Things are pretty normal the next week.

            Deceptively normal.

            The whole school rolls their eyes when Minho gleefully announces to the whole world that he is off the dating market now due to a certain Lee Taemin. Most of the gossipers just mutter, “it was about time”, before moving onto juicier topics. Such as Jiyong’s newly flamengo-colored hair. “Wasn’t he bald before?” A girl whispers, and a cacophony of agreements follows.

            So. It is on this strangely, weirdly, normal day that Hyukjae sits cautiously down next to Donghae on the bench outside of their school. They usually bring their lunches outside to eat together.

            “Ahem,” Hyukjae ceremoniously clears his throat. Donghae keeps munching his salad greens. Actually, they look a little sickly purple to Hyukjae.

            “Donghae,” Hyukjae says loudly. “Excuse me? Anyone in there?”

            He pokes Donghae’s forehead.

            Donghae swats his hand away and glares. “I am trying, note the word trying, to eat in peace.”

            “Too bad,” Hyukjae says.

            “Hrmph.”

            A brief silence broken occasionally by shrieks of other bumbling teenagers in the background settles between them. Hyukjae taps his finger on the bench, a nervous tic he can’t get rid of.

            Donghae opens his mouth to put a piece of broccoli in.

            Tap.

            Donghae chews.

            Tap.

            Donghae chews some more. This broccoli is awfully stubborn.

            Tap.

            Donghae finally swallows. The greenery goes down his esophagus, or at least what he thinks is called an esophagus.

            Tap.

            Donghae finally can’t take it anymore.

            “Hey!” Hyukjae yelps when Donghae jabs his hand with his very sharp chopsticks. “What was that for?”

            “Your tapping was annoying me. Spit it out. What’s bothering you?”

            Hyukjae stares at Donghae with wide-eyed wonder. “How did you know?”

            “Of course I know. I haven’t spent, like, five years with you without gaining knowledge of Hyukjaeology.”

            “…So I’m an academic study now?”

            “Yes. You should be quite honored.”

            “I am,” Hyukjae says sarcastically. And then starts tapping his finger again, freezing when Donghae sends a scorching glare at it. “Okay. Fine. I’ve been on edge all day because you haven’t done anything crazy yet.”

            “I don’t do crazy stuff!” Donghae waves his chopsticks, which still have a piece of ribs impaled through them, around. He wilts a little under Hyukjae’s incredulous stare. “Maybe like once in a year,” he allows.

            Hyukjae raises an eyebrow.

            “Fine. Once a month.”

            Hyukjae adds another eyebrow, looking successfully unsophisticated with both of his eyebrows stretching his forehead up.

            Donghae pouts. “Every week. Satisfied?”

            “What happened to your MAFIL, aka My Awesome Fall in Love, project?” Hyukjae steals a carrot stick from Donghae’s lunch box and gets a small growl from Donghae.

            “Err…” Donghae pokes his food a little bashfully. “I kind of ran out of ideas.”

            “Oh.” Hyukjae is pleasantly surprised.

            Donghae doesn’t make a move to continue eating. He just stares at the food as if it holds the answer to the meaning of life.

            “Hyukkie.” Donghae bites his bottom lip. “Do you have someone you like right now?”

            Hyukjae his head to the side a little. “I do. Why?”

            Donghae’s knuckles turns white from gripping the chopsticks too tightly. “Oh,” he says weakly.

            “You didn’t answer my question.” Hyukjae doesn’t notice how Donghae’s breathing is suddenly a little too shallow, as if his chest is in pain.

            “Is it Jiyeon?” Donghae asks, ignoring Hyukjae’s previous statement.

            “What? Jiyeon? No. Why’d you bring her up?” Hyukjae stares at Donghae’s eyes, which are turned down at his lunch box.

            Donghae still seems tense but he relaxes a little at that answer. He shoves his box into Hyukjae’s lap and makes an exaggerated motion of looking at a nonexistent watch.

            “Oh look at that! I gotta go to the library to feed the fish!” He yells loudly and dramatically.

            Hyukjae looks gob smacked as Donghae practically sprints back into the school building.

            “Our library has fish…?” Hyukjae mumbles to himself.

            Donghae neatly stacks another thick encyclopedia on top of his book fort. There are stacks of all kinds of books surrounding him on the table, all the better to hide him from Hyukjae. He is sitting in a table in the far corner of the library, away from the sight of the main tables clustered together partly because the volume is too loud there with so many students hanging out. Yeah, he was lying to Hyukjae when he said he had to feed the fish.

            Seunghyun is the one in charge of feeding the precious fish, after all (some students have even reported him cooing at the fish when he feeds them, quite disturbingly so.)

             Donghae feels jittery, because while he was rushing to the library, other people kept catching his eyes and he couldn’t stop wondering if that is the person that Hyukjae likes.

            He doesn’t like this uncomfortable, clenching feeling in his stomach. Not at all.

            “Donghae…” A low voice comes from his right. Donghae jumps.

            “What are you doing?” Another voice continues the sentence on his left side.

            Donghae makes a “hurhurrr” kind of sound and puts another book on top of another stack. “What does it look like? I’m constructing the best book fort ever, Donghae style.”

            The newcomers walk around the table and sit across from him. Donghae grins at them. They’re the head student librarians of this year, in charge of the other student volunteers. Seungri and Tao are notoriously well known as the Panda Twins throughout the school. No one knows, though, if they’re real twins. That will forever remain as one of the Seven Wacky Mysteries of their high school. Both of them sport permanent dark shadows underneath their eyes, which are probably what gained them their nicknames in the first place.

            Tao takes a book from Donghae’s fort. “The Order of Space Quantum and Tea,” he reads slowly. “Just from which section did you get this book from? I don’t even remember us having that.”

            Donghae shrugs. “It looked cool enough to be in my fort.”

            “Where’s Hyukjae?” Seungri asks.

            Donghae slumps a little. “I’m… Kind of hiding from him right now.”

            “Did you guys get in a fight or something?” Tao looks incredulous at the prospect even as he suggests it.           

            Donghae shakes his head violently. “No! No! I just – Yeah. Don’t worry about it.”

            Tao and Seungri both look like they’re going to ask more, when a loud burst of laughter and crowing echoes through the library from the clusters of tables. Tao shakes his head.

            “Oh no. It’s going to happen now.” Tao puts his chin on his hand, almost in a resigned manner.

            Donghae leans forward. “What’s going to happen?”

            “You’ll see. Or rather, hear.” Seungri smiles mysteriously.

            His prediction comes true as a restrained voice cuts through the racket. “That was the last warning to be quiet. Prepare for hell,” a baritone voice says ominously.

            Several bloodcurdling shrieks ring through the air and are suddenly cut off at the highest pitch. Eerie silence descends through the library.

            “What was that,” Donghae states flatly. He stares at the Panda twins for answers.

            Tao grins, his face lighting up. “Just Kyuhyun –“

            “– running people over with his trolley,” Seungri finishes. Donghae gapes, wondering if they’re just joking.

            But then a spiffily dressed student librarian rolls a trolley over to the three of them. Instead of books lying side by side on the trolley, there are two unconscious human bodies thrown haphazardly upon it. One of them has his face up, tongue lolling out of his mouth.

            “What shall I do with the useless corpses, Sirs?” The student, who Donghae assumes is Kyuhyun, smirks at them.

            “Deposit them at the nurse’s office as usual, Kyu,” Tao drawls.

            Seungri grins. “Oh god, the nurse must be pissed off to see even more students being rolled in.”

            “Roger that, Captains.” Kyuhyun salutes them with an extra flair, snickers at the expression on Donghae’s face, and rolls the trolley out of the library doors.

            “So that’s how you keep order in here,” Donghae observes. Tao’s eyes turn into half-moons as he smiles in response. Seungri chuckles.

            With the quiet whispers left behind due to Kyuhyun’s violent massacre, Donghae could hear himself better, at least.

            “I have a question, hyungs,” Donghae starts in a toned-down voice.

            “What is it?” Seungri topples over the stacks in front of Donghae so that he could see him better.

            “What does it feel like to be in love?” Donghae feels a bundle of nerves tightening in him because he hasn’t asked anyone this question yet. All he has been doing was researching off dusty books and more notably, the Internet.

            Tao sighs a little, intertwining his fingers together in front of him. “We can’t really tell you that, Donghae.”

            “Because it’s different for everyone,” Seungri says.

            Donghae purses his lips together. “Okay, then. For you guys.”

            Seungri tugs at his collar a little. “It’s like… I guess, for me, it feels like I’m losing my sanity because the other person drives me so nuts. Kind of like…”

            His usual eloquence seems to abandon him. It is quite obvious to the whole school that there is definitely something going on between Seungri and Jiyong. Seungri’s small pink tint on his cheeks indicates that perhaps he is thinking about Jiyong at the moment.

            Tao rubs his hand on the book cover, looking thoughtful. He is also in some kind of relationship with a guy named Kris (who perpetually seems to have a stoic kind of face, but somehow melts into a puddle of complete goo whenever Tao comes near him). That’s partially why Donghae asked the two of them, because they’ve obviously had some kind of experience in the area of love.

            “You know. The general indication that you love someone is that at times, you really think that you hate them,” Tao says. Seungri nods in agreement.

            “That’s… Backwards,” Donghae says.

            “I guess so, but love doesn’t really have logic or anything.” Seungri shrugs. “Often, you fall for the last person you expect to fall in love with.”

            Tao smiles sardonically in agreement.

            “A lot of times,” Seungri continues, “it’s when you’re not looking for it, that love finds you.”

            “Love’s unpredictably y like that.” Tao laughs lightly.

            Donghae slowly breathes out, feeling the words cement themselves in his head. He’s been trying not to think about why he’s always so dependent on Hyukjae, why he gets pissed off at the possibility of Hyukjae belonging to another person, why he… No, he still doesn’t want to think about it. He doesn’t want to admit… That. The mental chasm there is still too deep and scary to cross.

            “Thanks,” Donghae says to his sunbaes. The Panda Twins chorus a “you’re very welcome, Donghae-yah” at him. Tao ruffles his hair and Seungri claps his shoulder in a good luck type of gesture before they both leave.

            Donghae just groans and puts his face on top of a musty smelling book. It feels like his life has suddenly gotten very complicated.

Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii. Yes I finally updated! As I predicted, school HAS been taking time from my beloved fanfiction writing time. Anyway, that was an extra long chapter to reward your patience (and partly cuz it dragged out longer than usual cuz i couldn't stop writing)

Kyu running people over with a trolley is for you, Homint -winks-

And OMG. AixSarang is writing a Eunhae fic dedicated to ME (for my bday X3)!! I'm so happy I gotta share it with all of you: Unable to Confess