Requester: MyLabsJericTeng_16
OC Name: Park Nami
One-Shot Partner: Winner, Seunghoon
Genre: romance, fluff, comedy

“Smile Again” Winner

“Lee Seunghoon, you better have a peachy excuse for calling me out of my house in the wee hours of morning before I have to get ready for school,” Nami growled. Seunghoon looked her up and down and had to bite his tongue to keep his laugh from escaping. He’d known Park Nami for years and he still couldn’t get over how adorably dreadful she looked when she was sleepy.

“You’re coming to this one.”

“…If you’re going to be an ambiguous this early, I’m not afraid to march back into my house and grab my dad’s steel-toed boots to smack you over the head.” This time, Seunghoon did laugh and ruffled the top of her head. Seeing the punch that was coming, he narrowly ducked in time to avoid a harsh blow to the side of his face.

“I pulled some strings because I really want you coming to this one,” Seunghoon joked as he pulled a ticket and a backstage pass out from behind his back. “Will you come? Please?”

Nami didn’t have to think twice before she launched herself into her best friend’s arms and laughed in exhilarated disbelief. “Of course I’ll come, you idiot! Why wouldn’t I?!” She practically snatched the tickets out of his outstretched hands and stared at them, still wondering if this was a dream or not.

“It’s not a dream, and I’m being serious,” he laughed and pushed her off of him. “Make sure you’re there. They’re VIP seats, right next to the stage.”

“I hate you, but sometimes, you know how to make up for it,” Nami retorted. “Thanks, Hoonie. Your excuse wasn’t half as bad as I thought. Now, if you’ll excuse me…” She yawned so widely, she felt like the sides of would split, “I’m going back to bed.” She waved sleepily over her shoulder and disappeared back into her house. Seunghoon audibly chuckled before he turned around and crunched his way back to the taxi.

In a half-asleep state, Nami hadn’t been able to fully revel in the fact that she had VIP seating to go see the YG Family Concert in town tonight. She thanked the heavens that she ended up becoming his friend, despite his status as class outcast in their earlier school years, because goodness gracious was he making up for it now. She was completely unable to look away from her precious tickets in fear that they’d just poof into thin air and she’d have to return to the reality that Seunghoon hadn’t snuck out of practice last night to give them to her.

She took a moment to appreciate that fact: Lee Seunghoon had snuck out of practice to come and see her to personally deliver the tickets he’d gotten especially for her. That itself made butterflies flutter around in her stomach; in their nearing-thirteen years of friendship, they’d gone through a series of phases.

They’d started off as enemies: Nami resented Seunghoon for copying her drawing of a mountain lion in elementary school, and he’d gotten the teacher’s praise for it instead of her.

Then they progressed to become not-quite-friends-but-not-enemies-either when Seunghoon had shoved the kid who’d been picking on Nami for her uneven pigtails due to an unfortunate hair experiment she’d tried on herself when she was left home alone.

They soon became best friends when Seunghoon began getting picked on for being the tallest kid in the grade—he was abnormally tall, really—and Nami was the only one who didn’t see a problem with his abnormal height. (Not that it mattered; everybody caught up to him in a couple years.)

Attached at the hip, one was never seen without the other. In the rare case that they were, they were always looking for their other half.

In their last year of high school, though, Nami began seeing Seunghoon as more than a friend when she saw a girl confessing to him. She realized that during their time together, they’d all grown so much that she almost didn’t recognize the dweeb who couldn’t speak up for himself when kids made fun of him for his height.

He’d grown into himself, he’d found his identity, and he was actively and passionately pursuing his dream of becoming an idol performer.

While she’d always seen herself falling for the smart boys (all her previous crushes included the head of the mathletes Kim Namjoon, president of the chemistry club Kim Sangwoo or—as he preferred to be called—Roy Kim, the best piano player in the district Yang Seungho, valedictorian of their class Im Siwan, etc.) she couldn’t deny that seeing someone so passionate and sure about his dream was attractive and even heartwarming. And after several months of battling with herself, she finally accepted that she liked her best friend but refused to do anything about it.

How horrible would it be to make so many years of friendship go down the drain just because of some passing feelings?

Only, they didn’t pass. In fact, they got even worse when he went on “K-Pop Star Season 1” and was recruited into YG Entertainment as a trainee. The lack of his presence in her life made her realize exactly how much she depended on him and not being able to see him every day (usually to the point where she was sick of seeing him) took a toll on h