Joon had been eighteen years old when he first met Sanghyun. The boy had recently come from the Philippines with his family, and was as socially awkward as anyone can be in such a situation. It didn’t help that his Korean was terrible, despite the fact that he could speak three other languages rather fluently.

The first day Sanghyun came to school, he had been almost instantly surrounded by girls of all the grades who couldn’t help but admire his model-like good looks. But—Joon found out much later—Sanghyun was shy and didn’t know how to speak to girls that weren’t his sisters. His shyness and awkwardness around the opposite had earned him the reputation of being cold and aloof, and for some odd reason, the girls like that idea even more.

He had arrived at school rather early that day, and had seen the poor boy being practically drowned by the sea of giggling girls around him. Sanghyun looked lost and very confused, as he was still trying to adjust to his new environment.

Feeling sorry for him, Joon stepped in between the mass of girls and pulled Sanghyun away.

From then on, they had stuck together.

When Joon started college, Sanghyun had a nervous breakdown. He was afraid of being on his own, so Joon had to remind him that he had other friends, and that maybe, this would be his chance of finally getting a girlfriend (“I don’t want to have a girlfriend, hyung!”).

No matter how much he acted like everything was cool, Joon was really scared of going to college, and even more scared of leaving Sanghyun alone. It was an inexplicable feeling of overprotectiveness he felt toward the younger, so he kept going back to his old high school whenever he had the time, to visit his friend and hang out with him. So even if they were apart, they were still together.

Maybe he was just afraid of growing up.

That close friendship they shared had granted him “almost family” status with the Parks, to the point where he now had a permanent seat at their table.

Dara and Doorami knew him as well as they knew their brother, and he always liked to think he knew them as well. But there were things that he still didn’t get, like their habit of making bets about the most meaningless things.

He could still remember when Doorami had had to dye her hear blue for a month because Super Junior had won in the music charts that week and she had said they wouldn’t.

So, when he came to the Parks’ house one day, and found Sanghyun dressed in his sisters’ clothes, he didn’t ask why; he just went along with it, laughed a little (okay, a lot) at his embarrassed friend, and went on with his life as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

But it was exactly that moment when he realized how much he cared about his dongsaeng, and no matter how pretty he looked as a girl, he preferred the normal Sanghyun.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Lee Changsun was not a fool, no matter how much people like to say otherwise. If the guy who had Sanghyun’s phone wanted to pretend they had never met before, fine, but Joon wouldn’t.

He was the same guy that had been watching them at the mall one day, when Sanghyun was still going as a girl, and if this whole “I found your phone, come pick it up" business was some convoluted plan to hurt his Hyunnie, some heads would roll.

~*~*~*~*~*~

“That was very rude, hyung.”

Joon turned to look at Sanghyun, who was clutching his phone as if he was going to lose it again, and shrugged.

“I don’t have to be nice to strangers,” he replied.

“They found my phone!”

“Stole it, more likely.”

“Why would they steal my phone? Hyung, you’re not making any sense.”

Joon remained silent.

“Anyway,” Sanghyun continued, ignoring Joon’s silence. “Byunghee hyung seemed really nice.”

“‘Byunghee hyung’?” Joon repeated incredulously. “He’s your hyung now? Huh, he must be really something for you to consider him a hyung so fast. It took you three weeks to call me hyung.”

“Are you jealous, hyung?” Sanghyun asked with a smirk.

“No, I’m not jealous. Why are you speaking such nonsense,” Joon said, looking away. “And don’t call me hyung.”

“What? Why?”

“Because.”

“That’s not a reason, hyung!”

“I’m not your hyung anymore.”

“Hyung! Oh, okay. I won’t call him hyung again, can you stop being mad at me?”

“I’m not mad at you.”

“Doesn’t sound like it.”

“Stop bothering me, kid.”

Sanghyun sighed, and they walked in silence for a while.

“Can we go eat something? I’m hungry,” Sanghyun whined, placing both his hands over his stomach.

“No.”

“Well, then, I’ll call Byunghee hyung, I’m sure he wouldn’t mind treating me to a meal...”

“NO!”

Joon didn’t know how he did it, but in a second, he had snatched the phone from Sanghyun’s hand, and hid the gadget in the back pocket of his jeans.

“Hey!” the younger exclaimed trying to take his phone back. Having more muscle than him, Joon quickly overpowered him, and shoved him aside.

Sanghyun crossed his arms over his chest and glared at Joon.

“Alright. What's going on? You’ve been acting really weird, not to mention rude, ever since we went into that coffee shop.”

“Are you crazy?” Joon said, ignoring Sanghyun’s accusations. “Didn’t you say that boy was the one who saw you at the bathroom?”

“Yeah, but what does that have to do with anything?” Sanghyun looked perplexed.

“And they call me idiot,” Joon muttered loud enough for his friend to hear him. “What if that boy figures it out, huh? What if he tells the others? What if he’s told them already? Your ‘Byunghee hyung’ probably hates you right now.”

Sanghyun’s eyes widened in fear, and Joon hated himself for saying those words, knowing perfectly well that his friend’s biggest fear since this bet started, was to be discovered by someone.

“He-he wouldn’t...”

Joon didn’t ask who he was referring to.

“Okay, come on, I’ll treat you to a meal, just don’t call that jerk,” he said, feeling his heart break at the sight of Sanghyun's teary eyes.

“Really?” Sanghyun said, his voice trembling slightly.

“Yeah, really. I’m not that stingy,” Joon said defensively,

“You normally are.”

“You should feel lucky, then. Come on, let’s go before I regret it.”

“Can I have my phone back now?”

“After we eat.”

Sanghyun pouted all the way to the restaurant.

Holy crap, what is this? Two updates in a week? I'm on a roll xD.

Truthfully, this is all Joonie's fault. If I hand't been watching IRIS 2 this update would have taken me the usual time... isn't he AMAZING on that show? I feel like dying every time I see him~~ and that's why he got himself his own chapter, and he wouldn't let me sleep either, demanding I write this LOL.

A little side note: the three languages Doong speaks in this story are: English, Tagalog and Spanish. To my knowledge, DoongDoong can't really speak Spanish, but from what I know of the Phillippines, Spanish is a prominent language there, not so much like English, but still. I'm just playing with that. If any of you is from the Phil. feel free to correct me if i'm wrong about this. :D 

I'm just doing it  gratuitously because I would just die if he spoke Spanish, since it's my mother language. (any other Spanish speakers out there?)

EDIT: enidlenej told me the school he went to in the Phillippines is Chinese-Filipino so instead of Spanish it'll be Mandarin.