In the end, Youngjae did the opposite of thinking fast.

Instead, he fell asleep.

Youngjae had nodded off while sitting up, resting his head, and the next thing he knew he jerked himself awake. A quick look to his side and he read that the clock on his nightstand read 4:07AM. Granted, it was only for a few hours, but it was still 180 minutes that he left Jaebum hanging. It took a couple more minutes to pick his practically dead phone up and be temporarily blinded by the bright screen.

He made a mental note to stop looking at his phone as soon he woke up.

There weren’t any more messages from Jaebum, which on one hand was good because hopefully he understood that it was past midnight and that’s when normal people should be sleepy. On the other, it could mean that Jaebum thought Youngjae was already blowing him off.

Youngjae wasn’t though.

He was going to worm his way out of the family dinner and meet his god damned man crush. It was going to be hard, excuses weren’t his forte when it came to his parents, but Youngjae was going to try.

And succeed.

“Sure. See you there.”

Part of Youngjae wanted to add a heart emoji or something ridiculously cute but in true lame Choi Youngjae fashion, he didn’t want to appear strange so he stopped himself. One day he would be able to send Jaebum a heart symbol without a shred of doubt.

‘Yeah right. In my dreams.’ 

Now what? Youngjae supposed he could go back to sleep, even if he’d only get a couple more hours. 

Eventually, the boy decided to go back to sleep. It was going to be a long day, and he could use all the sleep he could get.

-- -- 

Park Hyoshin had woken him up.

A small dusting of snow had fallen over night, and he had nearly slipped on the smallest patch of ice on his way to the bus stop.

The ahjusshi was extremely adamant on the price for her crabs, so Youngjae had to dip into his own money to help pay for the mackerel and tuna. 

On the bus back, he had an extremely hard time getting the money together for a return ticket and he could feel the annoyance from the people behind him. Youngjae could’ve sworn his hair was going to turn grey at this rate.

The small ice patch was still there from earlier this morning, and once more, Youngjae nearly slipped and dropped the bags of (mostly) fresh fish.

It was only 9:35am, but today was already too long for his liking.

It was about to get longer too. 

Staring at his reflection in the washroom, he took a deep breath and tried to calm himself. Youngjae was about to give some bull excuse to his mom (“You remember one of my friends from elementary? Lee Minsoo? He’s coming to visit family and only has tonight to hang out, so could I please miss dinner?” was the gist of it.) and it was messing with him. 

Choi Youngjae was, in fact, scared of his parents.

Another deep breath followed by a long exhaled, and Youngjae figured that he was as ready as he was ever going to be, “Hey, mom?” He called, exiting the washroom and heading towards the kitchen. 

“What is it?” She answered, and Youngjae found her, back to him, slicing tuna extremely thin. 

“Can I have a favour?” She paused, and he felt himself beginning to sweat due to nerves. His mom placed the knife down, and turned to him, and it took the majority of his willpower not to retreat. There was a bit of blood from the fish she cleaned on her apron, which didn’t help Youngjae’s case at all. “Do you remember Lee Minsoo from when I was younger in elementary? He moved to Seoul.” 

His mom’s head tilted to the left ever so slightly, not bothering to say anything in response. It was as if it was her way of saying, “Go on, continue.”

Youngjae obliged to the silent command, praying that he wasn’t going to come off as ridiculous sounding. “He’s back in town visiting family, and he wants to hang out, so I was wondering...” He trailed off, suddenly frightened at her. 

“You want to miss tonight’s family dinner, right?” 

Just as he was about to answer, she began to speak again, “Go. You’ve been going non stop since you entered high school, and you deserve a break,” She turned back to the fish, knife back in her hand, “You won’t be missing much, anyhow. There will be the same stories, same questions...have fun.” His mom resumed slicing the tuna thinly, and Youngjae had to resist doing a victory pose of some sorts.

‘There’s a reason you’re my favourite, Mom.’

With that, he spun around and headed to his room to hopefully lay down for a quick nap before getting ready to go out.

-- --

Youngjae was incredibly silly to believe he’d be getting any sleep before a non official date with Jaebum. 

For a few hours, he had been rolling around in his bed, thinking about impossible scenarios that would happen tonight and the following days. At one point, Youngjae’s mind began to wander into the deep end, only to return shortly after as his mother called him for a quick lunch. 

The next couple of hours were spent on the computer looking up male fashion advice. He wasn’t too into fashion, so it was rough trying to piece together clothing from his closet that looked good and internet approved. Youngjae decided to just throw on a black sweater vest with a dark blue shirt underneath. It wasn’t the highest quality of clothing, but it worked, and it was going to be covered with his giant black jacket. There was a bit of a dilemma between pants, but Youngjae eventually decided on his generic black pants and (knock off) Nike shoes. They were black with some blue on them and Youngjae didn’t think they looked too bad.

...Hopefully.

So here Youngjae was, sitting in a small, quiet cafe with his eyes on his phone, scrolling through a webtoon on Daum. It was something to take his mind off the churning in his stomach. It was something that happened when he was about to do something out of his comfort zone; It had happened before on a date with a pretty girl in junior high. 

Dates weren’t his specialty.

‘Even though this is not a date!’ Youngjae had to remind himself constantly as he read. 

It was five past 5 when the door to the cafe opened for the first time since he arrived, and Youngjae lifted his head, expecting Jaebum. 

Instead, it was a couple, a new one from the looks of it. Youngjae frowned, lowering his head, trying not to click his tongue in annoyance. It was a habit he had formed one day in class when another student did anything remotely stupid.

It was only until 5:27pm, a time Youngjae would most likely remember for the rest of his life, a young man entered the cafe and who Youngjae had spotted out of the corner of his eye. He had gotten frustrated with constantly lifting up his head to see that the wrong person had entered the cafe, so he just continued to read the mindless webtoon. 

It wasn’t until he tilted his head to the left, that he confirmed it was in fact Im Jaebum who had walked through the door and was now standing there, looking around for someone he had never spoken to in person. 

Just as Jaebum was about to move in a completely different direction of Youngjae’s table, he raised his arm to catch the attention of him, and it worked. Jaebum’s eyes flickered over to him, and a smile broke out on his face.

Seeing the smile in person, and not just on a computer screen, Youngjae couldn’t help but smile back despite his stomach doing back flips.