26 - Friendship

Acid Teochii

Warning: Again, Spoilers for XenexianAG's Constellation...eventually, when she gets this far, bc I'm a little ahead of her...


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February 7th 2015

With all the pain Hanni’s world recently, it was no surprise that he’d been spending a lot of time with people that made him happy. Of course, the people who made him happy were, mainly, a certain Jimin from the group Polaris.

It was no shock to any of the members of Acid Teochii when he left the dorm practically daily to go on a date with his girlfriend, simply because she made him feel better.

Being with Jimin made it so all of the pain from the past few weeks just sort of...faded. Hyo was no longer dead, Myung wasn't a hair’s width away from a breakdown, their friend hadn’t been replaced by a girl who was so much younger than them… he was happy when with Jimin.

So he spent every moment he could with the girl, going to cafés and theatre performances, or even just a date to the park… Jimin was happy to oblige after all, just happy that Hanni wasn’t as close to a breakdown as the rest of Acid Teochii appeared to be.

But because of this, Hanni and Jimin had been less careful recently. From the start of their relationship, they’d been careful where they went in public, always wearing disguises when they went anywhere they might be recognised. It was a system they’d just automatically put into place… but the system seemed to break after Hyo died. They threw caution out of the window, at least, Hanni did. He wanted to be with his girlfriend and didn’t really care what anyone else thought on the matter.

So when he received the phonecall, he couldn’t help but be filled with guilt over the matter. For a while, Jimin had been determined for their relationship to stay hidden. She didn’t want to deal with the fans and her company over a relationship scandal happening, and Hanni had respected that… but he just forgot after his mind was so filled with death and suffering in the dorm.

“They know, Hanni,” Jimin had called her boyfriend, only a few hours after they’d gotten home from watching a movie. Hanni, worried that Jimin had lost something and was asking Hanni if he’d accidentally taken it home(As he often did, their stuff seemed to merge together so often…), he wasn’t expecting her stressed, teary words.

“What?” Hanni frowned, standing and taking the phonecall into his bedroom, ignoring the pairs of eyes that turned to focus on him from over their takeaway Chinese food.

“They know. Someone saw us, a fan I think. There’s pictures of us all over the internet, all the news sites are reporting on it! Chaerin found it, looking up gossip as she often did… Hanni I don’t know what to do. SM are going to be so pissed with me!”

“Okay, Jimin, just calm down…” He soothed, frowning a little.

He knew CEO Lee would have no problem with him dating, his only condition would probably be that he didn’t do anything he regretted or got Jimin pregnant somehow, he would probably make the comment that he didn’t need any more children needing training running around his feet. Somewhere in the back of his mind, Hanni had been wanting their dating to be public for a while. He didn’t like hiding his feelings for her, or having to hide in public when he was with her. He was proud to be dating the Polaris idol, and he wanted to show off to the world how perfect his girlfriend was… he couldn’t do that if the world didn’t know she was his girlfriend.

But on the other hand, he was worried and hoped there was some way to cover the dating rumour up. After all, dating scandals were for some reason huge… people just didn’t want their idols to be dating, taking their ‘chances’ away by dating. Jimin would be subject to hate from Acid Teochii fans, while Hanni would be subjected to hate from the Polaris fans… just look what had happened to Taeyeon and Baekhyun when they’d been caught dating. Death threats… he wouldn’t be able to deal with them.

“Calm down?!” Jimin screeched down the phone, causing Hanni to wince and pull the phone away from his ear slightly. “How can I calm down?! Hanni what am I supposed to do!”

“Well…” Hanni started, frowning. “Have you spoken to your manager?”

“Not yet,” Jimin replied, her voice shaky but at least she wasn’t screaming at him now. “I expect I’ll be called in to talk about it soon so SM can give an official statement… what should I do? What should I say? Should I lie and say we’re just friends? I mean, that would make it so the scandal doesn’t happen, we’d both be safe from over the top fans… but it means we’d have to be careful about where we go, like, careful times 100! But if I tell the truth about us… we’re subjecting ourselves to practically no privacy anymore, we’ll have to deal with death threats and angry fans, we could lose fans for our groups… but then we wouldn’t have to hide anymore. Hanyeul, what do I do?”

Hanni sighed, rubbing at his face and trying to massage the building headache out of his temples. “Jimin-ah… it’s up to you, I don’t mind what you do, you have to do what will be best for you as a whole, okay? Whatever you choose, I’ll support you. I’m here for you, just like you’ve been here for me, okay..?”

He heard his girlfriend let out a small sigh from over the phone, figuring she was also trying to keep away a building stress induced headache. “Yeah…yeah, are you sure you won’t mind what I decide to do?” She questioned, her voice small and worried. Hanni’s stomach twisted in guilt again, he should have been more careful with where they went on dates.

“I’m sure,” He assured her. “Just…let me know, okay?”

“Okay,” She confirmed before hanging up the phone.

Hanni let out a stressed sigh, falling face first onto his pillow and burying his face into the soft fabric, screaming into it to relieve his anger and confusion. Why couldn’t people just let them be and allow them to date whoever they wanted? Why was it such a big scandal when one idol was dating another?

Of course, there was the supportive idols, the one who regularly posted on forums and tweeted their support to the idol, but as always, the negative comments always outweighed the positive.

It was like his mom had taught him growing up, words had a way of affecting people, and the connotations of your words changed the length of how long they’d be affected.

If you called someone amazing, or beautiful, or something positive, they’d feel good for that moment but the feeling would soon fade, so you should always tell people their positive traits and make them feel good for as long as possible.

But if you called someone ugly, fat, anything negative... they’d remember it for a life time. That negativity would always be at the back of their mind, eating at them. They’d always remember it, because if you said something positive, you could just be saying it to make them feel good, it wasn’t true all of the time. But when you said something negative, they believe that it must be true, something must have spurred that negative thought about them, so they’ll remember it for a lifetime.

Hanni felt as though people’s reactions to dating scandals matched that very well. People could call their idols ‘perfect’ and ‘amazing’ all they wanted, but the one comment about them being selfish for dating would always be there, would always affect them.

“Hanni-ah? Are you alright?” Vann asked from the doorway, a frown marring his face. He was leaning on the door frame, arms crossed.

He slowly looked over to the older man, nodding with a sigh. “Yeah, yeah I’m fine Vann-hyung, thank you though.”

His frown deepened. “Want to talk about it?” He offered, walking in and sitting next to the boy on his bed.

“It’s… it’s nothing important. It won’t really affect us too much right now.”

“Even more reason to tell me then, even if just to get it off your chest.”

Hanni sighed, rubbing at his face. He knew that Vann wasn’t going to let up anytime soon, at least not until he told him. So he may as well bite the bullet and let him know now than have him and the other members find out when SM released their statement.

“A fan caught Jimin and I on a date, there are pictures of us all over the internet already. Chaerin, Jimin’s friend, found them. Jimin’s freaking out over it, she can’t decide if she wants to tell SM it’s true or tell SM that we’re just friends… I don’t know what she’s going to choose.”

“Do you care what she chooses?” Vann questioned, leaning back to lie on Hanni’s bed.

“I told her I didn’t… but a little bit, yeah.” He confirmed, sighing slightly. “I don’t want us to have to hide anymore, but if it comes out we’re dating, the backlash will be terrible. I’m not so worried about myself, I know CEO Lee and Namjoon will be fine with it… but Jimin is with SM, and I don’t know how they’ll react. I’m worried that this is going to make her second guess dating me, that she’ll want to break up just to avoid the drama.”

Vann sighed, rolling over to look at him. “I doubt that, Hanyeul. She loves you, you love her. It might get a little… complicated for a while, but I don’t think she’d break up with you over something like this. It wasn’t your fault you two were caught.”

“That’s the thing, hyung,” Hanni winced, focusing on following the patterns in the carpet so he didn’t have to meet his friend’s gaze. “It is my fault. I’ve thrown caution into the wind recently. When we first started dating, we were so careful to not get caught, but everyone’s been so stressed and worked up that I just sort of…forgot about it.”

“Don’t blame yourself, Hanni, it’s alright… well, how do you feel about going out for ice cream?”

Hanni turned to Vann in disbelief. “Hyung, it’s early February and you want to go out and get ice cream to cheer me up? I’m not 7, you know…”

“I know I know, just an idea.”

“Thanks, hyung.”

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XenexianAG
#1
Chapter 34: Can't wait until we go over to China to check up on my babies AKA HANNI, JIN AND CHO because I'm excited.
RiverFawn
#2
Chapter 34: *Sighs at Ae-cha*
Aiya, be respectful, maknae! I feel bad for Hope and Jin... Eesh.
I still like her better than Yue tho :P
But CHO FTW
RiverFawn
#3
Chapter 32: *Blinks*
Does that say Ae-Cha
Wow it does
Wow
That was unexpected
I bet she's going to do something to Yue tho
XenexianAG
#4
Chapter 31: My Jimin munchkin is just so adorable Anna you write her so freaking well xD
RiverFawn
#5
Chapter 31: -_- You actually scared me here ok
XenexianAG
#6
Chapter 29: Aah the pain is real
RiverFawn
#7
Chapter 29: Oh my Hyo *cries*
XenexianAG
#8
Chapter 28: AND THE FIRST SCANDAL TO HIT POLARIS IS OUT! BOOM!
XenexianAG
#9
Chapter 27: AWWWWW HOW CUTE ARE THEY THO OMG
XenexianAG
#10
Chapter 26: OH DEAR MINE IS A FEW CHAPTERS AWAY STILL OOPS! But yayyyyyy