You saunter in: smug strides, smug look, smug lips.

            The corners of your mouth tilt upwards; your hands materialise from behind your back, revealing – a plastic bag, wrapped round the thin slope of your wrist. It dangles precariously from your grip; rivulets of water bead its surface.

            It’s probably nothing – as always – and yet the contemptuousness of your sneer compels me to entertain you – as always.

            “Minho – listen. I bought,” you announce, with an air of triumph, “this delicious baby.”

            From within the white bag you extract a carton of orange juice. Warmed up and seemingly sweating, it seems to tiredly sag – perhaps, I think, beneath the weight of the beams your asinine grin emits.

            I chuckle, still.

            “Whatcha laughin’ at?” you retort. Then you pause; your beam widens. You lean forward –

            “Orange you glad I bought this?”

            The joke takes two seconds to set in. I roll my eyes, rove them back down to my book.

            “Juiceus Christ. Can’t you take a joke, boy?”

            “– Mm.”

            “I can see you smiling,” you scoff. “Behind that book.”

            I don’t respond. After a while, I hear the fridge door open and slam shut.

            The book in my hands could might as well have been blank: I have to flip myself a few pages back. I wasn’t quite paying attention.

***

Minho shifted his weight from one foot to the other as he deliberated on the concrete pavement; in his contemplation, his lips were pressed together and his brows furrowed darkly. Should he – no, but – then again…

            He blinked a few times, conjuring the image of Taemin behind the sheen of glass before him. Imagining the mannequin as Taemin; imagining his auburn cloud of hair; imagining his almond eyes staring quizzically down at him. And his arms – his long, slim arms, flowing down the sleeves of the jacket…

            But the jacket, Minho thought, would probably be a little oversized for Taemin – and yet, he mulled, chewing on his lower lip – and yet, oversized is his thing. Oh, but the colour, though – that candy-corn orange – was that quite the best colour?

            Minho thought of Taemin – thought back to the slips of shy giggles, to the cheekiness of his gaze. And he thought back to the lame joke he’d pulled the other day.

            Minho stifled a laugh. Orange it was, then – orange indeed.

***

I’ve devised an excellent plan. I find myself thoroughly convinced of its brilliance: For the first time, my level of intelligence has impressed me.

            You don’t know this yet, but the execution of the plan will go like this: You will, as I have been informed, spend the majority of tomorrow out with some people – your classmates, or grandmothers; whoever. That much you have not divulged. But you have confided in me the timing of your return: 11pm.

            You did not tell me the purpose of this outing, and your eyes had probed me – enticed me, even – to ask you what it was. You turned, downcast, when my response revealed only my attempt at nonchalance. But – ha! – there’s the catch! – you see, I do know! Tomorrow commemorates the anniversary of your very first screams, and your very first bath in blood: Tomorrow commemorates your birthday. I am aware, Taemin, I am aware.

            So at eleven, I will be sitting as languidly as I possibly can – despite the electrified nerves both you and I will share at that moment – at our small, communal dining table. On one end, I will be (falsely!) reading my book, and the chair opposite will have the orange jacket draped round it. Your birthday gift.

            I’ll pretend not to see you. And you’ll most likely pout, I imagine. “Don’t y’know what day it is –” you’ll start, and then, upon spotting the lovely candy-corn jacket, you will gasp, excitedly: “What is that? Did you ever have a jacket like that?”

            And I, shutting my book, will swivel round, and look you firmly in the eye. In your anticipation and your sudden, inexplicable desire for orange things, I will deliver you the iest smile I can manage, without, with luck, the showing of too much teeth. And then – and then, my voice: baritone, y, dulcet –

            “Happy birthday, .”

***

By nine, his impatience had grown unbearable. At nine-thirty the jacket had been positioned – with absolute precision – and Minho was waiting – in trepidation, on tenterhooks, teetering on the edge of his chair. The words in his book were absolutely meaningless. He could have caught the words promiscuous and cabbage together somewhere within the chunks of text, which was awfully odd, but honestly, he couldn’t have quite cared less.

***

Perhaps he shouldn’t have consented to Jongin’s pleads. Sure, he wanted company, and sure, it was his birthday – and yet the webs of retrospective regret have begun to spin in the cavity of his chest. His heart is in an erratic frenzy; his sweat leaves his skin cold and slick, making him feel more gaunt and susceptible than he’s ever quite felt before.

            The booze, perhaps – of course it was the booze. Articulation and coherence have deserted him; he is dazed, his mind a perpetual fog, his vision a twisting haze. An overwhelming sensation suddenly tides over him; pangs, pangs, pangs of pain; stars before his eyes; he gags, almost retches, heaves –

            Jongin slaps his back ardently and makes a raucous comment, but Taemin can’t register it, or anything else. His body isn’t used to this. In hindsight, the bar was – oh God, I need to throw up –! – going to the bar – was definitely not a good idea.

            Somehow he stumbles out of the doors, past sickening bodies and the repugnant stench of sweat. And somehow he feels a heavy breath ghost at the shell of his ear; somehow he’s pulled into a car; somehow he’s ended up in the very lewd company of a girl –

            She’s clawing at his shirt, and he is at her dress. At least he thinks he is. His head is throbbing with a ceaseless ache; with every pulse of the vein in his temple his vision seems to concave. His phone has fallen out his pocket and onto the seat of the car; it is buzzing away, but he gives it no heed. In the urgency and heat of the moment, a primitive need has seized his entire corporality.

            Then her dress is off; their lips collide messily like the crashing of a sliding symphony and she’s making sounds he’s never thought were conceivable by a girl. The air is musky and stale; his every other breath gets hitched in the sawdust edges of his throat.

            Then he suddenly catches the shock of orange on her underwear. For some reason he thinks of Minho. He thinks of 11pm.

            A sideways glance at his phone tells him that it’s 12:32am.

            His heart lurches.

            “Why’d you stop?” she whines.

            “I need to go,” he says, his breath shaky, yet resolute. Her hands are on his chest.

            “But you just got here!” she persists – but now, to him, she is a fly at the back of his mind.

            He forces his way out the car, slamming the door fiercely in the girl’s puckered face. He walks away with a haphazard stagger and a disoriented stumble: What now? His feet find the street, and they teeter across, needing to get away…

            He hears the car door open and he hears a loud “Hey!” – but just at this moment, white noise fills his ears, and while light consumes his vision. For a split second, he is blinded. Stunned. Frozen.

            And then, almost deafeningly, he hears the screeching of tires.

            His body is hurled into the air.

***

Minho grew weary of waiting; for every time he glanced expectantly at the clock, and for every call that wasn’t picked up, his shoulders sagged an inch lower. He fixed his gaze forlornly at the jacket across him, and the jacket stared steadily back.

            He folded his head into his arms, curling into himself, hunching his back over the edge of the table.

            Sleep caught him mid-conscience.