Last Night On Earth - I . | Kdy

last night on earth - i . | kdy

part ii, part iii

you soon find out that there are more dangerous things than the flesh-eating undead during a nationwide implosion. 

pairing: doyoung x reader verse: zombie apocalypse au rating: M for horror themes only ! genre/s: romance, horror/suspense warnings: brief but stil present mentions of and sometimes depictions of violence, mentions of and possible minor character death, language word count:  4.2k

author’s note: i have an unhealthy attachment to this fic and the plan i have for it so please don’t come for my neck !!!!!!!! i simply had to ;~;

It starts off at four in the afternoon with a series of emergency phone calls.

The first is a woman reporting an intruder in her house — nothing the department hasn’t handled before, and it just seems like an isolated criminal case, so they dispatch you and your partner, Youngho, to quickly investigate the situation. Even with Youngho’s less-than-lawful driving speed and his fulfilment of his desire to dramatically enter a house by kicking the door down when no one answers (because he’s always wanted to do that), you find the place lacking in commotion when you arrive. You don’t even have time to contemplate how eerily quiet the house is when both of your phones go off, and you hear the deputy chief’s voice, uncharacteristically ragged, yelling down your line.  

“You two better get your asses back to HQ,” he roars. Even with the volume of his voice, you can’t help but notice the phones ringing off the hook, trills constantly overlapping and being cut short by frantic co-workers answering them two at a time. “We’ve got emergency calls from all over the city, and now the mayor’s on the other line screaming at us to lock the whole city down.”

“A city lockdown?” You’re still expressing your shock to him when you feel yourself being dragged out of the house by Youngho’s unnaturally firm hand. It’s likely he’d gotten the same call from someone else, since he’s urging you to hurry up and get in the car, and he even helps you along by pushing down on your head and practically shoving you into the passenger’s seat. “What the hell for?”  

“Fuck if I know,” he says curtly. “Just hurry already. Chief wants to see everyone, but he wants to talk to both of you, too.”

“But we — ” the deputy chief hangs up before you can get another word out, which is just as well since Youngho had just floored the gas pedal, and the police car revs so loudly you actually feel your ears pop a little. “What the hell — who called you?”

“Chief,” Youngho answers. “Says we need to get back ASAP.”

“Did he tell you why?”

“Yeah, and while he was at it, we had some tea and crackers, and chatted about the weather.” He throws you a patronizing look. “He barely got five angry words out before he hung up.”

“That’s pretty weird.”

“For the chief? Not really.”

You end up agreeing in silence, watching the houses zip by from your window. Everything looks scarily empty in this area; it’s mid-afternoon, though, so you don’t really make much of it, since most people tend to be out for work or just coming home from school at this time. You’re not even really sure why you feel like the street seems so eerie, but you end up brushing it off, allowing your mind to focus on more substantial things, like the sound of static that strengthens and weakens while Youngho fiddles with the police scanner.

That plan of distraction works out for about five minutes, at which point you see an old lady on the sidewalk get tackled to the ground by a flurry of limbs.

Your extremely loud curse word harmonizes with Youngho’s, and the back of your head hits the headrest of your seat hard as he slams down on the brake, the car skidding sideways as its inertia is interrupted and it quite literally swings off course, barely missing a lamppost. The both of you scramble out of the car, pulling out your handguns and positioning them, Youngho’s hand a little steadier than yours, even if you don’t really care to admit it.  

The elderly woman is on the ground, her grocery bags a few feet away from her arms, which are limp for the most part, save a finger or two twitching helplessly in their attempts to reach out at her fallen food. Her attacker, probably a middle-aged man in a business suit, is hovering over her, almost motionless in a pool of her blood that’s slowly creeping past his knees. You’re the first to cock your gun — you can’t imagine why he wouldn’t just run away, but you also can’t imagine why a sensibly dressed human being might go out of his way to attack a harmless old woman.  

Youngho’s gun clicks a few seconds after yours, but the man doesn’t seem to be fazed by it; in fact, he hardly seems to notice, especially since, upon slightly closer observation, he seems to be retching or something over her body. You can’t even mistake it for crying because the sounds are just downright disgusting. Even Youngho’s face, as you observe from the power of peripheral vision, is contorted into this slightly uncomfortable expression.  

You dare to step closer, and Youngho follows suit, but the guy doesn’t budge anyway, too busy probably vomiting over the poor lady to care. It takes all of your willpower not to wrinkle your nose, but the distressingly wet sounds coupled with the new stench that assaults your nose makes it pretty difficult.  

Your partner takes the initiative to speak, because you’re not entirely sure what to say at this point. “Put down whatever weapons you have and step away from the body, sir,” Youngho’s voice is just as steady as his hold on his gun, which is extremely admirable considering that neither of you still have any clue as to what this man is up to. “Any sudden movements or attempts to flee will be met with gunfire.”  

You think the man might start running (as is expected) or might freeze up and beg for mercy (as is also expected), but you don’t expect him to wheel around and sneer at you with blood dripping down his chin and a pearl from the old lady’s necklace trapped between his teeth. The front of his shirt has been ripped open, too, and there are scratches and wounds — bite marks??? — on his skin, many still fresh. His expression isn’t angry, or terrified, or guilty; all you can see on his face is the raging desire to rip the both of you apart with his bare, bloody hands, and he makes this guttural, almost animalistic noise to confirm your theory.  

At this point, neither of you can be expected to stay composed, so both of you let out a panicked appeal to the Lord, turn to instinct, and fire your weapons.

There’s a reaction from him, sure — your bullet hits his chest and Youngho’s hits his shoulder, and his torso kicks back at the force of the impact. He doesn’t topple over, though; he stays snarling at the both of you, maybe a little more perturbed, while the two bullet wounds leak out more blood, even though he doesn’t seem to care about that either.  

“What,” Youngho breathes out; he’s lost a lot of his nerve, and he’s lowered his weapon about halfway, his disbelief taking over. “What in the fuck.”

The sound of Youngho’s voice causes the man to turn sharply to him, teeth bared as wide as his mouth can allow. You don’t know what possesses you to shoot again, but your finger presses against the trigger before you can make a better decision, and the bite of the bullet against the side of his neck causes him to change his target, his murky eyes now fixing on you. He moves himself off his knees in a strangely limp fashion, at which point, the idea that something really isn’t right hits you, and you pull at Youngho’s arm, which has once again raised quickly in response.  

“We need to go,” your voice is weak. “Like, right fucking now.”

Youngho stepping back is enough to confuse the guy, who’s now looking back and forth between the both of you like he can’t decide which one he wants to start ripping apart first. The decision doesn’t seem to matter to him at the end of the day, though, because he eventually puts it aside and decides to charge at you with his arms out, screeching horribly, a trail of blood and saliva still hanging off his lips.

“Oh fuck me —“ Youngho manages to wheeze out, panickedly grabbing your arm as well and dragging you back towards the car. You both fumble with the door, and it doesn’t help that you can just hear the growling getting closer. A stream of swear words fills the car as Youngho shuts his door and tries to insert the keys into the ignition.  

“Hurry up,” you half-scream. “Hurry up, hurry up, hurry up —”

“Will you shut up?” He snaps, finally jamming the keys in and bringing the engine to life.  

“Youngho, go!”

“Shut up!”

Both of you yell when you feel something hit the driver’s side of the car; it rocks a little, and you see hands clawing at Youngho’s window, nails screeching against the glass; Youngho manages to hit the gas just as the man’s snarling head comes up into view, and you feel a slightly less heavy thud hit the vehicle again as you leave his battered body behind in a frenzy of smoke and dust.

Nothing much passes between you at first; you’re both breathing so heavily it kind of feels like you’re sucking up all the oxygen in the car. Both of you start (Youngho almost hitting the brakes in full again) when you phone starts ringing loudly.

“Where the hell are you two?” The deputy chief bellows; you can actually hear his enraged breathing punctuate his question for a brief second. “I told you to get back here right away!”

“Sir, there was this man that attacked —“

“I don’t care what you two have been doing! Just be here in the next five minutes!”  

Even the click of the phone sounds angry, and you let out a groan, tossing your phone onto the dashboard. “Whatever your speed is, double it.”

Youngho is still evidently a little shaken, and he complies without question on the matter, knuckles white as his hands grip the steering wheel. “What the hell just happened, ________________?”

“I don’t know,” you admit. “Mental illness? Drug abuse, maybe?”

“He was eating her. He’d chomped down on half of her neck muscles in a minute.”  

“I don’t know, Youngho,” you repeat. “Did you ever read that story about that guy who ate another guy in Florida? He was sick, too.”

“Yeah, but he was shot to death by the police,” he reminds you. “Which didn’t happen, in our case.”  

“Bulletproof vest?”

“He was bleeding, dumbass.”

You decide to let the insult slide given that it was obvious the both of you were dancing around on your last nerves. Crimes for personal gain were one thing;  petty theft, home intrusions, bank robberies were all pretty standard and, while unlawful, hardly gave you the kind of creeps you were experiencing now. Homicides were a slightly separate issue and much more disturbing, but you’ve never had to deal with a case of someone killing someone, eating them, and then refusing to die when shot. Until today, that is.  

The both of you sit through the rest of the car ride in silence, Youngho weaving his way through the traffic jam at the rotary. He ends up having to turn on the siren, but it’s of little help, and the deputy chief ends up having to call you again right as you’re pulling up to headquarters. He’s red in the face and about ready to gnaw your heads off when you rush in, breathless and apologetic.

“Can it,” he puts up a hand as you open your mouth to explain. “I don’t give a shit. The whole city’s on lockdown process right now. The mayor wants our full attention on keeping civilians safe from the crisis.”

“What crisis?” Youngho bursts out; he hardly talks over authority, which sort of shocks the deputy chief into a brief spell of silence. “Sir, we’ve just seen a man murder an innocent woman on the street, and he —“

“There are bigger issues than that,” the deputy chief snaps. “Big mobs and mass riots have been cropping up all over different districts. Jung-gu and Mapo-gu have already shut down. We’ve been getting reports that a horde of people have just started raiding and attacking establishments and offices. The entire subway system closed down, too. We’ve already sent out some people to help mitigate the fighting and a bunch of other corporals to watch the city borders. It’s like the fucking purge, except no one knows what started it.”

“So why does the chief need us?”

“Ask him; he’s on the phone with the mayor right now, but he’s also been looking for the both of you. Maybe the next time you two are given an order, you’ll actually do it on time.”

He jerks an annoyed thumb to the chief’s office before stalking off, pulling out his phone to yell at someone else. You and Youngho exchange a look of alarm before walking up to the door. A silent, irritating debate on who should knock ensues, ending when you smack his scissors away with your paper and rap shortly on the door.

“Come in.”

You turn the knob and let the door swing open before pushing Youngho inside; he makes a noise of protest he has to kill immediately when the chief looks up with a grim face, putting the phone back in to the receiver.

“I’m assuming Deputy Choi has already told you about the situation in the financial district.”

“Yes, sir,” you respond simultaneously.

“The mayor wanted the city locked down, but he also wanted some of our people looking after the officials in this city. I’m sending out some of our corporals to guard the senators and high-profile conglomerate business owners in Gangnam-gu.”

Once again, you and Youngho turn to each other in confusion. “But, sir, we’re not —“

“What I’m getting at,” he silences Youngho, who sucks in his lips so far back he looks like an elderly man. “Is that I’m promoting you two. We’re short a few people who can do this job right, and you’re two of the only officers with enough years under their belt to qualify to some degree.”  

“Um — thank you, sir,” you start. “But I still don’t understand what —“

“Do either of you two know anything about Kangwoo Logistics?”

“They’re a shipping and manufacturing company,” Youngho answers, then adds under his voice. “My refrigerator is from them.”

“The family that owns it is living in Gangnam; their CEO is living Gangnamdaero and their COO is in Apgujeong. Flip a coin to see who goes where; I don’t care. I need both of you stationed at their doors and ready to gun down anything that might come after them.”

“What’s coming after them, chief?”

He sighs deeply as he picks up the phone, avoiding your eyes as he punches in a number and responds to your question.

“Hell.”

You and Youngho play two rounds of rock, paper, scissors that ends in a 1-all win. He calls dibs on keeping the police car, and you get to choose Apgujeong because it’s closer to your parents’ house, just in case you need to take a shower or raid their fridge, or something. The entire building is going to be locked down as well since all the other officers are on duty, and you’re both cleaning out your locker when the deputy chief comes around and tosses two bulletproof vests at you.  

“Promotion gift,” he says gruffly. “You’re gonna need it.”  

“Thank you, sir,” Youngho picks up his and slips it on; it sits well on his shoulders, whereas yours almost drowns you. You throw the deputy chief a distressed look, and he has the decency to respond with a sheepish one.  

“We didn’t really have a lot of options on hand. You can just pad it out with an extra shirt.”  

“Sir,” you tug off the vest, setting it on top of your bag. “About this afternoon — Officer Seo and I were hoping to bring it up with you.”  

“What about it?”

“We saw a man attack an old woman. At first we thought it was just a…” you pause; you don’t even really know what it seemed like, let alone what it was. “We thought it was just a random murder, but when we got closer he —“

“Attacked you?” You nod slowly. “What did he do? To the old woman.”

“He was… he was… eating her, sir. It looked like he’d taken a bite out of her neck.”

You expect the deputy chief to look shocked or, at the very least, disgusted, but all he does is sigh heavily, like he’d gotten really disappointing news. “It’s been happening all over the city. People randomly attacking others; and they all end up acting like rabid animals.”  

“But what is it, sir?” Youngho pipes in.  

“We don’t know. No one really does. Which is why you have to keep a good watch out. The chief’s going to have your ass if anything happens to them.”  

“They’re not politicians or anything,” Youngho, who’s been admiring his reflection surreptitiously in his locker mirror, finally slips off the vest and stuffs it in his bag as well. “What makes them so important?”

“Beats me. But the mayor asked for some of our people to be sent over to them, so that’s what we’re doing.”  

He ushers you out, reminding you to keep your phone lines open at all times, and you and Youngho pile into the car once again, setting off for Apgujeong. You hardly hit any traffic now, which is fine time-wise, but it’s also not normal for Gangnam at this time — couple that with the fact that most places have closed shop.  

“Even Starbucks is closing,” Youngho remarks in some awe. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a closed Starbucks.”  

“Will you focus on driving? We really don’t need another death on our hands today.”  

“Just type the address,” he says snippily, shoving the paper in your face and letting you key in the street name. The GPS rattles out directions, taking you down Apgujeong Rodeo Street and into the more residential parts of town.  

“Jesus Christ,” you press your face against the window, jaw hanging open. “They even trashed the cinema.”

“So we have ourselves some… popcorn-loving cannibals? Like, maybe they use it as a side dish to human flesh.”

“That’s totally disgusting.”

“I was just trying to lighten the mood. I don’t think — what’s his name? Kim Doyoung-nim is going to appreciate his bodyguard not having a sense of humor.”

“Bodyguards aren’t supposed to have senses of humor,” you frown. “And I’m not a bodyguard. I’m a police officer.”

“Yeah, well, starting today you’re a bodyguard with a cool badge,” he drums his fingers on the steering wheel. “We both are.”  

“We got a promotion, and you’re talking like this is the stupidest thing that’s ever happened in your career.”

“We got a promotion so we could be babysitters, ___________________,” he sighs, like he can’t believe you’re being this foolish. “Instead of being out there, helping people and saving the world, we have to coddle two rich dudes. We’re going to be going out and picking up their laundry and making sure they eat their vegetables before tucking them into bed. Please tell me what isn’t stupid about this situation.”

“They’re important people; the mayor asked for them to be protected.”

“Because they have a couple of cool boats and have a pretty good name in the kitchen appliances industry?”  

“I — just shut up,” you wave him off, folding your arms across your chest. He snorts, slowing down the car as he pulls into a narrow street with a row of huge houses. The street isn’t actually narrow by nature, but there are so many cars parallel parked on either side of the road that you feel like you have to suck in your stomach so that the police car can fit between them.

“Smell that? It’s the smell of pampered chaebol kids and the leather on their expensive sports cars.”  

“Give it a rest. Pull up here — right here.” You point to a mailbox with gold numbers on its side that match the address on the paper. “I think this is it.”

“Do you need help with any of your stuff?” Youngho calls out as you push the door open, and you wave off his question as you make your way to the trunk, pulling out your bag. You really do need to go to your parents’ place; apart from the vest, you only have one change of clothes and two pairs of socks. You make a mental note to call them about it.  

Youngho rolls down the window as you walk up to the mailbox, sticking his big head out. “Are you going be okay?”

“I guess so,” you adjust the strap of your bag on your shoulder and pat your bulletproof vest reassuringly. “I should probably head in now. Let me know when you get to Kim Jungwoo-ssi’s house.”

“Yeah, I will. Let me know if Kim Doyoung-ssi’s house really does have six bathrooms, like I suspect it does,” Youngho laughs, but there’s no real mirth to his voice; it’s just for show, really. His expression softens when you don’t join in. “Don’t die, okay? I’ll kill you if you do.”

“Please,” it’s your turn to laugh, even if your voice is trembling a little. “You know we’re both invincible.”  

“Damn straight,” he ducks back into the car, rolling the window up. You stand on the sidewalk, waving at him, and you see the white of his palm wave back from inside the car as he drives away, trying really hard not to feel like this is some kind of last goodbye.  

You have to take two deep breaths to steady yourself before you walk up the driveway; Kim Doyoung clearly lives a comfortable life, with two sports cars parked in front of his house and a well — who the hell has a well in their damn garden? Maybe Youngho’s right — it’s wholly possible that this monstrously large mansion does have six bathrooms.

What it doesn’t have is a proper doorbell, however; you can see that there’s an intercom system with a camera, and it’s obvious that it would be the way to announce your presence, but you still spend two minutes checking out the door just to see if you can ring a more normal bell so you can avoid having to be seen by this guy without seeing him back. Of course, there’s nothing, so you either have to content yourself with the camera-bell system or knock.  

You can hear the trill of the music when you press the button; a couple of seconds later, you hear a male voice, a lot softer than you’d imagined, come through the speaker.  

“Who is it?”  

“Um — Kim Doyoung-nim? It’s Corporal ____________, from the Gangnam-gu Police Department.”

A soft sigh punctuates the brief and honestly awkward exchange; a couple of minutes later, the door opens, and you find yourself face to face with a young man. In his loose sweatshirt and pants, he doesn’t look like he could afford to pay the rent for one of the rooms of the house, let alone actually own it. Half his body is still behind the door; in the shadow it casts over him, you can barely see his face. The only indication that he is the guy you’re looking for is his question.

“How can I help you, officer?”  

“The mayor sent me. I’m here to protect you, sir.”

He’s clearly taken aback by this information because the door widens a fraction as he lets go of the knob. “Protect… me?”

“Yes, sir. There’s mass rioting going on in other parts of the district, so we need to secure your home right away.”  

He doesn’t respond immediately; you can hear the click of the knob as he turns it — once, twice, thrice. Finally, he sighs again, heavier this time.  

“I’m sorry for making you come all the way here, but you need to leave.”  

It’s your turn to be taken aback now, but you don’t express this feeling as silently; you sputter a little, whatever composure you had slipping off a bit more. “But — sir, my orders were to —“  

“I don’t need your protection,” he says more firmly now. “Good day to you, officer.”  

You can’t even imagine how thunderstruck your expression is when he shuts the door right in your face.  

a lesson on style - v . [ ljn | njm ]

pt. i, pt. ii, pt. iii, pt. iv.,  pt. v, pt. vi

you’ve always been content with being associated with one word and one word only: average. average in looks, academics and social skills, you’re just looking to graduate high school without causing disasters you’ll have to live with until you kick the bucket. when you’re paired with school king lee jeno for the semester-long physics thesis, you can’t help but think the entire situation has pretty much set itself up for failure. that is, until you strike a deal with your partner. alternatively: an au tale involving lessons in popularity, eleven consecutive B­ minuses, a secretly sensitive, chess­-loving jock, and an amateur sex tape.

pairing: jeno x fem!reader, jaemin x fem!reader    verse: high school au { jocks!nomin ft. a super cute whiny ap physics genius renjun }  rating: M for sexual themes ( there are allusions to sex but no explicit smut! ) chapter warnings: none!  word count: 10.9k

author’s note: is this twice as long as any other chapter? yes. do i believe it might be twice as devastating? also yes. side note, i sincerely hate proofreading and the thing i hate the most is trying to figure out where i applied italics and stuff because it doesn’t transfer over from google docs to this gosh darn tumblr text editor and i refuse to use the weird beta one so if anyone has any ideas on how to retain it please lmk :^(

tagging: @justalildumpling, @spiderrenjunfics

It’s a yes or no question, you tell yourself. It’s literally one answer, one word — yes or no. And you don’t even have to second-guess it, because you know the truth, and it’s not a complicated one. It shouldn’t be that difficult to answer.  With Jeno looking at you, though, you feel a little off-kilter, as per usual. Still, even with his gaze on you, you think that your response should be as normal, calm, and truthful as possible.

What comes out of you is a derisive laugh that clearly shocks the both of you.

“Wh — dating you — I wouldn’t — that’s preposterous,” you splutter out, gripping your laptop so tightly that you actually hear the bottom of I make a soft sound as the metal tightens. You’ve never used the word preposterous in any real life conversation, and it’s clear Jeno hasn’t heard it in a similar context either because he looks at you weird.  

“I mean, I’m not saying I’m mad about it,” he goes on. “I’m just wondering why he’d say that, unless you said something.”

“He — I — he — he’s crazy. All smart people are loopy,” you laugh again, and it sounds even grosser this time, with your voice going up really high and breathy like you’re being strangled to death. Which, come to think of it, you’re pretty much doing to yourself, figuratively. “That had no basis whatsoever. I would — I would never. Ever.”

“Never… date me?” His eyebrows shoot up so high they almost touch his hairline.

“Yes! I mean — no, no! I mean, I would definitely not say that we were dating when we’re obviously—” you laugh derisively again, which just causes Jeno to look even more confused. “We are clearly, obviously, clearly not. Not dating.”

“Obviously,” he repeats simply.

“Yes. That’s… I mean, obviously, I would date you, like in the hypothetical way, because… I mean, why not? but we — you know. We’re not. Dating. Definitely not.” Your heart rate, thankfully, is starting to decline from the thousand beats per second it had been going in; Jeno’s eyebrows are also calming down. “Right?”

“Right,” he confirms slowly.

“Right. So. I didn’t say we were to him. Or anyone. Nothing.”

“Oh, okay,” he finally says after a moment of silence. “That was just… plain out of the blue, then.”

“Totally,” you agree wholeheartedly. “So, so weird.”  

“Okay,” he shifts his position now, turning more deliberately towards you; you instinctively grip your laptop tighter, pressing it harder against your stomach. The bottom corners dig in, and in your peripheral vision, you can see that you’ve been pressing the A key down for so long that you have an AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA in your chat box with Renjun and he’s typed out a very concerned and confused WHAT IS TAKING YOU SO LONG TO TYPE. You move your thumb away from the keypad. “Sorry for the sudden question. I just wanted to clarify because, you know, I don’t want anyone else to think we are yet, or anything. And I definitely don’t want Huang Renjun attacking me for the wrong things, considering his track record.”

Your heart suddenly skids to a stop at the yet. He’d said it so offhandedly you were sure he wasn’t giving it much thought, but to you, this kind of felt like one of those weird, fever-induced dreams you had, except it seemed to be going fairly well as long as you didn’t factor in just how much you’d blubbered just now.  

“Um. Right,” is all you can say.

“That being said,” he jams his hat back onto his head, which is ludicrous considering he’s inside, but it just makes him look cuter, and you’ve never minded that. “Thanks for saying you’d date me. Hypothetically.”

“Oh — that. Right. You’re welcome,” you reply, and you desperately want to ask if he’d also hypothetically date you, but you sort of also don’t really want to know the answer. In the moment that it takes for you to tell your brain to quiet down, he claps his hands, startling you a little.

“All right. So. Project. Proposal. Graduating.” He points to your laptop, and you nod vehemently, shifting it against your stomach a little to make sure he doesn’t see the chat box with Renjun. “Let’s get to it, then.”

You hurriedly exit your internet browser and open a blank Word document. It kicks off slowly, with you taking a good fifteen minutes to format the title page because you’re not sure which citation style to use and also because you can’t stop thinking about the previous conversation, which causes you to misspell both your names wrongly. Luckily, Jeno doesn’t say anything, even though he clearly sees your blunders; the fact that he is clearly attempting to be interested (or pretending really well to be) in getting things done allows you to pick up a slightly more comfortable pace of discussion later on. He even agrees to do a lot of the supposed heavy lifting in the experimentation phase, which involves playing musical instruments, and you volunteer to do the mathematical work, which is the only thing you think you’ll be able to do in that part of the experiment anyway.  

Everyone in your house is up at this time, so it gets increasingly louder as the hours move on. There’s some kind of intermittent yelling coming from your brothers’ room that could either be Jiho gaming or Jiho getting strangled, but no one seems too alarmed apart from Jeno, who learns to let it go once you tell him that your other brother is in there with him and is probably the one strangling him, if the latter scenario is true. Either way, your dad comes out, banging on their room door to keep it down, which adds to more of the noise pollution.

Sooyeon also makes it down later than everyone else, dressed but still clearly out of sorts, stopping mid-yawn when she sees you and Jeno sitting together as you’re trying to drag out an explanation of what the significance of the study is.

“Oh. Good morning,” she sidles over to you, sitting on the arm of the couch next to you to peek over your shoulder at your laptop; you know she’s not really interested in your work, but her inherent nosiness makes her acting so natural. “What are you guys working on?”

“Physics term project.”

“Oh, right. You mentioned you guys were partners. How’s it going?”

“It’s going… well. Fine.” You bend your laptop’s monitor down halfway so she stops looking.

“Oh, I know you,” Jeno suddenly snaps his fingers, pointing his finger at her. Your sister looks up, beaming. “You’re on the cheerleading team. I’ve been trying to figure out who you look like since last year,” he turns to you, amused. “Can’t believe it took me this long. Small world. Hey, how come you’re not on the cheerleading team?”

“Because she wouldn’t give up Weightlifting Fairy Kim Bok Joo for late-night cheer practice,” your sister reasons out for you before you can find a cooler (and less honest) excuse. “Hey, dad’s taking me to the mall. Do you need anything? We’re also picking up lunch, so Jeno oppa, if you’re staying for lunch, the cuisine choice is all yours.”

“Raincheck,” you deflate at Jeno’s response. “I’m supposed to be having lunch with my sister. Thanks for the offer, though.”

“Can you get me a new USB drive?” You weigh in. “And not the crappy Daiso kind.”

“Okay. Text me so I don’t forget. Not now,” Sooyeon pushes down your hand before you can pick up your phone. “Wait ten minutes, then text me. Hey, dad, can we get tangsuyuk today?”

Your dad is by the door, two brothers in tow, having probably convinced them to leave the house as well, and Sooyeon joins them, pushing them all out hurriedly. You don’t miss the fact that she winks at you just before closing the door, and you resist waving her away.

“You… have a really big family.” Jeno finally speaks up again once you’re alone.

“Yeah. Sorry. It would have been worse if my mom were here. She might have tried to adopt you.”

“Jaemin’s mom technically has first dibs,” he lifts a hand to his face, rubbing his eyes a little aggressively. “Do you think we can call time of death on this for today? My eyes are falling out of my skull.”

“Sure; I can finish up the conclusion anyway. It’s just… repeating everything we said, but really fast. I’ll just e-mail you a copy for safety.” You save the document as he nods, working your trackpad so you can open your NAVER mail account and attach the file. Your fingers hover over the keyboard, suddenly feeling like an idiot. “Uh… sorry, but I just realized I don’t have your e-mail address.”

“Oh. Yeah,” he reaches out, and you retract your hands quickly, planting them firmly onto your lap. He starts typing away, pressing send and turning the laptop back to you with a satisfied groan. “Cool. So — serious question. Why aren’t you on the cheerleading team if your sister is?”

“Well, I was going to come up with a great excuse, but since I got ratted out — I don’t really like staying in school late. Plus, they practice on rainy days, which is not my thing.”

“I mean, we do too on the football team, and it’s usually fine. It’s weird; do you not dance? Or… I don’t know, cheer, or whatever?”

“I mean, I don’t fail PE, or anything. I just… never had the interest.” You admit, shutting down your laptop.

“I could talk to Jimin — you know, the captain? We’re pretty close.” He pauses, then adds an afterthought. “She’s dating one of the other guys on my team.”

“Who?”

“I’ve told you about Jisung, right? That enormous tree of a guy with the small face?”

“Kind of weird for a guy as tall as you to call a similarly tall guy a tree…” you trail off, and he laughs — laughs! Score for your unintended humor. “But yeah, I’ve seen him around.”

“Yeah, so they’re a thing. Anyway, what was I sayi — oh, yeah. If you want me to talk to her, give you a shot at it, I think she’d be open to it. You don’t have to be a gymnast or anything, I’m pretty sure.”

“That’s a really nice gesture, but I’ll pass.”

Jeno sighs, leaning back onto the couch and lifting one of his legs to cross it casually over his knee. He looks at you disapprovingly, which is a little terrifying until you realize he’s feigning it because his lips are curling up a little. So cute. “Come on, _______________. Okay — lesson number one.”

“What?” You’re at a loss, and you don’t bother hiding it this time. “Lesson?”

“I told you I’d help you get more popular, right?”

“Yeah, but I didn’t think we were having lectures and quizzes.”

“No quizzes,” he corrects you. “Lectures, very brief. Five minutes tops. I have no time to grade anything.”

“Well let me just—” you grab your phone, trying to navigate to the voice memos app, but he takes it from you and plants it back onto the table. You note how his fingers brush yours briefly, leaving you frozen, your hand still shaped around a phone that isn’t in your grasp anymore.

“No need to record anything. Note taking is for nerds. Just listen to me. Be in the moment. Absorb it,” he instructs. “First lesson in being popular: don’t turn down things that will make you more popular.”

“Okay, that one was fairly obv — what are you doing?”  

“I’m texting,” he really is, unlocking his phone and scrolling through his contacts before he starts tapping away on his phone screen. “I told you; I’m sure Jimin will be more than happy to —“

“Wait — okay, stop, stop,” it’s your turn to seize his phone from him, but you don’t do so very smoothly, and it ends up falling midway from him to you, wedging itself into a crack in your couch cushions. Jeno doesn’t really seem like he minds in particular, but he does offhandedly reprimand you for it.

“You’re being a horrible student.”

“I’m not — look, no, thank you for… you know, going the extra mile to ask for me,” you fish his phone out of the couch, making sure to exit the messaging app. “But I can’t join the cheerleading team.”

“Why not? It’ll make you infinitely cooler. Is it because your sister’s on it? Because we can get her kicked out if you really want —“

“Wh— no, I don’t want my sister kicked out!” You raise your voice in tandem with your palm, and he desists, a little surprised at how loud you’ve gotten. “I’m just saying that it’s the last semester of high school. There’s no point in me joining. I won’t even last a full year on that team.”

Jeno falls silent, suddenly struck by the logic in your words. “Huh. I guess you’re right. I didn’t think about that.”

Now that you feel like it’s kind of safe, you perch his phone back onto his thigh, and he takes it, slipping it between his legs without a second thought. You try hard not to think about how his phone may have brushed against his… never mind.

“So I… you know, I appreciate what you wanted to do for me. Really; it was… extremely cool of you,” you say with utmost sincerity. “But as a plan, I feel like… there might be better ones.”

“That’s true,” he agrees. “But the lesson still stands. The things I recommend that you do, I really feel like you should do them.”

“I promise this’ll be the last time I reject your suggestions.”

“Cool. Well — we just have to think about what else we could do to help you get up that ladder.” He looks up at your ceiling, a little wistful, and you feel so useless that you just busy yourself with shutting your laptop down. This sudden silence drags on until he snaps your fingers and you start, turning your attention back to him. “Oh, I know. You can come to this party I’m throwing next week.”

“You’re throwing a party?”

“Yeah. I just thought about doing it. Like, right now.”

This time, you don’t even have to try to push away the idea that he’d just thought to throw a party for you; a surge of unpleasant memories arises to do the job. The last party you’d been to was back in middle school, and it had ended with you skidding across the floor because someone had puked on it. You were only lucky that the extremely furious parents who actually owned the house and didn’t know that there would be a party in their living room had caught you before you’d broken something of theirs.

You remember Jeno had been there. He was in a different section at that time, and you’d never spoken with him; in fact, you’re fairly certain you hadn’t known his name back then. But even so, he was still the coolest kid in attendance. Everyone liked that kid that was extremely tall and good-looking and also knew how to play the electric piano.

“That’s… cool.” You inhale a little reluctantly, and Jeno cottons on, looking at you warily. “It’s just… you know. Parties. They get messy. People get drunk. Puke. Make out.”

“Yeah. That’s what they’re for.”

“Not really my scene. Especially the puking part.”

“Oh god, I remember I was at this party once in middle school. Some kid had puked in the middle of the living room and some other poor chick had slipped on it. Hilarious.”

“Ha,” you feign laughter, and it sounds disgustingly dry. “Hilarious, yeah. Can’t remember that happening, but I’m sure that was super funny.”

“Come on. It’ll be fine. Besides, you said you wouldn’t reject any of the other stuff I recommended.” He tilts his head like he’s asking, but his face is pretty resolute. You wring your hands together, and he notices. “If I promise to make a no-puke rule, will you go?”

You know he’s doing this because he’s fulfilling a part of the bargain; it’s really more of an obligation to him than anything else, and that much is clear. Still, the way he talks, the way that he presses the subject makes it really easy to trick yourself into thinking he actually, really, really wants you there, which creates this huge, almost terrifying and overwhelming wave of elation that muddles you into agreement.

“Okay. I’ll go.” He smiles at your response, and the feeling in your chest just swells to a new height; it’s almost like he’s happy you’re going, or you can at least delude yourself into thinking that much.

“Awesome. I’ll let you know about the details, although it’ll probably be at Jaemin’s.”

You point to the opposite side of your house, in the general direction of your neighbor’s lot. “That Jaemin?”

“The one and only.”

“I guess it’s cool if I don’t have to look for a ride.”

“You can still hop into my car. Make a grand entrance. People will love that.”

“That’s okay,” you laugh again, but this time, it sounds genuine, to your relief. “But is Jaemin going to be okay with it? His parents?”

“Yeah, it’ll be fine. They all love me,” he chuckles. “Jaemin won’t say no, anyway. It’s not like we can have it at my place.”

“Why… not?” You suddenly get flashbacks of Jaemin calling you nosy, but you shake him and his loud laugh off once Jeno starts talking.

“Too small. Not good for entertaining. You guys would probably have to eat dinner in my bedroom.” He says lightly, jamming his cap back onto his head just as his phone starts ringing, a light blinking from in between his thighs. He looks down at his phone briefly before turning his attention back to his cap, making sure his bangs aren’t flattened by the rim. “That’s my sister. I’m supposed to pick her up from work. I have to get going, but hey — I’ll see you next week?”

“Yeah, definitely,” you stand with him, and he grabs his backpack before patting his pockets to make sure if he has everything valuable to him. You walk him to the door, opening it for him, and he steps out into your driveway, walking towards his car. You stand by the doorway, hugging your laptop. The assumption is that he’s just going to drive off, but he turns around as he opens the driver’s side door, pointing a finger at you like he’s just remembered something. You freeze in place, once again squishing your laptop close to you so hard that it makes a noise.

“You should probably text your sister about that USB drive, by the way.” he reminds you with a small smile before folding his enormous body and climbing into the car.

You don’t even have the opportunity to say anything because he’s shut the door behind him. Through the tinted glass, you see one pale palm move; it takes you a second to realize he’s waving at you. Your hand instantly shoots up, waving back at him as he pulls out of the driveway and back into the road.  

You wait for his car to zoom out of sight before you close the door, red in the face and ready to explode with joy.

Lee Donghyuck gives you back your proposals with a smile on his face near the end of the next physics class. Technically, he smiles like that all the time because he’s required to, but his grin looks a lot more genuine as he approaches you with your proposal, which Jeno takes from him.

“Cool topic,” he even comments, pointing a finger to the huge B-minus on top of the paper that’s circled in red ink. “You guys need to work a little on the content development, though, but it’s just the proposal. If you guys work even harder on other requirements, you’ll ace it.”

You seriously don’t think he expects you to actually ace anything, but you appreciate the quick pep talk, especially since Jeno actually looks impressed.

“I would have never thought I would have gotten a B-minus in anything for this class,” he whistles under his breath. You smile at him, not bothering to add the fact that B-minus isn’t as breathtaking of an achievement. Still, you think that if you can push each other — and also maybe Renjun into helping you out here and there — you might at least secure him a slot into the graduating class.  

You’ve gotten used to parting ways with everyone else in the class to have lunch together with Renjun, and even on days when Physics classes fall before lunch, you only linger a minute longer than usual to accord Jeno the traditional gaze of longing that he doesn’t notice before dashing off. This time, though, as you’re gathering your books and making to leave, Jeno stands up with you, slinging his bag over his shoulder.  

And there they are — the words you’ve always wanted to hear from him. Well, some of them.

“Want to walk to the cafeteria together?”

You look around to make sure he’s not calling out to anyone else, which becomes clear once you realize the only other person who’s left behind is Lee Donghyuck, and he doesn’t even turn at the sound of Jeno’s voice.

“Really?” You can’t even mask the elation in your voice, which just spikes when you see the corners of Jeno’s lips turn up slightly in amusement. “Yeah — yeah, okay.”

No one actually looks at you while you walk next to him in the cafeteria; the probability is that his height eclipses yours so much that you don’t even look that noticeable, and neither of you is causing a scene, which is always a great bonus. You have to take two steps for every one of his, but you also notice that he’s taking a much slower pace than usual, which can only mean that he’s making sure you can keep up.

You spot Renjun at your usual table, reading Lee Ho Cheol’s Panmunjeom anthology, which he’d posted about on his Facebook status over the weekend. The feeling of being able to like his statuses again was fairly nice, and you’d given it the little heart reaction. On instinct, your feet carry you towards him until you feel a warm hand wrap around your forearm. It covers more than half of that part of your arm, so it can’t be anyone’s but Jeno’s, and you look up in total shock as he stares down at you with equally strong confusion.

“Where are you going?” He asks, genuinely perplexed.

“What… are you doing…” you breathe out, feeling a little faint. He doesn’t notice that you look like you’re close to drooling on him since he’s starting to steer you away from Renjun. “What…”

“Table’s this way,” he says plainly, like this should be obvious to you. You can see that he’s headed towards where he normally sits, which is already filled with people, laughing loudly and talking over one another. You jerk your head back to Renjun, who has noticed you now and is watching you with an unreadable expression over the top of his book, half of his face hidden.

“Um — yeah, but I just thought —“

“Okay, so second lesson — don’t write this down,” he stops you from reaching into your pocket to bring out a pen. “If you want to be popular, you need to make sure you surround yourself with equally popular people.”

“Are these rules stuff you just sort of make up on the go, or…?”

He gives you an amused and patronizing look. “Obviously.”

“Okay — okay, but can’t Renjun sit with us?”

“He can if he’s not just going to ignore everyone by reading his book. Or if he’s not going to make any mean comments about anyone.”

You open your mouth, ready to promise he’s not going to, but you’re struck by the realization that he might just sit there and finish Panmunjeom without even saying hello. Even if he didn’t, you can’t guarantee that Renjun will be pleasant around everyone being noisy all at once about things he doesn’t really care about. Being pleasant around one person — Jeno — is already kind of a herculean task for him.  

“Yeah, okay, fine. But can’t I at least tell him I’m sitting here?”

Jeno slowly releases your hand, nodding. You try not to make it too obvious that you’re disappointed at how quickly that moment of contact had come and gone. “Yeah, okay. I’ll get my food and save you a seat, then.”

You wait for him to walk towards the cafeteria line, noticing that a couple of freshmen give way so he can go first; you can tell he smiles at them because they giggle as he walks by and grabs a tray. Making a beeline for Renjun, you also see that he suddenly lifts his book higher to cover his face, probably to hide the fact that he hasn’t flipped a page since.

“Hey,” you say, and he puts the book down, looking disgustingly innocent in his fake surprise.

“Hey. When did you get here?”

“Just now,” you slip into the chair across from him. “What’s for lunch?”

“Something they say is bulgogi but might be yesterday’s fake steaks cut into really thin pieces.”

“Okay, cool,” you don’t even look at the bowl when he tilts it your way so you can see. “Anyway, um, I really hope you don’t mind, but Jeno asked me to sit with him today for lunch.”

“Oh.” Renjun takes a bit of bulgogi on his fork, examining it with feigned interest before popping it into his mouth, chewing slowly. “I see.”

“It’s just for today. I promise. Are you — is that okay?”

He studies your expectant face, thumb brushing over the spine of his book. Your fingers are knotted on the table like you’re praying.

“Yeah, it’s okay,” he finally concedes. “I said I’d support you… so… this is me. Supporting. You. The both of you. If that’s already a thing.”

“It’s not, but you’re the best,” you reach out, giving his hand a squeeze. He mutters something that sounds like I know, taking his hand back and using it to shut his book.  

“But we’re still going to see Love and Thunder  this Saturday, right?” He confirms.  

“Ye— oh, wait,” his expression darkens considerably when you backtrack, looking a little sheepish. “I think I might have something to do over the weekend, so I can’t really make any promises right now.”

“Dude, seriously? It’s the movie of the year. What could be more important than three hours of Marvel hero ass-kicking?”

“Well, it’s just,” you drum your fingers against the table, trying to think of a less direct way to phrase such a basic statement. You come up with nothing, so you just come clean. “There’s a party…”

“You hate parties,” Renjun replies immediately. “You’ve haven’t been to one since middle school.”

“I know that, but —“

“Do you? Does it make sense that you know that you hate parties but are thinking of going to one anyway?”

“Well — you know. Jeno invited me.”

Renjun makes a slightly sour face, but it isn’t directed at you; he’s looking at Jeno, probably, seated a little way away. You turn to look apologetically at him, but you notice that he’s already looking your way, his eyes narrowed in effort like he’s trying to read your lips from this distance but can’t.

“What if something bad happens? Parties aren’t exactly the safest, cleanest, least traumatic events in the world,” Renjun points out. “You could turn someone’s house into a puke slip ’n slide again.”

“Or,” you raise a finger. “Is this the party I could go to so that I can forget about that event that happened ages ago and, thus, free myself from that trauma?”

“Thus? What is happening to you?” He shakes his head, fingers coming up to knead at his brow. “But — so no Love and Thunder?”  

“We can go the day after.”

“You’re not going to be too hungover?”

“No, of course not. Besides, it’s going to be at Jaemin’s house. If it gets too much, I can just walk home.” You can see he’s softening at the mention of it being in a nearby location and not in like, some abandoned warehouse. “Plus, you can come. You know, we can have fun together. Just… eat, dance a little, mingle. It’ll be fine.”

“Am I allowed to come?”

“Of course,” you don’t know if there’s a guest list, or anything, but Renjun seems to get along with most people in your level as long as their names don’t start with a J and end with a eno. “Please? We can even walk there together.”

“It’s like twenty steps from your house, so it’s really not the appealing case you think you’re making.” He sighs. “Fine, fine. I’ll go. And we can watch Love and Thunder the next day. But I’m holding you to that.”  

“Awesome,” your heart feels infinitely lighter, and Renjun even gives you a half-hearted grin. “Great — so, I’ll just — you know —“ you point towards Jeno’s table; Renjun nods slowly, picking up his book again.

“Yes, yes. Go on,” he shoos you away, once again pretending to grow immersed in his book, even though you know he’s snorting to himself when you give him an excited thumbs up before leaving the table.

You even feel like there’s a small skip to your step when you walk to the line, and the grin never leaves your lips as you get your tray and pile what really does look like fake bulgogi on your plate; the cafeteria lady is surprised by your expression, considering you’re surrounded by generally somber ones, and she mistakes your smile as you being excited to eat the food and tells you to take more. Somehow, you’re in such a good mood that you do, which earns some alarmed stares from the people behind you.

The conversation is in full swing when you approach Jeno’s table, and your heart jumps a little when you’ve noticed that he’s kept his word and saved a seat for you — right beside him, no less. His food is half-finished, and he’s talking to Park Jisung about what sounds like some massive multiplayer online shooting game, but he stops when you sit down.

“You guys don’t know _______________, right?” He addresses the whole table; a whole set of eyes lands on you suddenly as his voice rings louder than everyone else’s. “She’s my physics project partner.”

“Of course we know her,” the girl to Jisung’s right, Jimin, pipes up. “We don’t live under a rock, and we’re almost all in the same year, dumbass.”

“I was just announcing it for Jisung’s and Minjeong’s sakes,” Jeno fires back easily. “Who, by the way, aren’t in the same year level.”

“Well, address them specifically next time,” she laughs. “Hey, _____________.”

“Hello,” despite your excitement, your voice comes out way smaller than normal, and it even cracks, which causes you to clear your throat, a feat that mysteriously causes most people to laugh.  

“I know Jimin noona is dazzling to everyone,” Jisung says. “But just for the record, she’s taken. By me. Obviously.”

You stare at him, a little dumbfounded, as Jeno tosses a wilted leaf of lettuce at his face. It doesn’t even make it to the halfway point of the gap the table makes between them. Jisung sticks out his tongue childishly.

“Anyways, I told you guys earlier that we were having a party, this weekend, right?” He points at Jaemin, who, until now, has been quietly wrapping his bulgogi into his lettuce and stuffing them whole into his mouth. “Your house, dude.”

Jaemin rolls his eyes good-naturedly, still in the middle of chewing his food, but he takes one big gulp to respond. “Did you even ask me?”

“Does he ever?” Jisung contributes, amused. “Jeno hyung, why can’t we ever have parties at your place? Jaemin hyung’s house has like ten million pictures of his family that we might break.”  

“Okay, fine; my house. You guys better pull food weight this time, though,” Jaemin agrees suddenly, like he hadn’t been indignant a moment ago. Jeno looks satisfied with this response, not bothering to answer Jisung’s question, which is a little weird; you’d assumed that everyone he was close to also knew of the reason why he never held any events at his house considering the answer he’d given you when you’d asked the same thing had been so simplistic. You don’t take the time to dwell on this, however, since Jeno speaks up.

“I’ll bring the drinks,” he volunteers before adding, “Ice included, Jisung.” The latter makes a face at him, and everyone laughs again, and you presume it’s some inside joke. You smile for a second before you realize it probably seems disingenuous.

It’s weird, you think, that they’re so comfortable around each other, even with their seemingly different personalities. It had always just been you and Renjun, which suited you just fine, but it’s also robbed you of the opportunity to figure out how to interact in a much larger, more outgoing crowd, which is a missed opportunity you’re feeling the effects of now. People start piping up about what they’re going to bring, with Jisung getting a small smack upside the head from Jimin after he volunteers (again, apparently) to bring utensils and “himself, which is gift enough.”

“What should I bring?” You whisper to Jeno.

“Nothing,” he sounds surprisingly sincere and reassuring, not to mention he matches the volume of your voice somehow, making it seem like you’re having your own private conversation. “Just come and have fun.”

“Okay,” you half-wheeze, and he smiles down at you before rejoining the conversation, responding immediately when Jaemin speaks up.

“This time, you guys seriously need to stay away from my bedroom. And my brother’s. And my parents’. Actually, what I’m really saying is that you people need to unlearn how to use stairs.”

“You’re really going to deny your room any action?” Jeno fires back easily.

“I don’t want to go to sleep on a bed someone else made out on,” Jaemin sighs, in a heavy way that somehow causes you to think he’s probably been through it more than once before.

“No one just makes out on a bed.”

“We’re in school, Jeno. You know what I mean.”

“We’ve made out on a bed,” Jisung wiggles a finger between himself and Jimin, who tells him to shut up, something he does almost immediately, even if he and Jeno exchange a high five that creates a sound so loud you’re surprised there’s no physical aftershock.

“________________, Minjeong and I were going to go to the mall on Saturday morning,” Jimin calls your attention underneath Jeno and Jisung’s long arms. “Want to come with? We can have lunch together, too.”

“Oh — yeah, sure,” you agree, and she smiles so brightly and sweetly at you that you blush. Jisung was right about the dazzling thing, then.

“Cool. Text me your address and we can come pick you up.”

You spend the rest of your lunch mostly listening and learning about these people, and you’re somewhat thankful they don’t put you in the hot seat and just interrogate you about yourself. You find out that Minjeong’s trying to get her driver’s license soon, and Jisung had actually been interested in joining an entertainment company as an idol trainee before he’d found out that they confiscate your phone for years, something that ended up being a dealbreaker for him. You learn that Jimin is applying for a English Comparative Literature undergraduate degree in Seoul National University, which Jisung says is inexplicably both “the hottest and the most boring thing about her.”  

The weirdest thing you learn about this band of friends comes up when Jaemin suddenly stands, saying goodbye to everyone hurriedly before rushing off with his plate. No one finds this weird except you, so you bring it up.

“Oh, Jaemin hyung is on the chess team. He has practice during lunch once a week,” Jisung informs you when you ask.

“He’s on the what?” You glance at Jaemin, who’s walking out of the cafeteria at a brisk pace.

“The chess team,” he repeats without any further explanation. You look at Jeno, who shrugs at you.

“Yeah, he likes that stuff. Everyone in our year is a big nerd.”

“Except you and me,” you add, and his lips turn up again, seemingly pleased with your statement. There it is again — your heart flipping over and screaming wildly.  

“Exactly. Except you and me.”

You don’t actually expect Jimin to follow through with her shopping invite, but she actually ends up texting you on Saturday morning instead of the other way around, asking for your address again after saying that she’d gotten your number from Jeno. You’re so out of sorts when they arrive not ten minutes later that you actually have to double back for your wallet and your phone.  

Jimin has almost always been in a separate section from you in school, while Minjeong is a whole year below you, and they’re also extremely close, so you’d never really gotten the chance to know them, and your expectation is that this excursion is going to be an awkward and pitiful event. They end up being really nice, though, and Minjeong even asks you about your physics project with a tone of genuine interest, commenting about how Jeno is exceptionally good at playing the guitar. You also naturally assume that they’re going to just mill around the boutique area for clothes, but Jimin actually drags you around to some electronics shops to look for a gaming headset for Jisung, and Minjeong goes to three different pet stores to look for the right dog food.  

“You should have tried out for the cheerleading team,” Jimin says when the three of you have settled down at the food court with bowls of bibimbap. Minjeong wordlessly picks out the carrots from her bowl and dumps them in Jimin’s, who doesn’t even bat an eyelash. “We’re a little under the member quota right now. No one likes risking their lives on human pyramids anymore.”

“I can’t imagine why,” you say, and Jimin laughs.

“Seriously. It wouldn’t hurt for you to try. Besides, even if it’s the last semester, we could really use some extra members. Right, Minjeong?”  

Minjeong looks up at you, her egg dangling between her chopsticks.

“Do you want my egg, _____________?”

“Sure,” you reply, amused. She quickly lays the egg on top of your own, even going so far as to arrange them neatly so that their yolks are aligned. “Are you allergic to something?”

“She’s a picky eater.” Jimin explains, using her spoon to squash her egg’s yolk.

“I have a refined palate,” Minjeong corrects her, fishing out a stray piece of carrot and placing it in Jimin’s bowl.

“You eat like a baby.”

“Baby food is pretty good.” Minjeong admits. “The banana-flavored ones are nice.”  

“Gross,” Jimin laughs. “This is exactly why you and Jaemin broke up.”

“You and Jaemin dated?” You raise your eyebrows. Minjeong nods, mixing her rice methodically with her spoon. “What happened?”  

“He got tired of ordering banana-flavored baby food for her,” Jimin quips.

“Will you shut up? Anyway — yeah, we dated last year, really briefly. We just didn’t work out. I did some work for my dad over the weekends back then, so we just never got the chance to go on actual dates. We said we were going to take a break or something, revisit the dating thing when we were less busy, but we just kind of left it in the past, and we started seeing other people.”

“You started seeing other people, you mean,” Jimin corrects her. Minjeong nods, thoughtfully mixing her rice before taking a slow bite.  

“Yeah. Besides, it just sort of felt like a relationship of convenience. Like, we were both there, we were both single, so we tried it. It was okay while it lasted. We’re still friends.”

“But I’ve already heard about Minjeong’s boring love life six hundred times,” Jimin points her spoon at you, a grain of rice flying at high speed in your direction. “Oops, sorry. So what’s going on with you and Jeno?”  

“Oh,” you have to swallow your own spoonful of bibimbap hard because your throat has suddenly constricted. “Nothing’s going on with us. We’re just partners. And… friends?”  

“You’re not dating?”

“Not in the slightest.” Your mind flips back to when Jeno had said he didn’t want people getting the wrong idea about the both of you. Yet. Whatever that meant. “No way.”  

“Oh,” Jimin looks weirdly disappointed. “I thought you were, since he suddenly started asking about who you were seeing. We thought it was a trick question, like we were supposed to answer ‘him.’”  

“But you like him,” Minjeong says it like it’s not a question but a factual statement, which it is, but you still take a while to respond, feeling put on the spot suddenly.  

“I mean… he’s nice.”  

“And cute,” Jimin adds.  

“And cute,” you agree. She smiles triumphantly, as if this is some kind of game she’s winning. “But… nothing’s going on.”  

“Well, Jeno doesn’t date often. I mean, he goes out with girls. But I don’t think he’s been in a relationship for a while,” Minjeong adds thoughtfully. “Maybe he’s starting to think about getting serious with someone?”

“I don’t know.” You like the idea of it, but realistically speaking, it’s not like you two were that close. Then again, you also weren’t sure about how close any two people should be to start thinking about dating each other. It’s not like there’s some kind of rule book. “Maybe. Maybe not.”

“Coy answer,” Jimin sounds approving. “Definitely a sign that something’s going on.”

“Wh— no, I mean, I’m not sure about… you know, we don’t really talk—“

“You don’t really have to,” Jimin winks, and the seaweed pieces in your bibimbap suddenly get very interesting, even though you know the two of them are exchanging looks.  

They drop you back home after lunch, waving goodbye (with Jimin screaming out a see you later!) as they drive off, and you’re so exhausted from the walking and the fact that you’d had to carry Minjeong’s bags of premium dog food back to her car that you fall asleep the moment your body hits your bed. You wake up with a considerable amount of drool on your pillow and three missed calls from Renjun.  

“Not that it’s a big deal,” Renjun says when you call him back. “But I don’t know what to wear to parties.”

“I don’t think it’s a black tie event,” you rub the sleep out of your eyes. “Just wear something casual? Cool? I don’t know either. Also, when did you suddenly start caring about how you looked at parties?”  

“You make it sound like I’ve never tried beforehand.”

“Your signature style is graphic tee and jeans, so…” There’s a loud noise on his end of the call and you hear him mumble a swear word. “What happened?”  

“The closet rod fell,” he whines. “Also, graphic tee and jeans are Jeno’s signature style too. He even had ripped jeans, which make him look more homeless than I do.”  

“Jeno’s jeans are artistically ripped,” you correct him. “Yours are ripped because your dog tries to eat them when they’re hanging out to dry.”

“And you don’t know if Jeno’s own dog has ripped his jeans artistically,” you can hear him struggling with the metal rod, and his voice becomes more and more muffled as you assume that his phone is sinking deeper into his neck as he holds it between his shoulder and ear. “I’ll call you back. Or — you know what, I’ll just be there in fifteen minutes.”

“Make it twenty, I’m still half-asleep.” You hang up and press your face into your pillow, falling back asleep until Renjun arrives within the promised twenty minute time span, chastising you for your lack of punctuality the entire time you sluggishly change your clothes. The only helpful thing he does is call your sister in to help you fix your hair, which she does enthusiastically as you yawn at your reflection and Renjun criticizes your poor scheduling even further while he plays online minesweeper on your laptop.  

“So we only stay for an hour, hour and a half max, right?” He confirms as you walk towards Jaemin’s house. The door is open, and there are people outside, already deep in conversation.  

“Right,” you agree. You don’t hold the fact that Renjun wants to leave quickly against him; for some reason, being around this many people is making you a little queasy, and you don’t know what people do in parties apart from truth or dare. Unfortunately, no one seems to be sitting in a circle around a spinning bottle when you enter; instead, all the furniture has been cleared out for a table that has food piled onto it, and the coffee table is stacked high with paper cups and drinks. Mark Lee and Jaemin are by the ice bucket, and the latter notices you first, waving at you.  

“Hey, ______________, Renjun. You guys made it,” Jaemin pushes a cup of what looks like Hwanta at you, taking Mark’s cup of soda as well and handing it to Renjun. “No traffic, I hope?”  

“Just the same old pile-up. It takes really long to get here, you know,” you smile, and he laughs easily.  

“So your parents are okay listening to trashy music from upstairs?” Renjun asks, looking around for any sign of parents.  

“No, they’re out for dinner with friends, and my brother stays in a dorm in college, so they’re not affected that much.” Jaemin looks like he’s about to say something else, but something beyond the two of you catches his eye and he mumbles an I’ll be right back before speeding off, disappearing into the crowd. Mark is pouring himself a new cup of soda, throwing Renjun a wounded look when he isn’t looking. You decide to strike up a conversation instead of watching him wait for Renjun to apologize for the technically stolen drink.  

“So has this been going on for a while, or…?”  

“No, it’s been maybe half an hour, or something. Oh, I think Jimin was looking for you. She’s somewhere—” He points around the room, clearly unsure. “Somewhere around here. I’m sure you’ll bump into her later. She and Jisung are probably groping each other in the garden or something.”  

“Since when did Yoo Jimin start dating Park Jisung?”  

“Since they sat next to each other on the KTX to Daegu over the break. You should ask Jisung about the make-out session that steamed up economy car A. He says seats 13 A and B still smell like her perfume and his cologne mixed together.”  

“Ew,” Renjun comments, and Mark makes a noise of agreement.  

You’re only half-paying attention to their disgust about Jisung and Jimin’s history of desecrating public spaces since you’ve spotted Jeno, who’s watching a group of juniors play what you assume is beer pong. You keep thinking about going over to him and saying hi, but you can’t seem to figure out when the right time is. Also, your nerves get the best of you, so you just stand beside Renjun as he starts a weird bonding experience with Mark Lee.  

Luckily, you don’t have to do anything at the end of the day; Jeno suddenly notices you, pushing himself off the window he’s been leaning against and walking over. You grab Renjun’s arm by instinct, and he lets out a sharp ow as you squeeze him. He manages to shake you off just before Jeno stops in front of you.

“_______________,” he looks pleased. “You made it. And… you brought Renjun with you.”

“Hey,” Renjun says flatly, handing his half-drunk cup of soda back to Mark, who takes it with a dumbfounded look on his face. “I think I see Donghyuck, so I’m gonna go say hi.”

He slips away before you can say anything, but Jeno doesn’t even look perturbed; he glances at Mark, who meets his eye then suddenly turns to walk off, and you hear him asking someone where the trash bag is.  

“So, are you enjoying?”  

“I just got here, but it seems great,” you try to sound enthusiastic even if you’re shouting a little over the new song that’s started playing. “Music’s a bit loud though.”  

“Makes awkward pauses less awkward,” he says sagely, and you can’t help but think there’s some logical inconsistency in that, but you just shrug it off, nodding up at him. “Did you get to try the pizza?”

“Not yet; why, did you make it with your own two hands, or something?”

“No,” he shrugs, grinning. “But I ordered it with my own voice.”  

You laugh as he does, but the sounds get drowned out by EXID’s Up and Down playing at full blast. He makes a motion, but you don’t catch on, so he just takes your wrist and leads you through a throng of people back to the beer pong game. Upon closer inspection, you see that the liquid inside is a lot darker than you expected.  

“It’s just cola,” Jeno explains. “We were thinking of buying beer, but most people here can’t drink anyway, so it would have been a waste of money.”  

“Smart,” you comment sincerely, watching the two guys on the opposite ends of the table consistently miss their targets. “So you just have to get the ball in the cups? And then what?”  

“The other person drinks. Hey, Jaehyun,” he calls out to one of the guys playing, who looks up and consequently gets hit in the cheek by a flying ping pong all. “Show _____________ how to play.”  

“She can just take Taeyong’s place; he sucks anyway.” This comment elicits a rude gesture from the other boy, and you notice they’re both wearing similar jackets with a logo you can’t really place but looks suspiciously official.  

“You both suck. Let her take a turn; I’m gonna go ask Jaemin if he has more ice or if we need to make a run.”  

Jeno places his hand on your back, leading you forward; the guy named Taeyong reluctantly steps aside as Jeno walks away, greeting some guy that looks familiar but who you also can’t place in your memory as he passes by.  

As it turns out, you’re not half-bad at beer pong; you manage to get Jaehyun to drink four cups of cola, which has him burping all over the place and begging for a break for his stomach. The party is in full swing now, but this is the part that starts to feel uncomfortable, and you excuse yourself from the game with the promise that you’ll play with the two of them again once you’re all of legal drinking age.  

The garden is no better when you exit; there are people in groups that you know you won’t be able to squeeze yourself into. You do actually see Jimin after a moment of scoping, but her limbs are intertwined with Jisung’s in the mini gazebo, and you don’t really want to interrupt, so you just head back inside.

The music is extremely grating now, and you’ve eaten two slices of pizza and downed at least three glasses of different kinds of soda, so you also feel a little bloated and sleepy. Jeno hasn’t resurfaced either over the last hour or so, and you think it’s high time Renjun must be antsy to get home. The problem is that you can’t find him in the living room or the kitchen; you actually knock on the bathroom after gathering up some courage, but the female voice that answers that it’s occupied makes all that effort go down the drain.  

You trust Renjun wouldn’t leave without telling you, but you’re also not sure why he would be missing for this much time. The fact that you’re just standing by the food table while people pass by, say non-committal hellos, and leave with pizza slices in hand makes it even more uncomfortable. In the end, you decide to text Renjun to meet you back at your house and weave through the crowd to get to the door.  

There are still people outside, and while some are leaving, others are also talking or flirting, and you notice that these are more people that seem familiar but unfamiliar all at once. They all look a little older, too; a couple of guys are all wearing sweaters with the same obnoxiously large logo you’d seen on Taeyong and Jaehyun’s jackets, and it dawns on you that these people must be from the university level, hanging at a party away from younger kids. You scan the grass for Renjun, but you don’t see him anywhere either.  

What you do see is Jeno standing extremely close to a girl who’s wearing a similar university sweater. He has one hand around a cup, but his other hand is sandwiched between the girl’s palms. You can’t really discern his expression, but his brows look knitted, and his mouth, while open, doesn’t seem to be moving.  

You feel like you’ve seen this scene before, back at the dance where you had snapped upon seeing Lee Gyuwon and Jeno together, leaving poor Chenle behind. You’d only recently learned to laugh about that situation, so this one comes as both a painful reminder and an unfortunate addition of scenarios that made you extremely uncomfortable. You have to placate yourself with the reminder they just seem to be talking, even if they are standing really close to each other; nothing is actually happening, save for the fact that you can sometimes see Jeno’s hand gripping the cup in his hand a little tighter now and again.  

All of this just goes out the door when the girl leans in, pressing a hand to his chest, and kisses him.  

A voice inside your head tells you it’s frankly masochistic to keep staring at two people kissing when you like one of them, but you just stand there, rooted to the spot, watching the girl wrap an arm around Jeno’s neck. He pulls away after a while, and his mouth starts moving really quickly. His eyes dart around, like he’s watching for something, until they land on you, and his lips stop mid-speech. The scene gets blurrier, and you think you’re going to pass out for a second until you realize you’re just crying a little.  

Soft fingers wrap around your forearm, pulling you away gently. You think it might be Renjun, who’s finally found you after all that hullabaloo, but when you regain some sense, your attention focuses on Jaemin, who’s leading you back to your house. He’s doing so wordlessly, without even looking at you, and the noise of the party fades into an easily ignorable buzz once you reach your driveway. He stops you right at your front door, pausing a little before facing you with a small smile.  

The part of you that hates yourself the most tempts you to look back, to see if you can still glimpse Jeno from this far away; your head actually starts to turn, but Jaemin reacts quicker, trapping your face between his palms and keeping your head steadily towards him. His smile grows a little, but it doesn’t reach his eyes, and his teeth don’t show like they usually do.  

“Hey. Just look at me first, okay?”  

“Um,” is the only thing you can say considering you’re not sure if he’s doing this randomly or for some unknown reason.  

“Your hair’s kind of a mess, you know that? Did you get in a fight, or something?”  

“No, I was just… you know, there were a lot of people, so I probably bumped into a few of them,” your voice sounds distant, but you’re glad to hear that it still works and that you can form something of a coherent sentence. Jaemin laughs softly.  

“Yeah, it did get kind of crowded back there.” He starts to gently put strands of hair back into place, but it’s clear he has no clue what he’s doing because he sighs and drops his hands to your shoulders after a minute. “Anyway, you seemed a little out of it, so I thought you might want to go home for a quick break. If you want to go back, though, we can.”  

“No,” you say quickly. “I was… actually just looking for Renjun. So we could leave quietly.”  

“Well, usually, if you’re leaving a party, you’re supposed to tell the host,” he chuckles softly. “But since I dragged you here, I guess it doesn’t apply.”  

You want to laugh, but all your body seems to want to do is produce tears; you can’t even understand why you want to cry, considering you and Jeno aren’t dating, and he’d made that extremely clear. You suppose that it had just seemed like all the events were leading up to you getting together, although you may have just been reading between the lines when you weren’t supposed to thanks to your endless bounty of personal delusion.  

Either way, you didn’t want to cry about it — especially not in front of his best friend, who probably thinks it’s pathetic enough that you’re hopelessly deluded. You inhale in an attempt to calm yourself down, but all it does it signal your body into letting out a soft sob. Jaemin doesn’t move, and his expression hardly changes, save for the fact that the smile is back to its unnaturally small state. He actually looks like he’s… sad? That doesn’t seem right, though; maybe it’s really more like he pities you, which you can’t even blame him for.  

Still, he gently raises his right hand again; this time, instead of attempting to fix your hair, he gently places his palm against your head. Then lifts it. Then places it back down again. Soon, you’re standing in your driveway, crying silently while the guy from next door is awkwardly patting your hair like you’re a wounded puppy. It doesn’t last more than five minutes, but it’s still a fairly embarrassing period of time, and you wipe at your eyes aggressively while he retracts his hand.  

“Kind of stupid, huh?” Your voice is thick and ugly. “Crying after a party.”  

“Crying after a party, yeah. Crying after seeing someone you like kiss someone else? Not stupid at all.”  

“So I didn’t hallucinate?” You sigh, hiccuping yourself into a slightly calmer state.

“No, unfortunately. I mean, Jeno is — anyway, it’s not really any of my business, I guess. Do you want me to look for Renjun back at my house, or something?”  

“No, it’s fine. I texted him that I was going home anyway, so he can just come find me when he sees it, I guess.” You feel like your voice is childishly sullen, and Jaemin must think so too, because his smile grows again, like he wants to laugh. “But… thanks for walking me home.”

“I almost dragged you home.”

“But I used my two feet,” you crack a smile, wiping away a stray tear that’s just fallen from your eyelashes. “So I still technically walked.”

“Can’t argue with that logic,” he agrees.

You both stand in front of your door, not moving; you’re not making eye contact either, but it doesn’t feel too uncomfortable. There are a ton of things you want to ask him, but all of your questions seem either too upsetting or too invasive, so you just stay quiet until Jaemin looks up again, focusing on something past your head.  

You turn to find Jeno approaching, and his eyes are flickering between you and Jaemin. His hands ball into fists for a second, like he’s steeling himself.  

Jaemin’s voice seems different when he talks again, and he’s not looking at you when he speaks. “I should get back home. See you, _______________.”

He brushes past Jeno, not looking back as he returns to the party. Jeno watches him go, making sure Jaemin’s past your property line before turning back to you.  

“You left so quickly,” is how he opens the conversation.  

“Oh. Yeah, it just got crowded. I lost Renjun, and I couldn’t eat anything more,” you explain lamely. “Sorry. I guess I should have told you.”  

“No, it’s — that’s totally fine. I just… I guess you really didn’t have a good time.”  

“I did; no, I totally did.” Up until a few minutes ago, you want to add, but there’s no way you would. Jeno nods, not really looking like he’s fairly interested in how much you enjoyed the party. “I found out I’m… pretty good beer pong, so that probably bumped my cool points, right?”  

“She’s my ex-girlfriend,” he suddenly blurts out, skewing the conversation’s falsely casual atmosphere drastically towards a topic you were desperate to avoid. You stand in silence, fairly stunned, and Jeno looks like he’s about to burst completely, his words coming out a little too fast because he wants to say so much. “She used to go to our school. A year older. We broke up during her last year; she said she didn’t want anyone from her past tying her down in college. I mean — we — she — we were over. It was fine. But she showed up tonight, I guess since she heard from Jaemin’s brother that there was a party… I didn’t know. She never told me. We just — I guess she thought we could get back together, so we talked, and she kissed me. But we’re not. Back together, that is.”  

“Uh,” you say, once again at a loss for words. “Okay.”  

“It didn’t mean anything,” he starts to slow down, looking a little relieved that he’s gotten the crux of the story off his chest. “She was a little drunk before she got here. It was just a spur of the moment — no, sorry. It was just a mistake. That’s it.”  

“It’s… I mean, it’s… it’s fine?” It’s not, you know, but you don’t know what else to say considering it’s supposed to be fine to you. “She’s your ex-girlfriend. You’re bound to still have feelings for each other. Also—”

“We don’t,” he interrupts you. “We don’t have feelings for each other. I mean, I don’t. For her.”

“Okay, but I also don’t know why you’re telling me all of this.”  

“Because. Because I know you saw us outside.”  

“I did,” you admit, still feeling the uncomfortable pang of distress at recalling the sight. It seems to be triggering your fight or flight instinct because you’re taking slow steps back, but Jeno is just moving forward with you too. Even when you run out of space to step, he’s still advancing, eyes focused on you, like he’s watching for your expression. “And it’s your right to make out with your ex-girlfriend. It doesn’t have anything to do with me.”  

“Doesn’t it?”  

“Does it?” You’re thoroughly confused now, and it looks like Jeno is too. “We’re just friends, aren’t we? We’re not really even that. My opinion on your relationships doesn’t really… matter.”  

“It does though. It does to me.”  

You fall silent, dumbfounded; your mind can’t decide on which feeling to focus on first, so you just stand there looking stupid. Jeno is standing really close to you now, and you can actually smell the fabric conditioner on his hoodie and the cologne that’s fading off from his skin. When he speaks again, his voice is barely above a whisper.

“You like me.”  

It’s not asked like a question, but he pauses like he’s waiting for you to respond. You’re too close to him to feel comfortable enough to lie and deny, plus the situation seems so intense that the thought of doing something wrong doesn’t even cross your mind. You nod, and he doesn’t even look the least bit surprised.

“I’m telling you all of this because I know you like me. Because I don’t want you to misunderstand something like that.”  

“It doesn’t matter, though,” your voice is also soft, less because you’re trying to be quiet and more because if you speak up, you’re afraid you might start crying again. “You don’t have to explain something like that to someone who likes you just because they like you. It shouldn’t be a concern.”  

“But I want to,” he says firmly. “I want to make sure you know — I’m really not with that girl. What happened back there — it didn’t mean anything.”  

“But why?”  

He reaches out, and the action feels eerily similar to Jaemin’s; his fingers idly toy with loose strands of hair, but it doesn’t feel laden with the motive of comforting. Instead, his hand skims down the side of your face gently, stopping just below your jaw. You wonder if he’s noticed you’ve stopped breathing, but if he has, he doesn’t make it obvious. His thumb extends away from his hand, lightly tracing the height of your cheekbone.  

“Because I don’t want something like this to push you away from me,” he murmurs. “Because I want you to like me. Just me.”  

this is my energy every time i do something silly and write something on complete impulse even though there are major loopholes and questionable parts and choppy shitty pieces of dialogue and then publish it without a single intention of proofreading it 😭😭✋🏻 y’all are just suffering my self indulgence and i am so sorry for that

because i’ve been really slow with my progress on gorgeous 1.5, i’ll be putting up 2 first ( which is already done and is simply collecting dust 🥹 ) !! i think since 1.5 is kind of an in between chapter anyway, it doesn’t have to be posted hella chronologically ( or this is what i’ll be telling myself anyway 🫣 ) so … yes !! expect part 2 this weekend 😌✨

last night on earth - ii . | kdy

part i, part iii

you soon find out that there are more dangerous things than the flesh-eating undead during a nationwide implosion.

pairing: doyoung x reader verse: zombie apocalypse au rating: M for horror themes only ! genre/s: romance, horror/suspense warnings: brief but still present mentions of and sometimes depictions of violence, mentions of and possible character death, language word count: 5.5k  

author’s note: interestingly while i was at work the other day i found my original 10 chapter + epilogue plan for this so i guess past!me was kind of a real one 

The next five minutes involve the tedious process of you gaping at the door while you attempt to come to terms with what had just happened, your jaw opening and closing like you’re a goldfish; you trying to ring the doorbell again and talk through the microphone even though you know it isn’t on; and giving up on that entirely and rapping on the door, your knuckles growing redder with each knock.

“Kim Doyoung-ssi. Kim Doyoung-ssi?” You call out in increasing levels of volume and intensity. “I think we’ve had a little bit of a misunderstanding. Can you — could you please open the door? Kim Doyoung-ssi?”  

Your knocking grows weaker as time passes, mostly because your fist is starting to experience some kind of burning sensation that can’t mean anything good; you can also tell that this pain is in vain and that your current tactic is totally ineffective considering you’re still not getting a response.  

From the corner of your eye, you see an open window, just over the well in the garden. You end up calling his name, face tilted towards the window in the hope that he can hear you better. Nothing happens, save for the curtain blowing a little in the wind. Even standing on the stool next to the well doesn’t give you any kind of clue as to where he is, so after a few more minutes of futilely calling out to him, you just march back to the front door.  

“I know you can hear me in there, Kim Doyoung-ssi!” You finally reach the breaking point of your patience, which had already been worn down by two trips across town and your having witnessed a full on inexplicable cannibal attack. “I’m staying right here!”  

You toss your bag to the side and slump down onto the marble patio, your back finally getting some damn relief when you lean back against the cold, varnished wood of his big doors. There’s nothing else for you to do apart from play games on your phone, so you pull it out to see a couple of texts from Youngho.  

[ incoming ] 영호- just got to gangnamdaero. kim jungwoo makes his brother look like a beggar looool [ incoming ] 영호- what’s going on w/ u

you make an incensed noise and type back your reply so angrily you think your screen might crack.  

[ outgoing ] asshole won’t let me into his house!!!!!!

The more you think about it, the more your irritation grows; you can’t see a reason why he wouldn’t want some extra security. Was his entire property booby trapped, or something? What made him so complacent? And who turns down extra security that’s being offered to you for free? The only explanation you can come up for it is that he’s somehow convinced he doesn’t need your protection or doesn’t think you can do a good job of providing it for him, which just opens up another can of worms. South Korea isn’t really well-known for letting women take up civil protection positions. This is all just guesswork, of course, but even considering that he might think you’re not qualified to be his — as Youngho would put it — babysitter because you’re a girl is really riling you up.

Your phone trills again, signaling a new message from Youngho.

[ incoming ] 영호 - what do you mean he won’t let you in

[ outgoing ] i mean i’m just sitting out here after he shut the door in my face

[ incoming ] 영호 - does he know you’re a police officer? maybe he thinks ur just trying to get into his pockets [ incoming ] 영호 - or his pants lol jk just ring the doorbell again and tell him the mayor sent you [ incoming ] 영호 - kim jungwoo has an indoor pool

[ outgoing ] can you not text so smugly

[ incoming ] 영호 - i’m trying but he did just say i could use it whenever so it’s kind of hard

[ outgoing ] so much for protecting him

[ incoming ] 영호 - nothing’s going on here. It’s all clear. maybe the whole crisis is over? kind of like seasonal flu

[ outgoing ] you just want to go swimming

[ incoming ] 영호 - yeah i REALLY do ttyl gonna do a perimeter check

So much for Youngho criticizing all the rich people. You look up at the doorbell, wondering if you should try ringing it again, but the thought of doing so somehow makes you feel itchy on the inside. In the end, you decide to follow in Youngho’s footsteps and do a perimeter check, except you sort of feel like an intruder trying to figure out the right way to break into Kim Doyoung’s house. He has a pretty wide backyard with a substantially diverse bed of flowers, but there’s nothing much special here; it’s more typical “city-rich boy that spends more time outside” than outright ostentatious and lavish — at least, in comparison to what Youngho must be seeing, considering he’s already found an indoor pool. You count his windows, and none of them are open save the one, so it’s either he has a centralized air-conditioning system or he’s suffering in stuffiness because he just doesn’t want you inside. The latter possibility makes you feel a little better.

All in all, you note nothing out of the ordinary; you circle back to the front door in about ten minutes. You only note a couple of high-risk things: first, his house has a number of large windows that are latch-based, which means that anyone with decent knowledge on tools and how basic mechanisms work can probably break into his house, but he must have some kind of alarm system, considering how loaded he is. Second, and more importantly, a couple of rooms in his house are more glass than any other kind of material; while more of a natural disaster risk than anything else, you can’t rule out the fact that a mass attack on this place might use those rooms as an entry point. Heck, a couple of well-aimed bullets and those rooms become part of his backyard.  

You’re technically supposed to report all of this to him, but it’s not like you can at this point, so you just sit back down and take out your phone again. Youngho must be having the time of his life with a guy willing to give him a roof over his head for the night and a dip in his cool indoor pool while you have to figure out how you’re going to sleep on your clothes and use them tomorrow morning. You think about asking him to come pick you up or something or to at least tell Kim Jungwoo to talk some sense into his brother, but both of those options sound childish, which is why you end up putting them aside and just playing stupid match-three games.

The sun is more than halfway down when you get tired of playing; the street is still as quiet as it had been when you’d arrived, save for the crickets, but the slowly growing darkness makes the silence seem so much more sinister. You’re torn between ringing the doorbell again just to beg or running over to a convenience store to get some extra underwear and some beef jerky for the night when your phone rings, almost scaring you into screaming. It isn’t Youngho, like you’d initially assumed; it’s the deputy chief.  

“Corporal Seo told me you’re having some issues.” He sounds exasperated, like he can’t believe he still has to supervise you even until this point.  

“Um,” you can’t keep the sheepishness out of your voice. “A… little.”

“A little? I hope you’re not wasting anyone’s time here.”

“Kim Doyoung-ssi isn’t… keen on being protected. He sent me away.”

“God. Don’t tell me you actually left,” he groans.  

“No — I’m just out here.” You reply lamely. “At his front door.”

“Well, good. Stay there if you have to. I’ll tell someone to come check on you and bring you any necessities once we have a warm body to spare, but it’s not looking likely. We’re getting non-stop reports of escalation in Seollung and Samseong. Yeongdong-daero is practically a war zone now. More dead than alive there. We’re not dealing with anything normal here, so you need to be on your toes at all times.”

“Sir — what do you mean, not anything normal?”

“That attack you and Corporal Seo mentioned this afternoon? It’s not an isolated case. More and more people are turning rabid, like they’re sick and they’re infecting others by attacking them.” He pauses, and you’re sure it’s not for dramatic effect, but it still ends up dramatic when he continues. “They’re indiscriminate, vicious, and fast. There’s no easy way to gun them down. And the people they kill? They don’t stay dead for very long, either.”

“Then what do we do?”

“Are you a religious woman, corporal?”

“Not particularly.”

“Might want to start picking up a Bible if you have the time.” His consequent chuckle is dark, half-hearted, and leaves you more disturbed than amused. “Keep steady at your post. We’ll update you when we can get a man out there. In the meantime, make sure nothing happens to Kim Doyoung-nim.”  

You hang up with the feeling that you would have preferred it if Youngho had called, even if it were just to gloat about floating around in a nice, safe indoor pool. With a groan, you lean your head back against the door, watching the last of the sun dip down beneath the horizon. Somewhere on the second floor, a room is lit, and the light provides you with the minimal comfort that you’re, at least, not entirely alone.  

Seconds morph into minutes, and the minutes blend into the long stretch of an hour; you shift positions here and there, trying to not let your feet fall asleep in case you have to get up quickly, but, so far, your left leg is refusing to cooperate. At one point, you hear rustling near the hedges, and you have to deal with trying to get off your ass without putting too much weight on your foot, but it turns out to be a false alarm halfway through when a stray cat peers out, gives you a tiny glare, and stalks off to bother someone else’s trash.  

A little over an hour passes, which leads you to start thinking about long-term options, but even that train of thought is totally derailed by the fact that you really want to get cleaned up. You’re weighing how much of your dignity you’ll have left if you use the well as your last-resort shower stall when the door suddenly opens; you jackknife off it just in time to avoid falling backward onto Kim Doyoung’s feet.  

“You’re still here.” He observes softly, watching you scramble up and silence your phone, which had just been obnoxiously playing music at the highest volume. “Why?”  

“Like I said, I’m staying right here. My job is to protect you, so I’m doing just that.”  

“And you’re doing this to the grating tune of Sunmi’s Siren?”

“Well, I —“ you have to stop yourself from defending your musical tastes, but in the time it takes you to switch from an indignant mindset to a more professional one, he cuts you off again.  

“I’m not comfortable with a stranger sitting outside my front door overnight. And, like I said, I don’t need your protection. You would be doing us both a favor if you just went home, officer.”  

“I’m sorry, but I can’t do that,” you say, inwardly pleased that your voice has regained a lot more of the firmness you need to make your point. “The mayor asked the police department to watch over you and your brother. This is me, acting on an order.”

“If you’re meant to be my bodyguard —”

“I’m not your bodyguard,” you bristle. Something like amusement passes across his face.

“If you’re meant to be protecting me, then you’re, in a sense, contractually bound to me. That means that I’m currently first in the line of authority. Just think of this as me… retracting the contract early.”  

“That’s really not how this works.”  

“Have a good night, officer,” he makes to shut the door again, but your irritation from the absurdity of the situation as well as your desperation to sit on a surface that isn’t just marble floor causes you to stick your foot in the doorway, effectively stopping it from closing all the way. Kim Doyoung looks down at it in some surprise.  

“Kim Doyoung-ssi, I don’t think you understand. The entirety of Seoul is on lockdown. There are people randomly killing other people with their bare hands in the street. These people — they’re turning into monsters that can’t be killed. I don’t know if this is a blow to your pride, but if I were offered protection from something like this, I’d take it gladly.”

“I know what’s going on,” he frowns. “I’ve been watching the news. And it doesn’t look like you’d be able to stop anything from coming after me, so why risk it?”

Your lips press into a thin line. “If you’re so bothered by it, then I can call the department and ask them to send their first free male officer to your house as soon as possible. But for now, you’re just going to have to deal with me.”

“What — no,” he has the audacity to laugh, and even in the cloud of annoyance that surrounds you, you notice that it’s a laugh that doesn’t really suit him. Guys tend to laugh loudly, without restraint, and oftentimes, sort of… ugly. Not this guy — the chuckle he creates is all teeth and soft sounds, sort of like he’s holding himself back. “It’s not because you’re a woman. I’m sure you’re just as capable as anyone else. I just don’t see the point in added security. That just means one more person dying because of me.”

“Like I said,” you repeat the phrase that’s sort of becoming trademark in this interaction. “It’s my job. We’re supposed to be putting our lives on the line for civilians — which, I think, include you.”  

“So you’re okay with that? Dying because of a stranger?”

“Dying because I’m doing what I have to — what I love to? That doesn’t sound bad to me, Kim Doyoung-ssi.”

“That’s very noble of you, officer,” his consequent smile isn’t as genuine as his laugh; it hardly reaches his eyes. “But I’m not keen on watching someone else die for me and living with the guilt that comes after that. I already have a lot on my plate as it is.”  

“Well, that just means I’ll have to do everything I can to keep us both alive, right?”  

Silence blossoms between the two of you; his fingers are rolling the doorknob idly, and you can practically hear the gears turning in his head. Finally, he lets out a characteristically heavy sigh and opens the door a little wider.  

“I’m not comfortable with you staying outside, so you can stay tonight. I’ll call the mayor tomorrow and talk to him about duty relief for you.”  

You catch yourself just before you make a noise of relief and hurry to pick up what little you’ve brought. He’s already halfway inside when you straighten up, but he’s left the door open for you, so you quietly make your way in, shutting and locking the door behind you.  

“Living room, kitchen, study, bathroom, den,” he points to each room nonchalantly. You can hear noise coming from somewhere upstairs — probably a television opened to the news. “But you already knew that.”

“Excuse me?”

“Or was I wrong in assuming that you weren’t figuring it out when you were snooping around my house?”

“Wha —hold on, I was doing a perimeter check,” You say defensively. “I didn’t make a detailed map.”  

There it is again — that suppressed ghost of a laugh that comes one second and is completely gone the next. “Just trying to lighten the mood a little.”  

“My sense of humor isn’t that sharp.”  

“I can tell,” he turns away from you, making his way up the stairs before stopping halfway, raising an arm to point to the door closest to the landing. “This is my room. Feel free to use any other guest room tonight. Oh — except for the one furthest down the hall.” The puzzled look on your face probably gives away the fact that you’re thinking he must be full of ugly or kinky secrets, and while you don’t verbalize any of these thoughts, his response suggests that he read your expression accurately. “It’s my girlfriend’s room. She has a lot of valuable stuff there, and she prefers it when they’re left untouched; she’s really particular about that.”

“Is your girlfriend on the premises?”  

“Not now, no. She only stays occasionally, when work brings her into Seoul. Most of the time, she lives with her family in Daegu.”  

“Oh. I see.” You have no idea what to say to this, and he doesn’t invite any more conversation either, so you spend another minute staring at each other before you lamely announce, “I’ll… be checking the perimeter, then.”

“I thought you already did that.” He’s amused again.

“I meant — security systems. Here. Inside. Reinforcement planning.”

“Reinforcement?”

“Your glass rooms are just begging to be shattered.” You explain.  

“Poor architectural choices back when I first bought this place. But I’m assuming you’re not planning to nail bits of wood to them.”

“No, but I can see if we can install some kind of frontline barrier outside them. Do you have a CCTV system?”

“Not at the moment.” You stop yourself from asking what kind of rich guy doesn’t have a security system, but you once again assume he’s already anticipated that question through his follow-up statement. “Up until very recently, this has been a very safe neighborhood. No anomalies, no strange people hanging around my property until today.”  

“I did find an intruder cat a while ago,” you take a stab at being funny. That weak little smile creeps back onto his face.  

“I wasn’t talking about the cats.”  

Even though you’re supposed to put security first, you end up just idly milling around the glass room previously identified as the den — which is about the size of your apartment, probably — thinking of how much you want to shampoo your hair and how much you would actually kill to have some corn cheese from the nearest GS25. The moment you hear Kim Doyoung’s bedroom door close, you hurry up the stairs. It only takes you one other try to find a guest room (the first attempt being a pretty sizable bathroom) and five minutes to rid yourself of your sticky uniform and hop into the shower.  

You come out feeling like a decent human being again about fifteen minutes later, and your mood takes a pretty big spike upwards for about two seconds, up until your singular set of clothes reminds you that you’re really only here for one night, and you have no clue how you’re going to explain being relieved of the one job you were promoted for not even 24 hours in. You’re toweling your hair dry in an increasingly aggravated manner when your phone starts blaring again, and it’s actually Youngho this time.  

“Turn the video on,” he says, inappropriately gleeful. “I want to see you roughing it outside.”  

“I’m inside, you dick,” you snap, rejecting his request to switch to video twice. “Don’t you have a job to do?”  

“Yeah, and it’s going really well, thanks for asking. How’d you get him to let you in?”

“I didn’t really. He just sort of gave up on keeping me out. He says he’s going to call the mayor tomorrow and ask him to retract the order.” You pause before finally letting your anxiety get the best of you. “You don’t think I’m going to get demoted for this, right?”

“I doubt it,” Youngho, for the most part, actually sounds genuine. “It’s not like it’s your fault that Kim Doyoung-ssi is all about doing things himself. Worst case scenario is that you’ll get reassigned to some other similarly stuffy, rich, and ancient guy.”

“He’s, like, our age.”

“I know. You’re missing my point entirely. Just stop worrying.”  

“Yeah, you’re right,” you sigh, tossing the wet towel into the hamper. You’ve forgotten your comb, so you just wing it and go out of your room, haphazardly running your fingers through your hair to tame it to a degree. “So have you had any problems on your end?”

“Not at all. It’s way quiet here. Actually, I’m pretty sure half the people in this neighborhood don’t care that there’s something going on outside. There was a couple hosting a barbecue on their front lawn an hour ago. You?”  

“Nope, all clear here, so far.” The television sounds are louder this time, and they’re no longer coming from Kim Doyoung’s bedroom; they’re coming from the living room now, and the volume is up to full blast. You peek over the banister, but the owner of the house isn’t on any of the couches. “Just an empty street, the same way we found it.”

“I hope that means we can leave soon.”

“Yeah, because you’re having such a difficult time with Kim Jungwoo-ssi’s swimming pool there.”

“He’s got table football here,” he sounds pleased again. “And my guest room has a TV bigger than any of the walls in my apartment.”

“The shower in my room has nice water pressure,” you argue, taking slow steps down the stairs. “Also, I feel like you’re not really doing your job that well.”

“That’s very hurtful, and I’d like to bring this up during partner therapy next week.”

“I’ll let you, if we actually make it through the week.” You finally reach the bottom of the stairs. Youngho’s wheeze of a laugh brings a tiny, tired smile to your face.

“That’s very optimistic of you.” You’re about to bite back when you hear a brief clatter and a weak groan coming from the kitchen. Alarmed, you don’t even bother to hang up on Youngho; he’s still talking about the view of the city from his really big window while you hurry to the source of the noise. You don’t have your gun on hand, so you make do by grabbing an umbrella from the rack by the front door and rushing into the kitchen, holding it aloft.

You almost whack Kim Doyoung with his own umbrella, but you luckily stop yourself before it comes to that. There’s a metal spatula on the floor, and right next to it is a pan on its side, resting on the front of his oven and a half-cooked egg spilling out from its edge, the yolk slowly crawling towards your feet.  

“I’m… going to call you back,” you tell Youngho, who’s still babbling about how great Kim Jungwoo(’s house) is when you hang up.  

“The handle was hotter than I expected.” Kim Doyoung sounds abashed. For some reason, this makes him look… less intimidatingly closed-off and a little more personable. “I should have gotten a towel, or something.”

“Or an oven mitt,” you agree, tugging at the hand towel hanging on the refrigerator handle and picking up the pan. He watches you a little helplessly before deciding he’s being kind of useless and picking up the spatula, using it to edge the pan slowly into the kitchen sink. You both take handfuls of tissue to wipe off the mess of egg on the floor, but all you seem to be doing is spreading it around a little more, so you end up going for a quick solution method and pouring isopropyl alcohol onto it and letting a new batch of tissues soak it up.  

“I don’t want to sound like I’m telling you how to do your job,” he starts slowly. “But don’t cops usually have guns?”

“I was improvising,” you hide the umbrella behind your back. “I left my gun upstairs, and I thought you might have been in trouble.”

“Oh. In that case, I’m sorry for worrying you.”  

“I also don’t want to sound like I’m telling you how to do your job, especially because I, quite frankly, don’t even really understand what that is,” you toss the egg-wet tissues into the bin. “But wouldn’t someone who cooks with a pan that has a metal handle know that they have to hold their pans with protection?”  

“I don’t cook in this house,” he looks a little sheepish now. “I never have.”

“Personal chef, then?”

“No. I just eat out. All the time.”  

“So this huge kitchen space with its fancy appliances is basically your girlfriend’s territory only.“

“Actually, it just came with the house. No one really uses it. Well, until I tried to right now.”  

It dawns on you that the embarrassment shining through his face might be the product of him botching a meal he was trying to cook for you. It’s almost laughable, but you think it’s way too mean to even smile, considering the gesture was pretty polite, although the results were disastrous in themselves. “Let’s… try not to break the tradition of you not using your kitchen tonight. Did you really want an egg for dinner, or was that just a spur of the moment choice?”

“It was more of a that’s the only thing I have in my fridge choice,” he chuckles softly.  

“I guess it would be good to stock up on everything tomorrow if we — you, I mean — are going to be holing up here for the foreseeable future.” You try not to sound too bitter about having a deadline for when you have to leave, even if it kind of hurts your pride, but Kim Doyoung’s face morphs into something apologetic as he slowly rinses the pan and the spatula. “I can do that before I leave. It’d be better if you didn’t leave your house, just to be safe.”  

“How will you get to the grocery, though?”  

“I’ll ask someone to give me a ride.”  

“The person you were on the phone with?” He dries the pan off and sets it on the induction stove again. “Was that your boyfriend?”

“Oh — no, that was my partner. He’s with your brother right now, actually.”  

“I see.” He pauses like he’s weighing out his options before asking, "How is my brother? Is he doing okay?”  

“From what my partner told me, he’s fine. More than fine, actually. Youngho’s been enjoying your brother’s house since he got there.”  

He lets out a soft breath that could probably pass off as a laugh. “That’s good, I guess.”  

You don’t want to entertain an off-handed answer with anything to open another short-lived conversation, so you just go to the refrigerator, opening it to find, as expected, nothing more than a carton of eggs, some pomegranate juice, and a chocolate bar with a ribbon on it. You survey the rest of the kitchen for any indication of rice, but you can’t even see a rice cooker, so you decide you should just double up on the eggs.  

“I’m sorry,” he ends up creating his own conversation starter as you nudge the eggs around with the spatula. “For putting even this on you.”

“It’s not a big deal,” you’re sincere about this, and you hope it translates in your tone. “They’re just eggs. And I guess making sure we don’t starve to death is kind of like protection in a way.”

“All the same, thank you, officer.”  

“You’re welcome, Kim Doyoung-ssi. And it’s just ______________. Officer makes it sound like I’m arresting you.”

“Then it’s just Doyoung. Kim Doyoung-ssi makes it sound like you work for me.”

“According to you, don’t I?” His laugh is muffled as he ducks down to get two plates. You use the spatula to stab a haphazard half-line between the eggs, and you tip a serving onto each plate, which he then brings to the kitchen table. “Since you don’t cook, maybe it would be better if I got you some pre-packed food.”  

“Like?”

“Like ramyun. Or chicken wraps. Or those soup packets where all you do is add water.”  

“I’m sure I’ll find a way to not do that well, but the other things sound good,” he concedes. “I haven’t had ramyun in ten years, at the least.”  

“It’s good when you add egg to it. Or you can add kimchi. We should probably get you that, too.”

“I think that should be first priority,” he agrees, stabbing into his eggs; he inhales them to consume, like they’re noodles, which is an admittedly amusing sight. “Considering that’s the lifeblood of every Korean.”

“That, and rice, which you don’t seem to have in here.”  

“I don’t cook, remember? I can’t even remember the last time I used a rice cooker on my own.”

“Well, if you have one, I could teach you before I leave.”  

“That… would be appreciated,” he says slowly, starting to look uncomfortable as he slows down his eating.

“Um — are they not cooked well?” You ask, worried.  

“No, it’s not that. It’s just — I don’t want you to think I’m asking you to leave just because —“  

A loud banging interrupts him, and you both turn your attention to the living room. Doyoung is halfway up from his seat when you shoot up as well, holding out a hand to stop him from going to get the door. He, in turn, gives your umbrella a nervous and unconvinced look as you pick it up and head for the front door.  

It’s not even polite knocking; it’s the sound of someone’s fist assaulting the (very nice) wood of the front door — fast, heavy, and alarming. The closer you get to it, the clearer the voices behind it become.  

“Open up!” The words are slightly muffled, but there’s no mistaking the frantic tone. “Open up, please! Is anyone home? Hello? Someone, please — anyone, please let us in!”

Your hand is on the doorknob before you can think, but something stops you just before you turn it. Keeping Kim Doyoung safe is the highest priority right now, and opening his home up to strangers isn’t exactly at the top of the “what keeps people out of trouble” list. Even if the people behind this door are desperate, you wonder if, with everything that might be going on outside, you should be taking risks like this.  

Your fears are only solidified when the pounding on the door gets louder and more aggressive, punctuating troubling words. “Help us! Please, open the door — they’re coming after us, please!”  

You let go of the doorknob, watching it rattle for a second with the intensity of the knocking, before you move your hand to the deadbolt, fumbling with the little weight on the anchor. You’ve just about slipped it into place when Doyoung’s voice stops you.

“What the hell are you doing?” He demands; there’s no trace of quiet in his words now, and it’s so unlike how he’s been talking to you that it actually causes you to freeze. “Let them in!”

You throw him a look that you sincerely hope suggests how indignant you feel that he’s so willing to let random people in his house when you’d sat waiting for hours outside. “We can’t let people in here that you don’t know. That’s a cardinal rule in keeping you out of harm’s way.”

“They said they need help,” he presses. “Let them in.”

“Kim Doyoung-ssi,” you grit your teeth. “I don’t think you understand —“

“They said something’s after them. They could die out there. Are you going to have that kind of blood on both of our hands?”

The yells on the other side of the door are becoming somewhat incoherent; there’s probably at least two people out there, considering the rate at which the knocks are coming. Your fingers tighten on the deadbolt as you stare at Doyoung, whose expression is unwavering.

“Let them in, officer.”  

A sharp hit to the door breaks you out of your momentary trance, and you groan in frustration as you tug the deadbolt back and yank the door open.

Three bodies collapse onto the floor; you have to step out of the way as the tangle of limbs and heads scrambles into the living room. One guy is pretty much out cold, with another tugging him by the shoulders deeper into the house. The other gets to his feet, trying to get his bearings before fixing his eyes on you.

“Close the door, close the fucking door —“ He yells, panicked. “Hurry, close it!”

You don’t even get a good look at what’s beyond the foyer before your instincts just tell you to slam the door shut; you finally put the deadbolt in place. Another body slams into the wood, but this time, no words follow.

Only vicious snarls, chillingly familiar, come from the other side of the door. 

a lesson on style - iv . [ ljn | njm ]

pt. i, pt. ii, pt. iii, pt. iv.,  pt. v, pt. vi

you’ve always been content with being associated with one word and one word only: average. average in looks, academics and social skills, you’re just looking to graduate high school without causing disasters you’ll have to live with until you kick the bucket. when you’re paired with school king lee jeno for the semester-long physics thesis, you can’t help but think the entire situation has pretty much set itself up for failure. that is, until you strike a deal with your partner. alternatively: an au tale involving lessons in popularity, eleven consecutive B­ minuses, a secretly sensitive, chess­-loving jock, and an amateur sex tape.

pairing: jeno x fem!reader, jaemin x fem!reader verse: high school au { jocks!nomin ft. a super cute whiny ap physics genius renjun } rating: M for sexual themes ( there are allusions to sex but no explicit smut! ) chapter warnings:  word count: 7.6k

author’s note: i went quiet for a hot minute because a ton of nice things ate up all my weekends and a ton of terrible things ate up all my weekdays but im BACK with gremlin energy stronger than ever !!!!

tagging @justalildumpling​

Renjun, being the quintessential all-around nerd that he is, has told you a lot about what they talk about in his advanced placement physics classes. A huge part of their class’ previous term had to do with theoretical physics; it had been basically months of him trying to enthusiastically explain something wildly abstract to you, and you laying your head on his fairly tall pile of books checked out from the library, humming in agreement at opportune times, like when he’d catch his breath, to make it sound like you weren’t falling asleep on him. He’d told you about the uncertainty principle, the multiverse theories, the difference between loop quantum gravity and string theory — both of which, he’d said, had their merits, but he was ultimately a stringy universe kind of guy. A lot of the stuff he’d said hadn’t made much sense, and they mostly seemed impossible, which is why you’d stopped trying to pay attention by the end of the first month.  

With all of that information in mind, however, you have to say that this is the most absurd thing you’ve heard thus far.  

“That’s physically impossible,” you say without even thinking. Jeno, who has been grinning for the last two minutes leading up to his proposition, suddenly shifts mood, looking a little taken aback.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, this,” you gesture to yourself as a whole, trying to ignore the inappropriately timed wave of tingles that arises when his eyes follow your hand. “Is not a shapeless slab of stone you’re going to be able to sculpt into something magical. I’m… I’m as good as it’s going to get. Which is fine, by the way.”

“Not really sure about the analogy,” he muses. “But I’ll go with it. I’m not going to try to re-mold you, or anything. We can just spruce it up. Kind of like putting Calvin Klein boxer briefs on that ripped naked guy by Michelangelo.”

“Wh — okay, I’m not even going to bother asking about the underwear brand choice.” You wave the analogy away. “You know that… getting a good, stardom-esque reputation like yours isn’t easy in high school, right?”

“Yeah, but it’s not impossible,” Vaguely, you note that he doesn’t reject the idea that he’s a high school superstar. “Remember Park Jisung?”

“The guy that stands behind you in games?”

“The running back, yes,” he confirms. “Two years ago, that kid was a total loner. He ate lunch under that big tree next to the teacher’s parking lot. Now he’s running for captain next year, and everyone in his level is friends with him. And he’s wearing contact lenses instead of glasses now. See?”

“I’m not sure how that last one fits in, but I’m also going to let it go for now. I don’t have two years,” you remind him. “We graduate this term. Well — hopefully.”

He shrugs nonchalantly. “You don’t need two years. I’m just saying. You’re always with that friend of yours, but you could stand to widen your circle, and there are a lot of our classmates I know you’d get along with. You could get into some cool new things, meet new people, share new interests. Plus, we’d get to hang out a lot more instead of just, you know, doing,” he points disdainfully at the list of topics. “That.”

You stare down at the paper, but your eyes just stick to it blankly without reading, your mind trying to process everything instead. You don’t really care about climbing up the proverbial social ladder; average is pretty fine with you, and you’re not even sure what a better reputation is going to achieve at this point. Still, the most appealing part of this conversation is getting to hang out with Jeno — the one thing you’ve craved since puberty, probably. Honestly, it seems like a win-win; it’s not like you weren’t planning on doing the project, anyway.  

For some reason, it just feels too good to be true, though; you think there might be a snag, but you also can’t figure out what it might possibly be. You look up at Jeno for any sign of him faltering, but he’s just staring back at you a little expectantly, and it suddenly dawns on you that he’s worried you’ll say no.

Which is, frankly, laughable.

“Yeah, okay,” you say slowly, setting aside any hesitation you have. He lights up, that grin making a comeback on his face. “Yeah — why not?”

“Why not,” he echoes, looking exceptionally pleased. “For sure. Okay, well — awesome. So, I was thinking we could probably get some more headway with the project this week. You know, get it over with, rip the bandaid off quick and early, that sort of thing.”

“I’m free any time,” you say almost immediately, not only because it’s true but because even if it weren’t, you’d happily cancel all of your schedules for this. Luckily for you, your eagerness comes off as a simple fact, and Jeno clearly takes it as such.

“Cool. I have practice after school, though, so can we do it over the weekend?” You nod, and he takes back the piece of paper, flipping it over while uncapping his pen with his teeth. “Here’s my number; text me on Saturday morning or whenever and just remind me about it. If I don’t reply in ten minutes, call me. I oversleep sometimes, or sometimes I let my battery die out because I forget to charge my phone. In that case, you can call my sister to wake me up. We don’t have a landline at home because, well… obviously.”

“Uh,” you’re not sure what to do with this sudden onslaught of information about his daily life, and it’s almost hilariously surreal that he’s writing down his sister’s phone number under his own. “That — okay.”

“Also, is it okay with your parents if I park in your driveway?”

“You know where I live?” You don’t even bother masking the tone of surprise.  

“Well, yeah.” He looks amusedly perplexed. “You’re Jaemin’s neighbor. You’ve played Winner’s Really Really almost everyday since it came out. I can hear it from his bathroom.”

Right. Your lapse in memory makes you want to punch something — preferably yourself. “Oh. yeah. I should probably keep it down.”

“Nah. It’s a good song. Pretty sure that’s why Jaemin won’t stop asking me to play it in the car now.”

“Anyway,” you try to shift the topic back on track. “Usually, on weekends, my parents take the cars so the driveway’s empty, but their schedule’s kind of messy. They have, like, alpaca enthusiast functions sometimes, and sometimes they just stay home, so I can’t really promise a parking spot right now.”

“It’s cool. I can just park in front of Jaemin’s house, if that’s the case.”

“Is that okay with his family when you’re not even in their house?”

“Are you kidding? His mom invites me to their Seollal celebration like every year. I join their family for jesa like I don’t have my own family to do it with. She even calls me adeul. I could strangle Jaemin in his sleep, and she’d come in and ask me if I needed more heavy duty rope. It’s totally fine.”

You feel like a part of what he’s saying is a huge exaggeration, but it’s almost endearing that he and Jaemin have this kind of friendship. Briefly, your mind shifts to Renjun, and you wonder if you have the same kind of confidence in your relationship — then you remember you’re furious at him and shake the idea off before you start thinking about strangling him with some heavy duty rope.

“I’ll let you know if they leave anyway.” You take the paper back, index finger running idly over the dents in the paper that his writing his number had made. “Just in case.”

“Cool, just —“ He stops for a second as the teacher walks in, looking as disgruntled as ever. Jeno lowers his voice to a whisper. “Just text me.”

You nod, and he drops the conversation, turning his attention to the board where your teacher is trying to graph out a parabola. You try to focus on it too, opening your notebook to copy it down quickly alongside the equation he’s written to its right, except you have no clue where that figure came from and why he’s drawing it.

It also doesn’t help that you’re trying really hard not to stare at Jeno, who’s obviously not paying attention and is, inexplicably, smiling to himself, which is just giving you the worst (or best) kind of butterflies.

You don’t know why you’d expected things to change immediately, but whether or not they were supposed to, they don’t. The assumption was that because you’d be hanging out with Jeno, you wouldn’t need to worry about where to sit during lunch time, but he’s hardly in school for the last two days of the week; the crowd he’s with is still at their regular spot, and you understand that they’re probably friendly enough to accommodate you, but it seems like a stupid idea to approach them and say that you want to sit there because Jeno is supposed to be there.  

It gets worse when you see Renjun at your usual table, eating his donkatsu, and you make eye contact. His expression is unreadable, and you suddenly feel the overwhelming need to either cry or throw miso soup at his face, so you deduce that you’re still not ready to approach him. It doesn’t help that his backpack and a stack of three, unbelievably thick books is on the chair where you frequently sit next to him, like he’s doing all he can to shun you. In the end, you take a cue from Park Jisung of two years ago and make your way to the big tree near the teacher’s parking lot, settling down under its shade.

It’s actually not as bad as it had sounded when Jeno had talked about it; the cell service is surprisingly great, so you get to wedge your phone between your legs while you’re Indian sitting and watch more Facebook videos featuring samoyeds and rescued kittens on mute. You spend maybe five minutes in between to check Jeno’s profile, but you’re unsurprised to find that the last time he’d been active was almost three days ago; the most recent post was a picture from last month that he’d been tagged in by who you assumed was his sister.

Halfway through the hour, a shadow grows over you, blocking out the sun. You look up, expecting that it’s Renjun, seeking you out after more than thirty-six hours of stony silence, but it isn’t; it’s Jaemin, looking a little sweaty and breathless. From your position, you notice that he’s in muddied cleats instead of the traditional casual sneakers that almost everyone wears, and there’s a little ring of darkness around the neckline of his navy blue shirt.

“Hey,” he sounds as breathless as he looks. “Can I sit here for a sec?”

You nod wordlessly, still in the middle of chewing your donkatsu, and he busies himself with tossing his backpack down against the tree before following suit, collapsing next to you with a huff. He even smells a little sweaty, like he’s been out in the sun for long; even if it isn’t exactly repellent, you inch away slightly. Thankfully, he doesn’t really notice, with him so busy trying to find the right place on his scalp where his hairline cuts evenly. When he speaks up again, his voice is exceptionally casual.  

“You know this tree is infested with wooly caterpillars, right?”

“What?” Your mouth is half-full, though, so it just comes out as a garbled hnwaf?, and you jerk away quickly, precious bento box in hand. When you look back at Jaemin, though, he’s chuckling, back still pressed against the tree trunk.

“Kidding. Obviously.”

“Not funny.” You shift back in place, swallowing your food so that he can more clearly understand how unamusing that was.

“Sorry.” There’s a light twinkle in his eyes that says he isn’t though. “I didn’t have a better conversation opener. Anyway — why are you out here? This is literally the second least desirable place to have lunch.”

“What’s the first?”

“The boys’ bathroom on the third floor.”

You snort softly, putting the lid back on your bento box to avoid spillage just in case he decided to trigger panic again. “I’m just… enjoying the breeze and sunshine. Nature is such a thing for me. I also hear looking at greenery speeds up your metabolism.”

“Bullshit,” he laughs, and you’re amusedly taken aback by how comfortably he’s speaking around you. Then again, he doesn’t seem the type to talk any differently around anyone else. “Nice straight-faced lie, though. I would have believed you if I knew that definitely wasn’t true. I do hear it relaxes you, though — the looking at greenery thing.”

You laugh softly, leaning back (a little gingerly) against the tree, your bento box balanced on your knee; you can feel Jaemin’s gaze burning into the side of your face, clearly expecting an answer to his question, but the ideas of elaborating on petty fights with your only consistent friend or on petty desires involving his best friend both feel weird, so you just avoid the topic altogether, throwing your own question at him instead in an attempt to curveball the conversation into your favor.

“Do you know why Jeno isn’t in school today?”

Jaemin doesn’t answer immediately; you can tell he’s noticed you weaseling away from such a basic question, but, thankfully, he doesn’t push it after a brief moment of silence, simply reaching into his bag to extract a sandwich and an energy drink bottle. He takes his time popping open the bottle but doesn’t drink, twirling the cap between his fingers.

“He just does that sometimes, Jeno.” It’s clear in the tone of his voice that he’s choosing his words carefully. "He’s got… other stuff to do outside of school, so he suddenly ghosts. I’m sure he’ll be back on Monday, though. He usually shows up after the weekend, in my experience.”

“Other stuff?”

“It’s not really something I can explain or — you know. I don’t know how to, anyway. I wouldn’t know where to begin. Plus, it’s technically none of my business —“

“No — no, I get it. You don’t have to tell me.” It feels uncomfortable, anyway, suddenly prying into Jeno’s business, no matter how much a substantial part of your consciousness wanted to.

“But you want to know,” he takes a sip of his energy drink. “Because you’re nosy.”

“I’m not!” You want to cringe at how defensive your voice sounds, but it would just give you away more. “It’s just that, you know, he wasn’t around for class yesterday, and I haven’t seen him around today, so, I just…”

“I’m kidding, ________________. I know you’re not nosy. You’re worried about him because you like him.”  

Horror creeps into your expression; you watch, frozen, as Jaemin takes a large bite out of his sandwich. You can see the spam between the slices slipping down at the bottom, threatening to fall into the plastic bag. You lock eyes with him; he stares at you, but you can’t tell if he’s smiling because his cheeks are puffed out by all of that bread and filling he’s munching so diligently on. Denial is the first thing that pops into your head; it seems so easy just to say no, I don’t!, but you can’t bring yourself to. In the end, you just sigh in defeat.  

“Does he know?”

“Jeno? I don’t know. Maybe, but he also has this talent for not paying attention to stuff that seems obvious, so there’s the possibility that he doesn’t. We don’t really have a very in-depth feelings are valid relationship, so it’s not like we talk about it.”

“Is it that obvious, though?”

“Is Dongbangshinki’s Here I Am the best song in history?”  

“Debatable,” you snort half-heartedly. “But I get what you’re trying to say.”

“I know you think Winner’s Really Really is the best song, but,” he pauses, swallowing down his food and taking another enormous bite. “You should really expand your horizons more. For both our sakes.”  

“Really Really is a great song. Besides, Jeno says you’ve been playing it in his car these days.”

“It is an earworm kind of jam,” he admits. “But it doesn’t beat out the classics by a mile.”  

“Here I Am was released in 2010!” You argue. “That was like ten years ago!”

“No, it was released in 2012.” He says as-a-matter-of-factly. “And Really Really should be thankful for all Here I Am sunbaenim has done for it.”  

You don’t know why the sound of your laugh is so foreign until you realize you don’t really remember having laughed genuinely over the last week; between panicking over the strangely massive amount of attention Jeno had bestowed upon you and Renjun’s childish and, therefore, frustrating behavior, you haven’t found much humor in anything, and humor hasn’t really found you until now. It feels nice to just carry out a conversation without worrying it’s going to turn into a disaster or an argument, and you kind of like how Jaemin laughs even louder and a lot more obnoxiously than you do; some freshmen crossing the field in front of you actually turn when he starts guffawing.  

The silence that you both lapse into is a little less strange; you get to resume finishing off your donkatsu, and Jaemin enthusiastically inhales the rest of his sandwich. He’s flicking the bread crumbs off his fingers into the grass when he starts talking again.

“So you and Renjun still aren’t talking?”

“Wh — now who’s being nosy?”

“Technically, it’s not hard to deduce,” he crumples the plastic bag and smushes it into his backpack again. “You’re not in the cafeteria with him like you usually are. Plus, he punctured three holes into his quiz a couple of days back because of how hard he was digging his pen into his paper. I had to give him a new sheet.”

“Yeah, well,” you blow out air in a sharp, annoyed huff. “I hope he failed.”

“He didn’t, but for the sake of my curiosity, why would you hope that?”

“Because he’s just — he’s being a pain in the ass. He has been, for a while. Also, he has this really bad problem of talking too much even though it’s obvious you want him to shut up. And he thinks he’s hilarious when he’s just being mean.”

“To Jeno, you mean?”

“You heard about that?” You raise your eyebrows. “I thought you guys weren’t into talking about feelings or whatever.”

“We aren’t. Jeno literally said you know that Renjun guy? What’s his problem?, and I just naturally put the pieces together.” He shrugs.

“Yeah, well, I wonder that sometimes too.” You pluck out blades of grass aggressively, feeling your face heat up with residual fury from the thought of Renjun.

“Haven’t you guys been friends for years?”

“Yeah? So? He can’t be a jerk to me after all these years?” Your snippy tone cuts through your trance of anger, and you look back at Jaemin, who’s surprisingly not at all taken aback. He’s just looking at the dirty blades of grass in your fist with some mild form of interest. “Sorry. That was rude.”

“No, it’s okay. It’s not like I know what you really fought about. Although,” he adds as an afterthought. “If it’s about Jeno, I really don’t think he’s worth losing a friendship over. Don’t get me wrong; I mean, Jeno’s great. He’s my best friend.”

“Your mom loves him,” you interject helpfully, and he hums in agreement.

“But it’s not like you have only one position for a male friend in your life. You don’t have to trade Renjun for Jeno, or anything like that. Maybe you guys can just talk it out.”

Jaemin’s fingers are idly playing with the grass as well; instead of pulling them out, though, he’s just brushing his fingers through them like they’re the fur on his sleeping cat. It strikes you that Jaemin and Jeno are weirdly nothing alike; Jeno’s substantial physique totally eclipses Jaemin’s fairly leaner one, and they even talk differently, not to mention the fact that the latter is clearly lightyears ahead of the former academically. Still, they’re close — kind of like you and Renjun were. Are? Should be?

“Yeah — I guess,” you let go of the grass, watching them fall, crumpled, back into the dirt. “I guess you’re right.”

“Besides, if anyone were to replace Renjun as your best friend and confidant, it would obviously be me.” The light humor creeps back into his voice, and you smile slightly.

“Obviously.” It’s weird to think of Jaemin as coming close to the level of a best friend, but it’s also starting to hit you that he’s talking more like a friend than a casual neighborhood acquaintance, a particular relationship development that you didn’t think would be possible at the start of this school year — or, well, two weeks ago, actually.

You can see streams of people walking out of the cafeteria back into the main building; lunch time is nearly over, and this fact is confirmed by Jaemin suddenly tilting his head back along with his energy drink, downing its contents in swift, audible gulps, his Adam’s apple bobbing rhythmically. He lets out a refreshed exhale once he’s done, popping the cap back on.

“I have to get the class’s quizzes back from the faculty before I go in. Want to walk back together?”

“No, that’s okay,” you watch him shrug on his backpack, reaching out to fix the zipper that leaves it half-opened. He mumbles a thanks. “I’m going to sit here and finish watching this samoyed ASMR video until the bell rings.”

“Cool,” he stands, brushing off the grass and dirt from his jeans. “Well, see you around, _______________.”

You give him a wave, and he starts trekking across the field; you almost turn back to your video, which has been on pause since he’d arrived, but he calls out to you, walking backwards now instead of stopping like a normal person.

“By the way, you should know that ownership of my jacket comes with great responsibilities. More information to follow,” he calls out.

“Oh, shit,” you mumble to yourself; you’d forgotten about it, even if it’s been sitting on the chair by the front door for the majority of the week. You raise your voice to respond to him. “I’ll drop by later and give it back!”

“Don’t worry about it,” he waves away your words. “Whenever you remember.”

“I’ll do it after school,” you’re practically shouting now because he refuses to stay still. He gives you a thumbs up that looks minuscule from the distance between the two of you.

“I’ll hold you to it!” He gives one last wave, turning back around and jogging towards the main building.

You can see the little sweat patterns that are almost dried up on the back of his shirt, even if he’s so far away now; weirdly enough, they remind you of tiny angel wings.

This is the first Saturday in your life on which you wake up really early; you’re actually up to see the sunrise, which is something you haven’t seen since a Thursday during your second grade when you’d woken up, startled, to a stray cat making a mess of the trash cans in front of your house. You’re already oddly feverish and more than a little jittery from the moment you roll out of bed, which leads to you taking an hour-long shower that you use to create multiple scenarios involving Jeno’s visit. None of them end particularly well, especially the one where he drives up to your house only to tell you that he’s found a better partner before driving away. It’s at that point — as well as the point where you notice that the tips of your fingers have significantly pruned up — that you decide you’ve wasted enough time and water.

Still, even with the hour above you’ve killed, it seems way too early on a weekend to call someone, much less expect them. Now is actually one of the rarer times in your house that it’s fairly quiet, with only a few footsteps in adjacent rooms breaking the silence, so you take advantage of the opportunity to prepare. In this case, preparation really means taking out the piece of paper that had Jeno’s number, adding Jeno’s number, adding Jeno’s sister’s number, taking note of the project Jeno wants to do very briefly before deciding you have no tools to prepare for it, and then contemplating whether or not you should call Jeno or his sister now.  

Your final decision is to head down for breakfast and attempt to stop obsessing too much over the Jeno situation, and you’re surprised to see Jisoo at the table, a bowl of cereal in front of him that looks only a fraction of a percentage touched. His eyes are glued to his phone, and he’s scrolling madly away. He doesn’t even notice you as you open the refrigerator and let out a small noise of defeat as you learn he’s taken the last of the milk.

“Hey,” you finally speak up, setting down your glass of grape juice way too hard on the table so he snaps out of it; he fumbles with his phone, almost dropping it into his bowl of cereal. “Who are you talking to this early in the morning?”

“None of your business,” he mumbles, locking his screen.

“Okay. Well, it’s also none of my business, but your cereal milk is curdling.”

He looks down at the bowl, like he’s shocked to see that it’s somehow materialized in front of him, but he doesn’t respond, opting to shovel soggy cereal into his mouth to avoid having to speak. You both consume your food in silence for the most part, until he’s only got the last dregs of milk and some cereal he didn’t manage to stuff into his face swimming at the bottom of the bowl.

“You can’t tell Sooyeon noona,” he starts suddenly, and you put down your half-empty glass of juice.

“That’s a promise I cannot make without knowing what you’re hiding.”  

“It’s not bad. I swear. It’s just… if you tell her, she might do something about it, and I will literally never come out of my room again if she does.”  

You wrap your fingers around the glass, condensation sticking to your skin. “Fine. I won’t tell her. For now.”

“I’ve been… I’ve been talking to Kim Minjeong.”

Your mouth forms a tiny ‘o’, finally cottoning on to why he doesn’t want you blabbing to your sister; Kim Minjeong is in the same year as your sister, and she comes over sometimes after cheerleading practice. You like her, mostly because she’s undeniably nice and also because sometimes she brings egg custard tarts for the family, but you do know both of your brothers tend to avoid going down when your sister invites any of her friends over. You’d always naturally assumed that neither of them enjoyed the awkwardness that comes along with hanging around older girls you don’t know but have no choice to play host to (which is a specific and odd type of awkwardness, but a real one just the same), but that seems to be true for only one of your brothers now.

“Since when?”

“For a couple of months now. She — I don’t know,” Jisoo’s hands squeeze around his phone. “She’s so nice. She doesn’t treat me like a kid. Plus, I found out she watches Battlestar Galactica. The original and the remake.”

“Sounds like you’ve got a keeper. So what’s the big deal?”

“I mean, I like her, but I think she just… you know, she’s just nice to me because she has to be — because she’s friends with Sooyeon noona? And I don’t know if I should tell her I like her. And if I do, how should I tell her? And what am I going to do if she says she doesn’t like me back? And what do I do if Sooyeon noona finds out?”  

He lifts his eyes, looking at you expectantly, but you’ve been operating under the assumption that these questions are all rhetorical, and you have no response to offer. All you can do is shrug helplessly, which is extremely lame, and Jisoo looks even more devastated now.

“Well, how would you go about it?”

“You’re asking the wrong person,” you snort. “My signature move is stare and stutter. You having a conversation about Battlestar Galactica with a hot cheerleader is a lot, lot farther than I’ve gone.”

“Well, how did Jaemin hyung ask you out?”

“He — hang on — what?”  

“How did. Jaemin hyung. Ask you out?” He chops up his sentence like you’re a baby, and you smack his forearm. He doesn’t even flinch.

“He didn’t ask me out because we’re not together, as I repeatedly told you guys earlier this week.”

“Yeah, but some girls from my level saw the two of you near the teacher’s parking lot making out. Which reminds me — I think you have a couple of new… enemies from my year level. You should probably know that.”

“We weren’t making out! We were just talking. I’m —“ You almost want to say you’re loyal to Lee Jeno, but even in your head, it sounds a little pathetic. “I’m not into him. At all. Please don’t make me repeat myself.”

“Fine,” he sighs in frustration, as if it’s your fault that you’re single and therefore useless as a source of advice. “Well, what do you think I should do? If you were her — would you be creeped out by me asking you out?”

“Yeah. Because you’re my brother.”

“I mean if I weren’t.”

“Look, I can’t predict what she’s going to do; even if I were her closest friend, I wouldn’t know what the future was. Why can’t you just ask her out? If you’ve been thinking about it this much, then you’re obviously ready to try, right?”

“What if she says no? I’m going to have to live with Sooyeon noona knowing about it.”

“You’re going to have to live with her regardless, because she’s your sister,” you remind him. “And sooner or later, she’s going to find out. Personally, I think you should tell her. Sooyeon, I mean. She might be able to help you.”

“She might blab and ruin me. Sooyeon noona gossips so much.”

“Hey, watch it. I accept you looking down on me, but I will not have you have any negative opinions on our precious sister.”

“But it’s true,” he groans. You smack his arm again. This time, a tiny ow escapes him.  

“I know it is, but it’s her one and only flaw, anyway, and she’d never gossip if she knew it would affect you negatively. Talk. To. Her.”

“Fine,” he picks up his spoon, scraping off the soggy cereal that’s adhered to the bottom of the bowl. You flinch at the loud noise. “Fine, I will. But if this goes horribly, I’m blaming you.”

“You’ll do no such thing,” you say, raising your glass to your lips and finishing the last of your juice while your brother washes his bowl and retreats back into his room.

You can hear the rest of your family slowly waking up, and your mom is the next one to come down, announcing that she’s on her way to go to some quilt-making class that she’s been itching to go to for months. She asks you what you’re going to do today, and you talk about your project in as vague a way as possible so that she doesn’t continuously pry; luckily, she’s so excited about making a quilt today that she doesn’t even try to push it, simply promising to buy more milk on her way home from the class before heading out.

It still seems too early to expect Jeno, so you end up going up the stairs way too slowly, consequently annoying your youngest brother, who’s waiting to go down; he blows past you once you’ve reached the top of the stairs, muttering something about how girls always take their time. The end result of you trying to kill more time is you booting up the Sims on your laptop, making a new household and cheating your way into free real estate and a ton of money so you can move them into the fancier neighborhood. In the end, though, the yipping of the new dogs they’ve adopted gets to you, and you pause the game, finally picking up your phone.  

Unfortunately, it doesn’t even ring; the operator voice just tells you the number is unreachable at this time. It takes another five minutes for you to muster up the courage to call Jeno’s sister, who, to your relief, picks up after the third ring with a sleepy ‘hello?’

“Um… I’m sorry to wake you,” you don’t know why you’re whispering, but it just seems appropriate. “I’m… well, Jeno told me to call you if his phone isn’t ringing, so I just… sorry.”

“Oh,” there’s a pregnant pause that makes you wonder if she’s hung up the phone for a short, scary moment. “Oh, right; you’re probably ______________, right?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Yeah. Sorry. Jeno told me you might call. He’s probably got his phone turned off. I’ll go wake him up and tell him to contact you.”

“Thank you,” you’re still whispering when you hang up, and all the extra air escapes you in the form of a relieved sigh once the call drops. You return to your sims with a significantly lighter heart thereafter, and you even get them into cool new jobs before your youngest brother sticks his head into your room without knocking.

“______________ noona, Renjun hyung’s downstairs.”

You press the pause button so hard it actually sounds like the key has cracked, swiveling around in your study chair.

“Renjun? Huang Renjun?”

“Who else?” He sounds annoyed, but that’s how he usually sounds anyway, so you just brush it off. You think about telling your brother to tell him to go away, but your brother is already gone before you can finish deciding if you really want to do this, leaving your door ajar. With a groan, you slip off your chair, only momentarily distracted by your text message alert going off.

[ from; Lee Jeno ] hry sorry. 4got to charge my phone. Battery died. omw to u.

You don’t take the luxury of cooing over how cute his text sounds in your head, running down the stairs instead to see Renjun standing by the front door, twiddling his thumbs. He hears you charging down, looking up as you do so, and you can tell he’s swallowing hard because his Adam’s apple bobs dangerously in his throat. It’d be kind of funny if you weren’t equally as nervous.

“Hey,” he greets, his voice sounding a little choked up, like he hasn’t spoken for days — which, you know, is physically impossible for him.

“Uh. Hey. Why are you — what… are you doing here?” So maybe it comes out a little more accusatory than you’d initially intended, and you see that Renjun recoils a little. You feel bad about it. Kind of.

“I… um… we haven’t spoken for a few days.”

“I know that.”

“Right. Sorry. I was just hoping to talk to you.” He takes a deep breath. “I’m… I… you know.”

“Here to make fun of me? Like you’re so used to doing?” This time, his cringing brings about the slightest wave of pleasure in you, followed immediately by a larger, much more all-consuming attack of guilt.

“No, no. I came here to, you know. Apologize.”

“Oh.” You nod slowly. “I see.”

You wait for him to say something, but he’s just watching you, like he’s waiting for some kind of bigger reaction, except there’s absolutely nothing to react to, so you just give him a look that urges him to keep going.

“Right. Sorry. I mean — I’m sorry. I’m sorry for what I said back then.” He sighs, and it’s clear he thinks he’s digging his dignity’s grave deeper and deeper as he talks. “I have my reasons for not really liking Jeno. I don’t really know how much that’s going to change in the span of a few days. But I do know that I embarrassed you in front of him, and I don’t want to do that to you, ever. I’m sorry for that.”

“It was kind of embarrassing,” you agree.

“And, more importantly, I… I want to support you. I mean, I really don’t think you guys should get together, if I’m being honest,” he notices you bristling and hastens to add to his sentiments. “But I also know it’s not really about what I think. If you like him, and you’re happy around him, then… I’ll be okay with it. As long as he makes you happy.”

“We’re not together, Renjun,” you reply quietly. “I just like him. One-way crush — that’s it. It’s really, really not that big of a deal. I don’t want to fight just because I have a crush. If you liked someone, just liked them, I wouldn’t stop you from having feelings.”

“I know. I know you wouldn’t because that’s what good friends should be like. I should’ve been a better friend to you.” He takes in a shaky breath. “_______________, I’m really, really sorry. I hate fighting with you like this. Eating donkatsu alone without anyone to complain to about the moistness of the breading was torture.”  

You choke out a laugh, and it’s only then that you realize that you’ve been slowly tearing up. Even Renjun looks a little misty-eyed, which is weird for the both of you, considering that you only ever cry watching Ma Dongseok movies.

“It really was kind of soggy.” You agree, and he laughs loudly.

“So this is good, right? I mean… we’re good?”

“We’re good.” You and Renjun rarely hug, since there’s never any cause for it, but it seems appropriate to do so now; luckily, he must be on the same train of thought, because he envelops you in a tighter-than-usual hug. You spend a couple of seconds just standing in your living room, trying not to sniffle too loudly into each other’s ears.

“Anyway,” he starts up again when he pulls away, dabbing at his eyes with his sleeve. “I have to go home and help my mom with her garage sale today, but I’ll see you on Monday?”

“Definitely.”

“Cool. Oh — one more thing. Do you… think you can tell Jeno I’m sorry, too?”

“No,” you laugh. “No way. You tell him you’re sorry yourself.”

“Aw, come on,” Renjun whines, emphasizing his reluctance to do so by stamping his foot childishly. “There’s no context in which I’d be able to get to talk to him alone, anyway.”

“He’s coming over here in a few minutes to start on the project with me,” you inform him, and he actually looks a little crestfallen at this new information. “You can tell him you’re sorry then.”

“Fine,” he grumbles, sitting himself down on the chair near the front door only to sit back up, looking up at you in mild disbelief.

“You still haven’t given Jaemin’s jacket back?”

“Oh, shit. Yeah. Well, I keep forgetting!” You defend yourself.

“He lives right next to you! You could even ask your brothers to do it if you promised to pay them 10,000 won!”  

“Yeah, but giving it back through someone else when I could just do it myself just seems so rude, you know?”

“And keeping it even though you have no reason to is polite in your head?”

“Shu— oh, oh, he’s here,” you cut yourself off as you hear the crunch of tires on your driveway, signaling that Jeno had parked in the spot your mom had left behind when she’d gone for her quilting class. Renjun flies off the chair and presses his back against the door before you can fling it open. “Hey!”

“Can you relax for one second? He’s getting out of his car. If you open the door now, you’ll look crazy.”

“Oh,” you pause, considering his words. “Good catch.”

A few moments later, the doorbell rings, and you shoo Renjun away from the door to open it. Jeno’s form is literally blocking the view of the outside, and you briefly wonder if this is more of a testament of his physique or proof that your family is just made up of small people. Or both.

“Hey, sorry,” he pulls off his baseball cap, which leaves his hair adorably flat and messy. “I overslept a little. Also, just in case, I brought my g — oh.”

Jeno stops when his eyes land on Renjun, who’s now miraculously standing behind you, looking like he wants to disappear. The look on Jeno’s face is stony, but he tears his gaze back to you anyway.

“Is this a bad time? I can come back. I’m sure Jaemin’s awake by now.”

“No, it’s cool. Renjun just… dropped by.” You step back so that Renjun is in the forefront, and he shoots you a withering glare. “He actually has something to say to you.”

“Does he?” Jeno doesn’t even sound interested, but he focuses on Renjun again anyway. “What’s that?”

“Look, dude,” you’ve never heard Renjun call anyone dude before, and it makes you snort, a noise which the both of them ignore. “I’m sorry about the other day. It was totally uncool of me, and I shouldn’t have said what I did. I didn’t mean any of it.”

“Oh,” Jeno clearly wasn’t expecting an apology, but he looks pleased anyway. “Okay. Well, apology accepted.”

“Thanks,” even though it’s what he’d wanted, Renjun doesn’t sound too enthusiastic about receiving forgiveness. “And I mean it. I give you both my blessing. You can… pursue this relationship without any more active, explicit judgment from me. Good feelings for everyone, and all that.”

“Okay,” you cut in, not missing the fact that he’d gone out of his way to add active and explicit to allow himself the sneaky sliver of opportunity to judge Jeno in silence. The latter is looking at him, befuddled again. “That’s all you wanted to say, isn’t it, Renjun?”

“I’m not even sure if all of it was what I really wanted to say,” he sighs defeatedly at you. "But yes; I’m good.”

“Cool,” you push him towards the door; Jeno steps aside to let him through, and Renjun walks out, looking a little dazed, like his body can’t handle the idea that he’d just apologized to Jeno and is in the process of going into total shock. “Bye, Renjun. See you on Monday.”

You hear him mumble something as he trudges away, and Jeno follows his movements in silence until he disappears down the sidewalk.

“Was that weird, or—?”

“Yeah, it was kind of weird,” you admit, ushering him in. “But he means well. Anyway, putting that aside, should we get started on the actual proposal?”

“Did he say he gave us his blessing?” Jeno suddenly starts echoing Renjun’s words like they’re only starting to sink in now.

“Oh. Yeah — I wouldn’t really think too much of it,” you wave it away as Jeno settles down on your couch. “Smart people tend to say crazy things. So, I was thinking about the topic you picked, and I think the physics lab has a digital multimeter. We can check if it has that option for measuring sound frequency.”

“Uh huh,” he still looks like he’s not latching onto the topic change, whacking his baseball hat onto his thigh idly. “Sounds good.”

“You know… I’m going to go and get my laptop first,” you announce. Jeno makes a sound of assent, and you run upstairs into your room again. Your Sims game is still going on, and your laptop’s fan is working on overdrive. You press quit a good ten times, not bothering to save the game and open up Facebook, typing out an angry message to Renjun.

You: WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU

Na Jaemin: ??????

You: oops sorry wrong send !

Na Jaemin: lol good morning to u too

You leave Jaemin on read, focusing on your mission to chastise Renjun and opening the right chat.

You: WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Huang Renjun: IDK WHAT HAPPENED THAT WAS SO WEIRD

Huang Renjun: I SAID BLESSING JDGJSSJSF

You: I KNOW I WAS THERE

Huang Renjun: I KNOW IM SORRYRIJSPJG

You: DOSIJGSJG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You almost make it out of your room before having to double back, realizing you’re leaving behind the laptop you came up to get, and run back down, finding Jeno in the same position with the same perplexed look on his face. He, thankfully, doesn’t notice how red your face is when you sit down.

“Okay. Sorry. Should we start?”

“What? Oh, yeah of course,” he shakes his head as through trying to break himself from a trance.

“So I was saying, we could probably borrow one of those multimeters from the lab, but we’d need a written request for that. Also, I think we need to figure out—”

“Sorry, I just really need to ask,” Jeno interrupts you, and your voice dies in your throat. “That thing Huang Renjun said —”

“I’m really sorry.” You sigh, realizing the topic is unavoidable. “It was weird. I’d say he’s not usually like that, but…”  

Jeno nods, staring at the inside of his cap, which is now settled on his lap. His long fingers are playing with the backstrap idly, and you wonder if what you’ve said is enough to make him drop the conversation. Unfortunately, you can tell he’s still on it when he looks up at you seriously, leading you to a sharp, uncomfortable inhale.

“You… didn’t tell him we were dating, did you?”