“Shall we go see a movie then?”

Giving Baekhyun a judging expression, Minseok shook off the hand Baekhyun had placed on his shoulder. Instead of answering, he simply shook his head no and walked ahead leaving Baekhyun just a few steps behind him. No way would he be caught dead going to the movies with just one other male guy his age. Minseok liked girls, not feminine looking boys. They continued to amble down the peaceful town sidewalk, not that far from Minseok and Luhan's apartment, while Baekhyun continued to go through his list of possible 'hanging out ideas'. He originally called them 'date idea', but that only got Minseok more irritated so he decided to change it.

“How about you let me go back home so I can study?” Minseok grumbled under his breath so that Baekhyun couldn't hear what he said.

Unfortunately for him, Baekhyun seemed to have the ears of an elephant, “Why would you do that? That's boring, do something fun for a change, you oldie!”

Taking the older one by his arm, Baekhyun broke into a run with Minseok helplessly being dragged along looking like he would trip any second. Shouting cries of protest, Minseok demanded that Baekhyun tell him where they were going, but the stubborn kid acted like he turned off his 'elephant ears' mode. They passed by many clothing stores, which surprised Minseok since Baekhyun looked like the type of guy who would spend hours shopping, and pulled into an abrupt stop in front of an old arcade. Chest heaving from the short period of running, Minseok realized how out of shape he was. He snatched his arm away from Baekhyun and returned it to his side, “Don't ever do that again, Byun, unless you want me to send Luhan to your place at night,”

“Relax, hyung, what's important is our health,” Baekhyun flashed a goofy grin revealing a set of pearly whites, “Besides, running is probably the best thing you can do with your coming of age!”

Minseok rolled his eyes at the poor excuse, and turned his attention to the building looming in front of them. There wasn't much of a color scheme to the exterior, moreso, it didn't seem like the exterior had even been colorful in its prime. There was one large, rectangular window on the right of the rusted metal door. The 'Open' sign on the window blinked a magenta 'pen' with a burned out 'o'. It sure looked old from the outside, but with the array of neon lights blinking from the other side of the window, it was as if a party were going on inside.

“Remember when we used to go here all the time with Jongdae, Joonmyeon, and Chanyeol?” Baekhyun asked, still admiring the rustic appeal of his favorite childhood play area.

Shrugging his shoulders, Minseok went ahead and opened the arcade door. The place looked unfamiliar to him. Baekhyun must have been talking about one of those parties he was never invited too. In elementary and middle school, Baekhyun was the most popular boy in his year and he often invited many students in Minseok's year to his parties. Not once did Minseok ever remember being invited, “Maybe you guys went together since I don't recall ever coming here,”

“Oh right. You were always busy with the student council back then,” Baekhyun sighed, “Sorry about that. I didn't mean to bring it up,”

Minseok waved it off and let Baekhyun lead the way. Looking around at the clunky, still-functioning machines, there were a lot of game titles he recognized: Astro Invader, Street Fighter, Zero Gunner, Pacman, Super Free Kick, Doraeun Neoguri, ParaParaParadise, and the infamous Dance Dance Revolution. Chuckling to himself as he stopped in front of almost everyone's favorite childhood game, Pacman, he found himself longing to be a kid again. Baekhyun noticed the saddened look on Minseok's face, “Hey, I'm only twenty years old. I still have many birthdays to go and I'll invite you to each one of them! I mean, if you want me to, of course,”

“No, I'm not mad at you for that,” Minseok looked up at Baekhyun, stuffing his hands into his jean pockets. Baekhyun was right about what he had said earlier, Minseok was always busy with student council during his student career. There were also many things that he missed out on as a child, but mainly it was because of his parents.

Whenever his classmates would go out on a class camping trip or any field trip in general, his parents would just file away his permission slip and tell him that it was better to just stay at home and use that time to study. When his classmates wanted to celebrate their birthday at an arcade such as this, his parents would refuse to RSVP and told him that they'd just buy the game for him. Minseok was one of those kids that had the portable game version of whatever his friends would have to pay for at the arcade. It was this whole 'we'll just buy it for you later' kind of thing with mom and dad.

Minseok brought his eyes down to the Pacman screen once more and watched 'Start' flashing on and off, “I'm just finding out now what I missed as a kid,”

Biting his lip, Baekhyun felt guilty for bringing up the past. He didn't know that much about Minseok's back story, but he did know that he said something that upset him. He clapped his hands together, making the older one snap out of his thoughts, eyes widening. Baekhyun awkwardly draped an arm around Minseok's shoulders since they were almost the same height, “Well we have today to do whatever you never got to do as a little kid! So shoot, let's get started!”

Before the older boy got to say anything, Baekhyun was once again dragging him over to the Dance Dance Revolution machine towards the back of the arcade next to the basketball hoops. Minseok dreaded the thought of playing such an effort stealing game, let alone actually putting in any physical activity to play the game. Luhan bought the PS2 DDR game a few months back claiming that if he spent an entire weekend dancing songs on 'Hard', he would lose a lot of weight and build up manly legs while he was at it.

“Alright, let's get this show on the road!” Baekhyun excitedly shouted out, not even caring if anyone could hear him since they were literally the only two in the game area. There were two other kids but why would they care if Baekhyun was being loud or not? They were too absorbed in their own game of Jurassic Park to even notice anyway. Inserting a dollar in each of the the bill acceptors, he pulled Minseok onto the platform next to him and set up that game.

Minseok watched Baekhyun carefully, from what character they would play as to what level they were going to be playing on. He leaned against his right foot, anxious about how his performance was going to be. Maybe he should have joined Luhan's dancing party times in the living room after all. That would probably have given him the upper hand against the hyperactive Baekhyun. Max 300. That was a pretty hard song, or at least, if that was what Luhan insisted on working out to. He never could remember the songs names let alone the artist names since they were all so unique.

His narrow eyes doubled to the size of sauce pans when he saw Baekhyun pick the song level as heavy, “No, idiot! Beginner! You're going to break my bones!

“Don't worry, hyung,” Baekhyun reassured Minseok whose knees were knocking, “I'm probably not good at it either so on the bright side, we can break our bones together!”

author's note : after one million years, I finally updated. /claps for myself. I hope you guys haven't given up on this yet. I sincerely apologize for my laziness during these few months but i'm glad that I got to update this story at least once during summer break. That in itself is an accomplishment for me. I hope you enjoyed reading this chapter, and if not, then i'm sorry I didn't meet your standards. This was fairly short compared to the chapters I'm used to writing nowadays, but once i'm done writing this, I play on rewriting it again so that it's not as bad.