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Watching the dark sky of the night visible through his blue velvet curtains, Jongin absentmindedly searches for the stars. He’s never seen one before despite how stubbornly he’s looked for them, and he knows he won’t this time either; the atmosphere is so polluted by the poison of humanity that nothing but the rays of the sun and the pale light of the moon are able to penetrate the thick layer of toxic gases.

“Why are you following me?” Set shoulders, lips pressed thin. Defensive. Prepared for a fight.

“What are you doing in the forest? No one ever goes in here unless they have to.” Countering Do Kyungsoo’s question with a question of his own in an attempt to buy himself some time to come up with a good answer.

“None of your business. Now why the are you following me?” Wrong move, apparently, because Do Kyungsoo’s hostile demeanor only worsens.

Jongin blurts out the first thing his mind tells him and hopes for the best. It ends up sounding like a question. “I was thinking I could keep you company?”

Jongin groans and covers his eyes with his hands in embarrassment as his focus switch from hunting stars that are and will never be there to what had happened earlier that day, when Jongin had managed to catch up with Do Kyungsoo in the woods.

“… Are you joking with me?” Voice incredulous with sharp and suspicious edges.

“What? I'm not.”

“Do you think I’m stupid or something?”

“No! Why would I do that?” Now it’s Jongin’s turn to sound incredulous.

“Why would you, Kai, the major heartthrob of the school and all of the teachers’ little favorite student, voluntarily want to spend any time at all in my company?” Do Kyungsoo’s voice has turned acidic, and he makes ‘Kai’ sound like something foul, like a curse word, like by just saying it it’s making Do Kyungsoo’s mouth rot. It makes the hairs on Jongin’s arms stand and a cold shiver run up his spine.

Twisting around, Jongin buries his face in the pillow, drowning out another groan. So Do Kyungsoo had heard about Jongin through the gossip mill, after all. Not that it had surprised Jongin very much considering that he is the most famous person in the school.

Jongin opens his mouth to retaliate – he’s not sure about what he’s going to say, but just like before he’s just going to roll with it and cross his fingers that whatever his brain comes up with will work – but Do Kyungsoo beats him to it.

“Stay away from me.” He spits the words. Jongin almost flinches. And then Do Kyungsoo hurries away and leaves Jongin alone for the second time that day, feeling somewhat abandoned and stupid and not a little bit confused as to what just happened.

Inhale, exhale; the last words uttered by Do Kyungsoo echo through Jongin’s head as he breathes heavily into his cushion.

Maybe… maybe the monster hiding underneath Do Kyungsoo’s skin is a little bit more volatile, a little bit more damaged, than Jongin had first assumed.

It is now, lying there in his bed wide awake at 02:31, that Jongin realizes that it had been very naïve of him to think that just by trying to reach out to Do Kyungsoo by catching up with him would magically make them friends. Of course it couldn’t be that easy, now could it?

Not in Kim Jongin’s life, it couldn’t.

He sighs.

Up until the moment he’d run into Do Kyungsoo Jongin had been as perfect as any human could get, no matter how much that perfection had destroyed him; he could count the mistakes he’d made in his whole life on his own two hands.

But now, whenever anything is related to Do Kyungsoo, he can’t stop putting his foot in his mouth and do everything wrong.