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EXILATION
MOUTH MANTRA
1064w; pg-13 (jaemin/yangyang)
if your hands need to break something, you shouldn't hold onto this heart.
Jaemin gives out secrets like handing out a Costco multipack of candy to trick-or-treaters on Halloween – generously and about whom seemingly at random, always fun-sized and, like most things that were associated with Jaemin Na, definitely bad for you in the long-run.
"You're, like, weirdly obsessed with him," Renjun points out as Yangyang's taking a break in between complaining to chew on a sour belt. There's a pay-by-pound candy shop next to the off-brand coffee place Renjun works part-time at in the mall, and there's a Starbucks that just opened last week a five-minute walk away near the food court, and Yangyang's too wrung out from a week of pretending to be friends with the most exclusive clique at their private school to get chewed out by Renjun for his sugar fix. "You should really hear yourself. It's like you're giving a whole TED Talk on the upper echelon of our high school population."
Yangyang licks the sour coating off his thumb. "You know what he said about Donghyuck?" A whole wrench had been thrown into Yangyang's class schedule after he'd moved down to normal Calc, and now his P.E. period coincided with Jaemin's at the end of the day. That's when Jaemin would spill all the hot goss – in the empty locker room after everyone else had gone home, taking forever and a half to pack up his things because his mouth was moving faster than any other part of his body would go. He leans over the counter and lowers his voice, "That time when Donghyuck was out of school, saying that his family was taking an impromptu vacation to Cayman Islands? He got all four wisdom teeth taken out. Apparently his face was so swollen that he covered every mirror in his house so he wouldn’t have to look at himself for the entire week."
Jaemin had relayed all this to him with a toothy grin, like he wasn't just sharing a piece of their supposed-friend's personal mortification. "He also said that Jeno should've been nominated for Homecoming King last year, but Chaewon Kim from student council rigged the votes. She said –” he releases his index finger from his mouth with a pop, “Quote unquote – he was too much of a man-whore to represent the school like that."
"I’m pretty sure it's actually 'cause he failed Geometry three years in a row," Renjun points out. “You know that freshman year, the teacher was teaching us the area of a circle is pi r-squared and he raised his hand and asked ‘What kind of pie?’” Yangyang pretends to ignore the way he's rolling his eyes from where he's wiping down an espresso machine. "But fine, now you're telling me because –?"
"It's eating me away from the inside, Renjun! All these secrets!" Every time Yangyang was in the middle of pulling off his gym uniform, he'd emerge on the other side to Jaemin smiling at him like Pennywise, the words you won't believe what I heard about falling from his cannibalistic mouth. Just a hypothesis, but Yangyang believes that if eating humans was ever deemed morally acceptable in the near future, Jaemin would be the first to add it in the lean protein section of his calorie tracker app. "He's such a – an asshole. And yet the whole school literally kisses the ground he walks on. I can't stand him."
Renjun cuts in before Yangyang can go full-blown teen angst pity party. “Then why don’t you just stop hanging out with him?”
“It’s not that easy,” Yangyang faceplants into the counter. The Tuesday he forgot to ask his dad if he could borrow his older-than-him 90’s Tommy Hilfiger polo, Donghyuck had spat, “Wow, didn’t take you as an anarchist, Liu,” when Yangyang put his lunch tray down across from him, him and Jeno in their own respective crimson, cream, and navy. Jaemin hadn’t said anything outright when he’d slammed his shaker bottle on the table, but Yangyang tried to make himself as small as possible, curling into his Uncrustable and carton OJ. The only acknowledgement Jaemin bothered to give him at all that over lunch was a narrow-eyed look over Jeno explaining how his dick could tell when it was going to rain. He ignored Yangyang in gym class too, and the handicap parking spot Jaemin always pulled his Benz into was conspicuously empty. The bus ride home felt freeing yet inherently wrong all at once.
“Yes, it is,” insists Renjun, nudging the crown of his head with an elbow. “Jaemin Na, you’re a fucking asshole and I don’t want to hang out with you anymore,” he says in a bad imitation of Yangyang’s German accent. “That’s really all there is to it.”
What Yangyang can’t tell him is that Jaemin holds a secret of his own under his tongue like a clam with a pearl. And that secret involves their empty locker room after everyone else had gone home, the shirt of their gym uniform that looks slightly less bad on Jaemin because he’s hot shucked off, and Jaemin pushing him against the door of some football player’s locker, caging Yangyang between his arms, and sloppily making out with him. Yangyang thought it’d be a one time thing, but then he’d lunged forward at Jaemin after he’d pushed him down in lacrosse another day and smashed their mouths together again. It’d happened over and over and over, and now Yangyang was so far pulled in that couldn’t not be friends with him anymore.
“If you say so,” Yangyang says, noncommittal. Jaemin smiled at him Friday after school, his mouth still kiss-swollen and with entirely too-many teeth. For a brief moment, it looked like his awful, cavity-ridden heart could be in love with Yangyang.
Yangyang watched as he laced up his Air Jordans, painstakingly slow. At the last minute before tying the double knot, Jaemin looked up at him. “No homo,” he said, eyes crinkling.
“Yeah,” Yangyang echoed. Their friendship wasn’t real so the way he felt his heart splinter couldn’t be, either. “No homo.”
Yangyang pulls another sour belt between his teeth, offering the rest of the bag to Renjun, who declines. “It has to be the protein powder he mixes with pure espresso that makes him so mean,” he’s convinced.
"HOMESWEETHOME"
619w; g (taehyun/beomgyu)
beomgyu's only got a green thumb out of entirely selfish reasons.
THEY ASSUME YOU KNOW NOTHING
1473w; pg (nayoung/jeonghan)
"i've liked you for a long time," he says so readily that it can't not be true.
1224
799w; g (jun/jieqiong)
in ways you don't even know yourself.
1064w; pg-13 (jaemin/yangyang)
if your hands need to break something, you shouldn't hold onto this heart.
Jaemin gives out secrets like handing out a Costco multipack of candy to trick-or-treaters on Halloween – generously and about whom seemingly at random, always fun-sized and, like most things that were associated with Jaemin Na, definitely bad for you in the long-run.
"You're, like, weirdly obsessed with him," Renjun points out as Yangyang's taking a break in between complaining to chew on a sour belt. There's a pay-by-pound candy shop next to the off-brand coffee place Renjun works part-time at in the mall, and there's a Starbucks that just opened last week a five-minute walk away near the food court, and Yangyang's too wrung out from a week of pretending to be friends with the most exclusive clique at their private school to get chewed out by Renjun for his sugar fix. "You should really hear yourself. It's like you're giving a whole TED Talk on the upper echelon of our high school population."
Yangyang licks the sour coating off his thumb. "You know what he said about Donghyuck?" A whole wrench had been thrown into Yangyang's class schedule after he'd moved down to normal Calc, and now his P.E. period coincided with Jaemin's at the end of the day. That's when Jaemin would spill all the hot goss – in the empty locker room after everyone else had gone home, taking forever and a half to pack up his things because his mouth was moving faster than any other part of his body would go. He leans over the counter and lowers his voice, "That time when Donghyuck was out of school, saying that his family was taking an impromptu vacation to Cayman Islands? He got all four wisdom teeth taken out. Apparently his face was so swollen that he covered every mirror in his house so he wouldn’t have to look at himself for the entire week."
Jaemin had relayed all this to him with a toothy grin, like he wasn't just sharing a piece of their supposed-friend's personal mortification. "He also said that Jeno should've been nominated for Homecoming King last year, but Chaewon Kim from student council rigged the votes. She said –” he releases his index finger from his mouth with a pop, “Quote unquote – he was too much of a man-whore to represent the school like that."
"I’m pretty sure it's actually 'cause he failed Geometry three years in a row," Renjun points out. “You know that freshman year, the teacher was teaching us the area of a circle is pi r-squared and he raised his hand and asked ‘What kind of pie?’” Yangyang pretends to ignore the way he's rolling his eyes from where he's wiping down an espresso machine. "But fine, now you're telling me because –?"
"It's eating me away from the inside, Renjun! All these secrets!" Every time Yangyang was in the middle of pulling off his gym uniform, he'd emerge on the other side to Jaemin smiling at him like Pennywise, the words you won't believe what I heard about falling from his cannibalistic mouth. Just a hypothesis, but Yangyang believes that if eating humans was ever deemed morally acceptable in the near future, Jaemin would be the first to add it in the lean protein section of his calorie tracker app. "He's such a – an asshole. And yet the whole school literally kisses the ground he walks on. I can't stand him."
Renjun cuts in before Yangyang can go full-blown teen angst pity party. “Then why don’t you just stop hanging out with him?”
“It’s not that easy,” Yangyang faceplants into the counter. The Tuesday he forgot to ask his dad if he could borrow his older-than-him 90’s Tommy Hilfiger polo, Donghyuck had spat, “Wow, didn’t take you as an anarchist, Liu,” when Yangyang put his lunch tray down across from him, him and Jeno in their own respective crimson, cream, and navy. Jaemin hadn’t said anything outright when he’d slammed his shaker bottle on the table, but Yangyang tried to make himself as small as possible, curling into his Uncrustable and carton OJ. The only acknowledgement Jaemin bothered to give him at all that over lunch was a narrow-eyed look over Jeno explaining how his dick could tell when it was going to rain. He ignored Yangyang in gym class too, and the handicap parking spot Jaemin always pulled his Benz into was conspicuously empty. The bus ride home felt freeing yet inherently wrong all at once.
“Yes, it is,” insists Renjun, nudging the crown of his head with an elbow. “Jaemin Na, you’re a fucking asshole and I don’t want to hang out with you anymore,” he says in a bad imitation of Yangyang’s German accent. “That’s really all there is to it.”
What Yangyang can’t tell him is that Jaemin holds a secret of his own under his tongue like a clam with a pearl. And that secret involves their empty locker room after everyone else had gone home, the shirt of their gym uniform that looks slightly less bad on Jaemin because he’s hot shucked off, and Jaemin pushing him against the door of some football player’s locker, caging Yangyang between his arms, and sloppily making out with him. Yangyang thought it’d be a one time thing, but then he’d lunged forward at Jaemin after he’d pushed him down in lacrosse another day and smashed their mouths together again. It’d happened over and over and over, and now Yangyang was so far pulled in that couldn’t not be friends with him anymore.
“If you say so,” Yangyang says, noncommittal. Jaemin smiled at him Friday after school, his mouth still kiss-swollen and with entirely too-many teeth. For a brief moment, it looked like his awful, cavity-ridden heart could be in love with Yangyang.
Yangyang watched as he laced up his Air Jordans, painstakingly slow. At the last minute before tying the double knot, Jaemin looked up at him. “No homo,” he said, eyes crinkling.
“Yeah,” Yangyang echoed. Their friendship wasn’t real so the way he felt his heart splinter couldn’t be, either. “No homo.”
Yangyang pulls another sour belt between his teeth, offering the rest of the bag to Renjun, who declines. “It has to be the protein powder he mixes with pure espresso that makes him so mean,” he’s convinced.
"HOMESWEETHOME"
619w; g (taehyun/beomgyu)
beomgyu's only got a green thumb out of entirely selfish reasons.
"Owww," Taehyun hears Beomgyu whimper from the balcony.
He only glances up from his textbook when Beomgyu doesn't move to come back inside. The thing about winter is that Beomgyu starts wearing this obnoxiously purple bubble jacket once the temperature hits 5 degrees, and Taehyun doesn't even have to look to know every move he's going to make. It's not so much picking up on habits from years of forced proximity over their friends in common as a liability.
There's the tell-tale scratching of the nylon rubbing together as Beomgyu lifts a hand to show Taehyun. A smear of blood on the palm, redder than his cold-bitten cheeks. "Did you really have to put Soobin's bike next to my succulents?" he asks.
"It's your fault," Taehyun points out. Beomgyu only gifted him those succulents for his last birthday because he knew Taehyun would kill them. That gave him an excuse to come over at least once a week and bum off the central heating in Taehyun's apartment because Beomgyu's own flat mate was a stickler about the electricity bill. He always left a poorly cleaned-up mess of chip crumbs over the kitchen counter, and laughed a little too loudly at whatever he was watching on his phone, and he'd borrowed a pair of Taehyun's track pants once, told him they were too short for his legs, and proceeded to never give them back. "You're just clumsy."
"Who do you like better," Beomgyu says with his arms full of succulents. "Me or Soobin hyung?" He slides the balcony door closed precariously with his sock-covered foot.
Taehyun flips the page. "Soobin hyung," he answers obviously.
"But Soobin doesn't take care of your succulents."
Taehyun laughs out of his nose, "Soobin hyung doesn't even know how to take care of himself."
Beomgyu preens from where he's filling the spritz bottle. "That makes me cooler than him, doesn't it?" he asks loudly over the running sink.
"You can't take care of yourself either," Taehyun reminds him.
Beomgyu frowns at the thin horizontal cut on the fleshy part of his palm. Taehyun’s got a box of band-aids and ointment in the third drawer down in the kitchen leftover from the time Kai skinned his knee running down the stairs after Taehyun had suddenly dropped a picture of Beomgyu sitting across from him with a box of fried chicken in their group chat. He brightens when he looks up and realizes Taehyun’s looking at him. “I take care of you though,” he unabashedly claims.
Beomgyu had been the one to buy those, too. He said he’d taken his time walking to the convenience store two streets down, but the ointment came out warm when Taehyun helped Kai apply it, from the heat of his hands.
It was funny. Sometimes Taehyun thought about how Beomgyu would come over nowhere near as often if his own flat mate let him turn on the heater. He didn’t think that under any other circumstances, they’d become friends. But still, in every other hypothetical, these things all began with Beomgyu’s outstretched hand, doorjambing himself into Taehyun’s life.
Taehyun hums. When he’d sniffled walking home from dinner last week, Beomgyu had given him his bubble jacket and one of his mittens, still warm from his left hand. When he’d thought Beomgyu had eaten everything left in his apartment, Taehyun opened the fridge to find fruit drawers full of tangerines and a somewhat-edible pot of kimchi jjigae.
“I guess you do,” he admits. And when Taehyun finally chalked up the courage to ask him what he wanted for his birthday over Christmas, Beomgyu had looked at him with something between a joke and unbridled sincerity tugging at his mouth before saying, “You.”
He only glances up from his textbook when Beomgyu doesn't move to come back inside. The thing about winter is that Beomgyu starts wearing this obnoxiously purple bubble jacket once the temperature hits 5 degrees, and Taehyun doesn't even have to look to know every move he's going to make. It's not so much picking up on habits from years of forced proximity over their friends in common as a liability.
There's the tell-tale scratching of the nylon rubbing together as Beomgyu lifts a hand to show Taehyun. A smear of blood on the palm, redder than his cold-bitten cheeks. "Did you really have to put Soobin's bike next to my succulents?" he asks.
"It's your fault," Taehyun points out. Beomgyu only gifted him those succulents for his last birthday because he knew Taehyun would kill them. That gave him an excuse to come over at least once a week and bum off the central heating in Taehyun's apartment because Beomgyu's own flat mate was a stickler about the electricity bill. He always left a poorly cleaned-up mess of chip crumbs over the kitchen counter, and laughed a little too loudly at whatever he was watching on his phone, and he'd borrowed a pair of Taehyun's track pants once, told him they were too short for his legs, and proceeded to never give them back. "You're just clumsy."
"Who do you like better," Beomgyu says with his arms full of succulents. "Me or Soobin hyung?" He slides the balcony door closed precariously with his sock-covered foot.
Taehyun flips the page. "Soobin hyung," he answers obviously.
"But Soobin doesn't take care of your succulents."
Taehyun laughs out of his nose, "Soobin hyung doesn't even know how to take care of himself."
Beomgyu preens from where he's filling the spritz bottle. "That makes me cooler than him, doesn't it?" he asks loudly over the running sink.
"You can't take care of yourself either," Taehyun reminds him.
Beomgyu frowns at the thin horizontal cut on the fleshy part of his palm. Taehyun’s got a box of band-aids and ointment in the third drawer down in the kitchen leftover from the time Kai skinned his knee running down the stairs after Taehyun had suddenly dropped a picture of Beomgyu sitting across from him with a box of fried chicken in their group chat. He brightens when he looks up and realizes Taehyun’s looking at him. “I take care of you though,” he unabashedly claims.
Beomgyu had been the one to buy those, too. He said he’d taken his time walking to the convenience store two streets down, but the ointment came out warm when Taehyun helped Kai apply it, from the heat of his hands.
It was funny. Sometimes Taehyun thought about how Beomgyu would come over nowhere near as often if his own flat mate let him turn on the heater. He didn’t think that under any other circumstances, they’d become friends. But still, in every other hypothetical, these things all began with Beomgyu’s outstretched hand, doorjambing himself into Taehyun’s life.
Taehyun hums. When he’d sniffled walking home from dinner last week, Beomgyu had given him his bubble jacket and one of his mittens, still warm from his left hand. When he’d thought Beomgyu had eaten everything left in his apartment, Taehyun opened the fridge to find fruit drawers full of tangerines and a somewhat-edible pot of kimchi jjigae.
“I guess you do,” he admits. And when Taehyun finally chalked up the courage to ask him what he wanted for his birthday over Christmas, Beomgyu had looked at him with something between a joke and unbridled sincerity tugging at his mouth before saying, “You.”
THEY ASSUME YOU KNOW NOTHING
1473w; pg (nayoung/jeonghan)
"i've liked you for a long time," he says so readily that it can't not be true.
Kyulkyung only looks at her after picking pieces of confetti out of her own dark hair. "You're making it obvious," she points out, a little stern.
Nayoung blinks, coming back into herself. She belatedly claps along as the beginning beats of the winning song of the week flood through the sound system. She'd tried her best not to think highly of it when it was first released, but couldn't help humming the hook under the shower, when the running water was loud enough to drown her off-pitch high notes out. She meets Kyulkyung's eyes as they start shuffling off the stage and asks, "What do you mean?"
Kyulkyung tilts her chin toward the front. It was weird at first, and awkward, having to face each other years after their shared dream had been snuffed out. It was still weird now, knowing these past versions of each other so intimately and wholly, and not quite being old enough yet for time to scab over their old selves, and not far enough into the future where they could be completely removed from them. Frankly, sometimes when the light hit her face a certain way, Nayoung still saw the girl who'd put on a brave face when she'd walked into their old practice room for the first time and didn't speak a lick of Korean.
Now, Kyulkyung says to her in awkward phrasing, "You don't notice it, but you keep glaring at them." They bow to a junior artist who passes by. "You shouldn't hate them for what happened. They had nothing to do with it."
"I don't." Some part of her does, or wishes she did. She'd never admit it aloud, though. It sounded too petty and unjustified for being twenty-eight, and she should've long outgrown the trepidation of always coming second because the boys always had to come first. "That's just ridiculous."
Seventeen is standing in the spotlight with their backs to the rest of them, singing along to their encore. Jeonghan's holding the trophy up high in his hands, confetti caught in the crown of his hair. There's sweat shining on the back of his neck. Nayoung can hear the triumphant smile in his voice when Dokyeom lets him sing into the mic for the hook that's been stuck in Nayoung's head ever since she watched the music video on her phone under the covers of her bed, in the otherwise darkness of her apartment.
These things, Nayoung didn't miss about being an idol.
"I can't wait to cut my hair," Jeonghan suddenly sighs from where he's laying on her couch. It's a sofa bed, actually. Nayoung ordered it online because she thought it'd be useful for having people over. And then when it arrived, she realized that she never had people over. She doesn't even know how to set up the mattress.
Seungcheol started his service maybe two months ago. She knows Jeonghan's planning to go soon, too, before February of next year. It makes it easier, knowing this thing between them has a definitive end date. "Don't let your fans hear you," she chastises from where she's reloading her hot water dispenser. "You'll break their hearts like that."
He cranes his neck to meet her eyes over the kitchen counter. "Do you think I'd be popular if I got a buzzcut?" He's grinning like he's up to no good.
She'd gone over to his place before, maybe three times. She'd walked over to grab something off his TV stand and then realized that she'd seen a picture of Joshua on Jeonghan's Instagram, taken from that exact spot. She never wanted to go over there again afterwards.
Nayoung considers and then concludes, "I can't speak for the public."
The thing is, she'd hated when he'd started growing out his hair back before debut. They'd cross each other in the hallways and she'd be polite, but it was like every inch of hair brought him closer to something she'd been working years for. Boiled down to that, it felt like all the time she'd spent in the practice room could be trivialized into something so easily cut off.
Jeonghan runs a hand through it, pensive. "All the more reason to get rid of it," he says as if she hadn't tangled her fingers in it at the nape of his neck when he kissed her ten minutes ago. And it was all so trivial, all over again.
Nayoung asked for Jeonghan's number a year ago, when they guested on the same variety show. She'd done so mostly out of courtesy, and they didn't interact much during the shoot otherwise. A month later, she texted him for his birthday, and somehow that turned into regularly exchanging messages, and that turned into asking if he wanted extra persimmons her aunt had sent her that would go bad otherwise, and <i>that</i> turned into him gently brushing her hair out of her face, her fingers twisted in his cotton t-shirt.
For the most part, Nayoung assuaged their relationship by convincing herself it was just casual. They talked so little about each other to other people that it seemed like this thing between them was entirely nonexistent. They didn't have the same favorite songs, and they didn't have the same social circles, and Nayoung only knows for certain that Joshua figured it out, but only because he looked at Jeonghan's phone once.
"That doesn't count," she pointed out when Jeonghan told her. Some part of her foolishly wanted it to be more obvious, but when she thought about it further, she decided she'd hate that more.
They never took pictures of each other, or sent each other anything but plain-word texts. That's how Nayoung pretended how little this whole thing truly meant to her. Jeonghan laughed, "We're every PR team's dream," and then Nayoung shut him up by kissing him square on the mouth.
In hindsight, she regretted never asking Sowon about how it'd been when she and Jeonghan were dating, but Nayoung knew it'd been her own hubris. She hadn't bothered asking because she thought it'd be impossible, ending up in the same exact situation. And now here she was, in the same exact situation.
"If you had a friend," Jeonghan begins, "and they liked this guy, but say the guy was going to do his military service soon. Would you wait for him if you were them?"
Nayoung tears the paper a little from where she'd been pulling at the dog ear of her script. "Can you say that again?" she says slowly.
Jeonghan leans forward to put his phone facedown onto her coffee table. Nayoung can't meet his gaze. "I mean me," he repeats. He clears his throat. "And you."
"Oh." Nayoung's ripped the dog ear off entirely at this point. She rolls the softened paper between her fingers anyway, not trusting herself with anything else, much less Yoon Jeonghan's heart. "You want me to wait for you?"
"If you want to." He sounds so earnest that Nayoung makes the mistake of glancing up. He looks at her, earnest too.
Earlier in the year, the kiss scene in Nayoung's last webdrama went semi-viral. It'd been with an up-and-coming actor five years younger than her, and their characters were arguing over why they should and shouldn't be together at a new year's party. It all came to a head when the crowd around them, oblivious to their shouting, counted down the last ten seconds, and Nayoung's character surged forward to kiss her love interest right as the confetti shot into the air, fluttering down around them. It'd been all anyone ever asked her about during their short IOI reunion promotions, to the point that Nayoung never wanted to talk about it again.
Jeonghan never brought it up with her once, and she'd dismissed the script early as fiction. And now, Nayoung chokes out over the want of such a picture-perfect ending for the both of them, "It can't be that easy. For us."
Jeonghan's mouth tilts into a smile. "It only sounds that way if you want it to." It looks like he wants to reach for her hand, the one folding creases into the dog ear. In case he's thought about it, she puts the paper down.
"I wasn't supposed to like you," she tells him, which is admission enough. Idly, she thinks about all the reasons she should hate him.
"I've liked you for a long time," he says so readily that it can't not be true.
He grinned at her brightly on the last day of her promotions, when he was a guest MC and IOI won, handing her the trophy. Their hands brushed briefly in the flood of the stage lights. Now, Jeonghan covers her hand with his slowly, like he's giving her the chance to draw away.
She doesn't.
Nayoung blinks, coming back into herself. She belatedly claps along as the beginning beats of the winning song of the week flood through the sound system. She'd tried her best not to think highly of it when it was first released, but couldn't help humming the hook under the shower, when the running water was loud enough to drown her off-pitch high notes out. She meets Kyulkyung's eyes as they start shuffling off the stage and asks, "What do you mean?"
Kyulkyung tilts her chin toward the front. It was weird at first, and awkward, having to face each other years after their shared dream had been snuffed out. It was still weird now, knowing these past versions of each other so intimately and wholly, and not quite being old enough yet for time to scab over their old selves, and not far enough into the future where they could be completely removed from them. Frankly, sometimes when the light hit her face a certain way, Nayoung still saw the girl who'd put on a brave face when she'd walked into their old practice room for the first time and didn't speak a lick of Korean.
Now, Kyulkyung says to her in awkward phrasing, "You don't notice it, but you keep glaring at them." They bow to a junior artist who passes by. "You shouldn't hate them for what happened. They had nothing to do with it."
"I don't." Some part of her does, or wishes she did. She'd never admit it aloud, though. It sounded too petty and unjustified for being twenty-eight, and she should've long outgrown the trepidation of always coming second because the boys always had to come first. "That's just ridiculous."
Seventeen is standing in the spotlight with their backs to the rest of them, singing along to their encore. Jeonghan's holding the trophy up high in his hands, confetti caught in the crown of his hair. There's sweat shining on the back of his neck. Nayoung can hear the triumphant smile in his voice when Dokyeom lets him sing into the mic for the hook that's been stuck in Nayoung's head ever since she watched the music video on her phone under the covers of her bed, in the otherwise darkness of her apartment.
These things, Nayoung didn't miss about being an idol.
"I can't wait to cut my hair," Jeonghan suddenly sighs from where he's laying on her couch. It's a sofa bed, actually. Nayoung ordered it online because she thought it'd be useful for having people over. And then when it arrived, she realized that she never had people over. She doesn't even know how to set up the mattress.
Seungcheol started his service maybe two months ago. She knows Jeonghan's planning to go soon, too, before February of next year. It makes it easier, knowing this thing between them has a definitive end date. "Don't let your fans hear you," she chastises from where she's reloading her hot water dispenser. "You'll break their hearts like that."
He cranes his neck to meet her eyes over the kitchen counter. "Do you think I'd be popular if I got a buzzcut?" He's grinning like he's up to no good.
She'd gone over to his place before, maybe three times. She'd walked over to grab something off his TV stand and then realized that she'd seen a picture of Joshua on Jeonghan's Instagram, taken from that exact spot. She never wanted to go over there again afterwards.
Nayoung considers and then concludes, "I can't speak for the public."
The thing is, she'd hated when he'd started growing out his hair back before debut. They'd cross each other in the hallways and she'd be polite, but it was like every inch of hair brought him closer to something she'd been working years for. Boiled down to that, it felt like all the time she'd spent in the practice room could be trivialized into something so easily cut off.
Jeonghan runs a hand through it, pensive. "All the more reason to get rid of it," he says as if she hadn't tangled her fingers in it at the nape of his neck when he kissed her ten minutes ago. And it was all so trivial, all over again.
Nayoung asked for Jeonghan's number a year ago, when they guested on the same variety show. She'd done so mostly out of courtesy, and they didn't interact much during the shoot otherwise. A month later, she texted him for his birthday, and somehow that turned into regularly exchanging messages, and that turned into asking if he wanted extra persimmons her aunt had sent her that would go bad otherwise, and <i>that</i> turned into him gently brushing her hair out of her face, her fingers twisted in his cotton t-shirt.
For the most part, Nayoung assuaged their relationship by convincing herself it was just casual. They talked so little about each other to other people that it seemed like this thing between them was entirely nonexistent. They didn't have the same favorite songs, and they didn't have the same social circles, and Nayoung only knows for certain that Joshua figured it out, but only because he looked at Jeonghan's phone once.
"That doesn't count," she pointed out when Jeonghan told her. Some part of her foolishly wanted it to be more obvious, but when she thought about it further, she decided she'd hate that more.
They never took pictures of each other, or sent each other anything but plain-word texts. That's how Nayoung pretended how little this whole thing truly meant to her. Jeonghan laughed, "We're every PR team's dream," and then Nayoung shut him up by kissing him square on the mouth.
In hindsight, she regretted never asking Sowon about how it'd been when she and Jeonghan were dating, but Nayoung knew it'd been her own hubris. She hadn't bothered asking because she thought it'd be impossible, ending up in the same exact situation. And now here she was, in the same exact situation.
"If you had a friend," Jeonghan begins, "and they liked this guy, but say the guy was going to do his military service soon. Would you wait for him if you were them?"
Nayoung tears the paper a little from where she'd been pulling at the dog ear of her script. "Can you say that again?" she says slowly.
Jeonghan leans forward to put his phone facedown onto her coffee table. Nayoung can't meet his gaze. "I mean me," he repeats. He clears his throat. "And you."
"Oh." Nayoung's ripped the dog ear off entirely at this point. She rolls the softened paper between her fingers anyway, not trusting herself with anything else, much less Yoon Jeonghan's heart. "You want me to wait for you?"
"If you want to." He sounds so earnest that Nayoung makes the mistake of glancing up. He looks at her, earnest too.
Earlier in the year, the kiss scene in Nayoung's last webdrama went semi-viral. It'd been with an up-and-coming actor five years younger than her, and their characters were arguing over why they should and shouldn't be together at a new year's party. It all came to a head when the crowd around them, oblivious to their shouting, counted down the last ten seconds, and Nayoung's character surged forward to kiss her love interest right as the confetti shot into the air, fluttering down around them. It'd been all anyone ever asked her about during their short IOI reunion promotions, to the point that Nayoung never wanted to talk about it again.
Jeonghan never brought it up with her once, and she'd dismissed the script early as fiction. And now, Nayoung chokes out over the want of such a picture-perfect ending for the both of them, "It can't be that easy. For us."
Jeonghan's mouth tilts into a smile. "It only sounds that way if you want it to." It looks like he wants to reach for her hand, the one folding creases into the dog ear. In case he's thought about it, she puts the paper down.
"I wasn't supposed to like you," she tells him, which is admission enough. Idly, she thinks about all the reasons she should hate him.
"I've liked you for a long time," he says so readily that it can't not be true.
He grinned at her brightly on the last day of her promotions, when he was a guest MC and IOI won, handing her the trophy. Their hands brushed briefly in the flood of the stage lights. Now, Jeonghan covers her hand with his slowly, like he's giving her the chance to draw away.
She doesn't.
1224
799w; g (jun/jieqiong)
in ways you don't even know yourself.
Jieqiong always has a piece of toast for breakfast. This is not a fact, observed or otherwise. The last time Junhui and Jieqiong had eaten breakfast together actually was three years ago, sitting around a different kitchen round table. Junhui had a glass of microwaved soy milk and Jieqiong told him rather rudely that the outlet might short since she was using the toaster at the same time. It still came out too crispy around the edges, and Junhui remembers hearing the crunch of it over the deafening silence of them respectively scrolling down their phones.
Back then, they were barely close enough to strike up a meaningless conversation. They're even more like strangers now. That pointedly makes all the difference, and Junhui can't help but jiggle his left leg under the table. He doesn't quite hope that she'll leave, but he doesn't want her to stay either. It's a strange equilibrium that causes his heart to burrow in his throat, suffocating.
Across from him, Jieqiong acts like he's not even there at all. She leans back in her chair with posture so bad that her mom used to scold her for it. The only difference is that they're no longer at home with their parents hovering over them, forced to hang out together. That said they couldn't easily claim that they ended up here out of their own volition, either. The answer of it all felt like it was resting on the tip of Junhui's tongue, but when he tried to get the words out, they were lodged to the roof of his mouth like a piece of <i>tangyuan,</i> and he was forced to chew and swallow first. After all that, he'd simply forgotten what he'd wanted to say. The feeling of it lingered anyway, unwelcome.
Jieqiong absentmindedly tucks a strand of her jet black hair behind her right ear. The rest of it falls like a waterfall over her shoulder. When Junhui was fifteen, he'd told his classmates that she was his ideal type for it. It wasn't so much the truth as wanting to be a part of something, but then they'd speak in hushed, knowing voices every time Jieqiong passed by their classroom in the hallway. She would always walk along the wall before the sign "Class 5-B" and then step away to the other side. She never looked through the windows for a glimpse of him. This made it safe for Junhui to blatantly stare, wondering if their eyes would ever meet. And then he graduated.
It would never work, obviously. Junhui didn't like Jieqiong like that, and it was a mystery whether Jieqiong liked Junhui much at all. When they were young, she called him Junhui <i>gege</i> for all of three and a half months before ditching him to play dolls with the neighborhood girls. When they were young, they posed side-by-side awkwardly for photos for the sake of their parents, smiles stiff. They were posted on the walls of each of their family's houses, and they were at the fringes of every milestone of their respective childhoods, and now they were sitting across from each other, quiet, and all that potential had amounted to a sort of nothingness that they had come to terms with, or would never acknowledge at all.
The toaster dings. Jieqiong untwists her legs from where she'd propped them on the seat, slippers skidding as she secures them on her feet. She hisses as she picks up the toast with her bare fingers. There's a glass of water on the table with a faint lipstick stain on the rim. It's not anywhere near where she was sitting, but it must be hers. Junhui gets the strange sense that he’s lived through this exact moment of realization before, framed in the same yellow kitchen light, but can’t quite place the timing or context.
Jieqiong's hair swings as she walks back over. She leans over, puts the plate of toast in the middle of the table. There's already a piece held in between her teeth. "You can have it if you're hungry," is all she says, words distorted. And then she settles back into her badly postured position and does not look at him.
"Thanks." She bites down into her own piece, the crumbs flying everywhere.
It's too crispy around the edges, but Junhui doesn't have it in him to complain. It's warm, and Jieqiong made it for him. That had to be monumental, between the two of them.
Halfway through, Junhui averts his gaze to the chipped plate. It’s easier to pretend she hasn’t been staring straight at him the entire time. The more he chews, the toast melts like sand against his tongue. He doesn't think it’s his place to say anything about it.
I'M A MISFIT!
692w; g (beomgyu, sungchan, chenle)
get out my way!
It's an unconditional fact of the universe that Beomgyu's always the first one in the library after the bell rings. He unzips his backpack, dumping the contents on one of the round tables reserved for detention, before sinking down into his usual plastic chair and propping his guitar carefully against the wall. He absentmindedly taps a rhythm against his cheeks from where his chin is in his hands – twigs begin to sprout and flower from the wooden table legs.
"Took you long enough!" he calls out when he sees Sungchan's tall head from over one of the display shelves. There was already condensation forming on the wrappers of the Melona bars that he'd begged class rep Kang Taehyun from the year below him access to the teacher's refrigerator for, in exchange for cleaning both their class's erasers for the next three months.
Sungchan shoots him a sheepish smile as he digs through his messenger bag for a pack of shrimp chips, a box of Pepero with today's date as the expiration and an EXO member posing on the packaging, and three yogurt drinks. "What'd you get caught for today?" asks Beomgyu.
Contrary to popular belief, whereas Beomgyu was still doing time for his impromptu jam session that caused the just-planted trees outside his classroom to grow so out-of-control that the branches broke five windows and crowned him with another shining demerit, Sungchan never ended up in detention entirely out of his own volition. "I didn't notice it, but I went invisible for three periods after morning announcements," he says, rubbing the back of his neck. "Bae-ssaem thought I was playing hooky."
Beomgyu gapes. "And Hyejoo didn't say anything?" He scoffs when Sungchan just shrugs. "Wow, what's the point of her having x-ray vision if she doesn't use it for good? How's she supposed to save the world in the future if she can't even save a classmate!"
"I heard it makes her eyes tired," defends Sungchan. "At least, I think that's why she's always napping in class."
Chenle – the last regular of their detention table – walks in at that moment, his dyed safety-sign orange hair dripping pigment onto the white collar of his uniform. "What happened to you?" Beomgyu prods, borderline public-nuisance-loud.
"I accidentally set Minjeong's hair on fire in gym class," he confesses as he places his own wares on the tabletop – Home run balls and a bag of unpopped popcorn. The first time he'd brought it in, Moon-ssaem caught onto the noise as Chenle was trying to pop the kernels with the heat of his bare hands underneath the table. They'd walked out with an extra two days of detention each and a mischievous glint in their eyes, daring each other to raise the stakes.
He narrows his gaze at the half-finished bread Beomgyu had shamelessly added to the pile, initially thinking he'd won this round with his fifth day in detention. At the same time, Sungchan echoes, "Accidentally?"
Chenle doesn't have the decency to look remorseful. It's somewhat inspiring to a fledgling troublemaker like Beomgyu. "I was aiming for the volleyball," he elaborates, "that she was serving. It set off the sprinklers, and now they're saying the gym might have water damage."
"Surprised she didn't just freeze you solid right then and there," Beomgyu snorts, already pushing the snack pile toward Chenle in a grim admission of defeat. "Then I could've won today."
"Don't be a sore loser," Chenle taunts, unwrapping a Melona triumphantly. The corner's already misshapen from the mere heat of his presence. Beomgyu brought them on purpose because he knew if Chenle won, he'd be forced to share. His tongue comes back stained green, and he nods toward the rest of his spoils like a king. Sungchan's already diving for the melon flavor, which leaves Beomgyu with the banana, and who eats Melona for the banana flavor? "Eat your ice cream."
The taste of second place is a bitter almost-first, and suspiciously akin to overripe banana. Beomgyu bites down on the stick, plotting his next big move. He'll get them back tomorrow, for sure.
Back then, they were barely close enough to strike up a meaningless conversation. They're even more like strangers now. That pointedly makes all the difference, and Junhui can't help but jiggle his left leg under the table. He doesn't quite hope that she'll leave, but he doesn't want her to stay either. It's a strange equilibrium that causes his heart to burrow in his throat, suffocating.
Across from him, Jieqiong acts like he's not even there at all. She leans back in her chair with posture so bad that her mom used to scold her for it. The only difference is that they're no longer at home with their parents hovering over them, forced to hang out together. That said they couldn't easily claim that they ended up here out of their own volition, either. The answer of it all felt like it was resting on the tip of Junhui's tongue, but when he tried to get the words out, they were lodged to the roof of his mouth like a piece of <i>tangyuan,</i> and he was forced to chew and swallow first. After all that, he'd simply forgotten what he'd wanted to say. The feeling of it lingered anyway, unwelcome.
Jieqiong absentmindedly tucks a strand of her jet black hair behind her right ear. The rest of it falls like a waterfall over her shoulder. When Junhui was fifteen, he'd told his classmates that she was his ideal type for it. It wasn't so much the truth as wanting to be a part of something, but then they'd speak in hushed, knowing voices every time Jieqiong passed by their classroom in the hallway. She would always walk along the wall before the sign "Class 5-B" and then step away to the other side. She never looked through the windows for a glimpse of him. This made it safe for Junhui to blatantly stare, wondering if their eyes would ever meet. And then he graduated.
It would never work, obviously. Junhui didn't like Jieqiong like that, and it was a mystery whether Jieqiong liked Junhui much at all. When they were young, she called him Junhui <i>gege</i> for all of three and a half months before ditching him to play dolls with the neighborhood girls. When they were young, they posed side-by-side awkwardly for photos for the sake of their parents, smiles stiff. They were posted on the walls of each of their family's houses, and they were at the fringes of every milestone of their respective childhoods, and now they were sitting across from each other, quiet, and all that potential had amounted to a sort of nothingness that they had come to terms with, or would never acknowledge at all.
The toaster dings. Jieqiong untwists her legs from where she'd propped them on the seat, slippers skidding as she secures them on her feet. She hisses as she picks up the toast with her bare fingers. There's a glass of water on the table with a faint lipstick stain on the rim. It's not anywhere near where she was sitting, but it must be hers. Junhui gets the strange sense that he’s lived through this exact moment of realization before, framed in the same yellow kitchen light, but can’t quite place the timing or context.
Jieqiong's hair swings as she walks back over. She leans over, puts the plate of toast in the middle of the table. There's already a piece held in between her teeth. "You can have it if you're hungry," is all she says, words distorted. And then she settles back into her badly postured position and does not look at him.
"Thanks." She bites down into her own piece, the crumbs flying everywhere.
It's too crispy around the edges, but Junhui doesn't have it in him to complain. It's warm, and Jieqiong made it for him. That had to be monumental, between the two of them.
Halfway through, Junhui averts his gaze to the chipped plate. It’s easier to pretend she hasn’t been staring straight at him the entire time. The more he chews, the toast melts like sand against his tongue. He doesn't think it’s his place to say anything about it.
I'M A MISFIT!
692w; g (beomgyu, sungchan, chenle)
get out my way!
It's an unconditional fact of the universe that Beomgyu's always the first one in the library after the bell rings. He unzips his backpack, dumping the contents on one of the round tables reserved for detention, before sinking down into his usual plastic chair and propping his guitar carefully against the wall. He absentmindedly taps a rhythm against his cheeks from where his chin is in his hands – twigs begin to sprout and flower from the wooden table legs.
"Took you long enough!" he calls out when he sees Sungchan's tall head from over one of the display shelves. There was already condensation forming on the wrappers of the Melona bars that he'd begged class rep Kang Taehyun from the year below him access to the teacher's refrigerator for, in exchange for cleaning both their class's erasers for the next three months.
Sungchan shoots him a sheepish smile as he digs through his messenger bag for a pack of shrimp chips, a box of Pepero with today's date as the expiration and an EXO member posing on the packaging, and three yogurt drinks. "What'd you get caught for today?" asks Beomgyu.
Contrary to popular belief, whereas Beomgyu was still doing time for his impromptu jam session that caused the just-planted trees outside his classroom to grow so out-of-control that the branches broke five windows and crowned him with another shining demerit, Sungchan never ended up in detention entirely out of his own volition. "I didn't notice it, but I went invisible for three periods after morning announcements," he says, rubbing the back of his neck. "Bae-ssaem thought I was playing hooky."
Beomgyu gapes. "And Hyejoo didn't say anything?" He scoffs when Sungchan just shrugs. "Wow, what's the point of her having x-ray vision if she doesn't use it for good? How's she supposed to save the world in the future if she can't even save a classmate!"
"I heard it makes her eyes tired," defends Sungchan. "At least, I think that's why she's always napping in class."
Chenle – the last regular of their detention table – walks in at that moment, his dyed safety-sign orange hair dripping pigment onto the white collar of his uniform. "What happened to you?" Beomgyu prods, borderline public-nuisance-loud.
"I accidentally set Minjeong's hair on fire in gym class," he confesses as he places his own wares on the tabletop – Home run balls and a bag of unpopped popcorn. The first time he'd brought it in, Moon-ssaem caught onto the noise as Chenle was trying to pop the kernels with the heat of his bare hands underneath the table. They'd walked out with an extra two days of detention each and a mischievous glint in their eyes, daring each other to raise the stakes.
He narrows his gaze at the half-finished bread Beomgyu had shamelessly added to the pile, initially thinking he'd won this round with his fifth day in detention. At the same time, Sungchan echoes, "Accidentally?"
Chenle doesn't have the decency to look remorseful. It's somewhat inspiring to a fledgling troublemaker like Beomgyu. "I was aiming for the volleyball," he elaborates, "that she was serving. It set off the sprinklers, and now they're saying the gym might have water damage."
"Surprised she didn't just freeze you solid right then and there," Beomgyu snorts, already pushing the snack pile toward Chenle in a grim admission of defeat. "Then I could've won today."
"Don't be a sore loser," Chenle taunts, unwrapping a Melona triumphantly. The corner's already misshapen from the mere heat of his presence. Beomgyu brought them on purpose because he knew if Chenle won, he'd be forced to share. His tongue comes back stained green, and he nods toward the rest of his spoils like a king. Sungchan's already diving for the melon flavor, which leaves Beomgyu with the banana, and who eats Melona for the banana flavor? "Eat your ice cream."
The taste of second place is a bitter almost-first, and suspiciously akin to overripe banana. Beomgyu bites down on the stick, plotting his next big move. He'll get them back tomorrow, for sure.