suicidal? No, wait, are you trying to kill me?”

            “No.” Donghae scoffs. “If I wanted to, you would’ve been already dead.”

            “…Good point.”

            Donghae forces Hyukjae to step onto the swaying bridge, probably to test the durability of it. Hyukjae grips onto the sides of rope bridge, feeling his stomach sway in time with the bridge. They gradually tip-toe to the middle of the bridge.

            “Now what?” Hyukjae asks.

            “Now we wait.” Donghae folds his arms. “There’s probably a few students who go home through this way.”

            “And? Are we just going to tackle them off the bridge or something? I don’t get the point of this.”

            “See.” Donghae sweeps his arms around him in a wide circle, almost whacking his friend in the process. “This height is going to make my heart beat fast in fear. And then when I see someone, I’m going to feel like I’m attracted to them because adrenalin is rushing through my body.”

            “Why do I feel like you made all that up?” Hyukjae is trying to balance himself on the bridge, while Donghae is jumping a little on it in excitement.

            “I didn’t! It’s been proven in scientific studies!”

            “Calm down!” Hyukjae yelps. “We’re going to die if you keep jumping around like that.”

            Donghae pauses, but not because Hyukjae tells him to. “I see my first victim!”

            Hyukjae prays for the sanity of said victim. There is a skinny student stepping onto the bridge, and his skin is rather tanned.

            “Err. Oh hi Changmin,” Donghae says as he waves enthusiastically.

            “Hi Donghae. Hyukjae. What are you guys doing? Aren’t your houses on the opposite side?” Changmin is walking towards them while giving them a confused stare.

            Donghae slaps his hand onto his chest, in what Hyukjae assumes to be an attempt to see if his heart is beating fast or not. By the disappointed look on his face, his heart isn’t pumping enough adrenalin for him to constitute it as love. Then a strangely crazy smile came onto Donghae’s face. Hyukjae knows he is not going to like what’s coming.

            “I must make this more dangerous and exciting,” Donghae says.

            “What?” Changmin says, but then topples over backwards as Donghae grips the sides of the bridge and rocks them back and forth.

            “Ahhhhhhhh!” Hyukjae is clinging onto Donghae and the bridge at the same time.

            “Heheheheeh.” Donghae is even jumping and doing some kind of worm dance in order to make the bridge sway even more. Hyukjae swears he is seeing some of his pathetic life flashing before his eyes as the bridge almost turns upside down. Changmin is just being tossed from side to side with his eyes bugging out.

            Donghae finally stops. He opens his mouth, but nothing comes out. And then finally, “I think I feel sick.”

            “Serves you right,” Hyukjae mutters, having decided to grip the floor boards of the bridge in case they really did go upside down. He had heard rumors of crocodiles swimming happily in that river, and he did not want to go down there to find out if it was true.

            They look at Changmin to check if he hasn’t fallen off the bridge. The poor guy has apparently fainted in shock. Hyukjae shakes his head in sympathy, but makes no move to help him.

            “Urrfff.” Donghae practically runs off the bridge (stepping over Changmin in the process) and finds a bush to throw up in.

            “I could’ve told him it was a bad idea to start with,” Hyukjae says to himself, and then follows Donghae to sooth him even though he will probably whine about how dizzy he feels after he empties out his stomach acids.

            The job of a best friend to Lee Donghae never ends.

All that crap that Donghae spewed out about the James-Lange theory and the hanging bridge thing is all true. Lol look it up if you want to. Although there are other theories of emotion that counteract the James-Lange theory. I love psychology, okay? XD

Comments=love. :D