" you!"

Those are the only words Hoseok hears as he enters the lunchroom. It's a choked voice, probably cursing through tears, but it was well-heard over the laughter. Too well-heard because he knows exactly who the voice belongs to, and he watches Min YoonGi push him out of the way with his face buried in his forearm to hide the tears scarring, burning, searing into his pale cheeks.

And Hoseok catches the eyes of Park Jimin, YoonGi's former boyfriend, sided by his friends, terrifying and ominous Jeon JungKook with an obscure personality and Kim NamJoon, who is hostile with both his actions and his glares. And Hoseok's eyes lowered slightly to a tainted smirk that leaves those cat eyes filled with an emotion Hoseok lacked an explanation for, aside from dark and purely evil and look at what I did to your boyfriend, .

Even though Hoseok and YoonGi aren't dating.

Hoseok backs right out of the door that he had just come in through and runs out to the hall. "YoonGi!" He shouts, and he's so sure that some teacher was gonna come out of his or her room and yell at him, but  it. it because YoonGi is crying somewhere secluded and Hoseok had to find him.

Then he figures it out. The music room. That's where YoonGi would be.

Hoseok sprints in the halls and across campus to the music building, heart beating too fast and too hard while his legs extend farther than he knew they could go because the adrenaline level is too high for Hoseok's body to react with anything else.

And Hoseok's in the music room, and he calls the name on his lips again. "YoonGi! YoonGi, where are you?" And Hoseok searches the room, behind and under every chair and behind the cellos and under the teacher's desk and YoonGi isn't there.

His heart beats in his throat as he walks around campus, checking all the bathrooms for YoonGi's image crying against the sink or maybe on the ground. Hoseok finally decides to go to the gym, because that is the very last place he would look for YoonGi.

And sure enough, there is Min YoonGi in the locker room. Sitting on the floor in front of the lockers, fingers running through his hair, eyes and nose already fused to a light shade of red.

"Hey," Hoseok says gently.

"Hey," YoonGi croaks back quietly.

"Why are you hiding here?"

"Because I thought you wouldn't find me here."

Hoseok smiles at the boy and leans against the lockers next to him. "What happened back there, hmm?" Hoseok asks lightly. YoonGi rests his head against the younger's shoulder and shuts his eyes.

"I don't even know," he sighs.

"You only say that when you don't want to tell me," Hoseok points out.

"And...?" YoonGi asks.

"And you've never actually told me. I'd love to know this time, YoonGi. I can help, I know I can," Hoseok replies with determination in his tone. YoonGi feels the new stinging in his eyes, warning him that telling Hoseok would mean long sobs, and he isn't even sure if he knows what to do if that happened.

"I don't know-"

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