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Chapter Text

Life had to be a fucking joke.

At least his life had to be – it was complex, convoluted, confusing, complicated.

In his whole sixteen years of the ‘blessing’ called life, Han Jisung had wished for something to be simple, easy, something straight-forward like purchasing instant ramen over the counter of a convenience store.

An interaction, a transaction, a trade.

Something logical, something simple, something that made sense – something the opposite of his complete shit-show of a life.

But it wasn’t.

And he hated it.

Sighing, he puffed out the smoke he had let settle into his lungs, watching it with a bored mirth as it drifted past his swollen lips and into the dark city sky.

He took another drag, the butt of the cigarette illuminating his soft features and let the nicotine’s calm wash over him.

It had been a long day – the first day of school always was.

With shitty timing, tonight had also been one of Chan’s DJ-ing gigs and Jisung would be a bad friend if he didn’t show up and help. It was a strange China-themed bar, that had Chinese characters graffitied all over the walls, and bartenders dressed up in traditional Chinese wear, which Jisung was pretty sure was culturally inappropriate.

It wasn’t even the Spring festival time – it was early autumn, so he still had no idea why it was being thrown in the first place. Not like the shady part of Seoul had a large Chinese population anyway.

He pulled two fortune cookies he’d grabbed on the way out of the party out of his pocket, his Marlboro dangling from his lips. He bit into the thin crust of one to reveal the paper inside.

He winced as he chewed it. It was stale; bland.

So, he spat it on the pavement and unravelled the paper instead.

‘They say when an old man passes, a new child is born – a soul for a soul.’

He huffed. If only it were that simple.

“Yo, Sung,” a raspy voice he recognised as one of his only two friends called out. Jisung took another drag when the shorter boy reached him, an unlit stick resting between his own lips.

“What?” Jisung asked, looking away from the boy. He motioned towards the bar with a flick of his head. “Shouldn’t you be back in there?”

“Nah,” Changbin said, resting on the wall similarly to Jisung. “Chan’s got it covered.”

Jisung nodded but said no more. Chan was older than the both of them – for two years he had been the one that bartered to get them into pubs and bars and handed a few thousand won under the table to the bartender each time when they ordered some shots.

“Here,” Jisung said and passed him the second fortune cookie. He turned back to look at the stars while Changbin unwrapped it.

“They say when an old man passes, a new child is born – a soul for a soul” Changbin read out and Jisung scowled.

“We got the same one? What bullshit.”

He held the slip of paper over his cigarette and watched it burn.

“You heading home soon?” Changbin asked, shaking his head when Jisung wordlessly offered the lighter towards him.

“Maybe” the younger replied, smoke billowing into the cold air like a cloud. A few seconds of contemplative, but not uncomfortable silence trickled through them like water down a faulty pipe.

Changbin turned to face him and Jisung already knew what the elder was going to offer.

“We've got an extra bed if you need it – Chan-hyung wouldn’t mind-”

“No,” he interrupted, sucking in some more smoke. “I’m good.”

Changbin just nodded and turned away so his back rested against the cold wall.

The door’s opening startled them both and neon party light shone onto their faces before a ditzy girl vomited all over her clunky plastic high heels.

“Jesus” Changbin muttered as the girl hacked her meal of salads and vodka onto her pedicure.

Jisung curled his lip up in disgust. He looked away and took another drag.

“Hey, get up” Changbin called out to the drunk girl and when she just moaned on the floor, he reluctantly walked over to her, tapping on her shoulder, then offering her his hand.

“C’mon, on your feet.”

Jisung watched the elder heave the girl up so she was standing again.

“I’ll get her inside” Changbin smiled minutely at him in parting. “See you ‘round Sung,” and with then, with the girl’s arms around his narrow but strong shoulders, he disappeared into the party.

Jisung sighed, thankful for the relative quiet once again, apart from the trap music boosting through the small pub’s brick walls or the distant sound of police sirens.

His phone’s irritating ringtone cut through the somewhat quiet of the city, the silence of his thoughts and snuffing the little flame of the tip of his stick out against the wall, he answered the phone.

“Yeah?” his voice cracked, rough and brittle.

“Get home now Jisung” the static-like voice commanded. Begged.

He waited, pushing the boundary, edging on the line.

“Jisung” the voice, his mother’s voice pleaded again. “Please come home, it’s late and it’s… not safe out there.”

He exhaled, wishing there was smoke rather than his own warm breath filtering through his cracked lips. In some ways his mother was right – just one month ago a teenage girl from his neighbouring school, Lee Yewon or something like that, got kidnapped just on these streets.

This party sucked anyway.

“Fine” he spat before hanging up the phone.

He heard his heart beat loudly in his ears after the phone call. Thud. Thud. Thud.

He hated feeling this anxiousness like it was going to kill him. There was only one way to calm it, stop it; only one way he knew how to.

So, he pulled out his lighter and box of Marlboro’s and started the long walk home, a flame, like a light, guiding him home.

School was a bore.

Everyone there was irritating, fake, trying too hard.

Jisung hated it all.

“Would you like to donate some money towards Seoul’s anti-human trafficking movement?”

Jisung glanced up bitterly under his stained hoodie, annoyed that the sparkly voice of the school captain Lee Minho cut through his favourite part of Chan’s most recent rap.

“No” the refused bluntly, pushing past the elder boy and continuing the treacherous journey to his classroom.

He watched the high school hallway like he wasn’t even experiencing it. The happy faces at lockers, the constant chatter and shine of the high school he despised with a passion.

Changbin didn’t go here anymore – he dropped out last year to start work at his father’s metalwork store. Chan had graduated last year too, so here, Jisung was truly alone.

A bouncy girl, perhaps his age, smiled and walked in front of him, blocking his path with a sign-up sheet in her hand. “Would you like to join the pottery clu-”

“No” Jisung growled again, glaring at the chirpy girl until her fake smile dropped and her hands faltered.

Jisung stared at her until she shrunk down and moved out of his way.

“I can’t believe she just fully asked him that, does she not know who he is?” a whisper sounded from left.

He froze in his steps, his scowl replaced with a shocked blankness. They’re… talking about me…

“I know,” came the hushed gossip again, “I heard he beat up a senior last week – can’t you see those bruises on his knuckles?”

He looked down at his hands, expecting a myriad of purples and blues, but there was nothing. Just tanned skin. But they were trembling, his tell-tale sign of an upcoming anxiety attack.

Not now he begged his mind, but it was already starting to shut down, stop thinking, stop working.

“Han Jisung is so scary – I’m glad I was lucky enough to get no classes with him.”

“Damn,” someone said, their voice distorted and echoey in his ears. “I have English with him and when he does show up, he’s such a dick – always picking a fight with the teacher and glaring at Hwang Hyunjin-”

His breath caught in his throat.

Itching for a cigarette, a calmness, a constant, something to relieve him of his stupid, stupid anxiety, he eyed the open side door, it’s light calling him.

Then, the final arrow. “Don’t you remember what he did last year?”

His vision blurred. Chan-hyung? Changbin-hyung? Where are you?

He had to get out, get out, get out, out, out, out, out-

Before the world could see how pathetic he was being, how vulnerable he was – before they could all taunt and mock and gossip and-

Bang!

The morning school bell rang, and students rushed past him like a river, obscuring his view and he knew the opportunity had slipped out of his hands.

His heart slowed down. The voices were gone.

It’s fine, you’re fine he tried to convince himself.

Robotically, ignoring someone’s eyes glued to his back, he started walking.

And so, he went to class, chemistry actually - surprisingly not his least favourite one.

He didn’t mind the content – although he would never admit it, he actually quite enjoyed learning about atoms and balancing equations, but he never worked hard enough to do well in it.

Jisung rolled his eyes when he sat down, in his desk at the back-left corner of the classroom, right by the door so he could get out of there as quickly as possible when it finished.

The teacher started to talk – yap like a stupid yappy small dog that served nothing more than an irritation, and Jisung sighed loudly at the commotion bursting his eardrums, his previous panic having mostly subsided.

A student to his right, a boy with a freckled face that Jisung had firstly, never seen before, and secondly couldn’t decide if the rare un-Korean feature was pretty or weird, tapped his pencil quickly against the table; fidgeting uncomfortably at every word.

Thud, thud, thud the pencil sounded across the room and Jisung put on his nastiest scowl and glared at the student, hoping to catch his attention and scare him off.

But freckle-face didn’t stop.

Anger flooded his system like a fire in his veins.

“Hey, can you shut the fuck up?” Jisung snapped, clenching a fist under the table.

That at least seemed to catch the other’s attention because he jumped so high, he almost fell off his desk-chair.

Jisung scoffed at the boy’s weakness before turning away, ignoring the few stares his crude words had attracted.

The teacher yipped and yapped about how ‘disrespectful’ his behaviour was, and Jisung just wished for the familiar taste of nicotine and ash on his tongue, lathering the fire of insults forming in his mind that if he said aloud, would definitely get him expelled.

He couldn’t do that. His mother would have a conniption, but he didn’t really care about that.

More importantly, he promised Chan and Changbin last month he would do his best to not cause any ‘scenes’ in school – at least not any that could get him kicked out.

He remembered the conversation, the conversation all three of them had at Changbin's favourite spicy kebab restaurant (the boy always overestimated his ability to eat spicy food and always put on too much 'Siracha' sauce which left all three of them in balls of laughter) when Jisung had finished his sophomore year, well:

“I know you Jisung, you love to learn,” Chan had started, a grin on his face when Jisung had fake-groaned at the elder’s accurate, but still embarrassing statement. “And graduating always looks good, so don’t do anything stupid while we can’t protect you, okay?”

“Both physically and in the school system” Changbin butted in before Jisung could even try to speak.

Jisung opened his mouth to protest, however, as per usual Changbin was right. There had been countless times one of the pair had helped him get out of a fight or take some heat or the full blame for him when Jisung screwed up big time, a starting-to-be common experience.

“You aren’t doing your final year, hyung” Jisung had whined towards the older, pouting when the other’s expression morphed from a poorly-put-together façade of seriousness to humoured.

“Yeah,” Changbin smirked, shifting his weight so he leaned against his booth. “Because I was failing everything, and my Dad needs help at shop. For me, it was the right option, but I swear to god every time you had history last year you wouldn’t stop talking my ear off about how ‘cool’ it all was.”

Jisung hid his blushed face and his hands at that, Okay, History was his guilty pleasure and yes, he had forced the elder to stay on a two-hour call with him when he ranted about the Korean War and its origins, but still!

“I know it’s not going to be the easiest without us there for you next year, Sung,” Chan continued, returning the conversation back to one of seriousness. “But instead of punching anybody, or throwing a chair at a wall-”

(Jisung cringed at that memory. Freshman year was a bad time.)

“-How about you take some of those deep breaths we’ve all been talking about, walk away, then get your ass up here and take your anger out on me?”

Jisung scoffed at that, trying to hide his affectionate smile. “What Chan-hyung? You volunteer to be my personal punching bag?”

“Well it’s better him getting a broken nose than you getting expelled Sungie” Changbin said.

Jisung laughed as Chan rubbed the bridge of his nose, whining about how it would ‘ruin his perfect visuals’ or something like that, but slouched in defeat.

“Okay guys” he drawled out, cocking an eyebrow to try and keep some sense of coolness despite what he was about to say. “I will try – keyword try – to not do anything stupid, okay?”

“No over-dramatic yelling?” Changbin quipped.

“Nope.”

“No hissy fits?”

“None-”

“No chairs going through windows and then making Chan-hyung pay for it?”

“No!” Jisung whined, gently shoving the elder away over the table, who was cackling at his own comment. “I’m better than that now!”

“Sure, sure,” Chan said, his dimples on his cheeks and his eyes light. “You promise us Jisung?”

He paused. Jisung. Whenever Chan dropped the nicknames, it meant that he meant business.

“Yeah, Hyung,” he said, looking between his best friends. “I promise.”

And he intended to fulfil that as well as he could.

Forcing himself to calm down a little, Jisung watched as the teacher went back to the board and freckles looked frozen as he turned back to his textbook.

He smirked at his easy-to-get power and went back to his mindless daze.

Soon enough his little ‘incident’ was forgotten, just like how it was every other lesson when he said something snarky to an irritating student, and the class went on.

The reason why he hated the class, apart from freckle-face’s anxiousness, was actually because of the other students; more specifically one.

There was an intelligent boy there – always one-hundred per cent on tests and exams, and always the first to answer the teacher’s question, his hand shooting up so fast it was like he was volunteering to win a million won rather than explain the difference between miosis and mitosis.

Kim Seungmin was almost the bane of his existence.

He was gifted, unnaturally so, and Jisung hated that even with his talents, he never stopped working.

It was infuriating, irritating.

Kim Seungmin was a puzzle he could never work out, something more complex than a simple interaction, or exchange. So different to everybody else at this school, so out-of-field but at the same time so ordinary - so mind-numbingly boring and plain.

In freshman year Jisung had thought of the nickname Mr. Appropriate for him due to his sycophantic tendencies and polished look. It had stuck.

Han Jisung hated him.

The bell rang for the next class what seemed like an eternity later and he grabbed the books he never opened, the scrappy pencil-case he never touched and left before the yappy teacher could even properly dismiss them.

He checked his timetable for second period while walking down the basically empty hallway.

He almost laughed. English. Yeah, never mind – fuck that.

He swivelled to avoid Lee Minho’s stupid hall monitoring and escaped out of a fire exit.

Then he lit a Marlboro and left.

“Han Jisung the school called me, ya know! You can’t be skipping classes!”

The thundering sound of footsteps racing up the creaky house stairs made Jisung groan and he twisted his producing headphones off his ears before his mother could scold him for that too, and he spun in his desk chair to face the door before it slammed open.

“Jisung they told me you only went to one class today!”

Jisung bit his lip; a small ounce of guilt dripping through him.

His school wasn’t free – his mother worked long hours to be able to send him there.

But he brushed it off as soon as it started to infest in his body, deflate his lungs and weigh down his heart.

“Yeah,” he claimed, trying to remain nonchalant. “I hate English.”

“And did you have English for all of your lessons today?” his mother asked sarcastically, her hands on her hips. 

Jisung paused, his fingers halted from dancing over his old keyboard. “No.”

His mother sighed, leaning against the doorframe.

“Go to school tomorrow Jisung, The whole day.”

He didn’t answer. He didn’t like to make promises he knew he wouldn’t be able to keep.

“Hey, ya sister called,” his mother said and that caught his interest.

“Jihyin?” he asked despite only having one sister. He took his headphones off his neck. “Well, how is she?”

His mother sighed. “Good, Jisung she’s good. She sent a photo and she looks huge.”

Jisung almost felt offended on behalf of Jihyin before remembering that his sister was pregnant, and not in fact overweight.

“Right” he nodded stiffly. God she was going to have a baby. He was terrible with kids.

“Anything else you need to tell me?” his mother asked, interrupting his spiralling thoughts thinking about having to hold his niece or nephew and their loud cries when he inevitably did something wrong.

“No.”

His Mum left a few moments later.

Closing down his laptop and taking out his USB, Jisung, out the window, left too.

“You sure you’re good to go home this late? We have a spare bed if you want” Chan asked, tossing him back the USB of the song he was working on.

“God, hyung” Jisung shoved the fluoro orange stick in his hoodie pocket and pulled out his earbuds for his music. “You somehow sound like my Mum and Changbin at the same time, and no thanks.”

Chan laughed at that, his dyed blonde curly locks bouncing with his movements. At the sight, Jisung ran a hand through his own orange-brown hair. It was so straight, so simple, so boring.

The pair had worked late into the night. Every few days Jisung would pop around to Chan and Changbin’s shared apartment, only a few blocks away from his own house, and the three of them would all produce some music the cramped studio Chan made with a terrible mic and Styrofoam on the walls.

Music was the reason the three were friends. Jisung had met them in his first year of high school when Chan started a rap club and they were the only ones to show up with some scribbled lyrics and big dreams.  (On their one-month anniversary Changbin, who Jisung had once been intimidated by, had taken them to a little tucked away kebab restaurant, one he claimed was the best one in the whole of Korea. Jisung, of course, had been sceptical but had to admit, the food was perfect. It had been their little ‘special’ place ever since.)

Every once in awhile, Chan would suggest combining their solo music, the separately produced tracks and single raps to be a group of some sorts, but the trio had never gotten around for it.

There was always next year.

“Alright Sung, get home safe” Chan wished his dimples showing.

Jisung checked his phone. “It’s already one?” He glanced out the window into the dark night, or, more fittingly, the extremely early morning. “Shouldn’t Binnie-hyung be home by now?”

Chan looked away from his heavy-duty brick of a computer.

“He should be home soon – he told me he had to work late for his Dad.”

Jisung frowned his mouth in a firm line.

Changbin had been working overtime more recently these days. He knew that the boy and his father weren’t very well off – after all, it was difficult when not many people needed a sword welded for them, unlike the 1800s where the Seo Swordsmith’s and Metalwork had been a booming business.

Now they just got broken dishwashers and scrap metal.

“But there are gangs out,” Jisung said, a hint of concern dripping into his voice. “Isn’t it better if he just refused to work overtime and got home earlier?”

Chan eyed him again. “Now you’re starting to sound like the worry-wart. Besides you’re the one who wants to walk home now rather than just staying here.”

Jisung paused in slinging his backpack over his shoulder. Chan was right. He was being hypocritical, and he shouldn’t pry.

“Guess so” he mumbled, sticking the earbuds in his ears and choosing Changbin’s most recently produced song. “I’ll see you around Channie-hyung.”

Chan offered a weird little salute thing before turning back to his laptop, a lukewarm gritty coffee beside him and Jisung took it as his cue to leave.

“Go to your classes, Sung!” the Australian called as Jisung left the room and he let a smile slide onto his face before exiting out the front door and into the night.

Seoul’s autumn was cold. Every time he left the house, he never knew whether to bring an extra jacket and be too hot for an hour or whether to leave it at home, be comfortable for a while, then get cold.

Unlike Chan, however, he didn’t find the unreliable weather burdening. Rather he liked it in some strange way – it was simple, easily understood. He didn’t know why he liked some things so simple and yet hated it when people were so two-dimensional.

A loud yell startled him, and he peered cautiously to his left where two older boys were walking by, drinks in hand.

God, drunk gang-members – although something he wasn’t surprised by, it was still jarring each time at the casualness of it all.

He shoved his hands deeper into his pockets and increased his pace. Sure, he could protect himself in a fight – Chan had taught how to give and take a punch but showing up to school with a busted lip or a black eye again would just cause more trouble than what it was worth.

He steered clear of the two men, and they either didn’t notice him in their shared drunken stupor or didn’t care.

He climbed back through his window when he arrived home, holstering himself up a pipe on the side of the house. The front door was too loud at night, creaked like hell, so he never used it as he didn’t want to awake his mother.

His footsteps were silent on the floorboards, expertly avoiding the creaky planks and carefully he snaked his way to the other bedroom, his mother’s bedroom.

He poked his head around the door.

She was asleep, nestled between pillows and blankets.

He eyed the empty bottle next to her and felt his heart sag with guilt. She drank because of him, because of his actions and his attitude, because he was turning into a person like his father.

With a ghost of a breath he closed the door again.

The house felt silent, empty and Jisung felt himself ruminating on his life back in Malaysia where, upon the divorce, his father and elder sister, due to her boyfriend-now-fiancé, had decided to stay while he and his mother returned to South Korea two years ago.

The house always felt so much livelier there, more passion and love burning at the edges like the freshly baked cookies his older sister of seven years had always made.

But that was the past.

His mother was safe, fine.

There was no time to focus on what couldn’t be changed, what he couldn’t fix, what couldn’t have been stopped.

So, he crept away from his mother’s bedroom and slipped between his own bedsheets, thinking about his old life, his old home, how happy he used to be.

But it was gone, all gone.

And in the darkness, the loneliness of his bedroom he drifted off into an uneasy sleep.

When the ‘mentor’ program was presented one afternoon to the junior year level, Jisung couldn’t help but scoff.

Seriously? I have to teach some sophomore brat about classes and ‘spirit’? He thought, already ridiculing the stupid idea. The day had been going fine – he forced himself to actually attend all his classes despite not really paying attention in any of them except for History. When freckle-face even switched out his erratic pencil-tapping for gum chewing in Chemistry, he had even reigned in his irritation and had managed to ignore it!

But this had really put a spanner in his works of a school day without him seriously fucking up.

Looking around the assembly hall of his hundred or so peers, and the younger year level on the opposite side he almost laughed again when some of them looked genuinely excited about the whole prospect!

God, spending time with a random teenager just one year younger than him sounded like his worst nightmare. Most people knew who he was – ‘Han Jisung – local bad boy and maybe drug dealer’ was his most common rumour, and every time it put others off, made them stay away from him like he was the plague.

Sure, he didn’t mind it last when Chan and Changbin were at his side, also donning similar ‘bad-boy’ fantasies made up about them (to be fair it wasn’t too far from the truth), but now… as much as he hated to admit it, it just made him feel alone.

He had no one here. But that was fine, he told himself. Everyone at his damn high school was so fake, it wasn’t like if he even managed to find someone to talk to, they would be real with him anyway.

“Kim Seungmin, Park Sunghwan!” the Headmaster called out, a sheet of names and pairings in between his fatty fingers.

Jisung scowled at the sight, slumping back in his chair. Mr. Dok. He hated that guy with every fibre of his being.

He peered at the thin, wiry, constantly nervous-looking woman next to him, passing the man the sheets. She’s the school councillor – not successful enough to be a real psychologist but a more respectable position than half the school’s teaching staff.

Mrs Gwan if he bothered to remember correctly. He’d been forced in and out of her office twice a week during the worst time of his freshman year (yes, the chair incident), and he was still labelled a ‘case’ for her to this day.

He looked away when she met his eyes, and instead spread his legs more, a subtle sign of disrespect the body language experts would note down as 'disobedience of an authority figure'.

“Hwang Hyunjin, Sun Melissa!”

There was a jeer from the crowd as popular ass-hat Hwang Hyunjin stood up, a beaming perfect smile on his face and bowed to the shorter half-Korean girl, who looked extremely flushed at her match-up.

He rolled his eyes when the pair sat together and there was a small uproar of squeals from the local fifteen-year-old female population when the boy slicked his hair back like it was the most sexually arousing thing any of them had seen.

Jesus, that prick’s so conceited Jisung thought to himself, stretching out his legs to rest upon the top of the next chair, ignoring the way someone inched away from him like he was going to kick them instead.

Mr. Dok called out more names and Jisung watched the almost comical awkward first bows between two people, waiting for his own name to be said, and then he’d have to go up there and do whatever stupid thing too.

He waited as more names of people he hadn’t even heard of went up and greeted the ‘buddy’ who they were going to be ‘seeing twice a week in the authorised time’ where they would all usually have to suffer through thirty minutes of morning assembly anyway.

Maybe it won’t even be that bad he reasoned with himself. Spending an hour-a-week with a random kid for three months or however long fatso said this mentorship would last for is definitely better than the complete waste-of-time of morning assemblies or ‘de-stress sessions.’

Who knows, maybe the brat will be so scared of me I won’t even have to talk to him.

“Alright, you know have the remaining ten minutes to get to know your buddy before last period begins,” Mr Dok addressed to the two-hundred-or-so students of both year levels combined.

That made Jisung straighten up.

He looked around, his ears burning with the complete audacity of the situation. He wasn’t called? On purpose? That was basically discrimination!

“Hey!” he yelled out, making a sea of heads turn towards him. Mr. Dok almost dropped the papers through his slimy sausage-like fingers. Mrs. Gwan looked paler than ever.

He stood up, fire moving like blood through his whole body. “Hey! You didn’t read out my name!”

There was a murmur through the crowd, but he barely registered it, blood pounding in his ears and his vision tunnelled into the papers in that mother-fucker’s hands.

He clenched his fists and started his approach towards the stage, a rage in his eyes. “Hey! You deaf? I just told you, you didn’t read out my name!”

“J-Jisung” Mrs. Gwan stuttered when he reached the pair and Jisung poked his tongue in the inside of his cheek to try and conceal his anger, which was a futile attempt.

“Jisung, how about we go into my office and talk about this?” Mrs Gwan tried again, but he barely noticed her, intent on getting the headmaster’s answer instead.

“Huh?” he challenged again leaning in close so he could smell the putrid scent of barbeque pringles of the man’s breath and see the crumbs scattered on his upper lip. “What you think I’m gonna kill the kid?”

He watched in satisfaction as Mr. Dok’s face turned from a pale almost white to an ugly colour of green then to a reddish-purple as his temper shifted.

“Han Jisung” the man began quietly, his voice clipped and strained. “You will speak respectfully to me, and these sorts of futile attention-grabbing outbursts are the exact reason the teaching staff agreed you would miss out on this opportunity.”

He felt his jaw drop.

“Attention-grabbing?” he exclaimed in disbelief, ignoring the gasps of the other students around him. “Attention-grabbing” he repeated again, tipping his head to the side in a truly pissed-off fashion. “You think I’m fuckin’ mad, so I can ‘grab’ the attention of-”

He swung to the crowd, about to use their stupid gaping faces to make an example out of them but when he saw the shock in their eyes he faltered. He visualised Changbin and Chan sitting at the back, their faces grim and let-down, shaking their heads in the way that they could only do to make him feel guilty.

‘It’s not worth it, Sung,’ he imagined Chan reprimanding him. ‘What about our promise?’

His temper flipped and the adrenaline fuelling his anger drained out of him at once. He looked at the stunned faces with a new disdain, standing on the stage somewhat like Macbeth just before his fatal flaw was his downfall.

God, he was tired.

“Alright Jisung, let Mrs. Gwan escort you to my office” Mr. Dok whispered sternly, also realizing that two whole year levels had just witnessed Jisung’s ‘tantrum’ too. “We can talk about this there.”

Jisung felt his heart drop and his hands started to tremble at the comprehension of what he had done.

Shit…Chan and Changbin-hyung are going to be so disappointed.

“H-Hold on” a voice came from the back of the auditorium and Jisung lifted his head to see a skinny boy with bright red hair standing up, with his left hand uncertainly raised.

“Yes?” Mr. Dok asked, the interruption unexpected.

“Um,” the boy fidgeted under the wave of glances turned towards his and Jisung felt suspicion rise in his chest as his brow furrowed; perplexed. “I don’t think my name was called out either? I’m new to the school, so I don’t think I’m on the roll…”

The boy took another breath and straightened up, gazing at Jisung with determination in his brown eyes. “If he… doesn’t have a partner, I’d be happy to… be it.”

Jisung felt his eyebrows shoot up in surprise and while gawking and turned to Mr. Dok, who had his eyes knitted together in thought.

Say yes, I can’t deal with Friday morning assemblies, please say-

“Fine” the headmaster decided, still looking unsure if it was the right decision or not.

Jisung marvelled at the change of events, already crafting the perfect story to tell Chan and Changbin and he expertly leapt off the stage and made his way over to the red-head, trying not to let the small sliver of joy show in his facial expression at all.

“Hey, kid, what’s your name?” he asked when the quiet had risen into another sea of buzzing students whispering about ‘Han Jisung’s most recent spectacle,’ and the attention was off the sophomore.

The unnaturally red red-head smiled unsurely and Jisung suppressed the swell in his heart upon noticing just how young the boy looked; braces on and everything.

“I’m Yang Jeongin” the boy cutely bowed.

Jisung dipped his head in response and thought of what to say next.

“Well, Jeongin, I’m Han Jisung,” he smirked, sticking his hands into the green hoodie he stole from Changbin or maybe Chan. “Welcome to hell.”

Jeongin tipped his head back and laughed and Jisung managed a surprised chortle too.

His heart felt light.

Maybe, just maybe, he’d made a new friend.

“-And then I said ‘hey, kid – welcome to hell’ and he laughed like I was a full-time comedian or something!”

Chan snickered nicely and Jisung grinned at the elder, who maybe hadn’t been listening the whole time due to the expensive headphones laying over his mop of curly hair.

Jisung faltered when he remembered why Chan treasured them so much – his family had been quite well off, bought the apartment for his and everything. But when the elder came out as bisexual, his parents had cut him off. Those headphones were the last thing they ever bought him.

“Hey” Chan clicked his fingers right in front of his face, and Jisung flinched away before recovering his seat on a spindly chair in front of the recording booth. “Why are you looking at me with those sad eyes, huh?”

“N-Nothing” Jisung spluttered, pulling his head out of the depressing rainclouds. He turned his body towards the rather shitty but homely recording booth where Changbin was warming up with a few of his signature ‘yohs.’

“Alright, ready Bin?” Chan called out, his finger hovering over the record button.

Jisung fidgeted in anticipation for his hyung’s rap; it was a song that the elder had been working on for weeks now, and Jisung had even helped with the backing track.

When Changbin started, it was like Jisung’s whole life stopped.

It was beautiful – a dark gravelly tone with powerful rhymes and lines, but the lyrics all held a hint of hope, a desire for something better and a determination to act on it. It seemed completely effortless, the way words slipped off his tongue like raindrops off a bay leaf and twisted into intelligent messages that were completely breath-taking.

When Changbin finished, he looked away from the microphone, a small grin on his face.

“That was… really good, hyung” Jisung complimented, still a little overwhelmed from the rap. He looked at his schoolbag, where his own little notebook he used for writing was, and he couldn’t help but feel a little insecure.

Changbin was truly amazing – his tone was unique and dark, contrasting his light messages of hope. Opposite to himself where his tone was light, but his words were so angry, so bitter, so… meaningless.

“Oh – uh, I gotta go,” Changbin said out of the blue and Jisung snapped out of his rather sad epiphany.

“Hm?” Chan cocked his head, looking away from the audio recording. “Don’t you want to finish up this part so we can move on tomorrow?”

Jisung frowned slightly at Changbin’s rather unusual behaviour. It was only five o’clock – usually, all three of them would work till ten or so then go out to whatever party Chan somehow got invited but didn’t want to go alone to.

“Nah, I should probably head,” Changbin said, hooking up the recording headphones on the nail Jisung had hammered in last summer and he haphazardly grabbed his bag. “Uh – my Dad’s shop just… caught on fire-”

“Wait what?” Jisung exclaimed jumping up from his seat, “A fire?”

“It’s not too bad, just the uh- left wall is kinda gone” Changbin replied hurriedly, ejecting his USB out of Chan’s computer.

“Well we can come with you – you know we would all die for your Dad’s shop,” Chan said, standing up and grabbing his car keys. “Let’s go.”

“N-No!” Changbin held out his hands and Jisung raised an eyebrow at the elder’s antics in disbelief. “It’s really not that bad – just some metal melted and stuff, but my Dad doesn’t want you guys possibly getting hurt, okay? Just stay here and I’ll message you later?”

Maybe it was the underlying pleading in Changbin’s eyes that made Jisung dip his head and sit back down. After another moment Chan sighed and ran a hand through his frizzy locks before moving aside, letting Changbin leave the room.

Pride, Jisung mused, his hand habitually feeling his ack pocket for his comforting box of cigarettes. It must be his pride that makes him not want us there – that shop is their livelihood after all, and to see it ruined…

“Be home tonight okay?” Chan called, referring to the other’s bedroom right down the hall.

The only reply they received was the front door swinging closed.

“Damn” Chan muttered, clicking out of the producing application half-heartedly, the audio waves disappearing from view. “You noticed Bin’s been off lately?”

Jisung blinked and nodded anyway, despite not really noticing any of the elder boy’s change that his hyung seemed to be referring to.

“It must be because the Anniversary’s coming up,” Chan said, the words heavy in the room.

Jisung stilled at that. Of course, how could he forget? The anniversary – the anniversary of Changbin’s mother’s death.

He had been living in Malaysia when it had happened, and he never really managed to pry the whole story out of Changbin. But last year Chan had informed him off how Changbin’s mother, who had been born into wealth and thus brought it with her when she married local swordsmith Mr Seo, had been diagnosed with a long-lasting, life-draining terminal illness.

‘She never stopped fighting’ Chan had told him one night over a beer. ‘But after two long years with it, she didn’t make it.’

The treatment costs had drained the money, and it was a depressing display as the neighbourhood watched as the Seo’s move from their almost-mansion, to a smaller townhouse, then the remaining two into the little room above the metalwork shop.

Changbin had moved in with Chan last year, and although the three hadn’t talked about it, Jisung knew they were also expecting him to take the small, uninhibited bedroom next to Changbin’s room when he graduated.

He liked the sentiment, he really did, but he wasn’t quite sure if he was ready for that yet. Ready to leave his mother, especially after what his father had done.

The affair, was, for lack of a better word, quite the affair for the Han family.

It had torn them apart.

“You want to have a go in the studio, Sung? We have the extra time” Chan offered, the room feeling somewhat empty without the third of their little trio there.

“Yeah,” he agreed, walking over to his backpack to try out some of his writing, but he paused halfway through.

“You know what,” he said, changing his course and walking into the little makeshift studio. “I think I’ll try some freestyle rap today.”

Chan beamed, like that was exactly what he wanted to hear.

Over the next half-an-hour, Jisung rapped some of the best lyrics he’d ever thought of before, some angry and bitter yes, but others with a lighter tone; something with a little bit of hope.

The next morning Jisung took the long route to school.

He passed small shops and stacked apartments, people drinking at eight a.m. and some hurrying on their way to work.

He stopped, pausing his music of the demo he recorded yesterday when he reached Seo’s Sword shop and Metalwork.

The left wall was perfectly fine.

He lit a cigarette and started on the long journey to school.

Two weeks, one mental breakdown, a seventeenth birthday for him and depressing anniversary for the Seo’s, two packs of ciggies and three and a half sessions with Yang Jeongin later, it was Friday again.

Jisung sat on the classroom’s desk with his legs comfortably splayed and drooping off the edge. Jeongin was ranting about something, a rather peculiar but humouring habit Jisung had noticed from the younger boy who was sitting, like everyone else in the classroom, normally, on a chair.

A stern look from the teacher who had had her narrowed eyes on him the whole session made him look away and tune back into Jeongin’s rant, just so he could pretend he didn’t see her.

“And then I ended up getting a good score anyway, so it didn’t even matter” Jeongin finished up, his brown eyes wide and innocent.

“That’s great Jeongin,” he said when he realized the younger had stopped talking, despite not even knowing anything that the boy had said.

“Hey Jisung-hyung” the boy started and Jisung stared at the younger in shock.

Hyung? He… called me hyung? He looked away; his cheeks suddenly aflame in a confusing truck of mixed emotions. No one had called hyung in… years.

He managed to chime in just as Jeongin, who looked almost impossibly more flushed and nervous than the day he had stepped in to defend him, finished his question.

“Why do you… hate Hyunjin-hyung?”

“That dick? You call him hyung?” Jisung burst out laughing, starting the other mentor-apprentice buddies abound him. He stopped his chuckles, however, when he released that Jeongin was being completely serious.

“What isn’t there to hate about that guy,” Jisung smiled bitterly, old memories coming back to haunt him.

They had been friends at one point he supposed – their mothers were close, and they used to play knight and prince together when they were kids. But even that stupid game had been the problem – every time Hyunjin was the prince, and not a day went by when the elder wasn’t praised for every single thing from his lip shape to getting the right answer for two-plus-two even if he had gotten it first.

From that day forward it had been an aggrieved competition between the pair – if Hwang Hyunjin got a perfect score in Maths, then Jisung wouldn’t stop until he got it too. If he drew the best self-portrait in class, then one day before it was supposed to be displayed in the art contest, it would have magically disappeared or mysteriously get ruined.

Soon their cutesy childhood comradeship turned into a full-fledged fight to see who was superior.

And Hwang Hyunjin won every single time.

Still, it would be contemptuous even for him to hold a grudge from his bitter jealousy from when he was five years old. When the Han family left for Malaysia, he decided to put behind the whole thing behind him, but with his return just in time for freshman year, Hyunjin was no different.

He was still the pretty, popular, personable, picturesque, and stupidly perfect boy Jisung had known all those years ago.

And with puberty hitting him like a brick, the whole world rather than just old grandmothers on the street was infatuated with him.

It was ridiculous – so cliché and simple-minded.

Jisung hated it.

“You should just stay away from him, Jeongin,” Jisung sniffed, keeping his voice low so that teacher's pet tattle-tale Kim Seungmin didn’t report him for ‘denigrating his peers’ (yes, he, unfortunately, had been called into Mr. Dok’s office for it before, but probably not as much as he should have been.)  “Trust me, he’s got the looks, but nothing else.”

The bell shrilled before he could wait for Jeongin’s reply and he hopped off the table so he could get out of the suffocating room before the teacher (who he had once yelled at back in freshman year, thus explaining their mutual hatred of one another) could call his back to chastise him for his seating position.

He glanced at his timetable. English then Chemistry. God, he hated English – the vocabulary and sentence structure was confusing and ‘homophones’ which had replaced horror houses on the list of his one-hundred things that should burn in a fire (it was thirty-seventh.)

He bit the inside of his cheek, considering his options. He should go to English – it was always good to pick up some vocabulary so he could try and understand some of Chan’s songs that used it, but it was such a bitch and of course, Hwang Hyunjin, language extraordinaire, was also in the class…

In a snap decision, he weaved into the drama club room and escaped out the hidden door he had used many times to avoid detentions or get out of a fight (only the ones that were unfair which he decided was four-on-one, and where Chan and Changbin couldn’t save his ass.)

He decided to sit at the back of the school – a place where he could still see a commonly used hallway so he wouldn’t be late for his next class, but still, a utopia never used and tucked away, almost out of sight.

After pulling his box of Marlboro’s out of his backpack, he slid one between his chapped lips, the sensation familiar and welcome. He lit the stick in a truly experienced way, sucked in, and watched the smoke drift into the air, almost like a little cloud.

His mind cleared despite it never being that full or overwhelmed in the first place, and he inhaled the addictive nicotine again. The temporary lull it provided weighed out the long-term impacts of lung cancer, in his opinion – not like he wanted to live to when he was old, sickly and bedridden anyway.

He plugged in his headphones and turned on Changbin’s raps full blast, his backpack full of barely used books discarded to the side. With a comfortable sigh, he rested on the gritty concrete covered in dusty dirt; one hand on the floor to prop him against the wall so he could fully relax. The dirt felt like small sharp rocks against the face of his palm, and he relished the grounding it gave him, despite letting his mind drift into the sky, bobbing his head to every beat, every word of his music.

After fifteen minutes, he grabbed his own lyric notebook, skipping a few fresh pages ahead away from all the edgy and angsty stuff he had first written in there when he had bought it a few months ago, and onto a new page. He wrote melodies that came to mind, words that just seemed to flow like in from his pen, and immediately started to feel excited at the prospect of showing his hyungs it later.

It was almost heavenly, basically true bliss-

“Hey” someone interrupted, their voice monotone and factual. “You can’t be here.”

To hide his startle, Jisung slowly blinked his eyes opened and took one earphone out of his ear, the music, still at full blast, disrupting the otherwise quiet of the schoolyard.

“School captain,” he addressed, the sun almost binding his view. “What brings you to the back of the school? Want me to sign your stupid anti-whatever protest?”

Lee Minho frowned and moved his head slightly, so it blocked the sun from entering Jisung’s eyes. “The smoke brought me here” he pronounced, glaring at the almost-done Marlboro rested carefully between his teeth.

“Well,” Jisung sighed, plucking the stick out of his mouth, holding it delicately poised between two fingers. He raised his hand towards the elder, who, to his pleasure, looked extremely perplexed. “If you’re so interested goody-two-shoes, wouldn’t you like to try some, huh?”

“No,” Minho remained stoic; his eyes dark like Jisung had just told him he’d shot a puppy. “You can’t smoke on school premises, and as your school captain it is my duty to take you to Mr. Dok.”

Jisung cackled at that, tugging the other earbud out of his ear harshly. “Oh God, I’m terrified,” he snuffed out the dying orange butt of his cigarette on the dusty floor beside him.

“How about,” he groaned as he got up, his bottom sore from the sitting on the hard surface for too long. “How about, I don’t smoke another one of those and head to class, and you can go back inside, tell ya teachers it was nothing, and we can both get on with our days, with no… issues, yes?”

Minho remained quiet at that, his rather handsome face showing no emotion.

“C’mon” he tried again, grabbing his bag and opening his arms in the most convincing way he knew how. “I’ll even sign your damn trafficking protest thing tomorrow morning, huh?”

Minho’s left eyebrow twitched at that and Jisung knew he had cracked the other boy’s façade, for the better or the worse.

“You should never do something you don’t genuinely mean” Minho muttered so quietly he almost didn’t pick up on it. Then the school captain straightened up again, letting the sunshine blind Jisung’s eyes once more and he winced away.

“Go to your classes, Han Jisung, and don’t smoke at school again” Minho peered at him like he was looking not at Jisung’s face, but right into his soul. “-It’s a disgusting habit.”

Jisung could only watch with wide eyes as the elder stalked away, his hands buried into his blazer pockets and hair perfectly straightened.

‘Go to your classes, Han Jisung.’ It was almost word-for-word what Chan had said to him recently.

So, in a completely uncharacteristic paradox of his usual ‘do-the-opposite-of-what-authority-says,’ he walked to class, taking his seat right beside the door quietly, still slightly in awe of the whole situation.

“Hey,” a voice whispered from next to him and he looked up, slightly suspicious to have yet another person talk to him that morning.

He narrowed his eyes. It was freckle-face.

What the hell does he want?

“Yeah?” he challenged, expecting the nervous dude to change his mind and back off like most people usually did when he glared at them, but despite a small falter, the boy frowned again.

Resolute, determined.

“Do you… want some gum?”

Jisung sniggered, almost dropping his pencil at the completely unexpected question.

“What?”

Freckle-face looked hesitant for a moment before extending his hand, half-a-packet of a dozen or so sticks of wrapped gum. “I uh – asked if you wanted some-”

“I obviously heard you the first time, Freckles” Jisung snatched the card-board packet from the other’s hand (which was almost worryingly but intriguingly small) and examining the packet. “Watermelon-flavoured? What are you a pussy?”

Freckles glowered at that and before he knew it, the gum was wrenched from his grasp. “Damn, mate – I was just asking. I heard smoking leaves a bad taste in your mouth.”

Jisung paused, suddenly self-conscious that his breath smelled bad. “Give it” he growled, taking back the packet of gum, unwrapping one (and then discarding the paper on the floor) and popping it in his mouth before he could change his mind.

Watermelon thought, chewing the snack-of-sorts, enjoying the mouth-watering flavours that burst upon his tongue. It’s… better than I thought.

“Here,” he tossed the packet back and admired the way Freckle’s hands moved nimbly to catch it. “What’s ya name?”

The other boy looked surprised before glancing back at him, unsure if it was some kind of a test or not. “Felix” the student, now Felix-not-freckle-face informed plainly. “Lee Felix.”

Jisung wrinkles his nose at the rather exotic answer. “You not from here then?”

“No” Felix answered, opening his notebook which Jisung only realised had Korean hangul, then pencilled-in English translations dancing haphazardly on the margins of the page. “I’m here for a year’s exchange from Australia.”

“Oh?” Jisung raised his eyebrows. Australia – Chan was born there too. “Well,” he searched for a compliment, feeling slightly bad he just called the other a pussy right to his face. “Your ah- Korean is pretty good if you only showed up last fortnight.”

Felix laughed the, and Jisung bewilderedly looked at the Australian, wondering if he said something stupid.

“Well for starters I’ve been in Korea for seven months already, but my host family changed and secondly – well – I’ve been here since the start of term!”

Jisung screwed up his face at that. “You’ve been at this school for what… a whole month? But I only saw you for the first time two weeks ago!”

“Well I’ve been sitting here the whole time – it was the only spare seat on my first day.”

Jisung frowned, trying to recall the boy’s introduction and he vaguely remembered his irritation of losing his footrest (namely, the chair and table) he usually had as no one wanted to sit next to him.

“Shit.”

Felix seemed unsure of how to answer that. “Yeah.”

The rest of the class the two newly acquainted classmates were quiet; Felix started to write down what the teacher wrote on the board and Jisung huffed and listened to some music.

On the way out, Felix passed him another stick of gum.

Jisung nonchalantly accepted it and tipped his head up in a cocky goodbye, praying the sparkle in his eyes didn’t give away his appreciation for the gift.

Felix somehow seemed to know anyway.

On Monday there was a packet of watermelon gum on his desk and a post-it-note stuck on to it.

Drawn with a permanent marker on the pale-yellow paper were a smiley face and a series of nine digits.

He ate the gum, sometimes swapping out his morning cigarettes for the more refreshing taste of watermelon instead.

And rather than scrunching up the post-it note and tossing it at Kim Seungmin’s head, he carefully folded it up and slipped it into his back pocket, a small smile, just like the one Felix had drawn, on his face too.

It was interesting how easily Han Jisung’s good mood could turn to bad in an instant, a second, a single interaction.

It had been a week since Felix had given him the gum and they had started to become friends. Sometimes he would look at the post-it-note and consider messaging the boy, but every time he drafted up something to say, he would chicken out – his own stupid pride too large to extend the first olive branch.

However, he had been in a better mental state since then, and even Changbin and Chan had complimented him as it showed through his rapping too.

His black notebook started to be filled with less angry words written scratchy, harsh Korean. It was… good.

But just like everything, it had to topple down on a Tuesday lunchtime.

“Hey, dickhead – not so tough now your friends aren’t at ya back, huh?”

That voice, nasally and mocking ruined his eight-day-streak of not letting his anger get the best of him.

Pivoting around, he glared at the senior who was so pitifully ‘try-hard-gangster’ that it was completely pathetic. However, despite his irritating attitude, Jisung knew the other could pack a punch – he’d experienced it a few times last year.

“What do you want, Dakho?” he asked his expression bored and unintimidated despite the frustration already starting to churn in his veins.

Internally he triumphed when the elder boy’s ugly face turned sour at Jisung’s complete lack-of-interest.

“I’m just sayin’ Han,” Dakho grinned cruelly and Jisung rolled his eyes at the use of his last name. So juvenile. “You look awfully lonely.”

Jisung sighed again carefully scanning the hallway where a small circle was starting to form around them, giving them a wide berth as to not get involved between a potential ‘smack-down’ between the school’s most notorious ‘gangsters.’

When Chan had graduated and Changbin had dropped out, there had been somewhat of a void as two of the three resident ‘bad boys’ as the school had labelled them, had left. Kim Dakho had decided to try and fill the shoes a hundred sizes too big for him it seemed, but Jisung didn’t try and underestimate the idiot either.

Although he wasn’t a large fan of school-yard gossip, especially as he was usually the talk of it (in his sophomore year there once had been one that he only reason he went to Malaysia to serve prison time which had left Chan, Changbin and himself it fits of laughter), but recently there were whisperings that Dakho had entered a gang, and if true, meant serious business.

A glimpse of Felix’s dusty-brown dyed hair made his pause. The other was waiting for him, to be done – waiting for him to stop wasting his time to talk to this dipshit.

“Whatever, Dakho, don’t see you have too many friends yourself” Jisung growled and whipped around to start to walk away, but one last tantalizing threat made his heart drop.

“Han, keep an eye out on ya’ boy Seo; street’s been telling me he’s causing some trouble.”

Changbin, Seo Changbin.

His best friend.

“What the hell you saying, man?” Jisung spun back around a snarl on his lips, fury pulsating through his body, making his mind clear. “Keep his name outta your fuckin’ mouth!”

His hands were on the other’s chest before he realised it and in one hard shove, he sent the elder boy back into a locker.

“You talkin’ shit?” he asked, approaching the boy who was scrambling back into a cold wall of lockers.

There was a gasp from behind him, but he didn’t even care as he clenched his fist into a ball, preparing to teach the fucker a well-deserved lesson.

He grinned when he saw Dakho’s face contort from smugness to fear from beneath him. He felt like a king. I’ve been too good for too damn long-

“Jisung-hyung!”

With his fist by his left ear, cocked and ready to meet Dakho’s stupid high-bridged but crooked nose, he froze at the call.

Hyung…?

One fist still elevated and the other clutching Dakho’s shirt he looked up.

“Jisung” Felix’s freckled face was stern, slightly scared as it hovered over him. “Let’s go now hyung.”

He glared back down at Dakho, who seemed to have recovered from his initial shock and was now staring up at him with an ugly scowl.

“Hit me, Han – hit me,” he taunted and in one action Jisung harshly let go of the elder’s shirt and stood up, shrugging off Felix’s hand on his shoulder.

“Let go of me” he muttered, walking away from Dakho and the cluster of students that had gathered around to watch. He predatorily glared at the mobile phones that followed his every move and when he heard the yell of a teacher he quickly escaped through the trusty old fire-door.

“Why are you still following me?” he grumbled when Felix closed the door behind the pair, effectively cutting them off from the commotion indoors. His hands started to quiver violently, and when they trembled so violently that he couldn’t pick out a cig of his Marlboro packet, Felix plucked out one for him.

He snatched the stick from the boy and put it to his lips, lighting it with one of Chan’s spare lighters he had ‘borrowed.’

As soon as the nicotine hit his system, the world felt instantly calmer.

His heartbeat slowed; thud, thud, thud.

His anger evaporated and his anxiety settled as he breathed it out of his body like smoke.

He was fine, he was okay.

“You shouldn’t smoke,” Felix said after a few inhales.

Jisung glared at the boy, half wishing the other would leave and go to class, but he stayed.

“Got it” Jisung replied, his voice sarcastic and monotone, and he took another drag.

“If you do it to… stop feeling anxious” Felix started, looking unsure of what Jisung’s reaction would be. When he stayed quiet, a frown on his face, Felix continued.

“-It is only a short-term solution, I guess. When I feel anxious, I just usually have some gum – although it’s not nicotine, there’s been studies and stuff that prove it to ease anxiety with all the distraction and stuff…”

Felix trailed off, seemingly expecting Jisung to have tuned out by now, but just to prove him wrong Jisung quirked an eyebrow at the Australian, urging him to continue.

“And well, it is better for your health and gives you good breath” he informed to finish up.

Jisung returned the sentiment with stoic silence, taking another drag.

“Hey, Jisung-hyung-”

“How do you know that I’m older than you?” Jisung interrupted, glaring at the other boy.

“Uh-” Felix stammered. “I um – saw on the roll that your birthday is only one day before mine, so…”

Jisung exhaled more smoke, but his interest was piqued. “You’re born on the fifteenth of September?”

Felix meekly nodded.

“Hm,” Jisung nodded. We’re almost like twins. When he looked back at the Australian, who was fidgeting annoyingly in place, he quickly barked out, “Well what did you want to ask?”

Felix bit his lip, just like Jisung did when he was worried about something. “Um, I’ve just heard some uh - stuff about you…”

Jisung huffed and inhaled some more smoke. Welp, that went their only a one-week-long friendship.

“I mean-” Felix added on when he saw Jisung’s mood change. “They’re – They’re probably just rumours, but I’ve um – been dying to ask-”

“One question” Jisung growled out. He glanced at the younger with fire in his eyes. “One.”

Felix nodded and looked away, obviously deep in thought.

“Um – what was the… ‘situation’ last year?”

Jisung sighed, snuffing his current Marlboro out and lighting a new one to try and ease his anxiousness. He knew this question would come. He would be an idiot to pretend it didn’t happen.

“It was a whole school assembly” he started, already feeling slightly embarrassed. “The big one at the end of the year – presenting awards and all that shit. Parents were there and everything and uh- half my year level was sitting on the balcony level with the seniors usually were, so there was more room for the parents and shit.”

He sucked in another breath. “Um,” he said, suddenly feeling anxious that Felix would ditch him after hearing what happened, what he did. “My friend, Chan got a good award, top ten of the graduating class or whatever and well – I guess people were pissed because they all underestimated how hard he worked because of his reputation and shit, and uh-”

Jisung trailed off, feeling residue anger forming a lump in his throat even thinking about it. Felix stayed quiet; his eyes large; a mix of fearful and anticipating.

“This jealous dickhead uh- whispered to his friend that Chan-hyung was a fag and how he should kill himself, and well – I was sitting near, and uh – I got really pissed.”

He heard Felix’s gasp and took another drag, his hands shaking again.

“I um-” he paused. “I hit him a few times and then pushed him off the balcony.”

Felix looked horrified. This was everything Jisung was trying to avoid, leave in the past, but like everything it caught up to him.

“Was he… okay?”

Jisung sighed. “Not for a long while. He uh – shattered his legs, and I um – broke his cheekbone or something pretty bad. He had to get a few surgeries and go to rehab to learn how to walk again.”

Felix was silent. “Damn,” he said quietly.

“Yeah,” Jisung chuckled bitterly. “Damn.”

Felix seemed to recover himself enough to ask another question. “And you… didn’t get expelled?”

“No,” Jisung muttered. “I don’t really know how it works, but my uh – Mum paid hella money when I got here to do this whole contractual thing with the school, so they have to keep me till I graduate unless I fuck up like that again.”

Jisung shut his mouth at that. Oversharing with Felix about his life wasn’t something he really intended to do. And he definitely wasn’t going to confide to the younger where his mother got all that money; when in actuality it was almost her whole half the divorce settlement.

Thankfully, Felix didn’t ask.

For the rest of the hour, they sat without talking, the only sounds being the sound of students talking inside the classroom they were leaning against, or the lighter flicking to light another cigarette.

The whole time, Jisung’s mind drifted with thoughts, worries, especially concerning Dakho’s last words.

“Keep an eye out on ya’ boy Seo; street’s been telling me he’s causing some trouble.”

He snuffed his second cigarette violently against the wall as if it was extinguishing doubt of his best friend’s words and eliminating Dakho’s intruding taunt.

Changbin is fine – he’s just working at his Dad’s Jisung reminded himself. There is no way he, the kindest most soft-hearted one of the three of us, would do anything so stupid like starting up shit with a gang.

But as soon as Jisung saw Changbin that night, he wasn’t so sure anymore.

The elder had a blue bruise stretching across his whole left cheek, making one of his eyes swollen, puffy and red.

“Jesus, hyung” Jisung exclaimed, trying to keep his tone light as he walked into Chan’s living room. “Where the hell did you get that?”

“A television, if you’d believe it” Changbin chuckled and looked away from Jisung’s prying eyes. “Dad accidentally smacked me in the face with it while working.”

“Ouch,” Chan winced, walking into the room.

He turned to Jisung, an incomprehensible look in his eyes that made him freeze up.

“Sung, your Mum called and told me you skipped class again.”

Jisung groaned at that and flopped down onto the couch. For some reason, after a particularly bad fight from last year (Jisung had his wrist broken, but the other two had been worse off), his mother and Chan had exchanged numbers as the elder was really the only person he’d listen to.

“God, Chan-hyung, it’s so weird you and my Mum message all the time” he lamented, grabbing a pillow and stuffing it over his face, so maybe if he suffocated, he wouldn’t have to have this conversation.

“Well, Jisung, I thought we had a promise,” Chan said and Jisung felt the couch sink next to him, where the elder most likely had a seat. “No scenes, remember?”

“Skipping class isn’t a scene” he grumbled in response, wishing the other would just drop the topic.

“I was talking about almost starting a fight with Kim Dakho-”

“That guy?” Changbin interrupted and Jisung lifted the pillow of his face to see the elder’s expression. “He deserves to get his ass kicked.”

“Exactly!” Jisung stood up, thankful that at least one of his hyungs were on his side. “Dakho’s a dick, Chan-hyung – you know that! I’m pretty sure you almost broke his nose once, right? Remember when-”

“Enough, Sung,” Chan ordered with a stern eye. Jisung shut up. The last thing he wanted was to make Chan pissed at him. “Why’d ya do it?”

Jisung paused, biting his lip. Nervously he glanced towards Changbin. There was no way he could say the real reason – not unless he wanted Changbin irritated with him too.

“He was just… talking smack” Jisung flopped back down on the sofa. “And, I don’t know, I just felt really anxious for a second and then I lost control and whatever. It’s fine.”

Chan sighed; the sound heavy in the room. “Jisung, I know you don’t like talking about it, but have you been feeling more anxious than usual lately?”

Jisung fiddled with his hoodie strings.

Had he? Everything was going alright until today – he had made friends with Felix and Jeongin but… maybe that wouldn’t last. Maybe they would hate him when they got to know him better past his pissed-off-attitude, maybe they should have just stayed away in the first place, maybe he should just push them away, so no one got hurt because he seemed to be doing that a lot lately–

Oh, shit; that went sour quickly.

“I mean” he stammered, hating showing his weakness. “Like – no, but I made some new friends and I’m really worried about fucking it up and everything, and I don’t want them to think I’m just… what everyone else says I am, ya know?”

“Jisung, I know you well enough that the face you’re making right now is your ‘I’m-about-to-spiral-and-fall-into-an-anxiety-attack’ face,” Changbin said softly and the younger felt himself deflate.

Changbin, as per usual was right.

“Whatever, Hyung,” he said anyway, trying to pull himself together. “It’s not as bad as last year, okay? I’m not as anxious… or angry.”

Chan hummed but Jisung could see he wasn’t convinced in the way his shoulders were stiff with tension.

‘Don’t you want to prove to your hyung’s that you aren’t just an angsty burden? After they’ve protected you all these years – isn’t it time you try and be fine by yourself?’ His mind questioned and Jisung bit his lip.

“Look,” he started, standing up so he could see his hyung’s faces better. “What will it take to convince you that I’m better than last year? I mean, if you forget about today, I haven’t almost punched anyone for like a whole month!”

He watched as Chan and Changbin considered it. Last year they all knew how bad Jisung’s mental state was, and at his worst, he was fighting people and having anxiety attacks every other day.

“Sungie, let’s make a deal” Chan proposed in a leader-like way and Jisung glanced towards the elder with trepidation on all his features. “How about we all do something for our health?”

Jisung raised his eyebrows in disbelief. “Our health? What are all three of us trying chemotherapy for the first time?”

“Our mental health” Changbin inputted and Jisung groaned again. “I know someone who goes to this little… social group thing, for anxiety every Sunday. It’s really helped him Sung, and if you give it a try, it could help you too – ya know, breathing techniques and shit.”

“I know how to breathe, hyung.” Jisung deadpanned, already hating the blasphemous idea.

“Thirty-thousand won if you go, and actually try one session” Chan offered.

Jisung paused, mulling over it. “Only one?”

“Only one” Chan confirmed a smug look on his face.

He shoved the pillow over his face. Chan knew he had already won. “Fine, but I just wanted to let you both know, I’m going to hate every single second of it.”

In celebration of the two eldest’s shared victory and Jisung’s defeat, Changbin dressed him up in his leather jacket (which smelled of smoke?) and less—voluntarily, some eyeshadow and together the three of them left to hit the bar.

Chan bribed him in, and Jisung quickly lost himself in soju shots to try and forget about his shitty day (to make it worse, now he had to attend a therapy session in two weeks!)

The night, however, was great – Jisung made out with a random person he was too drunk to remember even the gender of, and Chan got in a fight that almost got his nose broken.

But then they were all kicked out by security, still pissed (in both the drunk and angry way) and were now walking around in the darkness of Seoul’s shady red-light district streets at midnight.

“God Chan-hyung? What made you think punching the bartender was a good idea?” Jisung slurred, taking out a cigarette and avoiding Changbin’s stern glare when he lit it and took a drag.

“He called me a faggot” Chan growled, almost uncharacteristically frustrated and way more intoxicated than Jisung had seen him in months. “Homophobes deserve more than a fist, damn.”

Changbin gently smacked him in the back of the head when he already knew what innuendo Jisung was about to make and the younger complained for a few seconds before inhaling more smoke.

A jeer from up ahead made the trio falter.

They watched as a crowd stumbled out of a night-club. Jisung wrinkled his nose. That place was full of illegal activities and crooks – one of the places Chan had warned them to stay away from on one of their first nights out.

If it was a gang, they should just steer clear; it was easier that way.

“Stay here, okay?” Changbin ordered with one glance towards Chan. “Look after hyung, I’ll be back.”

“Wait-” Jisung started, but Changbin was already walking towards the group, that had shaved down to one person alone.

He felt his heart start to race as Changbin started to interact with the stranger, who had fallen on the pavement. He watched carefully as Changbin pulled the other boy to his feet and loop an arm under his shoulder.

Jisung took another drag and looked away. He hated when people let themselves go like that – get way too drunk and then basically be screwed over for the rest of the night. It was gross, really, but Changbin always helped them out when Jisung never did.

He glanced over at Chan who was typing something angrily on his phone, to someone Jisung prayed wasn’t the boy’s parents. At least he could hold himself up and was coherent enough to form proper words, Besides, it wasn’t like the elder did this every night – probably once a year or so.

“We got a live one,” Changbin smiled as he walked the stranger, who Jisung could hear was mumbling random words to himself, over.

“Be careful” Jisung frowned, ready to jump in if the boy tried anything, but he was basically limp in Changbin’s deceivingly strong hold.

He narrowed his eyes when he recognised the sleek hair, the perfect lips, the mole beneath the other’s half-closed eyes.

The buzz in his brain made his facial-recognition slower than usual, but when he finally identified the boy, he wished Changbin had just left him on the sidewalk.

“Hwang Hyunjin?!” he exclaimed, looking into Changbin’s eyes with disgust. “You picked up Hwang-fucking-Hyunjin?”

Changbin sniffed and adjusted his hold on the student, his biceps rippling with the effort. “Guess so.”

“Jesus hyung, are you trying to ruin my life? Just leave him, he’s such an asshole” Jisung spat out turning away when Hyunjin gleefully recognised him, a series of “Han Jisungie” coming almost incoherently out of his lips.

“We can’t just leave him Sung,” Changbin reprimanded. “He won’t make it anywhere in this state, and his friends obviously ditched him. Getting him home’s the right thing to do.”

Jisung flicked his Marlboro on the floor and stomped on it in repulsion at his arch-nemesis’ unforeseen appearance. “What are you a hero, all of a sudden?”

Changbin sighed at that. “No, Jisung,” he said, his tone so patronising that Jisung clenched his fist. “Have you seen the news about all those missing people recently? Don’t you realise there’s a bigger picture than who’s your high-school friends or not? He’s what – sixteen? If we just left him there, who knows what would happen to him.”

Jisung took out another cigarette at that, refusing to answer. God, he hated how Changbin was right. Sure, he hated Hyunjin, but he didn’t want the idiot to get killed just because he was being immature.

“Whatever” he muttered, taking a seat on the curb beside Chan, who had seemingly given up on his rampant of hate-messaging and decided to look at the stars instead. “If he’s not out of here in five minutes I’m leaving.”

He lit his third cigarette of the night and winced at the ashy taste it left in his mouth. He couldn’t help but almost yearn for a refreshing watermelon taste instead.

But it was an empty threat, and after eleven minutes spent trying to guess Hyunjin’s phone password to contact the other’s father to pick him up as they didn’t know his address, Jisung was still waiting. (For once in his whole life, he felt slightly bad for the now passed-out teen. If his mother had to be phoned at twelve a.m. to pick him up, he’d be in for a beating for sure.)

His father arrived another twenty minutes later (obviously not living close to the ‘bad’ and impoverished side of town) and thanked Changbin profusely, and then made Hyunjin who had come back to half-his senses, bow to all three of them before letting the boy get in the car.

“You want to come back to ours, Sung?” Chan, who had also sobered up significantly, asked.

“Nah” Jisung replied. “I’ll just go home.”

Getting home was easier than expected; he didn’t run into any trouble and it was only a fifteen-minute walk before he arrived back at the house.

Shrugging off Changbin’s leather jacket he quietly walked to his mother’s room and, just like he did every night, and creaked open the door.

He sighed in relief. She was safe. He didn’t know when exactly he started to feel the need to check-up on his mother – maybe after the divorce. She had been sad for a while after that – it gave him some protective sort of comfort to make sure she was alright each night before he went to sleep.

“Sungie, is that you?”

Oh crap.

“Mum?” he whispered into the dark bedroom. “Sorry for waking you up, I just got back.”

He watched guiltily as his mother flicked on the bedside table lamp and turn on her phone.

“It’s one a.m.? Sung, I’d really prefer it if you wouldn’t walk back alone this late” she chastised tiredly.

He blinked. “Oh, sorry.”

“It’d make me feel much better if you’d message me and slept over at Chan and Changbin’s place instead, baby, it’s dangerous out there alone.”

His heart jumped at the nostalgic nickname and he swallowed. “I know, Mum, sorry.”

He watched as she yawned and slumped back into her bed. “Go to sleep, Sungie, I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Yeah, night Mum.”

He closed the door with a warm feeling in his chest and when he got to his own bedroom, he fell into bed with a small smile on his face.

His heartbeat sounded through the night. Thud, thud, thud.

And with his hand resting over the centre of his chest, he fell into a calm and soothing sleep.

“Who’s that quiet kid with complete-asshole, anger-issues, hottie, bad-boy Han Jisung?” became the question of the school.

Jisung rolled his eyes when he saw yet another person whisper it to the person next to them. It took three-or-so full weeks for the pair to start walking in the halls together (and finally start texting each other) and also that time for someone to finally make the connection that ‘quiet kid’ Lee Felix wasn’t just someone he bullied into pretending to be his friend.

Jisung kept his head down as he stalked through the halls, his new friend at his side.

After the Dakho chaos a week ago, he had gotten a lot of shit from Mr. Dok and another irritating session with Mrs. Gwan. Thankfully he was able to avoid a suspension as both Felix, and Jeongin (who had also seemingly been there at the fight) vouched for him and told the headmaster he had decided to walk away.

He was let off with a six-a.m. detention and a warning; in his experience, not too bad at all.

Just like every Wednesday, or every other day Jisung supposed, he was met with school-captain Lee Minho at the lockers holding a petition sheet.

The elder, thankfully, didn’t try and recruit him today.

“He’s always doing something, huh?” Felix observed when the pair reached Jisung’s locker.

“Hmm” Jisung agreed, shoving his backpack in the metal container, not caring that half his books he never took home got crushed.

“Human trafficking” Felix read slowly and before Jisung was about to call him ‘dyslexic,’ he realised that the hangul was most likely unfamiliar to him and therefore, he was not going to be a complete dick.

“Yeah” Jisung replied, scrunching up his nose, not liking to look at the images and statistics on the poster behind on the wall behind the elder. “Same shit every day.”

Felix looked pensive and contemplative at that. “It’s admirable. To feel so strongly about a cause.”

Jisung closed his locker and together they made the journey towards Felix’s locker, it being a singular one with the sophomores due to his late enrolment.

“Well you must have felt pretty strongly about learning Korean if you decided to come here” Jisung replied, glaring at the other students so they would move out of his way.

“Guess so,” Felix replied and Jisung tuned away so the younger to face the bustling students could put in the combination for his lock. “What do we have first?”

“Chem,” Jisung replied examining the students that walked past. “Then I have history.”

His dark gaze narrowed when he saw Hyunjin walk past, both Kim Seungmin and Jeongin at his side.

Scowling he glanced away, a sinking feeling in his chest. He had tried to talk Jeongin out of that friendship yesterday in their session, but the younger had remained steadfast in his decision.

Jisung had no idea what Jeongin saw in the other, and when told the boy how he heard that Hyunjin had cheated on his last English paper and that was the only way he got the top score, Jeongin had just looked at him with a disappointed glimmer in his eye and said: “I don’t judge people from what others say about them, hyung.”

That had made him feel worse because he knew that Jeongin had directed his words at him too.

“You ready?” Felix asked and Jisung wordlessly nodded, his mood soured by seeing Hyunjin, looking completely opposite of how Jisung had seen him on Friday night, and even more so when he recollected his and Jeongin’s last interaction.

Felix passed him some gum. Jisung took it.

When the pair arrived at Chemistry, one minute late which Jisung easily took the blame for, the teacher immediately started yapping firstly, their ‘unacceptable tardiness,’ then more interestingly for half an hour about a huge project one-month-long that would contribute to half of their semester mark, which would be completed in pairs.

“You in?” Jisung whispered to Felix and the freckled boy nodded, a sunshine-like smile on his face.

“-I will be randomly assigning your partners,” she informed and Jisung felt all of the small little ball of ‘maybe this won’t be so bad’ get shredded up inside of him.

Is she serious? He tipped his head back in annoyance, his foot already tapping with the beginning of irritation. Whatever – fuck this. If Felix’s not my partner, then I’m not doing my part.

“Alright move to your partner’s desk when I read out your names” the teacher cleared her throat and Jisung sighed loudly and kicked the metal table leg, to try and alleviate some of the tension building up in his body.

“Kim Sokjae and Lee Yongbok” she started and Jisung burst into laughter when Felix stood up, his face as red as a cherry.

When Felix moved to the front of the classroom with a small wave, the humour died out of the situation.

Maybe I can just force my partner to do my half too, it’s not like I care if they half-ass it he mused, already thinking of a few ‘creative’ strategies he could use to convince the poor prick partnered with him to complete the project and essay on Charles’s Law.

“Han Jisung and…” the teacher started, and he raised an eyebrow in wait, hoping it would be someone who was already scared of him. “-Kim Seungmin!”

He felt like he had been punched in the stomach. With protests already on the tip of his tongue, his mind fuzzy with anger, he glared at the teacher and then at the stupid-smart boy at the very front-middle desk.

Seungmin looked less than pleased with the announcement of being paired up with him too.

Jisung poked his tongue in the inside of his cheek and looked away, fury making his ears burn when he started to question how ‘random’ this pairing up really was.

I fucking hate this simple-minded pompous asshole – always thinking he’s so much better than everyone cause he’s dux of the year or whatever. I can’t believe I have to work with him!

After another few moments, Seungmin walked over to his side of the room, already looking mildly infuriated which was to Jisung’s pleasure before plopping down in Felix’s seat.

“Move” Jisung ordered as soon as the younger sat down.

Seungmin fixed his circular glasses. “What?”

“I said move,” Jisung growled fixing the other with his most cruel stare.

Seungmin glared right back at him before giving up, standing up and pulling up another unused chair, before carefully placing it in front of Jisung’s desk.

Haughtily and tauntingly, he propped his feet up on Felix’s chair and raised his eyebrows when Seungmin planted his huge textbook on top of Jisung’s unopened notebook.

“Alright” the brown-haired boy composed himself, expertly turning to the right page of the textbook like he knew where each topic started and ended (he probably did.) “So, the project is on Charles’s Law which examines how gases tend to expand when heated-”

“Nah,” Jisung interrupted, his voice arrogant.

Seungmin exhaled sharply and fixed his glasses again. “I beg your pardon?”

“Nah,” Jisung repeated, unwrapping a piece of gum and popping it into his mouth. He tossed the wrapper and Seungmin and watched as the boy’s face morphed into one of recognition of the patterned paper Jisung had thrown at him many times before. “This topic’s boring.”

He smiled when Seungmin’s carefully-crafted composure began to crack.

“Well” the boy started, his face turning the slightest shade of pink. “This is the topic we have to do; it’s standardised-”

“But I don’t wanna’ do it,” Jisung said again, leaning forward so he was almost nose-to-nose with Seungmin trying to push the other’s buttons, see what made him mad, see what ruined him.

Seungmin drew back, with another sharp exhale and Jisung grinned. The other was getting frustrated, even a blind person could see that. But what made it even better is that ever-so supercilious Kim Seungmin would never have the balls to confront him, just like almost every other brain-dead, mundane idiot at his school.

“If you could get out your textbook” the boy tried again, his temper waning, “And turn to page three-hundred-and-six, there’s a nice simple explanation of Charles’s Law for you, Jisung.”

“Don’t got it” Jisung sat back and chewed his gum louder. In fact, that wasn’t actually something to intentionally try to piss the younger off, he had never bought it in the first place and Changbin had burnt his copy in a bonfire so Jisung had never bothered to get it another way.

“The teacher has one you can borrow-”

“Nah” Jisung cut him off again and fixed on his best threatening face; hooded eyes, menacing smile and all. “How about you do all the work for me, huh? Unless you want me to ruin your A-plus average… this is fifty-per cent after all-”

“Why are you being such an asshole?” Seungmin cocked his head and asked, the question blunt and plain and completely confrontational.

Jisung huffed, his mouth gaped open in a minacious, but rather impressed fashion.

He had just got little Mr. Appropriate to snap.

The classroom was deadly silent, all hearing Seungmin’s brusque words.

Jisung sized up the younger, an almost playful animosity in his eyes. Seungmin definitely had a few centimetres on him and a rather well-built and maintained body. But Jisung would bet all his money that the younger had never seen the light of a fight, nevertheless thrown a punch before.

However, Jisung couldn’t deny that Kim Seungmin, who he thought was so boring like almost everyone else at this shit-ass school, had done something almost no one in his whole life had ever done before.

Surprised him.

“Alright, Kim Seungmin,” he drawled out leaning back in his chair, so the front two legs were suspended in the air. “I’ll do half of this stupid project but prepare yourself for the worst mark you’ve ever seen.”

He flashed the younger an unsettling fake-smile and at perfect timing, the school bell rang.

And leaving the younger stumped, he picked up his book, his bag and he left without another look back.

Kim Seungmin was seriously starting to get annoying.

He had already organised two after school sessions per week that Jisung had to attend, and when he actually tried to complete one of the questions, Seungmin had immediately fixed his answer till it was almost unrecognisable from the original one.

They constantly bickered over the smallest things from what colour pen they should use for the title (yes, grade school, he knew) to what food he forced Seungmin to pay for so they could share an afternoon snack (Jisung always stole the bigger half.)

But by the fourth after school session, somehow Jisung wasn’t as pissed off with the younger than he thought. Despite the younger’s opinions that almost always rivalled his own, he stopped arguing more often than not and just let the other do his thing, sometimes chiming in with ideas that Seungmin either laughed at or quietly nodded at, before incorporating it in.

And his and Seungmin’s newly-formed not-hatred of each other seemed to be working. At the half-way lesson mark, the teacher was amazed at their work and made them stand up one class to present their findings.

The class lazily applauded (apart from Felix who looked ecstatic), but it still felt… good.

For once in his life, he actually put some effort into a school project, even once deciding to stay at home and work on his half rather than go out one night with Changbin and Chan (Jihyin had called from Malaysia to talk about her most recent 'two-months-till-birth' ultrasound - she was having a boy, and her talking about all her plans kept him occupied enough to remain focussed on his work without giving up.)

When Jeongin discovered their friendship one morning session, he had started jumping for joy, ranting about how ‘he knew the whole time that they would become friends’ because of the whole ‘opposites attract’ theory. Jisung had just laughed.

The third week in, Seungmin even slipped him half of his choc-chip cookie one lunchtime they planned to meet up and that’s when Jisung realised that it was the younger’s way of saying ‘thanks.’

It was somewhat… rewarding.

That cookie tasted better than any other in his whole life.

On another note, Chan and Changbin were badgering him to attend that stupid group therapy session Jisung had hoped they all got too drunk to remember.

He had managed to avoid it for almost a whole month

“Please” he moaned when Chan picked him up and carried him out the front door to his beaten-up car. “Changbin,” he tried, attempting to wriggle out of the eldest’s strong arms,” I’ll give you a hug if you slash the tires, quick-”

“Nope,” Changbin smiled and opened the car door to his fate. “It won’t be as bad as you think, Sung.”

“Besides,” Chan laughed, strapping him in like he was a toddler. “If you skip out you lose all that cash I promised you.”

That got him to sit still and shut up.

Fifteen minutes later the three arrived at a ‘youth centre’ to Jisung’s displeasure (god, it made him sound like he was seriously screwed up or a straight-up criminal) and Chan clapped him on his shoulder as the three of them stood at the front doors.

“Do you need us to walk you in?” the eldest said in a high-pitched cooing voice and Jisung gently punched the boy in the stomach to get him to shut up.

“Have fun, and who knows, you might see someone you recognise!” Changbin smiled and Jisung habitually smacked him in the arm, sudden concern instilling inside of him when he realised that there was a large white bandage on his bicep he hadn’t noticed before.

The boy more cuts and bruises than usual and whenever Jisung saw him, his gaze looked a little darker. And he’d seen those thick type of pad-bandages used in medical dramas. He was getting worried.

But just as soon as he was about to ask where the other got it from, a plump woman with a kind smile ushered him in.

With one look back at his hyungs, the nervousness of the whole situation actually starting to hit him, he followed the middle-aged woman through the glass doors and down a long colourful hallway, full of posters, artwork and a few PRIDE flags.

“You’re Han Jisung, yes?” she asked and Jisung shoved his trembling hands in his hoodie pocket roughly and nodded, already building his façade of ‘toughness’. The centre smelt of disinfectant spray and the undertone of clay.

He quickly grabbed a packet of gum out of his back pocket where his Marlboros used to constantly reside and slipped a piece in his mouth, hoping it would calm him down. (A week ago, he decided to move the cigs and lighter out of his back pocket and into his bedside draw instead. Just so if someone patted him down at school he wouldn’t be caught with them, is what he had told himself.)

“Changbin was here last week and told me you would be coming for the group therapy on anxiety” she waddled down the path that seemed to never end.

He frowned. Wait, why the hell was Changbin-hyung here?

He felt his stomach start to twist in turmoil. Maybe he should just get out of here, screw the deal.

“Um, I don’t – I don’t have any money,” he stammered, seeking a way out but the woman just gave him a reassuring smile.

“Don’t worry honey, it’s community-run; free of charge.”

Dammit, shit, fuck-

She stopped at a vibrant yellow door.

“Take a deep breath, honey – you deciding to come this far is an achievement in itself, okay?”

Then she swung open the door.

And he felt his jaw drop at who he saw.

“F-Felix?”

Felix who was sitting in a weird cultish circle with ten or so other teens looked just as surprised.

“Jisung-hyung?” he basically yelled out, then blushed at the sudden pairs of eyes that turned to him. “Um-” he stammered, tapping a spare chair to his left. “Come sit down.”

Quickly correcting his surprise, Jisung slowly sauntered over to the chair Felix was indicating at, feeling clammy under Chan’s hoodie with all the attention directed on him and sat down, splaying his legs in a rude manner.

Unlike at school, he wasn’t called out for it. The twenty-something-year-old man who seemed to the leader of the session nodded at him and Jisung looked away.

“Welcome,” he said, his voice deep and calm. Jisung couldn’t fight the urge to look at the other but made sure he kept a secure scowl on his face.

The man looked well-dressed, probably in his first or second year of university, and had natural-looking slightly dishevelled hair. He looked almost regal in his position but sat in a way that made him looked extremely down to earth and compassionate.

He could tell that everyone else in the room respected him, but not in a teacher-like way, but rather like a friend.

“I’m Kim Woojin,” the gentle bear-like boy said and Jisung turned away. “This is a safe space, and everything discussed here will be kept in these weekly sessions. You are free to talk whenever you want if you decide to, but always remain respectful of others and their stories, alright?”

Jerkily he nodded when everyone in the circle glanced at him, not wanting to be a complete asshole.

Almost everyone here didn’t know who he was at all. Here he could… escape from the rumours and fantasies that followed him in a way he couldn’t at school, almost like he could rebirth himself as a new person.

Still, when Woojin asked if he wanted to introduce himself, he shook his head.

Apart from passing Felix a stick of watermelon gum, he stayed quiet the whole session.

“How’d you find it?” the other boy asked when the group-talk ended a few minutes early and they went to the outside wall to lean on despite the late-autumn cold.

Jisung paused, making himself actually think rather than just blurting out an ‘it sucked’ like he usually did when Felix asked him how class was.

“It was… alright.”

Truth was, it definitely wasn’t as bad as he had been expecting. No one burst into tears or told stories of gruesome events like he had seen in television programs; instead, everyone went around and told each other funny stories about their week or finding a new anxiety coping method they recommended.

The counsellor dude, Kim Woojin or whatever his name was, was actually quite chill. Despite not wanting to, Jisung had taken a liking to the boy by the end of the hour. He had talked about finding a ‘happy place’ whether physically or mentally for them to go to when feeling stressed out, and Jisung had decided that he would force himself to try it – it couldn’t really do him any harm to at least try something.

Of course, it wasn’t by nature a happy event. Jisung had flinched when a thirteen-year-old girl had walked in and greeted everyone like she had known them for years. Someone around his age had talked about problems with alcohol and how he relied on it to calm him down.

Jisung had tried not to feel insecure when in the corner of his eye, he saw Felix look his way, most likely referring to his dependency on cigarettes when they had first met.

“I find it really helpful – it makes me realise I can change myself; not let my anxiety and shit define me.”

Jisung glanced at the younger in surprise. That was the first time he had heard him swear.

“What do you mean?” he asked quietly.

Felix turned towards him, his shoulder rather than his back on the wall. “Like… I always used my anxiety as an excuse not to do stuff ya know? Never tried anything new, never spoke to anyone… My Mum, I don’t think she really believes in this whole mental health stuff, so I never tried therapy until I moved here where I was away from her.”

Jisung swallowed. His Dad believed therapy was a hoax too.

“Being here,” Felix continued his voice rumbly and deep. “Being here taught me something important – that I am in control of my life, my decisions – not my anxiety, not my mother just me. You’re in control of your life too Jisung-hyung. It might not look like it, but you are.

Jisung exhaled. “Sometimes I’m scared” he admitted softly. “Scared that I’ll hurt someone; push them away.”

Felix looked up at the blue sky at that. “You don’t have to be, Jisung-hyung. Even though we haven’t been friends for that long, I know you enough to know you would never intentionally hurt anyone.”

Felix’s voice was low, but purposeful, almost like the day he had first talked to him, offering some gum.

“I hope so, Lix” he sighed, eying Changbin and Chan walking up the path towards them. “I really do.”

Suddenly, Felix started running towards the pair and hastily and confused, Jisung scrambled to follow, but he stopped dead in his tracks when he watched the younger boy jump onto Changbin.

With his mouth agape in shock, he watched as the pair hugged, then pulled away, both faces as red as cherries.

Chan just cackled.

“What the-” Jisung spluttered running a hand through his faded orange locks. “What the-” he glared at Changbin who looked redder than Jisung had ever seen him. “What the fuck?!”

“Surprise!” Felix beamed; his arms still wrapped around Changbin’s shoulders.

Jisung blinked, wondering if he imagined the whole situation, but when he opened his eyes again, Changbin was still flushed against Felix’s tight grasp and Chan was basically rolling on the floor in laughter.

“Are you-” he huffed in shock, pointing an accusing finger at the two. “Is this where you’ve been every night Changbin-hyung? Defiling my friend!”

“N-No” Changbin stuttered, his eyes wide. “We’re not doing that-”

“Binnie’s my boyfriend!” Felix cheered, completely unbothered about Changbin’s almost heart attack and Jisung’s almost information-overload.

“For – For how long?” he choked out.

“Just passed two months!” Felix replied happily.

He gaped at Chan who of course was evilly laughing and knew the whole time, and then at Changbin and Felix again.

“Hey, Sung,” Changbin goaded and Jisung looked at him with faux malice in his eyes. “You’ll never guess where we met.”

As much as he didn’t want to give in to Changbin’s teasing, his curiosity got the best of him. “Where?”

“Remember that weird Chinese-themed nightclub Chan-hyung DJ-ed at?”

He groaned and spun away, almost not believing the coincidence. With something akin to love sparkling in his eyes under the last rays of the late autumn sun, he observed the two.

They looked… happy. Really happy.

He smiled and started his walk towards the car. “Whatever, I hate you all for not telling me,” he called cheekily over his shoulder and laughed at Chan’s rambunctious snort, that sounded through the crisp air.

Then the four of them climbed into Chan’s car and jeered and rapped to Changbin’s earliest tracks (WOW was a favourite and Felix was definitely better at rapping than any of the trio had accounted him for.)

Chan turned around and slapped some won notes into his hand with a proud smile on his face (Felix started screaming about how he needed to keep his eyes on the road.)

And as he joked around with the windows down and the wind ruffling through his hair, Jisung felt more alive than he had in a very long time.

Seungmin and Jisung sat huddled together, buzzing with half excitement half nerves at Jisung’s desk as the teacher started to hand back the projects. She had taken a week to mark all of them, and that week had been one of the most painful of his whole life.

He wondered if this was almost-crippling wait and nervousness what people who always put in effort into their projects felt like all the time.

“I’m sorry if we fail,” he whispered out, starting to doubt himself when they watched another pair receive their work.

Seungmin looked at him like he said the dumbest thing in the world. “We won’t fail, idiot. You worked hard, and your ideas were really good – the teacher was happy with us last week, wasn’t she?”

Jisung nodded, his mouth feeling dry as he observed Felix and his partner who Jisung had never bothered to learn the name of, receive their project and Felix send him a thumbs up from across the room.

He felt his stomach flip-flop as the teacher started to walk towards them, the final project in her hand.

“Well done,” she said, her voice clipped, and Jisung blankly noted that her voice wasn’t as dog-like sounding that he remembered.

Seungmin looked at his once more before turning the paper over.

Kim Seungmin and Han Jisung’s Project on the Working and Theory of Charles’s Law.

Grade: A+

Jisung felt adrenaline rush through his body and with a bright smile on his face he turned to Seungmin who’s cheeks were puffed up with a large grin.

They did it.

“You know,” Seungmin started as they walked out of class together when the bell rang, signalling that lunch had started.

“Hm?” Jisung looked at the boy and watched as he adjusted his golden glasses, Seungmin’s idiosyncrasy that told Jisung that the other was either feeling unsure or frustrated.

“When I told my parents, I was paired up with the ‘asshole who refuses to work’ Han Jisung, they were about to phone the school and demand it to mark us separately or let me do it individually.”

Jisung bit his lip. After they had celebrated together, the teacher told the class that another pairing, this girl Park Myongsil and her boyfriend had gotten the top mark; a ninety-eight per cent compared to his and Seungmin’s ninety-seven.

“Do you wish they did?” he asked carefully, telling himself he wouldn’t get offended and turn into a dickhead if the answer was yes.

“Of course not,” Seungmin said, baffled that the other would even say such a thing. “If I did that alone, there is no way I would have cracked a ninety.”

Jisung felt hope soar in his chest.

“I judged you too soon Han Jisung” the boy continued a sparkle in his eyes.

Jisung glanced at Seungmin, who looked slightly guilty over the prospect. “Don’t worry,” he reassured. “I think I judged you too quickly too.”

The kept walking together till they stopped at Seungmin’s locker, with Jisung wishing Seungmin would say something because the boy looked almost ready to spontaneously combust.

“Do you want to go to the park with me?” Seungmin blurted out.

Jisung cocked an eyebrow at the strange invitation.

“We could go… celebrate” Seungmin continued, looking uncharacteristically unsure of himself by the passing second. “Have a picnic… Jeongin and Felix could come too.”

Jisung paused, a humoured smile on his face. Usually, his idea of celebration was getting Chan to bribe him into a bar and drink until he was so drunk he forgot about his problems and his anxiety, but this idea was so wholesome that he couldn’t deny.

“Yeah,” Jisung replied back. “Yeah, I’d like that.”

By the end of school, their final grade had gotten out, placing second in the year level overall. As expected there were a million and a half rumours that he had forced Seungmin to do all the work for him (which although was what he initially intended, was not what happened) and when the four were walking to a small park, he let it get to him.

“Hyung,” Jeongin pouted, grabbing his hand. “Don’t worry about anyone else says, they’re all just jealous that you beat them!”

“Yeah” Seungmin agreed. “What matters is that we both know we shared the work – we both did our best, and everyone else talking shit doesn’t know what’s going on, okay?”

Jisung nodded. Seungmin was right. He had an inkling that if he ever met Changbin, they would either become best of friends as they both seemed almost omnipotent or would be the worst of enemies.

Thinking of the elder, Jisung peered towards Felix who was now trying to dance a popular idol song in front of Jeongin as they walked, almost tripping over.

Maybe Felix knows what’s going on with Bin-hyung. People do share everything in a relationship…

Forcing himself to stop thinking about it, he turned back into the moment and laughed when Seungmin started chastising the Australian on ‘safe walking behaviours.’

He admired his friend's faces, each happy and individual in its own way, whether it was the hair colour or the way their smiles were, and Jisung realised right then and there that he would do anything to keep them this happy.

Because right now, to have friends like them, he felt like the luckiest person in the world.

It was six in the evening when Jeongin’s mother called to ask him to come home and by seven Seungmin had left too.

“You want to come round to Chan’s,” Jisung asked his remaining friend.

Felix furrowed his brow in thought, “Nah,” he eventually decided. “It’s my host sister’s birthday today, so I should get home. Besides I’m seeing Binnie on the weekend.”

“A date?” Jisung teased, wiggling his eyebrows and laughed when Felix’s face turned red.

“Shut up” he grumbled, but he had a small cute smile on his face.

“See you 'round” Jisung said, waving to the Australian over his shoulder.

He almost missed the younger’s wave as he turned to look where he was going and a strange sense of anxiety filed his veins, just like it used to all the time last year.

It stayed with him when he got on the overcrowded subway to the darker part of Seoul and it followed him when he stepped inside Chan and Changbin’s place and kicked off his shoes.

“Hyungs?” he called out.

There was no answer.

He lightened his footsteps, adrenaline making his actions sharp and his mind clear. But the thrum of anxiety only worsened beneath his skin as he rounded the corner and heard two hushed voices coming from Changbin’s bedroom.

“I’m not doing shit, hyung,” Changbin’s hissed voice came through the door. “I can’t believe you don’t trust me on this!”

“I do trust you Bin” Jisung heard Chan’s frustrated tone and flinched, his throat feeling suddenly scratchy. “But every day you’re back with a new bruise, you’re sneaking out at night and lying to me and Jisung.”

Upon hearing his name, he leaned closer to the closed door. What the hell is going on in there?

“Chan, I’m fine okay – I just need to help support my Dad and sitting around like an idiot isn’t cutting it anymore. The business is failing-”

“If it’s failing, you know me and Sung would gladly help you” Chan bit back. “The shop isn’t even open at nights and don’t even try telling me you’re going around to Felix’s place because he just called me and told me he hasn’t seen you in a week and is worried he did something wrong.”

Jisung felt his heart pang at that. Felix doesn’t trust me enough to confide in me? He barely knows Chan-hyung…

“Fuck, Chan-hyung, lay off, alright?” Changbin’s tone turned sour and Jisung bit his lip.

“I’m worried about you Changbin” came Chan’s voice, stern but pleading. “And what? If you really needed to save all your money then why the fuck did you get inked, huh? How much did that cost-”

“Jesus, who are you my fucking mother?”

The room went so quiet Jisung held his breath in fear it would be heard.

“You better have pulled your shit together before Jisung gets here” Chan’s low threat came through the door. “I don’t care what you do, or how you do it, but get it done. And whatever the hell is going on with you Changbin, make it right.”

He barely had enough time to scramble into the bathroom before he heard Chan’s thundering steps come out of the bedroom and down the hall, retreating into the studio with the slam of a door.

Fuckin hell he thought to himself, plopping down on the closed toilet before his knees could give out. It’s rare when they fight; usually, I’m the person who starts something.

He sighed and put his head in his hands.

Then he eyed the small window above the sink.

Well, thank god Chan and Changbin lived on the first floor.

After a good ten-minutes of sliding out of the window, then falling onto the flower garden which he had then attempted to fix up but failed, he was back at the front door.

And so, he opened it again.

“Hyungs! I’m here!” he called out, quickly pretending to take off his shoes that he had left inside, and when he saw Changbin, looking far more put together than he imagined vis-à-vis the fight

“Hey, Sung,” Changbin said his voice slightly tighter than usual. “Wanna go out tonight?”

Jisung faltered. “What about Channie-hyung?”

Changbin looked towards the door to the studio. “I think he’s busy working.”

Jisung bit his lip. Changbin wasn’t lying exactly – they both knew when Chan was stressed or in a bad mood, he tended to overwork himself, and would sometimes spend hours upon hours holed on in the studio.

“Alright,” he answered, deciding not to push it.

Jisung waited nervously as Changbin went up and got changed, constantly moving to the closed studio door to check if Chan was okay but chickening out every time.

He’s your best friend, idiot he tried to psych himself up, placing one hand on the handle. You can do this, just ask if he’s alright and then everything will be fine – three, two, one-

“Jisung, you ready to go?”

Turning around, caught red-handed, he watched as Changbin, started at him, almost daring him to open the door.

“Um, yeah, Hyung,” Jisung said lightly, trying to keep the wobble out of his voice. He let go of the handle, the cold metal slipping through his fingers. “Yeah. Let’s go.”

The pair, feeling somewhat lost without their leader who had brought them all together in the first place, walked down the streets of Seoul in silence.

Changbin turned into an alleyway, seeming to know where he was going much better than Jisung did who usually stayed away from these parts. Despite his whirling thoughts, he didn’t ask his hyung where he was taking him.

When they reached a small dock, full of colourful and large shipping containers Changbin stopped.

Wordlessly the elder picked one, and clambered on top of it, and held out a hand to help Jisung up so they overlooked Han River.

The sight was almost beautiful.

Changbin pulled out a small cardboard box out of his jacket pocket, which Jisung released were Newport cigarettes, put one in his mouth before offering one to Jisung.

“Nah, hyung,” he refused, pulling out some gum. “I’ve got this.”

Silently he watched as Changbin lit his own cigarette and puffed out smoke into the cold air.

He looked away. “I didn’t know you picked up smoking.”

Changbin sighed the sound heavy on Jisung’s heart. “I know. Bad habit.”

Jisung licked his cracked lips and looked out to the river where the sun was beginning to set, turning the sky a stunning pink-orange colour.

He never used to appreciate things like this.

“Hyung,” he started nervously, peering at the elder boy. “Is everything… okay with you?”

Changbin exhaled another puff of smoke, the vapour dancing in the wind.

“I’m not… in the best place right now, Sungie” he admitted, looking out at the orange sky. “I think I’ve made a really big mistake.”

Jisung was quiet at that, mulling the elder’s words over. “Well, the good thing about mistakes is that you can always fix them” he tried, glancing at the other boy for his response.

Changbin just smiled, his skin tinted a coral-colour from the dying sun’s beams. But the smile held a tinge of melancholy, a tinge of regret.

“You’re right,” Changbin said, nodding like he was trying to reassure himself. “In times of adversity, you must have hope.”

Jisung nodded and chewed his gum. The sky turned a soothing red.

Changbin sighed again. “Jisung… what would you do if there was something really bad going on, that you might be able to stop?”

Jisung frowned. “What do you mean? What’s the bad thing?”

Changbin didn’t answer and Jisung bit his lip again.

“Well,” he started, his breath shaky. He thought back to what Felix told him outside the youth centre. “I think… you are the only person in control of your life – what you decide to do and all that. Only you can make your own choices and well, everyone has the power to change a bad situation, all that matters is that one person decides to do it.”

Changbin chuckled, the sound so different from the hushed yells from before.

“When did you get so wise, Sungie?”

Jisung paused, already knowing the answer. “I met some people, and I guess I decided to grow up.”

They sat together until the sun disappeared behind the skyscrapers marking the good side of town.

“Jisung” Changbin said when the stars started to show, his voice grave.

At the unexpected call of his name, he looked at the elder, who was snuffing out his cigarette. “Yeah?”

Changbin reached into his pocket and pulled out a blue stick, Jisung didn’t recognise at first.

“Your – Your USB?” he stammered when the elder held it out to him. “I can’t take it! It’s yours.”

“I just finished my first album” Changbin pouted. “I want you to have the first listen.”

Jisung paused. Usually, whenever they finished recording something, Chan always had access to it first.

“Hyung…” Jisung trailed off. He stared into his friend’s eyes. “Give this to Channie-hyung first, okay? Make it… Make it right.”

Changbin paled as he repeated what the eldest had said to him just that afternoon. Then he slipped the USB back into your pocket. “Okay, Jisung, I guess you’re right.”

Hopping down from the yellow shipping crate the pair started walking back, one arm around each other’s shoulders in a form of unbroken comradery. When they came to a crossroads, the left being Jisung’s route home and the right being Changbin’s, they stopped.

“Get home safe, okay?” Changbin said, seriousness in his tone. “If you see anyone, go the other way-”

“I know basic safety” Jisung snorted, his hands deep in his hoodie pockets. “Besides, I do this all the time.”

Changbin smiled then, a genuine one. “I know, I know. I can’t help but worry about my little dongsaeng though, not when he’s on the big bad streets of Seoul.”

Jisung laughed again, the sound loud in the night-time. “Alright, alright, I’ll be fine - bye Binnie-hyung.”

Changbin gave him a final squeeze before pulling apart. “See ya, Sung.”

Jisung waved as he watched Changbin walk into the darkness; the streetlight above him not working, it seemed.

And with one last lingering glance, he started to walk away too, the orange streetlight rather than an amber flame from a cigarette guiding his way home.

When he woke up, he already knew he was going to have a bad day.

His body felt tired and weak like he had run a marathon, his head felt so bad he feared it might explode, and his stomach felt so ill he considered just staying at home.

But still, he pulled himself out of bed, brushing off his mother’s concern and packed his schoolbag.

Laying in bed doing nothing would just make him feel worse. Besides, maybe seeing his friends would lighten his spirits.

Sighing, he checked his phone, but the cracked screen remained black. He checked the charging cable and groaned. Of course, it hadn’t been connected to the port. What a great indicator of how his already shitty day was going.

He ditched it on his bed and left his room.

The walk to school was colder than usual, a thin blanket of frost expanding over every living thing. With a tired exhale he watched as his breath showed, then faded into the air. He remembered he used to be able to see his breath even on the hottest of summer nights as it was mostly just smoke from Marlboros.

Trudging to school he realised he hadn’t had one in a while, but his anxiety seemed so bad today that maybe he should’ve brought them.

He tried some gum instead. It wasn’t as tasty as it had been yesterday. Slipping his cold fingers in the cardboard packet again, feeling for one more to amplify the flavour, he stopped when there was nothing there.

He had finished the packet.

Ditching it in a trash can, he continued his walk, a twist in his stomach he had almost not realised was there.

School was nothing short of strange. There were more pointed fingers, more sneaky glances, more whispers about him than usual.

Felix, Jeongin and Seungmin seemed the same, so he brushed it aside, trying to ignore the school’s shift in mood, instead.

But life, that had been going so well, was a complex, convoluted, confusing, complicated thing, and maybe he had been too ignorant in his bliss to forget that.

Life was never kind to Han Jisung.

And the news came to him at lunch from his very least favourite person in the whole school; Kim Dakho.

Jisung narrowed his eyes when he saw the boy sauntering up to him, his shoulders back and face cocky like he was ready for a fight.

“Just ignore it, hyung” Jeongin hissed from beside him but Jisung couldn’t, not when Dakho looked so smug, so irritating and he strolled over to him like he was king of the world.

“Jisung-” Seungmin tried, but in one instant Jisung had already made up his mind.

Maybe Dakho had been the reason for his throbbing mind all day like it was trying to warn him about the absolute headache the other was.

When the boy came close, Jisung edged away from Seungmin’s locker not wanting either of his two friend’s present (Felix had a foreign students meeting) to get involved in the upcoming altercation if it were to occur.

“Han,” the senior smirked boldly and Jisung plastered on his most menacing frown, his whole body from the tips of his toes to the hairs on the back of his neck alert for an incoming fist.

“Dakho” Jisung replied, his voice level. “What are you doing here? Want to embarrass yourself?”

Dakho laughed and Jisung shifted his weight to the balls of his feet, ready to defend himself or his dongsaengs if needed.

“No, Jisung,” Dakho grinned and Jisung felt unease channel through him at the use of his first name. “I just wanted to ask if you’ve seen and heard the news?”

He tensed up. Dakho wasn’t the type to play mind-games, he was far too bone-headed for that. So, what was he trying to achieve?

“No” he replied darkly, his stomach twisting so violently he felt he might be sick. “Why?”

The senior was quiet for a second.

“Well, you know your asshole friend Seo?”

Jisung clenched his fists, wondering if he hadn’t kicked him hard enough for the other to learn his lesson.

Dakho smiled then, his teeth bared like a wolf out for blood. Jisung felt his heart beat faster in his chest; his palms go clammy-

“Ya know what - I really tried to help you, Han, I really did,” the boy started to lazily pace around and Jisung flashed his eyes to the crowd that was starting to form.

“But Seo, Seo Changbin,” the boy repeated, stopping in his steps, cocking his head and staring at Jisung, his eyes completely blank. “Seo Changbin… is dead.”

He felt the world stop spinning on his axis.

D-Dead?

His mouth went dry, and his vision blurred so forcibly he almost fell over.

He – He can’t be-

He rested a shaking hand over his chest. Thud. Thud. Thud.

Then he realised that Changbin didn’t have a heartbeat anymore.

Then all he saw was red.

He only knew one thing then, the same technique he had fallen back on all last year whenever his emotions and his anger overpowered him.

In a single, murderous lunge he wrapped a hand around Kim Dakho’s throat, taking the other boy to the floor with him.

And then he punched, and he punched, and he punched.

Till the only thing he saw on Dakho’s face was red.

Distorted screams echoed around him but Jisung kept driving his fist down again and again like it was second instinct, his true nature.

He felt a bone break under his knuckles, and yet he kept going like the simple action was automatic, uncontrollable, feral.

Seo Changbin the word rang clearly in his mind with each hit. Seo Changbin, Seo Changbin, Seo Changbin, Seo Changbin-

When he came back to it, out of the haze, the fuzz that had clouded his mind, he was in the Headmaster’s office, his hands tied together with a skipping rope.

He looked down blankly at his fists. They were red, blue, black, scabby, bleeding, broken.

One of his knuckles was too far to the left and with a grimace, he looked away.

He didn’t even feel the pain.

He sat numbly as Mr. Dok, who he barely realised was there, took a phone call then left, with a warning to “stay there.”

Jisung almost laughed when the fat man waddled out the door. Like he had anywhere to go.

Mr. Dok returned what seemed like seconds, or maybe minutes later (Jisung couldn’t tell) with a bloodshot-eyed, tired-looking Bang Chan at his heels.

Right. The elder was his emergency contact for when his mother was at work.

Wordlessly, Jisung outstretched his hands and let the elder untie the rope. He waited as Chan and Mr. Dok spoke for a few seconds, not taking in any of the information, feeling like he had aged a thousand years from yesterday.

He had seen Changbin yesterday.

His eyes filled with tears.

He wondered what Felix would say when he heard what happened.

The walk from the Headmaster’s office to the front gates felt like it never existed.

His hands dripped crimson thick gloopy blood as he passed the people he hated, the people he saw every day and despised.

Chan was behind him, a steadying calloused hand on his shoulder and Jisung swallowed the lump that formed in his throat. He would never let these people see him cry.

He barely noticed Jeongin, Seungmin and Hyunjin next to his locker. Hyunjin turned away when they made eye contact like he was ashamed. Jisung managed a small fake smile to his friends, his eyes locked onto Jeongin’s brightly dyed red hair.

The colour of his fists, the colour of Dakho’s face, the colour of Chan’s eyes, the colour of the sky a minute before sunset, the colour of Changbin’s blood.

He let himself cry when Chan buckled him into his car.

But apart from his wet sobs, his choked heaving breaths, the sound of his fists hammering against the headboard as if it would take it all back, give him a chance to relive yesterday, give Changbin a chance to live today- there was silence.

As they drove past Changbin’s favourite spicy kebab restaurants they spent so many of their nights, Chan started to cry too.

Their tears had stopped by the time they had reached Chan and Changbin’s, no – Chan’s apartment.

“I’ve called your mum, told her the news, told her I picked you up,” Chan said as they walked to the door and Jisung nodded blankly barely registering the words.

“What happened?” he whispered, his voice crackly and hoarse when the elder walked him in and sat him down on the living room couch.

Chan took a moment to respond like he too hadn’t quite processed the situation. “Here,” he said instead flicking on the TV. “It’ll…be on the news.”

They sat together, in mutual mourning as they waited for the story to come up.

“…The murder of a nineteen-year-old male, identified this morning as Seo Changbin-”

A photo of Changbin taken at the elder’s nineteenth birthday in August flashed up on his screen. Jisung remembered it with a pang in his chest. He and Chan had baked the cake and the surprise had been in the warehouse of the Seo’s Sword-shop. After they had gone for a huge meal of kebabs and hot sauce before proceeding to get extremely drunk and then vomiting it all up again.

He felt sick again. Mr. Seo, Changbin’s father, must have sent in the image.

Jisung wondered how the man was feeling at this very moment; wondered if he felt as dead inside and hollow as he did.

“The boy was identified to have ties with one of Seoul’s most notorious gangs, ‘OB Faction’ as shown by Seo’s gang-affiliated bicep tattoo, which is hypothesised to have played a large role in the recent spike of human trafficking and kidnapping cases plaguing Seoul-”

“They-” Jisung started breathlessly, his throat pained from crying. “They think he… was a gang member?”

“He…” Chan said, licking his swollen and cracked lips. “Sung, I think he… was.”

Chan’s quiet, hesitant words hit him like a brick.

Because deep down, maybe he had suspected or even known it all along.

“Seo Changbin was killed in what police suspect to have been a fight in the early morning that escalated fatally, ending in several stab wounds to the chest. The suspects are still at large. If you have any information…”

Jisung zoned out to the rest of the lady’s words and in a few moments the news changed, to a photo of a corgi, a puppy, like Changbin’s death, his best friend’s death was comparable to what dog won the dog show.

Like the boy who rapped with hope in every word, the boy who took a punch for him all of last year, the boy who always helped drunk strangers in the street, the boy, like the boy who Jisung loved with his whole heart, was just a face and a name and a statistic.

Like he was nothing at all.

That’s when he decided that he, Han Jisung hated life and how it had ended for Changbin too soon.

Chan’s phone ringtone broke his rage.

“Here,” Chan said robotically.

Jisung took it with a shaking hand. It was his Mum.

“Jisung, baby – I – Heard the news about Binnie, are you okay?”

He told her that he was fine and with one look towards Chan, told her he would be staying the night. When she hung up, he felt somewhat lonely.

“I heard him last night,” Chan said, his voice monotone and dark. “Just like every night I heard him leave out the front door and I did nothing to stop him.”

Jisung was quiet.

“And the last thing I did with him was fight; yell at him-” Chan broke off into a sob.

Jisung looked out the window. It was sunset again.

“Hyung” he pleaded, his voice cracking with emotion. “Hyung it’s not your fault, it’s not – it’s not our fault-”

“I could have done something, Sung! Something that would have kept him alive-” Chan wept, and Jisung quickly sprung to the elder’s side, wrapping his arms around him in a way he thought was comforting.

The two laid there for a few seconds as the news continued on, and Jisung tried his hardest to hold himself together despite Chan’s onslaught of tears.

His heart felt broken. He had never seen the elder cry.

“I’m sorry” Chan whispered as the sky darkened. Jisung felt the top of his orange hair dampen with the elder’s tears. “I’m sorry.”

Jisung didn’t know what to say, all he could do was bury his head into Chan’s strong chest and hold on tighter like they were clinging together for dear life.

And maybe they were.

“We have to have hope, Chan-hyung,” he said, quietly into the night. “It’s what Changbin always had” he broke off, a sob crawling up his throat. “It’s what he – what he would have wanted for us.”

Chan was quiet again, recollective.

Outside police sirens sang as if mourning for them too.

“Okay Sung” Chan whispered, nuzzled into the crown of Jisung’s orange hair. “It’s just you an’ me now, okay? We need to look after each other.”

And with a tear rolling down his face, their trio now a two, Jisung nodded.

And the duo fell asleep, curled together as if it was the last thing they ever had now; as if, in the darkest of times and coldest of winters, all they had was each other.

Chapter Text

It had only been one full day without his best friend by his side, but to Jisung, it was the longest day to ever exist.

The news played the story a few more times in the early afternoon when he awoke, and he watched it with a cloud of depression hazing his mind. With one glance over to Chan, who sat next to him on the sofa, his eyes bloodshot and puffy, but his face an expressionless blankness, he knew the elder felt the same way too.

Numb. Cold. Vacant.

They shared a Marlboro when Changbin’s face came up on the news again, and then it vanished, just as quickly and suddenly as he did.

They found the killers, the news read. Two twenty-something-year-olds. All Jisung had done was commit their faces to memory with a quiet promise to seek revenge. Those fuckers deserved it.

Of course, Chan knew what he was thinking and just lit another cigarette, his eyes saying the answer Jisung already knew was best anyway.

They watched the cycle of news, again and again, puffing out smoke till the cigarette died.

Death was a strange thing, Jisung concluded.

It was like his whole life, Chan’s whole life, and Changbin’s whole life had stopped moving; stagnant, still.

But the world moved on like nothing had happened at all. Like a nineteen-year-old hadn’t just been stabbed and bled out in a shady alleyway, because to the world, Seo Changbin meant nothing.

And he meant nothing to many people; when Jisung looked out the window at noon, strategically avoiding Changbin’s empty bedroom, he watched as businessmen hurried to work and woman chattered in the streets or hassled for a lower price on vegetables from the alley markets.

To them, Seo Changbin was nothing.

But to Jisung, Seo Changbin had been almost everything.

He returned to the couch, and beside Chan’s warmth again.

“You should go home” were Chan’s first words to him, ragged and cracked and sad.

Jisung just nodded, a buzzing in his brain that didn’t seem to go away.

“I’ll come back” he promised. He wondered if Changbin had promised the exact same thing.

Chan just lit another cigarette. Jisung threw on his shoes and opened the front door, his body moving like it was a machine, completely mindless, completely automatic.

His mouth tasted foul as he walked along the roadside to his house. He longed for some Watermelon gum. With an aching heart and a tired mind, he wondered how Felix was holding up.

When I get my phone, I should message him, he decided, but it was just a flashing thought, a bypassing sentence, one with no commitment or emotion.

When he reached home however and saw his mother’s tear-stained face, he let himself cry.

“My baby, my beautiful Jisung, I’m so, so sorry,” she said, her voice wobbly and taught and Jisung just nodded and leaned into her embrace further. She was warm and she smelt of her vanilla shampoo, and it was the most comforting thing he felt since he heard the news.

“I’m okay” he lied, trying to reassure her, but his voice cracked, and he knew she didn’t believe it. Yet she hugged him again, and for a few moments, they just held each other in their arms, just like how he and Chan had been doing the previous night.

“I’m going to get some stuff then go back to Chan,” he choked out, pulling away so he could look into his mother’s eyes. “Is that…okay?”

His mother’s mouth drew into a line, but she nodded and ruffled his orange hair like she used to when they were in Malaysia.

“Of course,” she said and gave him a small smile. “I’ll drive you there.”

Sluggishly he drew away from his mother’s grasp and moved towards the stairs, his vision swirling and his feet heavy like stones had been tied to them, dragging his body down to the depths of the world.

When he reached his room, it was like everything had been desaturated; turned grey. His bed sheets weren’t as blue anymore, his lamp wasn’t as red, his orange USB resting by his headphones wasn’t as fluoro orange…

It was like the life had been sucked out of every little thing.

He grabbed his phone off its charger the ‘100%’ icon completely opposite of how he was feeling and changed his shirt and hoodie before trudging back downstairs.

The drive to the house was quiet. He plastered on a small smile when he saw the pot of leftovers his mother carried into the car, seemingly for him and Chan to share. Some old nostalgic folk tunes sounded over the radio, but Jisung didn’t have the spirit in him to hum along like he used to when he was a kid. Not now. Not anymore.

“Jisung,” his mother said quietly, her eyes trained on the road ahead.

Shifting his weight on the passenger seat, he glanced over at his mother. What he didn’t expect was a small melancholic smile on her face, and her eyes to be filling with tears.

“Mum?” he questioned immediately, scrambling for what he had done to make her cry. “W-What’s wrong?”

She sniffed and wiped away a tear sliding down her flushed cheek before returning it to the wheel. “I didn’t know if it was the best time to tell you with everything going on, Sungie, but… Jihyin… she gave birth last night. You… have a nephew now.”

Jisung felt his jaw drop. “S-Seriously? I have… a nephew?”

His mother laughed shakily at his reaction wiping away another stray tear. “Yeah, baby, you do.”

Jisung ran a hand through his hair. Holy shit.

“What’s his name?”

His mother paused. “Kyubok.”

Jisung frowned, searching for the meaning of the name through the hangul. “Kyubok… Blessed by God?”

His mother nodded, turning on the car indicator into Chan’s street. “He was born premature, Jisung, a month earlier than expected. It’s… usually a pretty bad birth when it’s so early – but he was confirmed completely healthy and is breathing fine on his own. So that’s why they decided on Kyubok.”

Jisung hummed in thought, looking out the window. They had arrived.

“I should get going,” he said, opening the car door halfway. “I’ll be staying here a few nights, but I’ll message you, okay?”

“Don’t forget the food!” his mother called out and Jisung chuckled, getting out of the car then grabbing the rather heavy pot.

“Sung,” his mother said, before he turned to close the door. He glanced back, almost afraid of what she would say.

“The…” she started and fiddled with the steering wheel. “The school called me, hon, told me… what happened.”

Jisung grimaced and clenched the pot tighter.

“We… need to talk about it, okay? When you come back?”

Feeling sour, he nodded and looked away.

“I love you, Sungie, okay?” she whispered carefully. “No matter what.”

He just sniffed and nodded stoutly again.

He watched, having no free hands to wave as his mother drove away, before turning around to face Chan’s door.

He froze, still at the curb. The apartment block seemed darker and larger than usual like it was looming over him.

Biting his lip, he gathered his courage and moved towards the door furthest to the left, where his eldest hyung would be residing.

“Chan-hyung!” he called out when he got to the door, holstering the pot embarrassingly on one of his knees, wondering how the hell his mother carried this all the way from the kitchen to the car. “Hyung, let me in! My mum made food!”

He only had to wait another few seconds, before he heard the thudding slow footsteps from the other side of the door, and it lazily swung open, revealing a more-sleep-deprived-than-usual Bang Chan.

“I’m back,” Jisung announced, plastering a smile on his face, hoping that even for a moment they would both be able to forget the horror that had just been committed. “No idea what Mum made, but it’s way too fuckin’ heavy.”

He shoved his way into the apartment, toeing his shoes off and swallowing when it seemed so empty. His breath caught in his throat when he spotted Changbin’s runners at the door and trudged to the kitchen before heaving the pot onto the bench.

For a second there was silence, the pair not really knowing what to say to each other. Jisung looked away from the pot and at his hyung’s face. Chan looked terrible - morbid almost. His cheeks were hollow and lacked colour, his basically dead bleached blonde hair was tied up in a little pineapple that wasn’t really working seeing the wisps falling into his dark, brown, sad eyes.

Jisung sighed. He couldn’t try to distract them from the past. The truth.

A smile and a meal wouldn’t change what happened. But maybe it could help them a little bit.

Motioning Chan to the couch, before the elder could collapse from exhaustion, he grabbed two bowls, expertly avoiding Changbin’s blue bowl, heaped a few spoons of the rice-vegetable thing into them, and rammed it into the microwave on high.

They both said nothing as the meals heated up, Chan slumped on the sofa, looking blankly at the wall, and Jisung peered towards him and the two bowls spinning around in the microwave, leaning dependently on the counter to hold his weight.

“Guess what” Jisung croaked out, his eyes trained on the seconds ticking down on the machine. Chan didn’t answer. “Jihyin gave birth last night.”

That got Chan’s attention.

“Really?” he looked towards him, his eyebrows raised.

“Yeah,” Jisung shrugged, suddenly feeling nervous. “A son, Pil Kyubok.”

Chan hummed in thought. “Blessed by God.”

Jisung didn’t have time to respond before the timer went off, the sound shrill in the open room.

With a towel wrapped around his hand, he pulled the now took steaming bowls out of the microwave, grabbed some chopsticks and settled beside Chan on the couch, handing him a meal. They ate in silence, but it was comfortable.

Still, never one for a long-attention span, Jisung pulled out his phone and started checking what he had missed.

<17 Missed Calls and 57 Unread Messages>

            Minnie: <Jisung, please respond. We all really worried about you.>

            Minnie: <Jisung-hyung I’m really scared. Please call me or Innie back.>

Biting the inside of his cheek he kept scrolling.

            INNIE: <Hyung, are you OK??? Felix is shaking a lot and idk what to do>

            INNIE: <Jisung-hyung pls call me. There’s blood everywhere…>

With another sigh he plopped the phone back on the couch, glancing down at his knuckles. He had barely remembered the bruises, the scabbing-over wounds. They didn’t look as bad as before; Chan must have cleaned him up yesterday, as there was a band-aid he hadn’t even noticed wrapped over his right-hand’s knuckles.

Damn, he didn’t even remember it. Funny what grief did to a person.

He looked away from his hands, the same hands he had used as weapons so many times and glanced back at his discarded phone.

He swiped it back and sent some messages of reassurance to Seungmin, Jeongin, and even Minho who must have gotten his phone number with his school-captain wiles. Felix hadn’t messaged him, for some strange reason, but Jisung sent him a quick ‘I’m alright, hope u r 2’ anyway.

When he cleared out his messages, there was one left, and he frowned at the unrecognised jumble of numbers that had supposedly sent it.

A… voicemail? At two a.m.?

Clicking it, he brought the phone up to his ear.

“Jisung,” A raggedy voice said and Jisung felt all the oxygen leave his lungs. “It’s me.”

With an ungodly squawk, he pegged the phone across the living room, watching it with wide eyes full of shock and apprehension.

“H-Hyung?” he stuttered; his eyes still trained on the device.

“Sung?” Chan asked, concern on his features. “What’s wrong?”

“Did you-” Jisung heaved, checking to make sure his heart was still beating. “Did you get a voicemail from… from Binnie-hyung?”

Chan tensed from beside him and Jisung turned his head to watch as Chan entered his phone with shaky fingers, before selecting the voicemail tab.

<You have one voicemail.>

“F-Fuck” Chan whispered hoarsely. He was as pale as a ghost.

The elder shot up from the couch his hands trembling violently, looking half-crazed and panicked. “Fuck, Jisung, fuck!”

Jisung had no idea how to respond, his hand still over his thrumming heart. Thud. Thud. Thud.

“Shit, Sung!” Chan lamented, manically tugging at his hair. “H-He tried to call us before he died! This is – this is evidence, like real shit-”

“We should listen to it,” Jisung breathed, his voice crackly and hoarse. “Chan-hyung, it’s his… his final words. We have to.”

Chan settled down at that, but tears and fear were still evident, swirling around in his eyes.

“What if it’s something I don’t want to hear.”

Jisung blinked back his tears at Chan’s scared confession but forced himself to remain strong. “It won’t be.”

The elder looked conflicted at that, but sighed, clutching his phone to his chest, “Yeah, Sung,” he agreed his voice high and pitchy like he was trying to believe it. “You’re right… I’m just… going to go to the studio, okay?”

Jisung nodded, “Yeah, hyung, okay.”

The room felt eerie when Chan left, the muted television flickering in the afternoon sun.

With trepidation in his veins, he turned robotically to his phone, lying limp under one of the windows where he had thrown it.

You can do this Jisung he tried to convince himself, walking over to the device, his legs wobbling dangerously like jelly. You have to. It’s what Changbin-hyung wants, no, would have wanted.

Reaching a hand out, he plucked his phone nervously off the wooden planks and looked at the bright screen. It had exited out from the voicemail.

So, once again, he clicked the notification and pressed it to his ear.

“Jisung” the same crackly voice came over the line again and Jisung took a deep breath to settle his heart. “It’s me.”

“I have no clue what I’m doing,” Changbin laughed, then coughed and Jisung bit his lip, only being able to imagine the state the elder was recording this in. “This feels so cliché and stupid, but… I guess I wanted to talk to someone.”

Jisung ignored the tear rolling down his cheek.

“I already left Lix, Chan-hyung and my Dad a message,” Changbin said and took a shallow, broken breath. “Not that you’re last place, Sungie… you could never be.”

The elder sighed over the line and seemed to try and move before grunting out in pain.

“You tol’ me to make it right, huh?” Changbin chuckled and Jisung stifled one of his own sobs. “I guess you overheard me an’ Hyung arguing earlier… But I took your advice, I stopped the bad thing, Sung, I promise.”

Jisung whimpered then, clutching the phone to his ear like it was his lifeline. No, no, no, no-

“Don’ be mad a’ me, or at ya’ self,” Changbin said sluggishly and Jisung tried to pretend the other’s words weren’t getting more slurred, more disjointed, more… painful.

“I know I did the right thing tonight, no matter how it ends; stopped these dudes from takin’ a guy, puttin’ 'im in a van or whatnot,” Changbin slurred than gasped out in pain, probably trying to move again.

“Damn, who knew blood was so red,” Changbin laughed and Jisung cried again, his face wet with tears and snot. “I sure as hell didn’t”

There was quiet for a second and Jisung felt his heart leap into his throat and sink at the same time. “Changbin-hyung!” he screamed out like it was a phone call rather than a recorded message. Another few seconds ticked past before the elder boy’s sigh came through the phone.

“I don’t really know what’s goin’ on,” he admitted quietly, sounding lost. “But when I was with you at the dock, watchin’ the sunset… I felt really calm. Like my body knew something was gonna happen’ before I did…”

Jisung held his breath.

“Jesus, I sound like I’m gonna die,” Changbin laughed then coughed again. “I’m not. At least I hope not. I’ll prob’ly come home and get blood o’ Chan’s rug and he’ll be pissed an’ we’ll go to the uh – hospital and I’ll be fine.”

If only, Jisung thought, sobbing again until his throat felt scraped raw.

“Hope’s important, Sung… Always.”

Jisung pulled the phone away from his ear for a brief second when Changbin broke out into a series of more scary-sounding weak coughing. He sobbed helplessly again when he saw there were only ten seconds left of the voicemail before the two-minute timer cut off.

“Binnie,” he pleaded like it would change anything.

Changbin just coughed again.

“I’m really proud of you Sung,” the dying boy said finally, and his slow choked breaths made it seem he had started to cry. “You’ve changed a lot, and you’ll be great out there in the big bad world, okay? Promise me you’ll be okay…”

“I promise,” Jisung choked out between his sobs, and waited for the elder to respond.

But there was nothing but the static beeps of the dial tone.

The voicemail had ended. Changbin was gone.

And Jisung never got to say a true goodbye.

He didn’t know how long he sat there for, replying the message over and over again, just to hear the elder’s last words, last breaths before the beeps of the dial cut him off too soon. But it was enough that his throat felt raw and his eyes dried and ached rivalling the pain in his heart.

Chan came out of the studio after sunset passed, looking similar, if not worse, to Jisung himself.

“He forgave me,” Chan said quietly.

Jisung couldn’t bear to respond.

“He…” Chan started, pulling something out of his pocket. “He hid this in the studio.”

Jisung narrowed his eyes at what the elder was holding and stood up slowly when he realised what it was.

“His USB,” Jisung stated lamely. “He finished his album two days ago.”

Chan hummed, then looked at his feet. “I’ve been… too scared to listen to it…”

Jisung paused. “We can-” he started, cursing why this was so hard to say. “We could listen to it… together.”

Chan looked up at that.

“Yeah, Sung,” the boy responded with a small smile. “I would like that.”

It only took them a few minutes to set up the USB and open all the mp3 files of Changbin’s songs. There was nine of them, and the boy had even made an album cover for it, a mesmerising mix of blues and silvers forming the silhouette of a child against a stark cream background.

With a quivering breath, Chan clicked on the first track, titled ‘Thursday.’

And as soon as Changbin’s gentle rap came over the speakers, the two of their trio left behind began to cry again.

It was raining when they lowered the casket into the ground.

Jisung could pretend the tears rolling down his face are raindrops and it seemed like everyone else at the funeral could too.

Chan was there, Felix was there, and a few other’s; friends of the Seo’s, some of Changbin’s childhood friends, and some of the family’s acquaintances.

They kept it small; Jisung declined when Jeongin and Seungmin offered to accompany him for support. They didn’t know Changbin, and now they would never have the chance.

Jisung and Chan, along with Mr Seo, decided to arrange the funeral on a Thursday; just like Changbin’s title track of his album.

They buried him in the plot beside his mother.

Jisung glanced to his side, where Felix was quietly sobbing, his breaths coming out in shallow, muffled puffs. Jisung didn’t lean over to comfort him, rather just stood as the priest finished up his words.

He stood still, numb as the ceremony wrapped up around him. People chattered, in their black coats and dresses and dried their eyes, but Jisung couldn’t move, his eyes trained on the mahogany coffin slowly disappeared, being covered in dirt and the blanket of frost covering the ground from the cold night before.

“You okay?” Chan whispered from beside him.

Jisung just nodded, about to turn to speak to Felix.

But the younger boy was gone.

“I want to thank you, boys, for helping me with the funeral,” a gruff voice said and both Chan and Jisung pivoted around to see Mr. Seo, looking a mixture of exhausted and sorrowful.

Jisung bit his lip, not knowing how to comfort the older man. He had never been good with words; Changbin was usually the one to talk them, being himself and Chan, out of both bad decisions and worse situations.

“That – That’s alright,” Chan dipped his head, looking like he didn’t quite know how to comfort the man either. “It was our…” the boy started, then trailed off, wracking his brain for a word that best fit the affair. “Duty.”

Mr. Seo chuckled at Chan’s apprehension, but it was sad sounding, almost hollow.

Quickly, Jisung peered around the cemetery, but there was no one else there.

Damn, how long were we just standing here?

It wasn’t even raining anymore.

“Changbin,” Mr. Seo began, and Jisung bit his lip and the man’s harrowed sigh. “He would be proud of you two – you’ve been a great friend to him over the years.”

“We’re honoured to have known him,” Chan answered, certainty ringing in his tone.

“Yes, I couldn’t have asked for a better son,” Mr. Seo agreed fondly, then lowered his head. “I… I was saving up for his university tuition, but…” he trailed off and Jisung’s breath caught in his throat when he saw the man pull two identical envelopes out of his coat pocket.

“- I know Changbin would have wanted me to give it to you,” the man finished finally and extended his hands, one white envelope in each.

“M-Money?” he choked out and blushed at how self-absorbed that seemed.

Mr. Seo didn’t need to nod to affirm it. Each envelope was basically ripping at the seams, filled with cold hard cash.

Jisung frowned and out of his peripheral vision, he could see Chan making the same confused face too.

They both knew that after Mrs. Seo’s death, the family had declined from their initial wealth, using almost every penny to pay for meals, for hot water, for heating. There was no way that this money was from just from the Swordshop’s income, and Changbin’s activity; the funeral and plot of land had been costly too, even with both Jisung and Chan chipping in.

“But… T-This is too much!” Chan flapped his hands around in the air, taking a step back. “How did you even get-” the elder started, then stopped immediately, his face turned beet red. “I – I mean-”

Mr. Seo was not offended, but rather burst into a hearty laugh, the only happy-sounding thing the man had emitted the whole service.

“I admit, it’s more than his university funds,” the man agreed sheepishly, and basically shoved each envelope into their hands.

Then his demeanour shifted into something more melancholic.

“Changbin joined that gang to make money,” Mr. Seo said bitterly. “He did it and never kept a single note; gave it all to me along with a tale of where he got each thousand won from and a smile.”

Jisung shifted in his place, the wet grass squelching beneath his shoes.

“I wish I could have been a better father” Mr. Seo continued melancholily. “Made a better living, then maybe things would have turned out differently-”

“You – You can’t blame yourself,” Chan said determinedly, repeating the same words Jisung had said to him previously.

Mr Seo just smiled sadly again. “It’s the role of a father,” he said.

Jisung looked at the offering again, and felt the ridges and divots of the paper, feeling enough money that could pay for a car if he wanted it.

“If I may ask,” he cleared his throat and wet his dry lips. “Where… Where is this money from then?”

Mr. Seo looked away. He was quiet for a second. “I sold the shop.”

Jisung almost gasped.

“The Sword shop?” Chan asked frantically. “But, Mr. Seo, tha – that’s your living! The – The family business-”

Jisung paled with the realisation.

The family business.

The Seo’s had only had one child, a son, who was destined to work in the Sword-shop and then his children after that. But now there was no one to pass the shop onto, there was no son.

“But…” Jisung said quietly. “Don’t you live above the shop?”

Mr. Seo didn’t answer at first.

“Don’t worry about me,” he said resolutely, a reassuring smile on his face. “I’ll be just fine.”

Jisung watched as the elder man walked away, leaving the two boys beside the grave.

He gripped the envelope tight to his chest. The white paper was filled with the Seo’s legacy; everything they had ever worked for.

And now it had been gifted to him.

“Do you think he’ll be okay?” Chan’s hoarse breath came from beside him.

Jisung paused, wishing he could wholeheartedly believe the father’s smile, final words to them both. But that would be naïve, blind.

Instead, he said, “I hope so.”

And the pair leaned into each other as they watched the man walk alone into the distance.

Three days later the police found a water-logged body washed up on the shore of a river.

Both he, his mother, and Chan were pulled into the morgue to identify the male.

Jisung almost felt sick when he saw the black clothes, the symbol of death, handing defeatedly on the man’s cold, blue body.

He ran to the bathroom to vomit when he saw Mr. Seo’s grey, weary face.

The car ride home was a tragic event.

Chan was numbly looking out the window, quiet as a mouse.

Jisung put in his earphones and listened to his angriest music on full blast.

His mother drove the long way to avoid Seo’s Swordsmith and Metalwork.

If he was in a better state of mind, he would have been thankful. Chan stayed with the Han’s that night, and the night after. His mother didn’t ask, didn’t need to, just made him up a bed and fed him just like he was her own child.

It took a few more days for the police to rule it as a suicide, and another week until the body is ready for a funeral.

Felix doesn’t come to this one, but apart from that Jisung blindly greeted the same people he saw a fortnight prior, all looking somewhat sadder and older than they did before.

Chan and Jisung chipped in a large sum of the money Mr. Seo initially gave them to purchase the expensive plot beside Changbin.

And there laid the three Seo’s all beside each other – a mother on the left, a father on the right, and a child in the middle.

As it rained again, the heaven’s mourning, Jisung blankly thought of the comparison to a family portrait.

It was fitting. And it was saddening.

Another week of missed school, missed calls from Seungmin and Jeongin, and missing Changbin, the headstones for the two graves arrived.

Jisung and Chan watched as the maintenance workers of the graveyard put them up.

‘For a man who loved too much’ Mr. Seo’s read.

Changbin’s one was engraved with a few simple words, ones he used to say to Jisung after a long day or a fight, and taken from one of his tracks in his album.

‘Even a shadow needs light to exist.’

When Changbin used to say that, Jisung had just gotten irritated, not really ever listening, not really ever trying to.

He didn’t understand hope back then.

But for the first time in his life, Jisung felt like he truly understood it.

On Monday, Jisung felt like a platypus (an animal Chan had to convince him actually existed) where the duck-part of him felt like he was about to shot himself, and the otter-part felt numb.

Why? Because today at exactly eleven in the morning he would be going back into to school and meeting both Mr. Dok and Mrs. Gwan (hooray, his favourite people), and coming to a compromise about ‘his time at school,’ as the email to his mother had read.

“What if they don’t let me back?” Jisung asked meekly from the back of the car as his mother drove to the school.

“They will,” Chan said from beside him, clutching his hand.

Jisung exhaled shakily, his good old anxiety creeping up on him and looked out the window, wishing he had some watermelon gum to chew to keep his mind from wandering too far.

Chan had invited himself along (with the permission of the school) to ‘defend’ him of sorts. Give the rundown of what happened to Changbin and how it was unfair to kick him out after his best friend died.

“I haven’t seen Jeongin or Seungmin since the fight,” Jisung chewed on his lip nervously as they pulled up at the school. His vision started to swirl, and he clenched Chan’s hand tighter to ground himself.

“-What if they think…” he started in a hoarse whisper, hating the very thought that penetrated his mind. “-I’m… a monster?”

“No one will think that honey,” his mother replied quickly, turning off the car and swivelling in her chair to face him. “Take some deep breaths and everything will be fine, okay?”

Forcing himself to nod, he let go of Chan’s hand and got out of the car, the gravel crackling under his heavy feet.

“You alright?” Chan asked quickly, swinging an arm around his shoulder as the three walked towards the entrance.

“Yeah.”

Chan left it at that, but he kept beside him as they entered the registration office and checked in for their appointment.

He looked blankly at the familiar wall as his mother talked to the receptionist, and walked numbly as the three were led to Mr. Dok’s office, bypassing a classroom, that in the window he saw Jeongin’s bright red hair in.

He ignored the boy when he tried to get his attention as Jisung walked past.

He looked at the floor, then at his knuckles.

He was fine. He had to be.

The meeting was awkward, uneasy. Jisung sat quietly with Chan reassuringly rubbing a finger over his bruised knuckles, a constant reminder of what happened, as his mother argued her case.

After twenty tense minutes, it seemed Mr. Dok had given in.

“Alright,” he said, rubbing his temples. “I understand that the circumstances make it unjust to judge him on this one event, so he can stay.”

Jisung perked his head up at that, meeting the tired man’s eyes.

“On some conditions,” the man said pointedly and Jisung stilled. “First, if you miss more than five classes this month you’re out.”

Jisung swallowed. Unfortunately for him, he had more than five English classes per month, so it looked like he might have to actually start attending them.

“Secondly, you can’t fail any subjects.”

Well, that was easy enough.

“And thirdly,” Mr. Dok started and peered towards Mrs. Gwan on his left. “Thirdly, the school board have discussed that your anger is unacceptable. Therefore, every Sunday at three in the afternoon, Mrs. Gwan will be escorting you to anger management sessions.”

Jisung raised his eyebrows.

“Weekly sessions?” his mother repeated, as dumbfounded as he was but expertly hiding it better. “But therapy is expensive-”

“The cost is covered,” Mr. Dok said firmly. “This is non-negotiable. If he fails to show for one session or misbehaves, he will be unable to continue learning at this premise.”

Jisung watched as his mother sat back, deep in thought. “How many of these sessions is he required to attend?”

“It’s a two-month course. At the end of eight weeks, his progress will be re-evaluated, and the board will decide if he needs to continue or not.”

“Wow,” Jisung breathed out. “That’s… a lot.”

“Yes,” Mrs. Gwan agreed, her voice high and nervous as per usual. “But we have decided that this is the best course of action for you, Jisung. We’re here to help.”

His mother nodded, seemingly in agreement. “Alright then. He’ll be on time for lessons tomorrow-”

“Actually,” Mrs. Gwan interrupted timidly. “There’s uh – a three-week suspension for large scale fights such as your son’s. We were lax on Jisung before due to the contract, however…”

His mother stilled, drew her mouth in a firm disapproving line, but nodded anyway. “Of course. When can he come back then?”

“Next week,” Mr. Dok informed, playing with one of his pens. “Monday.”

Jisung looked up at his mother. She sent him a small smile.

“Okay. Monday, then.”

It was Wednesday and Jisung is already craving to go back to school. (Now that was surprising, just three months ago he would have been ecstatic to get suspended.)

In honesty, he thought it was ‘pretty dog’ (Jeongin taught him that slang and Seungmin still had no idea what it meant, causing a lot of laughs on their group chat) that the school hadn’t allowed him back considering the circumstances. But causing an argument with the school board would only get him on their even worse side.

He stretched back in his desk chair, closing down the track he was working on. The final twilight rays of sun spilt through his window, heating his tanned skin revealed from under his t-shirt. He hummed to tune back to himself, exhaling when it didn’t sound just quite right.

He hadn’t really gotten back into making his own music since Changbin’s passing. That evening he had opened up his software app again and laid down a beat, thought of some lyrics he liked. He was trying out a melodic rap this time rather than his usual angry rap.

Some of Changbin’s final songs had been slower; gentler.

Jisung had decided he liked it.

His phone’s dull buzzing pulled him away from his window.

                        Minnie: <School was alright today, Sungie-hyungie.>

                                   <(Don’t tell Jeongin I called you that or I’m never talking to you again.)>

                                   <People keep talking but that’s not important.>

                                   <One thing though->

                     Jisung: <All good what up>

                   Minnie: <Felix hasn’t shown up at school since Changbin-nim…>

                               <I’m getting worried, he won’t respond to my messages.>

                               <Have you tried texting him?>

Jisung frowned. Felix? Last time they had messaged after the funeral, Felix said he was going back to school.

            Jisung: <He told me he was going to school,,, What tf do u think is going on?>

He waited anxiously for Seungmin’s reply.

            Minnie: <I think he might have withdrawn himself…it’s unhealthy for him to stay inside all day.>

Jisung halted over the message, re-reading it again.

            Jisung: <Maybe we could go to his house? Chan knows where he stays>

Seungmin didn’t respond for a second.

            Minnie: <Yeah, I think that would be good. You, Innie and I can check on him tomorrow after school? Meet at the back gate?>

Jisung leaned back in his chair. He had thought Felix was fine.

Looks like he didn’t really know how his best friend was after all.

            Jisung: <Alright. See u at the gate at 4.>

Four didn’t come quickly enough.

He had met Jeongin and Seungmin at the back gate he used to spend lunchtimes fighting or smoking at.

(One time in freshman year three seniors had surrounded him; he’d been talking game all week and it had been time for the fists to play.

Changbin had got him out of that one.)

But Jisung decided not to share that with his younger friends; his classmates looking at him as he left the school drew enough attention as it was.

Sure enough, Felix wasn’t at school. Luckily Chan had given him directions that morning and the apartment was only a twenty or so minute walk away.

Jeongin tried to cheer him up as they walked, telling stories of random things he had done while Jisung was away, and recounting some tales from when he was eight.

Jisung admired and appreciated the boy’s skill to endlessly talk, reminding him of the days when they had their sessions and Jisung would never utter a single word, but also felt too anxious to listen.

He pawed his back pocket methodically, stuck in a bad habit.

His Marlboro’s were there.

Right, he had taken them out of his bedside table to share one with Chan when he found the elder having worked in the studio for eleven hours straight.

He felt his cheeks flush and he bit his lip as he peeked at Jeongin who was animatedly ranting about something and Seungmin who as humming in agreement (and sometimes in disagreement) at whatever the younger was saying.

He looked back down to the pavement, his feet falling in heavy tired steps.

Nicotine always had calmed him down. And he didn’t have any watermelon gum…

Would they judge me? Would they mind?

But just as he made up his mind and grabbed his lighter out from his pocket, Seungmin pointed to an apartment complex.

“We’re here!” he said excitedly, and then turned sombre. “Let’s go… uh – support him, okay?”

Jisung paled, slipping the lighter back into his pocket.

No time now.

“You good?” Jeongin whispered quietly as the three walked up the stairs to Felix’s host family’s apartment, Seungmin courageously leading the way.

Jisung blinked, forgetting just how perceptive the other was.

“Uh – Yeah, Innie, I’m alright just… nervous,” he admitted when they neared the door.

But Jeongin didn’t have time to reply, and Seungmin didn’t have time to knock before the door swung open.

And it was Lee Felix.

Looking worse than Jisung had ever seen him.

His eyes were bloodshot and dull, his skin was dry and oily at the same time; sprouting pimples across his hairline and chin, his lips were chapped and cracked, and his face looked tired; half-dead.

“F-Felix-hyung?” Jeongin said, almost like he didn’t believe the sight in front of him.

The situation too tense, and guilt piling up in his throat at not having noticed, or even attempted to reach out, Jisung looked away, at the floor.

And then he saw what was behind Felix’s legs, what was held in his hand.

And then he felt numb again.

“You’re leaving?” he asked, his voice dark and monotone.

Felix flinched, still hiding in the doorway. His expression changed from surprise and fright; turned to a blank featureless face, one of remorseless. “Yeah, I am.”

“B-Back to Sydney?” Seungmin stuttered, looking more shocked and appalled than Jisung had ever seen him.

There was nothing for another few seconds.

Felix looked away, avoiding all their glances. From his profile view, Jisung could see how furrowed his eyebrows were, how taut his cheeks were, the freckles looking dull.

“Yeah,” the Australian dully repeated. “I am.”

Jisung watched numbly as a tear slid down Jeongin’s face. “And…” the youngest started, wiping his cheeks with embarrassed rage. “You weren’t going to say goodbye?”

Felix didn’t answer for a moment.

He stepped forward as if to push past them, his suitcase rolling against the concrete.

Then, “I’m sorry. I can’t do this anymore.”

Jisung felt like his already shattered world and heart break further.

“Fuck you,” he growled, clenching his bruised fist tight. In three steps he lunged onto Felix and grasped the boy’s hoodie into a ball in his fist. “Fuck you!”

Felix’s eyes started to water as Jisung cursed, again and again, weakly slamming his closed fist into the other boy’s chest.

The sound of skin weakly meeting clothed ribcage filled his ears with Jeongin’s frustrated sobs.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

“Why are you running away?” Jisung screamed, pushing his September twin into the wall behind him. “Changbin’s fucking dead and you’re just leaving? Leaving him to rot in the fucking dirt?!”

Felix didn’t react. “I’m sorry,” he repeated, looking away from Jisung’s eyes again.

Jisung searched his gaze, wishing the Australian would look at him, wishing the boy would say something else, tell him he would stay in Korea.

But Felix said nothing.

“J-Jisung-hyung,” Seungmin sniffed fixing his glasses, his face and neck red. “Let him go.”

Jisung looked at where his fist had grabbed onto Felix’s black hoodie, clinging on for something more than a simple ‘I’m sorry.’

Let him go. Three words with so much meaning.

“I have to do this,” Felix whispered his voice hoarse and choked up. “I can’t live here, not without him-”

“What about us?” Jisung stepped back motioning to Jeongin and Seungmin. “What about me?”

Felix stiffened but stood firm.

Through his rage and sadness, Jisung could tell that the boy had thought about his decision long and hard.

And if anything, Felix was stubborn.

“I’m sorry, but my flight is tonight. I’m leaving,” the Australian declared, finality in his tone. He pulled something out of his hoodie pocket and placed it gently into Jisung’s hand.

Watermelon gum.

Jisung stood still as Felix whisked past him, his suitcase rolling behind him, marking his departure.

Jisung slumped against the apartment wall as two women, most likely Felix’s host mother and sister came out of the apartment and walked past with a few deflated bows.

“I’m sorry,” the sister, probably around the same age as Chan, said with a bow. “I… thought he told you.”

Jisung was too numb to respond and he barely processed Seungmin’s response before watching the two women walk down the stairs and get into a small red car that Felix was already seated in.

The three friends left behind said nothing as the car drove away.

Jisung reached for his back pocket and lit a cigarette. Jeongin reached for his Marlboro despite Seungmin’s cocked eyebrow, but none of them said anything.

Pungent watermelon-flavouring smell and burning cardboard surrounded them as Jisung watched his last friend’s final gift burn.

They waited outside the apartment in silent hope that maybe Felix would return and say it was all a terrible joke until night, but the boy never returned.

With dark minds and a dark sky above them, the three of their precious four walked home.

Jeongin didn’t answer the many calls from his parents, a fact Jisung was sure he’d get in trouble for when he got home. He’d probably get in even more trouble when his parents smelled the lingering smell of smoke on his school uniform.

Jisung passed the younger his cigarette when he asked for it (Seungmin politely declined), but he made sure with Jeongin that this would only be a one-time thing.

Chan didn’t call. Neither did his mother.

They knew from experience he would almost never answer.

Jisung split up from the pair at a fork in the road; one path that led to the better part of town and one to the dark, gang-ridden one.

He walked home to his mother feeling worse than he had in days.

Because not only had he lost Seo Changbin, but Lee Felix too.

Jisung had dreaded Sunday.

He had waited impatiently for Mrs. Gwan to meet him at school and had barely said anything as she drove him to the clinic.

Two whole months of weekly anger management sessions Jisung chewed on some mint, nit watermelon gum, as he thought. How the hell did I get roped into this?

‘Maybe because you beat the shit of Dakho’ his mind sarcastically supplied and Jisung exhaled shakily when the car drew to a stop outside of a modern style office, next to a large wooded park.

Strange place for a psychologist building, Jisung mused staring at the lines of trees and large gates of the park as he got out of the car.

“Would you like me to walk you in?” Mrs. Gwan asked like she was afraid of the answer.

Jisung rolled his eyes, remembering the real reason why he was here. “Nah, I’m good.”

The woman stood still, seeming conflicted. After another few moments, she had made her decision. “I will meet you back here in an hour, alright?” she said firmly. “No funny business.”

Jisung nodded with a grimace.

“No funny business,” he repeated in what he hoped was a somewhat convincing promise.

Mrs. Gwan fiddled nervously with her car keys before nodding and getting back into the car.

Jisung watched the silver car, expecting it to drive off, but all Mrs. Gwan did was flick her hands towards the door.

Excuses and complaints on his tongue he turned towards the modern glass door.

‘If you don’t do this you’ll be expelled’’ his mind ringed warning against his already churning instinct to try and outrun the car and with it this stupid eight-week course. ‘You wouldn’t be able to see Seungmin or Jeongin anymore… Haven’t you lost enough friends already?’

And with a breath, he hesitantly walked closer to the building, Mrs. Gwan’s gaze piercing his back.

Biting his lips, he ghosted one hand over his back pocket, where his lighter and Marlboro’s were, and the other hand over the door handle.

“You’re in control of your life too Jisung-hyung,” Felix’s words echoed in his mind. “It might not look like it, but you are.”

Bitterness rose in his throat at the intrusive memory and he pushed it away, by pushing open the door in front of him like the physical action would remove the thought.

“Han Jisung?” the receptionist asked.

He nodded without a word, scooping up half the bowl of complimentary mints and sat grumpily in his chair, ignoring the three other teens in the waiting room’s wary eyes on him.

Loudly unwrapping one of the hard sweets (tossing the white paper on the floor and obnoxiously biting into it rather than sucking on it) he tried to take a few deep breaths.

God, he could use a cigarette right now.

Or maybe twenty.

He hated this part of himself; the asshole, who acted without a care in the world and had no empathy to anyone around him. It was a façade really, well at least it was now. Two years ago this was him; not an act, not an image he tried so hard to display, but now it was his fallback.

To show he wasn’t weak, wasn’t scared, wasn’t anxious.

His ‘coping mechanism’ for all those psychologists out there.

He reconstructed his stupid façade, edging up the tension in the waiting room up a notch by each passing minute until one of the girl’s excused herself to the bathroom and didn’t come up.

His heart hurt, and half of him felt terrible for what he had done. This is what he used to do every day, and it was tiring.

‘What if Chan-hyung, or your mother was here right now?’ the angel on his shoulder pleaded. ‘What would they say if they saw you being like this? They’d be so disappointed.’

The thought plagued his mind until his name was called. Kicking at the pile of wrappers at his feet, he got up and ignored everyone’s eyes on him, (making him anxious, anxious, anxious) and followed the man to a small, but decorated and homey-style room.

You can do this, just don’t crack, don’t let them see your weaknesses-

His heart leapt into his throat at the face he saw on the other side of the desk.

“W-Woojin-nim?” he spluttered as the door closed behind him.

“Ah,” Woojin said, his face relaxed into an easy, but professional smile. “It is you.”

Jisung let his carefully reconstructed façade slip away at the familiar comforting face.

“H-How do you know my name? I – I didn’t speak at the session,” he tried to get ahold of himself and sat down in the soft chair.

“Felix spoke of you,” Woojin answered plainly.

Jisung felt his heart sink. Right. Of course, Felix did.

He stayed quiet, remembering his initial plan to keep his pissed-off image, but the way Woojin looked so calm, almost welcoming, Jisung found it harder and harder to not talk.

“He’s gone,” Jisung blurted out when the silence became to over-bearing.

Woojin blinked and looked slightly perplexed and surprised. “Gone?”

Jisung looked away, the injustice of Felix’s daunting goodbye and soulless, unapologetic eyes making his stomach twist. “Gone.” He repeated, “Back to Sydney.”

Woojin sat back in his chair at that. “I wondered why he wasn’t showing up for the sessions,” he said and Jisung could tell the elder was trying to mask his disappointment.

“Do you know why?” Woojin asked.

Jisung bit his lip, feeling for his lighter again. Was he really ready to tell Woojin, who he barely knew, about Changbin? About Changbin’s death, and then Mr. Seo’s suicide he felt he could have prevented?

He drew his lips into a thin line and shrugged. “Dunno.”

Woojin didn’t blink at that, and Jisung suddenly felt bad because it almost liked like the therapist believed him. He looked to his left to avoid the elder’s deep brown penetrating but soothed eyes.

He frowned at what he saw. A bookcase – from floor to ceiling, and an expensive one by the look of it. But more importantly, the books that were on it.

“Twelve Ways to Achieve Nirvana: The Buddhist’s Guide?” he said incredulously, his voice tilting upwards in humour at the end.

“Oh, God, there’s more!” he exclaimed with a chuckle, angling his head sideways so he could read the many titles of Buddhist-themed self-help books. “Damn, there’s a lot of these. Whatta they for?”

“Here, we like to incorporate religion, mainly Buddhism or Jainism, into the healing process,” Woojin explained gently and Jisung raised his eyebrows in how funny this whole situation had turned. “However, it is completely your choice if you’re interested in including in your sessions.”

Woojin paused as if waiting for a reply.

“Uh…” Jisung started, now remembering that religion was a rather sensitive topic and he shouldn’t be that much of a dick about it. “Maybe? I mean, I guess it’d be cool…”

“It’s alright,” Woojin gave him a small smile. “You don’t need to decide now, there’s no pressure.”

Jisung just nodded and sucked a breath in through his teeth, somewhat wishing he hadn’t tried to poke fun at Woojin’s methods and Buddhism in itself in the first place.

“Well, let’s get started, shall we?” Woojin asked. “I’ve been told that you’ve been sent here for an eight-week course about uh-” he looked at his computer screen that Jisung assumed had some information about him, maybe even his school records. “Your anger?”

With a sigh, the realisation that he was here not to play around but rather to try and fix his rather large problem of blowing up at people dawned on him.

Changbin-hyung wanted me to always ask for help for my anger and anxiety Jisung bit his lip as Woojin waited patiently for a response.

Swallowing nervously, he looked at his hands, his bruised bandaged knuckles that had almost healed.

‘Haven’t you hurt enough people already?’’ half of his mind pleaded. ‘Think about Chan, your mother, Seungmin and Jeongin too. What about everyone you’ve ever hit? Like Dakho and that senior last year… Haven’t you caused enough damage?’’

He clenched his fists, not in frustration, but in indecision, in… fear.

Could he really ever change? He thought he had when he met Seungmin and Jeongin and Felix, but in the end, he had reverted to an animal, a monster who had punched and punched with no feelings but rage, no mercy…

“Yeah,” he replied, squeezing his eyes closed to push away the memory, his thoughts.

“Yeah?” Woojin asked after another moment.

“Yeah,” Jisung repeated, trying to suppress the bitter chuckle rising in his throat. He looked at Woojin in the eye. “Here I am.”

“Honey! Talk to Jihyin before you leave!”

Jisung stopped shovelling down his cereal and groaned. It was Wednesday morning, seven a.m. to be exact, and it was definitely too early for a phone call.

“Yep!” he yelled back anyway, stuffing another spoonful in his mouth before the milk could make the sugary flakes soggy. He turned back towards the television’s morning news (he did not choose it, the remote was just too far away) and tried to drown out his mother’s ramblings on the telephone from the other room.

“Here, here-” his mother rushed into the kitchen, looking slightly frazzled with her mobile outstretched in her hand.

Jisung tried to motion to firstly his full bowl of breakfast, and then his full mouth before almost choking on the cereal and accepting the phone.

“Jihyin-noona,” he said, trying to sound as composed as possible as he pounding on his chest with a half-hearted glare towards his mother (who was softly laughing like him almost dying on the couch was the funniest thing in the world.)

“Sung!” his sister’s enthusiastic but tired voice came from across the line. “How are you? What about Chan and Bin?”

Jisung paused suddenly feeling cold.

She doesn’t know about Changbin?

Of course. Malaysia didn’t get Korean news of a ‘lowlife’s’ death such as Changbin's. But… surely his mother had said something.

“Jisung?” the voice came again, and he realised he had been quiet for too long.

“Uh – yeah?” he rushed. “I’m uh – good. We’re good.”

Jihyin stayed quiet, suspicious he could tell, and Jisung tried to quiet his shaky exhale from reaching her. She had always been the observant one of the two.

“Well,” she said, apparently not deciding to question him, “Kyubok is doing good! Opened his eyes and all!”

“That’s-” Jisung nodded, trying to gain some eagerness and lighten his voice. “That’s great!”

“He’s a cutie, but a lot of work,” Jihyin chuckled and Jisung heard her yawn and winced wondering how little sleep she must be getting.

“Maybe you should go back to bed,” Jisung suggested weakly but Jihyin didn’t seem to be paying attention.

“Oh!” she exclaimed suddenly and there was a crackle over the line. “Dad’s here, Sung. I’ll put him on the line, okay?”

Jisung felt his eyes widen. His father?

He didn’t have any time to make an excuse as to why he had to go before his Dad’s gruff voice came over the line.

“Jisung?” he asked and sounded softer than he had in a long time.

(Especially as many memories of his father was him whipping him with a belt when he screwed up which was somewhat culturally acceptable or even hitting his mother which in Jisung’s eyes, had definitely not been alright.)

“What?” Jisung growled sharply and pretended not to notice his mother’s raised eyebrow.

He heard a door close over the line and his father’s breaths.

“Jisung,” the man started again. “I heard about the kid. The Changbin kid.”

Jisung felt his heart stop. “S-So?”

His father went quiet at his aggressive, but nervous stutter. “Just wanted to tell you I’m sorry.”

Jisung bit his lip. A simple ‘I’m sorry,’ wasn’t going to change anything.

But his father was… trying at least.

“Yeah,” he said finally. “I’ll miss him.”

“Your mother and I decided to keep this from Jihyin for now, especially with Kyubok and everything,” his father said, but Jisung could already tell what was about to come. “We don’t wasn’t to worry her, do we?”

Jisung exhaled through his nose. He knew what that meant; an underlying order, almost a threat.

“Of course not,” he replied flippantly, trying to keep his emotions from bubbling over. “Everything’s fine.”

After a few more rather awkward words and goodbyes, Jisung hung up the phone, resting his head against the sofa already feeling like he needed to get back to bed.

However, he had school today. His third day since his suspension, and he was excited to see Seungmin and Jeongin again. (The pair had decided it would be hilarious to not tell him that after his fight with Dakho, the senior had been shipped off to England for both a punishment and a strict place to learn better English. Dakho would return in a few nine or so months to redo his senior year with Jisung, something which he certainly wasn’t happy about, but at least it meant he wouldn’t have to see and be tempted to punch the elder for a long while.)

(Seeing Minho protesting every day at his locker was also iconic and something Jisung hadn’t even realised he had missed.)

But the words of the news reporter made him look up.

“Another teenager, thirteen-year-old Jung Hyeehok has gone missing late last night when he was walking home from the grocery shop on the corner of Giljook and Parkwon road.”

Jisung straightened up frowned at the news segment, and the innocent-looking face of the young boy.

“This is to be treated with utmost severity by police forces as Seoul’s child trafficking ring, especially gangs such as the OB Faction strike again; the fifth time this year, with now four males, the youngest being seven, and one female missing.”

“It’s terrible, isn’t it,” his mother came to sit beside him. “This is why I don’t want you walking home late alone, alright?”

Jisung nodded but his mind was elsewhere. OB Faction? Wasn’t that the gang Changbin was part of?

“Please contact us if you have any information about Jung Hyeehok or any of the other missing people” the news reporter pleaded. Five faces came on the screen.

“Tonight, there is an hour-long news special on Seoul’s recent kidnapping cases and a survivor of a late-night attempt. Please tune in at seven o’clock.”

He left the house and walked to school thinking of the news, each step becoming more and more frustrated.

Changbin-hyung couldn’t have been involved in… human trafficking… There’s no way he would have done anything so against his morals, no matter the money.

He remained pissed off the whole morning, unintentionally feeding into his bad-boy reputation, and his anger only grew when he sat down in Chemistry in third period and realised Felix wouldn’t be coming to sit next to him.

“Move your leg,” a nasally voice came from behind him.

With a glare Jisung spun around, just to see Seungmin standing up, looking completely unintimidated.

With a playful huff, Seungmin pushed his shoes off Felix’s old seat and sat there himself and started to unpack his books.

Jisung stared at the boy. “I thought you sat at the front.”

Seungmin shrugged and fiddled with his glasses. “You looked pissed today,” he answered bluntly, something that if came out of anyone else’s mouth he would have made them eat his words (meaning his fist.)

Jisung just shrugged with a sigh and tried not to let the younger see that a small flicker of relief on his face.

The teacher started up the lesson, surprised with the rest of the class that Seungmin had given up his usual seat to be at the back.

“Turn to page thirty-seven and read the diagram!” the teacher ordered and Jisung sighed and shoved his hands into his hoodie.

Then Seungmin placed his textbook on his desk with a smile.

“Let’s share, okay?” the brown-haired boy asked.

For the first time that day, Jisung let out a small smile. “Okay.”

Unfortunately, that smile didn’t last long.

At recess, their thirty-minute break, everyone was either whispering about a) Dakho’s departure and the fight, b) Jisung sitting with golden boys Yang Jeongin and Kim Seungmin, and finally c) the thing that pissed his off most – the news.

And there was a specific friendship group a table over that were loudly discussing it.

“That boy who got abducted went to my Church! It’s so sad!” a girl said, fanning her fake eyelashes like she actually cared.

“I know right?” another girl, someone Jisung recognised to be in his History class replied. Jisung met her eyes when she turned to stare at him. He almost didn’t hear her high-pitched voice.

“You know Han Jisung’s dead friend Changbin? He used to go here. Well, the news said he was involved in the gang that’s been taking all these people…”

From the way everyone in the cafeteria turned to stare at him, it sounded like the whole school heard the girl’s ‘whisper.’

“Hyung,” Jeongin’s quiet voice came from next to him. “Don’t let it get to you, okay?”

Jisung stared at the lunch table, his vision beginning to go red. Oh, were his fists clenching up again, on display for everyone to see? He hadn’t even noticed!

“Yeah,” a boy said, obviously and obliviously not noticing the canteen’s eerie silence. “I think everyone remembers Changbin– and that Australian one – uh Byungchan or something? Remember the trio?”

Jisung laughed quietly, his nails digging into his palms. If they say one more thing-

“-I bet they all kidnapped those poor people together!”

Fire in his eyes, he got up from the table, but a hand firmly on his shoulder pulled him back to the table.

“Han Jisung-hyung” Seungmin hissed, looing more serious and fearless than Jisung had ever seen him before. “Do not go interfere, alright? Do you want to get expelled?”

Jisung closed his eyes and revelled in the adrenaline that was slowly pumping around his body, keeping his lungs working, his heart beating.

Thud, thud, thud.

He took a deep breath.

‘Calm down,’ he imagined Chan’s voice; he imagined Changbin’s voice.

Seungmin was right. He should leave it.

And with Jeongin’s first-class Biology horror story and an ample supply of Seungmin’s choc chip cookie, he managed to calm down; suppress his rage and his desire to go and smack someone on the face.

By the end of recess, he had mostly forgotten about it. He was fine again.

But once again, it didn’t last long.

Because fifth period English was a bitch.

“Uh-” Hyunjin said, nervously grappling his hands together as he fidgeted. “I guess we’re partners?”

Jisung just scowled.

The teacher had matched the best person in class (Hwang-fucking-Hyunjin as expected) and the worst (himself, obviously because he had skipped essentially every class since the beginning of the year) for an oral presentation about all aspects of life.

Lucky for him, it was a one-and-a-half-fucking-month-long project!

“Um…” Hyunjin suddenly looked more uncomfortable than he did just moments before and Jisung didn’t give up on his glare as the older boy shifted around in his place.

“What?” Jisung barked out, somewhat interested in what Hyunjin wanted to say.

“I know this isn’t exactly what you want to hear right now,” he started flicking jet-black hair out of his eyes but having the decency to look slightly embarrassed. “But… you know when you guys found me that one night?”

Jisung frowned, vaguely recalling what he could remember. Chan was drunk, he was smoking and Changbin, Changbin had helped Hyunjin out when the other was wasted. Right, they had all had to wait in the cold for Hyunjin’s dad to pick him up.

Jisung bit the inside of his cheek and tried to remain unbothered. “What about it?”

“Well… it’s just I’m really thankful – if Changbin hadn’t found me then… I could have been lured into a van or something and I… just wanted to apologise for everything that uh- happened with us in the past and uh – for Changbin. Dying.”

Jisung raised an eyebrow, trying to figure out what the hell golden boy had just said.

And then it came together.

‘I’m sorry about Changbin, and now that he’s dead, I found it to be the perfect time to try and reconcile our differences.’

Jisung couldn’t fucking handle it.

“I’m out,” he snarled, ignoring the way his classmates turned to look at him. He felt anger bubble under his skin.

How dare Hyunjin stand there and try to take advantage of his grief and be nice to him when for seventeen years they’d hated each other. How dare he stand there and look sad for himself when Changbin had been the one who died! Hwang-fucking-Hyunjin barely knew Changbin, and yet he was almost in tears!

What a conceited little prick.

More than any other moment in his whole life, Jisung despised Hwang Hyunjin.

“-Have fun, dickhead!”

Before Hyunjin could say anything pathetic to him and before the teacher could run after him, he stalked out of the classroom and prowled down the halls, reaching his locker where he had hidden his cigarettes.

This will calm me down, he justified, grabbing his box and lighter. The whole day I’ve been antsy and pissed, ever since I talked to Dad, so this will fix everything. I’ll be fine again.

He slinked out of the halls, and out of the doors (skillfully ignoring the place where he had Felix had gone after the first almost-fight with Dakho all those months ago) and sat in the place he liked the most.

The back of the school.

As soon as lit cigarette met his lips, and the drug filled his lungs, he felt calm again.

The anger and anxiety that had been weighing his down the whole day left in a puff of smoke.

Sure, maybe he was addicted again after Felix (no don’t think about that coward) weaned him off nicotine and onto watermelon gum.

But the times he had been ‘sober’ if that was the correct word, had been different.

“Hey,” a voice addressed mixed with a bit of strictness and a bit of humour. “You can’t be here.”

Jisung felt smoke catch in his throat and with a startled cough he cleared his lungs.

He let himself smile, even if it was bitter.

Maybe his life was repeating itself or something; because without looking he already knew who was there.

“School captain,” he mocked, remembering his exact words from their first interaction. “What brings you to the back of the school?”

Minho sighed, seemingly giving up their little re-enactment of the last time they were both here. Jisung tried to keep the slight apprehension but mainly smug surprise when Minho sat on the dirt beside him.

“You did,” Minho said and Jisung sucked some more smoke and looked up.

Right, the window. He had forgotten.

“Well,” he said, his head spinning at a particularly large inhale. “I guess life repeats itself.”

Minho was quiet for a moment and Jisung felt his thigh brush the elder’s as they sat on the dusty uncared-for floor.

“It doesn’t have to,” Minho said quietly.

Jisung wondered where the boy’s words of wisdom came from but didn’t ask.

“Is that your only box?” Minho asked after some comfortable quiet, motioning to his Marlboro’s.

Jisung looked at Minho’s delicate features and then at his cigs, wondering why Minho was asking.

“Yeah,” he admitted, holding them closer to his chest. “And cigs these days are expensive, so there’s no way you're confiscating them.”

“How about-” Minho plucked the Marlboro’s out of his grasp despite his rather childish complaints and dangled them in his hand. His eyes sparkled with mischief. “How about we trade.”

Jisung scoffed and snatched them back, hiding his wince when his blistered knuckles stung against Minho’s skin. “Fuck that. Why the hell do you want my cigs anyway? It would be a scandal if anyone found you with them.”

Minho didn’t answer for a second. Then he reached into his pocket and held out a packet of mint gum. “Trade me. I know your old friend got you off Marlboro’s for gum.”

Jisung made a disgusted face at the offering but snuffed out his cigarette. “Are you a creep or something? Have you been waiting to give this to me?”

Minho laughed; the sound short. “No, you’re not that special Jisung. I was just thinking… how about whenever you feel overwhelmed you come talk to me first and then if you want a cigarette after that, I’ll give you one. Promise.”

Jisung looked at his Marlboro’s. If he was honest, he really didn’t want to get that deep into his addiction when he had worked so hard to get rid of the cravings before.

What do I really have to lose?

Jisung raised his eyebrows but took the gum and threw the elder boy his cardboard box in his hands. “This is stupid.”

“Maybe,” Minho agreed, pocketing the cigarettes and standing up. “But it might just work.”

“W-Wait!” Jisung stammered, getting to his feet. “How will I know where to find you? And don’t keep them in your back pocket – a teacher will see.”

“You’ll find me,” Minho smiled. “And hey – I won’t get caught. Now I’m not really one for corrupting power but being school captain has its perks!”

And Jisung watched as the elder boy walked away with a little salute.

And for the first time that day, he laughed.

On Friday, the school was still chattering about the news documentary about the missing people.

“You haven’t seen it?” Jeongin asked in their bi-weekly ‘mentor’ sessions (although they had hidden in a supply closet, not wanting to be near all the other student pairs.)

Jisung shook his head. His mother had tried to get him to watch it with her on Wednesday, but he was too nervous in case Changbin’s name came up in it as one of the perpetrators, even though the rational side of him knew it couldn’t possibly be true.

Instead, he had gone to Chan’s and made music. They had edged past the topic of Changbin and focused on rapping and beats and terms they were both comfortable with the whole night.

But now it was Friday.

And that meant it was Changbin’s anniversary.

One month since he was slaughtered.

“You should see it, I have it on my phone,” Jeongin said, snapping Jisung out of his heavy thoughts.

Too tired to refuse (he hadn’t been able to sleep last night), he leaned over to where Jeongin was already pulling up snippets of the special.

“It’s really… daunting.” Jeongin explained when five faces, the same ones he had seen before, came up on the screen.

Park Bewon fifteen, Kim Jinyun eighteen, Lin Soyah seven, Lee Yewon, the only girl, eighteen, and Jung Hyeehok, twelve he read, remembering the initial stories of only a few of them.

“All victims were taken in the past six months, all around Seoul, and the targets are usually teenage males – most likely to be trafficked into the sex trade,” the news reporter, the same one from the main news channel said and Jisung felt himself gag.

“It goes on about each person’s life and what happened to them and all that,” Jeongin said, scrolling past a large chunk of the two-hour documentary. “And then it interviews some people’s family and blames the police for not doing well enough to find them.”

Jeongin stopped at what looked like a timestamp he already knew. “But this is the most interesting part – It’s about someone who was almost abducted.”

He pressed play.

On the screen featured a silhouette, a shadow of a boy, his face obscured and his voice’s natural tone distorted into a deep mob-boss-like sounding way, like he had seen on crime movies.

“On the first of December, at around ten p.m. I was just out late on my usual run through the city,” the boy, whose shadow made him look around fifteen or sixteen said and Jisung watched the shadow scratched his Adam's apple in uncertainty. “But that day I was pretty tired, so I took a shortcut through some alleys on the bad side of town.”

Jisung felt his mouth go dry feeling his heart start to race.

“And when I got there, someone called me over to help them… He as lying on the ground begging for help saying something like he had broken his leg, so when I went to help him up, he suddenly grabbed my body-”

Jisung felt some anxiety shoot through his veins and leaned into Jeongin’s presence.

“Then two more people came and picked me up, and I saw they were taking me into a van… I honestly had no idea what to do – someone had a knife at my throat so I couldn’t scream.”

Jisung tensed as the boy wiped something away from his face, probably tears.

“But then, someone saved me. At first, I thought he was in the gang because he had the tattoo and everything, but he helped me get out and then I ran. I don’t know where he is now, probably still caught up in that stuff, but I’ll always be thankful for him – he saved my life.”

Jeongin paused the video and Jisung frowned.

“Innie,” he started his voice tight. “When did this happen?”

“A month ago,” Jeongin replied.

With shaking hands, Jisung got his phone out of his pocket and turned it on.

The first…

Today… it’s-

“Changbin,” Jisung whispered hoarsely. “Today it’s Changbin’s anniversary – that means -”

Jisung looked towards Jeongin who was as pale as snow.

“I know.”

Jisung barely registered the words, barely could breathe. “You knew?”

Jeongin had tears in his eyes. “Yeah, hyung. I… put it together this morning.”

Jisung slumped into his chair, his eyes watering too.

It all made sense now.

He remembered Changbin’s final words.

“You tol’ me to make it right, huh? …But I took your advice, I stopped the bad thing, Sung, I promise.”

The bad thing.

It was a kidnapping.

Changbin had saved someone’s life. By giving up his own for it.

Like the worst, but most selfless trade in the world.

“When my grandma died seven years ago,” Jeongin started a wobble in his voice. “Every anniversary I would go to her grave. It made me feel better – like I was close to her.”

Jisung felt a tear slide down his cheek. “What are you implying, Innie?”

Jeongin turned to him, and for the first time, Jisung realised he had old-looking eyes. Wisdom at such a young age.

“You know what I’m saying.”

And Jisung did.

So, after school he went to the florist and bought a bunch of different flowers, wishing he had asked the elder what his favourite one was when the other was alive. If only he wasn’t so self-absorbed. So, cruel.

And he split them into three at the graveyard, placing each one onto the three Seo’s graves.

And he sat next to Changbin’s headstone, plugged his earplugs and listened to the boy’s album, letting himself cry as it started to rain.

“Even a shadow needs light to exist,” came Changbin’s gravelly, sorrowful, but hopeful rap. With one glance to the boy’s grave, and headstone which had the exact same thing, Jisung let out a sob.

And he walked home as it started to pour, tears, rain and snot still running down his face, and he didn’t know why but he felt… happy.

It was bittersweet, but he was still… happy.

And he wondered if soon, he would find the light to guide him out of his shadow.

He smiled as the rain dotted his cheeks. Because maybe he already had.

“How are you feeling?” Woojin’s question lingered in the air.

Jisung sucked in his mint (he had taken five of them this time, and he considered that an improvement.)

“Alright,” he said honestly. “School’s draining and I have a shitty partner for my English oral,” he admitted, thinking of Hyunjin, “But otherwise it’s okay.”

“Have you been feeling angry or anxious the past few days?”

Jisung paused, wondering if he should tell the elder about his close call on Wednesday that Seungmin had luckily gotten involved in.

“Uh – yeah? There’s just a lot going on right now, so I’m basically in a constant state of anxiousness.” He laughed self-deprecatingly but Woojin didn’t join in.

Probably smart. If he was laughing at his patients struggles, he would almost certainly get fired.

“What’s going on?” Woojin asked calmly. “Apart from school.”

Jisung paused. It was only his second session, and he didn’t exactly trust Woojin enough to spill everything about Changbin to him yet, especially since his revelation on Friday.

“The stuff in the news,” Jisung said half-truthfully. “All those kids vanishing. It’s spooky.”

Woojin hummed in agreement.

In truth it was rather harrowing – not just the missing people, but the truth that he and Jeongin now knew – that Changbin had saved that other boy’s life. When they told Seungmin this, the younger immediately wanted to send it into the police, but Jisung had refused.

He had yet to tell his mother about the realization, or Chan for that matter.

The guilt of knowledge was almost killing him.

They were quiet for a second and Jisung felt his anxiety spike.

He bounced his leg.

Oh god, he didn’t know what to say. Was Woojin judging him for not knowing what to say? Maybe he could see that he was lying about everything and was secretly mad at him. Maybe Woojin was actually disappointed in him, and that was bad because Jisung hated it when he disappointed people and hated it more because that’s what people expected of him.

Oh wow, was this room getting smaller? Maybe he should ‘go to the bathroom’ and ditch. Or he could pretend he was sick and get Mrs. Gwan to drive him home early-

“Would you like to go on a walk?”

Jisung stopped moving his leg. “W-What?”

“Do you know what the reserve next to this office is?” Woojin asked, staring non-confrontationally into Jisung’s eyes.

“Uh,” Jisung started, drawing a blank. “Hopefully not the place where all those missing people’s bodies were dumped?”

Woojin looked slightly repulsed at his answer and Jisung felt his face go red.

“No,” the elder said. “It’s a place for worship, a Buddhist temple.”

“Oh,” Jisung said awkwardly. That made more sense.

“Would you like to go with me?” Woojin queried and Jisung looked at the bookcase sheepishly.

“I’m not really religious,” he muttered, scratching the back of his neck.

“Doesn’t matter, it’s still a beautiful place even if you don’t wish to worship,” Woojin said, grabbing a coat.

Jisung got up too, despite his initial hesitance, thinking about it he was glad to leave the rather confining and constricting room.

He wondered if Woojin had noticed his spiral in the first place and that was why he suggested it.

Probably.

The pair signed out of the building and Jisung sent a quiet wave to Mrs. Gwan as Woojin went up to the car window and explained where they were going and when they would be back (he even offered to buy her a coffee from the store across the road and Jisung rolled his eyes at the elder’s socially-perfect behaviour, although he didn’t doubt for a moment that Woojin was doing it from the good of his heart and not to try and prove a point.)

“What are the… uh - themes of Buddhism?” Jisung asked as they entered the park, nature and greenery so striking and uncharacteristic of mainstream Seoul, that he had to take a second to make sure it was real.

“The ideology?”

Jisung nodded.

“Well basically avoiding self-indulgence, Nirvana and the four noble truths which are all about suffering are the main ones,” Woojin explained somehow in a way that didn’t make Jisung feel stupid for not knowing or condescended.

They walked around the park and Woojin kept talking about the religion and the truths its history and everything that made Jisung feel slightly overwhelmed but also interested.

When they reached a small statue of a Buddha Woojin paused.

“This is my happy place,” Woojin said, kneeling on the grass floor.

Quickly, Jisung followed suit, not wanting to offend Woojin or any omnipotent figure – just case they might give him a damned break.

“Do you have a place you feel safe in, Jisung?”

Jisung paused. “I like my room,” he said quietly. “And I like to be around my friends… But sometimes I feel like I stress them all out, ya’ know?”

Woojin hummed before getting off the floor and bowing to the statue once more.

“I feel you should find somewhere you can go if you feel anxious or angry or sad, and take some time out, yeah? One at school too, maybe.”

Jisung nodded again. Woojin was right. He needed to get a place where he could clear his head and calm down without getting into a fight or doing something he’d regret.

“So,” Jisung sniffed. “What else do Buddhists believe?”

The elder continued his speech about the religion, and despite his cynicism, he found himself liking the idea of something larger than life more and more as the elder spoke.

“-Its concepts are karma, which is like cause and effect, and the samsara cycle,” Woojin finished up as they walked out of the reserve and towards the therapy building.

“What’s uh – sam-ar-ah?”

“Samsara,” Woojin corrected politely with a small laugh and Jisung pouted at the others humoured expression. They walked towards the office’s door. “It’s the cycle of death and life; reincarnation.”

“Reincarnation?”

“Buddhists believe that those who lead an undesirable life get reincarnated to live another life of suffering, and only if they achieve nirvana, they will end the cycle of rebirth and ascend.”

Jisung frowned. “That’s stupid.”

Woojin looked a little shocked, but laughed, pausing at the glass door. “What do you think about it?”

“I think-” Jisung began, “That reincarnation must be a good thing – it’s like a do-over, a second chance to do shit. Good shit. Better shit than what you did before.”

Woojin hummed thoughtfully and pushed open the door, hitting them with a rush of warm comforting air.

“All you need to do is sign out, and then I can let you go,” Woojin smiled and Jisung nodded, before obediently walking over to the receptionist desk, signing his name (grabbing one mint) and turned to Woojin with a bow.

“Uh – thanks for today,” he muttered out, embarrassed that the receptionist and other people in the waiting room could hear him.

“No need to thank me, Jisung,” Woojin replied with an easy-going but confident grin. “I’ll see you next Sunday alright.”

Jisung nodded, unwrapped his mint, and threw the wrapper in the rubbish bin. “Okay, Woojin-hyung, I’ll see you then.”

The whole car ride back, Jisung thought about the appointment, or what he liked to call it ‘mad-sessions’ (heed the double meaning.) He mulled over the ideas of Buddhism that Woojin introduced him to, finding a happy place and then finally, and embarrassingly, calling the elder boy ‘hyung.’

“Thanks,” he murmured to Mrs. Gwan as she dropped him on his street.

He closed the door on her reply, then continued to feel guilty about it till he reached his door.

“Mum! I’m home!” he yelled out, hovering in the doorway.

“Hi, Jisung-ah!” he heard the loving call back.

Just as he was about to toe-off his shoes, he stopped.

“Hey, Mum?” he asked, waiting for her response of ‘yeah?’ “I’m going for a walk, okay?”

His mother appeared at the door, a whisk and bowl in her hands. “Alright, Sung, be back before seven, yeah?”

“Okay,” he promised, plugging his headphones in closing the door behind him as he left.

He walked wherever his feet took him.

He watched as the sun started to dip behind the skyscrapers on the good side of the Han River.

And then he found the docks; the shipping containers colourful and as large as trucks.

He climbed onto the yellow crate, the same one he and Changbin sat one evening. The wind rustled through his, now, quite long orangey-brown locks.

I should dye it again, he mused cringing at the dead hair that had started to wave slightly, just like Chan’s curly hair.

He sucked in a breath, the scent of water and nature filling his lungs.

He felt… okay.

Maybe this could be my ‘happy place…’

He looked beside him, expecting to see Changbin there; his pale narrow face illumined by the orange dying rays of sunset, his jet-black hair somehow perfectly in place.

But Changbin wasn’t there; he was alone.

But unlike before, he didn’t feel sad. He felt a little numb but calm.

Maybe this was… acceptance.

And so, he watched, with no tears down his face and no cigarette lit between his chapped lips as the sun disappeared into nothingness.

It was Thursday and something felt wrong.

“Have you noticed anything off today?” he whispered to Seungmin in Chemistry, the slow-rising anxiety in his chest making his lungs feel constricted.

Seungmin frowned, then adjusted his golden glasses in thought. “No,” he replied, slightly perplexed. “I haven’t, sorry, Hyung.”

Jisung tried to let the younger’s words ease his worried mind, but he couldn’t stop from tapping his foot faster to distract him.

Last time he felt like this he found out Changbin was dead.

Maybe he felt so anxious because yesterday afternoon, with Seungmin and Jeongin by his side, he had gone to the police to inform them of their collective ‘detective-work.’ Of course, at first the policeman didn’t believe him the case of Seo Changbin ‘long cold,’ but with the voicemail of Changbin’s dying words and another watch through the interview, it was concluded that Changbin had saved that boy and died for it.

The policeman, who had turned to be a lot more sympathetic, asked if Jisung wanted to make the call to the boy and his family about who the savior of that almost-abductee was, but Jisung declined, eventually putting it through as an anonymous confession.

That night a thirty-second segment came up on the news, redeeming Changbin’s image from deadbeat gang-member to a selfless and live-saving figure, and as he sat beside his mother, he knew he had done right by Changbin and Mr. Seo.

(He told his mother about his discovery when the segment finished. Then, at three a.m. he called Chan and told him the news too. There had been a lot of tears that night. The next day he had gone over to see and comfort the elder, but Chan refused to leave the studio.

Jisung had lit a Newport in memorial, but he didn’t quite know who out of the trio it was for; Chan, Changbin, or himself.)

The bell’s shrill ringing, signalling the end of fourth period, snapped Jisung out of his memories. Quickly, he exited the classroom before the teacher finished her farewell and before Seungmin could catch up to him.

Maybe I should have a smoke, he chewed in his lip, pacing faster to his locker while trying not to get anyone’s attention. Just one, just one-

But when he searched his backpack, all he found was a packet of mint gum.

“Jesus Christ,” Jisung muttered, slamming his locker shut.

He ignored the way a freshman jumped out of his way and tried to take a deep breath.

Alright, okay, he was fine, one-hundred-percent, all he needed to do was find Minho and he could get a cig, and then he would be fine.

The warning bell for one minute before fifteen period rung out, but he took no notice of it, instead hurrying to Minho’s locker.

You’ll find me? Jisung remembered the elder’s departing words, wishing he had actually asked the other for a specific place rather than letting him go. What the fuck is that supposed to mean? He could be anywhere!

But when he got to Minho’s locker, the elder wasn’t there. Neither were his petitions and protest signs he put up every day.

Jisung frowned. Thinking of it, he hadn’t seen the school captain at the gate checking uniform that morning.

Still desperate, he strolled to the back of the school were they talked but the place was empty (apart from a group of sophomores vaping for god’s sake that he scared off with one crack his now-mostly healed knuckles.)

Maybe his reputation had some positives after all.

He slumped against the wall, taking one more deep breath to try and calm his racing nerves. He hated this fucking anxiety. It was the whole reason why he had gotten into cigarettes in the first place, and now he didn’t have any because he gave them away to an idiot who (probably for the first time) hadn’t come to school!

God, he was an idiot. Lee Minho was an idiot too.

But with one more breath, remembering his whole ‘missing-eight-classes-equals-expulsion’ he trudged over to his locker, grabbed his books and arrived at his classroom.

Sure, he hated anxiety, and maybe today he hated Minho, but he definitely hated English.

Fixing up his pissed-off mask so he could make Hyunjin write the whole oral (he knew he had tried the exact same thing with Seungmin and eventually they became good friends, but that didn’t mean he was going to be nice to his childhood enemy) he pushed open the door.

“Alright everyone!” the teacher continued like she hadn’t even noticed he walked in five minutes late. Jisung slumped into his assigned seat next to Hyunjin.

“Books away, we have a vocabulary pop quiz today; for the first ten words I’ll say the word in English, and you need to have the correct English spelling, then the next ten words I’ll say it in English and you must write it in Korean, and then vice versa for the last ten, alright?”

Jisung felt like screaming. Great. Perfect. There went his whole ‘not-supposed-to-fail-any-classes’ requirement for staying in school.

May as well just leave now with some dignity.

“First word, Justice!”

Juh-Juh-stix? Jisung furrowed his brow, his pencil hovering over the paper. Sounds of other students writing the English down made his freeze up more and he felt the anxiety he had just managed to push down, bubble up in his chest.

“Queasy!” the teacher called out again and this time Jisung had no idea where to start.

“Condensation! … Chromosome! … Giggling!”

The words kept coming until she gave them a two-minute break and then started on the next round, the round he vaguely remembered he had to translate into Korean.

God, he was fucked.

Then, as if God himself shone down on him, a piece of paper fluttered into the side of his view. And it had all the answers in neat English print.

Jisung stared at the paper, wondering if maybe some higher form of being was really looking out for him to save his grade, but then he saw the pale hand that had slid it over to him.

Probably the godliest being on Earth to everyone else and the devil incarnate in his eyes.

Hwang Hyunjin.

Jisung scowled and looked away as the teacher kept reading out words he had given up on.

‘If you fail, you’ll get kicked out’ his mind unhelpfully reminded in and Jisung peered back at the sheet, which Hyunjin was now carefully writing. on like the translation was effortless.

So, he picked up his pencil and put it to paper.

It was the next day, Friday’s lunchtime when Jisung dramatically explained the English-test-catastrophe to Jeongin and Seungmin.

“Well, it was nice of him to give you his answers, right?” Jeongin asked, and Jisung faintly remembered that the younger boy (and Seungmin as a matter of fact) was close to the other.

“Guess so,” Jisung mumbled, biting into his sandwich. “But you should have seen his face! He was all smug and that – thinks he’s so damn good at everything.”

“He works hard,” Seungmin spoke up, picking the chilli out of his rice. “Especially at English.”

“Yeah,” Jisung whined, completely aware that he was sounding like a baby. “But he’s so damn perfect all the time!”

“Wow,” Jeongin snorted and from the mischievous look in his eyes, Jisung already knew the younger was planning something ego-crippling and maybe-true-or-extremely-false to say. “Are you sure you hate the guy?”

Seungmin choked at the insinuation and Jisung narrowed his eyes at the pair trying to figure out the meaning behind the maknae’s words-

“Goddammit, no!” he gently hit the younger who was now evilly cackling when he slowly understood Jeongin’s implication. “I do hate him! As I said, he’s so fake and picture-perfect all the time! Trust me, the day I ever like Hwang Hyunjin will be the day I die!!”

Seungmin stopped picking out the spice he couldn’t handle at that.

“Hey,” he said softly, and Jisung realised he might have said something he shouldn’t have. “Look, I know you don’t like him, but Hyunjin is the most real person I know.”

“Yeah,” Jeongin agreed with a cheeky smile. “And he’s definitely not perfect. Maybe if you got to know him a little better you could get a more accurate read on him.”

Jisung just huffed, and took another bite of his sandwich, not wanting to say anything else about the topic. Neither of his friends sounded accusatory, something he appreciated, but just plain honest.

Still, the day he decided he liked Hwang Hyunjin would be the day he was dead.

However, in English class that was his final period of the week, he decided not to give Hyunjin the stink-eye but also refused to contribute anything to their project.

To try and forget about the boy, he rounded Chan up out of his studio, got them both dressed up, and went to the local bar – one of the safer ones at night.

“Why am I here again, Sung?” Chan asked when they reached the door.

“To have some fun!” Jisung cheered, pushing open the door into the smell of alcohol and sweat. “And to help me forget stuff!”

(Stuff being Hwang Hyunjin of course, and also the fact that Lee Minho stolen his Marlboro’s and hadn’t shown up to school again today.)

“That sounds like a terrible idea…” Chan mused, obviously unfocused. Jisung followed the elder’s gaze to a girl on the dance floor and knew the Australian was set for the night.

“Alright, bye Hyung, use protection!” he squeaked out cheekily and laughed off Chan’s dramatic glare.

Still chuckling to himself, even the life of the night making him feel better, he swaggered his way over to the bartender (who Chan had, of course, negotiated with so he wouldn’t have to show ID) and ordered three shots of vodka and downed them.

With the shitty trap music pounding in his ears and the alcohol already hitting his bloodstream, he felt a little bit better. He flicked his hand for another round and chugged two of the three shots, before gazing around the club looking for someone to ‘pull a Chan on’ (meaning ‘talk some chat’ to, for the fun of it.)

He observed the club life, but most girls were either not his type or already with someone, and even though he had tried to ‘distract’ some girls away from their men a few times in the past, it had always ended in a fight and tonight he didn’t want to be the reason Chan didn’t get laid when the elder had to inevitably save his ass.

Pouting, his mind already a little hazy he resigned to a fate of not getting any action before he spotted someone sitting alone in the corner.

A guy? He registered at the masculine clothes and body type as well as the dark hair covering the other’s eyes.

He shrugged and made his way over to the lone table, trying not to spill the vodka in his shot glass reserved for the object of his attention.

The closer he went, the more unabashed and (although he didn’t like to admit it) horny he got. Sure, he wasn’t down to have sex with the guy, but a make-out and some ‘light’ touching could fulfil his teenage-alcohol-driven desires. Besides, it wasn’t like he hadn’t done this exact thing before.

“Hey, there,” he said in his low-key forced deeper voice. He set down the glass in front of the other, whose head was down, to get his attention. “You look nice tonigh – Oh my god, Lee Minho!”

Minho looked up at him, his gaze unfocused and his cheeks flushed. He was obviously drunk, and Jisung briefly wondered if this was the elder’s first time, seeing that he had just ordered the basic drinks.

“Jesus, school captain,” he sat down opposite the boy, his lust completely dying at the realization. “I almost hit on you!”

“You what?” Minho slurred in response, not really understanding the words, and oh shit, he was way more drunk than Jisung had thought.

“Shit,” Jisung wiped his hair out of his face and forced himself to try and sober up. He looked at Minho, and then at the many, many beers and shots, the boy had ordered.

Welp, this was not how he expected his night to go.

“H-How much have you had?” Jisung tried, frantically sticking out an arm as the boy almost fell out of his chair.

“Dunno,” Minho giggled and hiccupped. “Stopp’d countin’.”

Ah, fuck.

“Well,” Jisung wracked his brain for a solution. “Let’s not get any more-” he stopped when Minho reached out for the vodka shot Jisung had placed in front of him and pulled it away. “And let’s talk, huh? Never would have expected to see you here.”

“Was sad,” Minho pouted and leaned the side of his head against the wall. “Needed ta’ stop thinkin’.”

Jisung paused, biting his lip. Sure, that was basically the reason he himself and come here tonight, but that was something he had done millions of times before. Minho was definitely a first-timer. That meant something serious must have happened for the other to lose his composure (especially as just two weeks ago he had made a speech on the issues of underage drinking.)

“Is that why you haven’t been at school?” Jisung asked, feeling slightly bad he was abusing the elder’s intoxication to get information he assumed Minho would never-else have given.

“Yah,” Minho sighed looking only slightly more sober than before. “It was the annivers’ry yest’day.”

Jisung bit his lip again, tasting blood. Could he ask? Or was that morally wrong?

But just like always, his curiosity won.

“What’s the anniversary for?”

“M’ cousin got missin’.”

Jisung frowned, barely picking up on the elder’s answer. “Your what?”

“M’ cousin,” Minho explained with a pout like it was obvious the whole time. “My cousin – Lee Yewon-noona, she got ‘napped.”

Jisung froze.

He remembered the documentary; he remembered the news from five months ago.

Lee Yewon, eighteen, the only girl taken.

“K-Kidnapped?” he stammered, still in disbelief, and he wondered if he had six rounds of Vonda shots rather than just two.

“Yeah,” Minho complained again and (worryingly) slumped into the wall again with a ‘smack.’ “Why do you think I’m protestin’ all the time!”

Jisung felt like he had been shot in the heart.

Lee Minho? The best school captain the school had ever seen, has a missing relative?

“S-Shit,” Jisung said because he didn’t really know what to say.

“Yeah, shit,” Minho agreed and rubbed his eyes with a yawn.

Jisung winced. The boy looked hammered, and it made him wonder how long he had been here for. Minho was obviously grieving, and Jisung damn well knew his (un)fair share of grief too, so he took pity on the elder.

Jisung got up with a stoic determination but kept his voice soft. “Let’s get you home, huh?”

Minho just nodded, seemingly too tired to protest and Jisung wished he had Chan or Changbin’s ripped biceps so he could ease the elder out of the wooden seat easier.

Somehow, he managed and winced as almost all of Minho’s weight rested on his shoulders.

Slamming a quick few ten-thousand-won’s on Minho’s table, hoping it would be enough to cover the elder’s heavy drinking, and giving a small wave and thumbs up to Chan who was now dancing with the girl he had his eyes set on at the beginning of the night, he walked out of the pub.

Cold air hit his face, and Minho whimpered in his ear at the stark temperature change.

Okay, Jisung, he tried to convince himself as he stumbled down the road towards the better part of town he prayed was in the direction where Minho lived. Don’t think about how close Minho is to you and how drunk you both are (and how your stupid, stupid horniness from earlier had returned and holy cow he could definitely feel Minho’s abs through the thin shirt of his back), and just focus on getting him home.

“Minho,” he gritted out as he took another step, swaying as the elder fell on him.

“Call m’ hyung,” the elder ordered and Jisung stilled, the words going straight to his groin. (Oh god, tonight was really not the night of a kink discovery-)

“O-Okay, Minho-hyung,” he gritted out, reining in his drunk (yes, drunk, nothing else-) mind. “Where do you live?”

Minho didn’t answer for a second, and Jisung prayed the elder hadn’t fallen asleep on him. “Minho-hyung!”

“M’ awake,” Minho complained, and Jisung shuddered as the hot breath lingered over his pierced ear.

“O-Okay,” Jisung stuttered out again and forced himself to stand steady. “Which way do we go? Wait, do you have your phone with you?”

Minho suddenly groaned and buried his face into the nape of Jisung’s neck, his nose tickling the back of Jisung’s hair. “Lef’ it at da’ bar.”

Alright, shit, phone’s at the bar, got it, let’s just hope he’s sober enough direct me back to his place.

But seeing as the boy could barely stand, it wasn’t very likely.

With one more final push of all his strength, he managed to unsteadily walk over to the curb and set his hyung down.

Minho fell back into the grass with a giggle and started to ramble about the stars.

He looked around, trying to gage some sense of where he was, and he frowned when he saw a swing set and a fire hydrant. Hold on, he had been here! Before he moved to Malaysia, he had been taken to play at this park all the time.

But – even though he recognised the area, he had no idea where to go or what to do now.

Jesus fuck, this wasn’t going anywhere. And neither was he; he was exhausted from carrying Minho a block away and now the vodka was really starting to hit him.’

Okay, don’t panic – what did Changbin do when Hyunjin was this drunk?

“Hyung,” he drawled out, gently tapping the elder boy’s cheek. “Hyung, what’s your parent’s number? I can get them to pick you up.”

“M’ parents aren’t here,” Minho said. “They working in ‘Merica for the week.”

Welp, there went that plan.

He only had two more options.

Sluggishly he pulled out his phone and scrolled down his contacts until he reached ‘Channie-hyung.’

He bit his lip. Maybe it was stupid, but he really didn’t want to ruin the elder’s night. He’d done that enough already, and it was hard enough to get Chan out of the house after Changbin… Jisung couldn’t just stop the elder from finally living when after a month of basically staying in his studio he had slowly gotten more and more dead.

No way. He couldn’t get Chan out here. Not tonight.

That left him with only one more option.

He waited as the phone dialled.

“Mum?” he asked quietly when she answered.

“Jisung?” she asked tiredly and Jisung felt guilt shoot through him. “Sung, are you okay? What’s wrong? Oh, look at the time, it’s one a.m.! Are you alone? Where’s Chan? Oh god, Jisung I told you not to walk home alone-”

“I-I’m not alone!” Jisung stammered out and bit his lip when he heard his mother’s relieved sigh from the other side of the phone. “That’s uh – actually the issue – my friend is really drunk, and his parents are overseas and he won’t give me his address and - whatever…Can you come pick us up? At that little park with the fire hydrant, we used to go to?”

His mother was quiet for a second. “Okay,” she relented and Jisung wondered how he could have ever despised her just a few months ago.

“Love you,” he breathed into the phone and smiled when he heard the soft ‘love you too’ back.

Sliding his phone back into his pocket and with nothing else to do, he stared at Minho.

“What?” the elder asked groggily.

Jisung looked up towards the sky, up at all the dying stars. “How can you be bothered to keep protesting every day?”

Minho was quiet, and Jisung opened his mouth to retract his words in case he offended the other, but Minho just smiled. But it was a sad smile.

“If you aren’t going to stand up and fight for what you believe in, then who will?”

Jisung felt the breath leave his body.

He turned back to look at the elder boy, his new friend but Minho had closed his eyes, relaxing in the grass looking serene; peaceful.

“If you aren’t going to stand up and fight for what you believe in, then who will?” Jisung repeated the words in his mind, running it over and over again.

He felt his eyes water.

Changbin stood up for what he believed in; he had died for it.

Maybe I should try to do stuff for what I believe in, he thought looking back up at the stars. But… what do I believe in?

The epiphany haunted him until his mother arrived. What did he believe in? While he was a child, he was too young to care for such things, and his whole teenage-hood he had been fake and mad all the time.

Will I ever really make a difference? He mused as he looked out the car’s window, Minho’s head leaning on his shoulder.

He gazed out at the stars as his mother drove. They seemed to blink at him, maybe giving him some sort of a sign he was too tired and too tipsy to figure out.

They seemed to be calling out for him, but when his eyes started to hurt, he rested his head on the car seat behind him. And with Minho’s soft breath’s ghosting over his ear, and the sound of the car engine whirring he let himself drift off into a slumber.

A week later, Minho’s words still drifted around in his mind.

Jisung didn’t remember much after he had fallen asleep in the car, but he woke up on his bedroom floor with Minho tucked in soundly in his bed.

The elder had been extremely apologetic to him at breakfast and bowed so many times to his mother that Jisung was sure he would turn into a woodpecker (where the tree was the floor) but otherwise, Lee Minho was quite an enjoyable presence.

Although, when they went into school on Monday morning, there, of course, had been rumours. Whispers spread like the plague and by the end of third period, the pair’s rather odd friendship had become the talk of the school.

Unfortunately, the most common hushed whisper was the words Jisung hated most, more than many of his other ones: ‘I heard Han Jisung and Lee Minho slept together on Friday night – my friend told me he saw them walk home drunk together – they’re so gay, it’s gross.’

Jisung had thought his classmate’s assumptions of their sexuality and ‘after-school activities’ would drive a wedge between their new friendship, but Minho didn’t pay it any mind, even acted as if he hadn’t heard anything.

Jisung however, couldn’t be so calm. Because although he knew with certainty that he did not have sex with Lee Minho on Friday night, he couldn’t deny that he hadn’t felt… something in his drunken-horny glory. Sure, he could explain the sexual attraction on being intoxicated, but vodka shots couldn’t change him from being straight to gay.

(Maybe he had known it all along that he wasn’t one-hundred percent straight – and sure – there had been stupid rumours that he, Changbin and Chan were kicking it in sophomore year, but that was different.)

On another note, Minho was an especially enjoyable presence when he was in debt to Jisung. Now, if he used Minho’s words correctly, he ‘wasn’t one for corrupting power,’ but with the playful teasing of the elder’s phone Chan had retrieved, he managed to get a few cigarettes for future use and got the elder to pretend he definitely wasn’t smoking in the boy’s bathroom when a teacher walked by and smelt the smoke.

(“I can’t believe I just lied for you, Han Jisung,” Minho had muttered, grabbing his phone from Jisung’s hand and shoving in in his back pocket. “I have weekly meetings with her! She’ll definitely hate me now when you were obviously smoking in there, idiot.”

Jisung had just chuckled to himself.

“Aren’t you the idiot for covering for me? You didn’t have to-”

Minho’s half-pissed half-fond punch clipped Jisung shoulder and he whimpered dramatically.

However, that had made Minho smile. “You really are an idiot.”)

Jisung would even call Lee Minho a friend.

Speaking of friends, or more so ex-ones, Felix had started to invade his thoughts too. There were constant wonderings of how the boy was, or what he was doing infested his brain but no matter how long he sat by his phone waiting for a message, Felix never reached out. Jisung never messaged first – his pride was too large for that.

He walked home from school the final day of that week feeling heavy.

He paused at a crossroads – one way to his house and the other to Chan’s before deciding to go spend a night with the elder.

Messaging his mother a quick plan of his whereabouts, with a promise a) be safe and b) get home on Saturday, he strolled to Chan’s place with his hands in the pockets of his hoodie.

Damn, it was getting cold. It didn’t usually snow in Seoul till February (‘the pollution’ Seungmin had provided when Jisung had questioned it) but the new year’s chilly winds were not doing any favours for his thin clothing.

“Chan-hyung!” he called out, slipping off his shoes and entering the apartment.

He scrunched up his nose at the stench. It looked like the place hadn’t been cleaned in years.

Maybe Chan wasn’t doing as good as he had hoped.

“Hyu-ung!” he yelled again and opened the studio door to where Chan – expectedly – was sitting at his desk with nothing but the laptop light illuminating his frazzled features.

Jisung paused. He never used to be the person of the trio, or even between the two of them that was the comforter. Usually, Chan always calmed him down from an anger-or-anxiety attack, and as he was so… self-absorbed in the past, he never really had to look after the elder.

Welp, no time better than the present.

“Hey,” he drawled out loudly, hoping not to scare the elder who still had his back to him. Chan, however, flinched. “Why don’t we get you-” (he rested his hands on Chan’s shoulders) “-out of here, and into the living room, okay?”

Worryingly, Chan just sighed, clicked the beat he was working on, off, and followed him like an obedient dog to the television.

Jisung flicked it onto the news.

His mouth went dry at the subtitles.

<Two murderers of teenager Seo Changbin convicted this afternoon.>

“T-Turn it up!” Chan demanded and although Jisung was glad something had finally snapped the elder out of his mindless daze, his finger hovered over the volume button.

Chan took the remote.

Together they watched the news.

“Fifteen years,” Chan uttered when the segment changed. “They… killed our best friend and only got fifteen years?”

Jisung felt numb.

He looked at Chan once he mentally composed himself and closed his eyes when he saw his friend’s glazed face.

Chan had departed from reality once again.

Jisung wondered if last time he dragged the elder out to the bar was the last time Chan had left the house.

“C’mon, hyung, let me take you somewhere,” Jisung forced himself off the couch and turned the TV off.

He held out his hand.

After a few moments, Chan’s pale hand took it.

Jisung walked the elder among Seoul’s dirty streets, avoiding a loitering group of men and heavy traffic. Soon enough his feet had led him to a familiar door.

“Why are we here?” Chan asked hoarsely.

Jisung just squeezed the other’s hand tighter and pushed open the wooden door.

The scent of spices washed over him immediately.

“I was wondering when you two would show up,” the elderly waitress, who owned the restaurant said with a sad smile. “Don’t worry about the cost, boys. It’s on the house tonight.”

Jisung nodded again, his mouth too dry to talk and lead Chan over to the corner booth, the booth where usually sat three.

They were at Changbin’s favourite restaurant, the one with the spicy sauces and fresh kebabs.

And even though they hadn’t been here in a long time, not since Changbin’s last birthday in August, it felt all too familiar.

The elderly woman brought their regulars despite the pair never ordering.

She set three plates down on the table.

Jisung just offered her a tight smile.

“Changbin loved this sauce,” he reminisced, grabbing the Siracha bottle and squeezing some of the paste of the side of his plate.

“He could never handle it,” Chan laughed and Jisung perked up at the only happy sound he had heard from the elder in the past few weeks.

The ate half their meals in mutual silence. Jisung searched for conversation but couldn’t find the right words to say.

“How’s the music going?” he asked when nothing else came to mind.

“Alright,” Chan replied timidly

Jisung felt his heart pang. He hated seeing the elder like this. It seemed he had recovered slightly from Changbin’s death to be there for Jisung, but now he was falling back down again.

The elder had declined all his DJ-ing jobs he had gotten, to the point he wasn’t requested anymore.

Although Jisung hadn’t said anything, he was pretty sure the elder was getting depressed.

He wracked his brain for something else to say. He squeezed on some more Siracha sauce.

“Do you remember how Binnie-hyung could never pronounce this?” he placed the clear bottle on the table.

Chan smiled fondly before his eyes turned sad again. Maybe bringing the elder here wasn’t such a good idea after all.

“Hyung,” he attempted, putting down his knife and fork. “Hyung… are you… okay?”

Chan looked out the window, at the evening sky. “Remember when we wanted to become a rap trio?”

Jisung faltered. He did. Changbin and Chan had been in on the idea, but Jisung had his own head shoved so far up his ass, and the skill of procrastination and compartmentalizing, that he had always found some excuse to do it later.

He had always thought to himself ‘there’s next year to do the rapping thing.’

But as it turned out, there hadn’t been.

“I… do,” he replied, not sure what Chan was insinuating with his question. He felt the old angry defensiveness bubble up in his chest again, but he pushed it down with a swallow. “Why are you bringing this up?”

Chan turned back towards his half-eaten meal that was slowly getting cold. “I just… feel like we could have been something. Us three. We could have worked hard, gotten out of here, made it as producers in the big companies or maybe even have debuted or something.”

“You want to be an idol?” Jisung asked disbelievingly.

“No. But we could have been an official trio, ya know?”

Jisung did know. There had been countless nights he dreamed everything would have worked out differently – an alternative life where he hadn’t been such a dick and had focused on his music with his hyungs, or another lifetime where Changbin was still alive.

But they didn’t live in a fantasy world. They lived in this one. One where Jisung had been a lazy asshole and Changbin was gone.

“We… still could?” Jisung said hesitantly.

Chan stared at him.

“We…” Jisung struggled for words. “We could be a rap trio or duo, I guess. Dedicate it to Changbin-hyung. There are lots of start-up sites…”

“We-” Chan started, but his voice cracked with his words. “We can’t do this without him, Sung. I can’t.”

Jisung stared at the table, at the Siracha sauce.

“Three-Racha,” he read out. “Bin-hyung used to call it Three-Racha.”

Chan stayed quiet.

“Hyung, can’t we do this? I know you want to do music, and I do too, and…” He struggled for words.  “Changbin-hyung would want us to move on-”

Chan tensed his jaw and he knew he had said the wrong thing. “Move on?”

Jisung clenched his fist under the table, anger pouring through his veins. “How long are you going to live like this, hyung?” he hissed staring into the elder’s eyes. “Huh? How long are you going to do … do this?”

Chan looked away and then brought his hands up to push through his mattered locks and cover his face. Then, weakly, “I don’t know.”

Jisung took a deep breath, remembering Woojin’s techniques. He couldn’t get angry – he couldn’t make this place, Changbin’s place, a bad memory for the both of them.

“I’m just… worried, Chan-hyung – and… don’t you want to do something? To commemorate him? We could start our rap trio and publish Bin-hyung’s album and we could try this.”

Jisung waited for the elder’s reply, but as Chan stayed quiet, he felt a lump grow larger in his throat. “H-Hyung?”

Then soft whimpers came from the other side of the table.

Jisung got up, rushing to be beside the boy who was now, in fact, crying in public. Gingerly he rested a hand on Chan’s shoulder. “Hyung? I – I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said anything-”

“No,” Chan sniffed with a sigh, rubbing his eyes. “You’re right, Sung. I don’t want to be like this anymore – I want… to do the trio, okay?”

Jisung felt a small smile creep into his face. “Three-Racha, then?”

Chan laughed wetly. “Only if we use the number three.”

“Okay,” Jisung sniffed, pretending it was the chilli making his eyes water. “Okay, hyung, let’s do it.”

Two weeks later the ‘3RACHA’ idea was going strong. Jisung had in fact failed his promise to his mother about being back home on Saturday and had to sprint to his house to make it back in time for Mrs. Gwan’s car.

“I’m here!” he panted out as he climbed into the vehicle and closed the door. “Sorry, I’m here.”

Mrs. Gwan just started the car.

The proclaimed ‘mad-sesh’ went alright. Rather than talking about the ‘triggers’ for his anger (which was usually anxiety which resulted in more talks about his anxiety, which made him more anxious and in turn made him more angry) Woojin decided to let Jisung freely talk.

Jisung had opened up about some of his fights, including ‘the incident’ with the balcony. He kept Changbin under wraps though. Maybe that was a topic for next time – after all, today was the fifth session of the two-month course. He only had three more – and he still hadn’t mentioned his hyung yet.

“Shall I leave you with one quote for today, Jisung?” Woojin asked when the session finished.

Jisung sat back down. “Uh – yeah. Sure.”

He watched as Woojin pulled out a book – somewhat old looking but also extremely well taken care of. The elder hummed as he turned to a page he had seemed to remember, and Jisung wondered how many times he had read the thick book to memorise the words and page numbers.

“Ah – here,” Woojin slid him the text, looking vaguely pleased with himself. “Read the third line.”

‘ Hatred does not cease through hatred at any time. Hatred ceases through love. This is an unalterable law.’

Jisung felt his heart stop and the words rang in his ears as he read them. It… applied to him – his situation – what he had confided in with Woojin just before. His hatred towards the world, his father, Changbin’s death – all it did was build up until he exploded.

“Um – t-thank you,” Jisung forced out, feeling slightly overwhelmed. “It’s… a good quote – a great quote, actually-”

“It’s a book of scripture – of quotes and Buddhist beliefs,” Woojin explained, reaching over the table to close the text. “I thought it might inspire you.”

Jisung repeated the phrase in his mind. ‘Hatred does not cease through hatred at any time. Hatred ceases through love. This is an unalterable law.’

“Yeah,” he replied lamely, standing up. “I’ll uh – see you next time.”

The carried home was mostly quiet.

“Did you learn anything today?” Mrs. Gwan asked when they pulled up outside his house.

“Yeah. I think I did.”

That evening he called Chan, worked on the 3RACHA album and did his Chemistry homework he knew Seungmin would kill him if he didn’t do.

Then, his mother called him down for dinner (takeout) and they face-timed Jihyin rather than their watch of shitty reality television.

“Ah, Jisung!” Jihyin said, her eyes light but her eyebags dark. She tilted the phone down so Kyubok’s face came onto the phone screen. The baby giggled in delight and reached a tiny little hand towards the phone.

“Kyubokkie must like you, Sung!” came his sister’s voice.

Jisung felt happy in his heart – the type he didn’t really know how to explain. He wondered if this was something to bring up with Woojin at their next session, but part of him wanted this surge of protectiveness to be kept hidden.

That night he stayed up late. Jeongin had messaged him at eleven to tell him to go to sleep, but Jisung had ignored it in favour of his computer.

Now it was past two, and his eyes burned as he deep-dived into the web.

Sighing he clicked through his twenty or so open tabs.

‘Sam-ar-ah.

‘Samsara.’

‘Is reincarnation real?’

‘’Buddhist quotes on rebirth.’

‘Kyubok name meaning.’

‘Statistics on reincarnation.’

‘Why same day friend died same day child born?’’

‘My best friend died straight after my nephew was born – is he alive again?’

Rubbing his eyes, he closed the window and watched as his four hours of questions upon questions disappeared. But the thought never left his mind.

Changbin had died. Two hours later, Kyubok, who was over a month earlier than expected was born.

There had to be a connection there – it was completely impossible to be a mere coincidence.

He didn’t fall asleep till the sun started to rise again, and his restless dreams were all filled with Changbin and Kyubok, Kyubok and Changbin, and the very question that something that could barely be explained was happening to him.

Hwang Hyunjin was really starting to get annoying.

Jisung didn’t know if his childhood arch-nemeses was actually intent on stealing his friends and ruining his life, or if he was just pretending he wasn’t the literal spawn of Satan.

Because the god-damned perfect prick was sitting at his lunch table right across from him.

“Don’t glare,” Jeongin playfully hissed, jabbing him in the side as Hyunjin engaged Seungmin into a particularly boring conversation Jisung was intent on not listening to.

“So, Hyunjin,” Jisung started with a what he hoped to be menacing smirk and ignored Seungmin’s sigh. “Are you constantly being a dick on purpose or is it just part of your personality?”

“Don’t be an asshole, Hyung,” Seungmin’s warning came from across the table but Jisung just raised his eyes at the offending face directly in front of him.

Whatever.

He stood down but held his grudge. Maybe it was his pride, dignity, or ego that made him do it, but whatever it was, Seungmin seemed happier for it.

The rest of lunch Jisung didn’t involve himself in conversation. It was almost like a silent protest – like ones he had seen on television or the one Minho had done a few months back, but it really wasn’t effective in getting Horrible Hyunjin off his table at all.

After lunch, and after his last classes, he walked to Chan’s.

The delicate fall of snowflakes accompanied him. Winter had truly begun; just like it always had late January.

However, he wasn’t pissed off at the cold change as he had been in previous years. Instead, the fragile downfall of fluffy white flecks was natural, something so normal but destined to repeat itself. By the time he reached the little homemade studio, he had some lyrics about snow, and the way it melted, and the way it came back again, swirling around like a blizzard in his brain.

Chan gave him a beat. Melodic. Soft.

Hopeful.

The words came naturally to him, rhymes falling into his hands like the snowflakes outside.

And for the next few hours the pair, the duo of 3RACHA tweaked and adjusted Jisung’s freestyle until it was completed.

“I think this is the fastest track we’ve ever made,” Chan breathed out when the finished track faded out with an echo.

Jisung smiled, remembering the black moleskin book he used to grieve over just a few months ago – angrily scribbling out every jaded word again and again until it was mediocre at best.

Now words were like snowflakes.

They were so… easy. Instinctive.

“I feel like I’ve changed,” he admitted quietly.

Chan just responded with a comforting hug, and despite the silence, Jisung knew exactly what the elder was feeling.

Pride.

And for once, Jisung was proud of himself, of his change as a person – from the angry defensive boy to something new, and of his attempts, to just… try.

“What are you going to name it?” Chan asked, slipping his headphones off.

Jisung paused and looked out the window. “I don’t know.”

It was twilight, and the snow still fell like in an endless perpetual cycle, falling, staying, melting, falling again.

He remembered Woojin’s words, his late-night thoughts and questions.

“Hyung, do you believe in reincarnation?”

He watched as Chan faltered, then hung up his headphones, an unreadable expression on his face.

“I’m not sure,” he replied. In a few steps, he walked over to Jisung and pulled the younger to the lone sofa at the back of the room. “I think… I think people who deserve it could get reincarnated.”

Jisung bit his lip and fiddled with the hem of his hoodie. “Do you think… Changbin-hyung could have gotten reincarnated?”

Chan didn’t answer at first, his face pale despite the peach-tinted illumination from the fading sun.

“M-Maybe, Sung. I’m not sure.”

Jisung nodded and looked back at the elder when he felt the boy slip his large hand into his own.

“Sung-” Chan began, his voice cracking. “I don’t know if reincarnation is real but if… if anyone could be born again, it’d be him. He… He deserves another chance.”

Jisung nodded and felt his eyes fill with tears. He wanted to open his mouth – tell the elder about Kyubok and his theories, but it felt… almost wrong. Like a part of him wanted that secret information to be kept to himself.

And so, all he did was rest his head on Chan’s shoulder and watch as the sun dipped below the skyscrapers of Seoul, feeling lighter, but also heavier than he had in days.

It was a week later, a Monday in fact, and Hwang Hyunjin was sitting ever so patiently at Jisung’s lunch table.

“Great,” he rolled his eyes and slammed his tray on the surface before ignoring Jeongin’s careful gaze.

He was more pissed off than usual today, and it had not gone unnoticed.

Yesterday’s session with Woojin hadn’t gone very well. Well, it went well in terms of therapy and shit, but badly for him. He had explained everything about his life, his father, and finally Changbin’s passing and the gang-related activity surrounding it.

Along with that, Woojin had already scheduled a half an hour test for his mental health standing in regards to his anxiety and anger (which although had certainly improved with the sessions and believing in some form of higher presence which saved him from anxiety about the future, was still not the greatest.)

Overall, he was tired from venting everything he was hiding from the elder before and worried about his results.

“It’s not a pass-fail thing, Jisung,” Woojin had tried to assure after he picked up the papers. “It’s just something to let me know where you’re at – and what I can do to help you further, okay?”

Jisung couldn’t help that he was anxious. What if he hadn’t improved? What would Chan, Woojin, his mother say? What if he exploded again – what if he hurt someone again?

There were just too many questions surrounding it, and the breathing tactics weren’t cutting it anymore. He was seriously starting to consider finding Minho and getting a Marlboro.

“Hyung,” Jeongin quiet breath came from beside him. “You good?”

Jisung nodded jerkily in response and glared at Hyunjin when the elder picked up on their vulnerable interaction. He quickly fixed the nerves off his face and replaced it with a scowl – something he so easily used to do, but now was becoming suspiciously more difficult.

Maybe he was out of practice – after all, he didn’t need to hide his every feeling anymore.

“We have English next,” Hyunjin said rather randomly, probably uncomfortable that Seungmin, who usually forced Jisung not to be a dickhead, had not arrived at the lunch table yet.

“Cool,” Jisung grumbled sarcastically and stabbed the cafeteria food with his chopstick.

Hyunjin looked a little unnerved, and Jisung squashed down the trickle of guilt that came with his cruel satisfaction.

But of course, Seungmin ruined it by hitting his gently over his head.

“Don’t be mean,” the boy chided half-good-naturedly-half-sternly and placed his meal beside Hyunjin before taking a seat.

Jisung just glared at the younger but shoved some rice into his mouth anyway. He couldn’t find it in himself to stay mad at Seungmin; he preferred to half-listen to Jeongin’s ramblings for the rest of lunch, despite the residual anxiety stunting his attention.

The bell chimed brokenly and Jisung trudged to his English classroom coldly, refusing to acknowledge Hyunjin walking beside him. (he also refused to acknowledge the length of Hyunjin’s slender legs, and how he had to walk faster just to keep up with the elder boy’s long strides, and how it had always been that way, ever since they were kids.)

“What were your hob-hobbies as a child?” Hyunjin read the question out in English and Jisung pretended to not understand the three words he knew (damn Chan’s English raps) before burrowing his head into the desk.

“C’mon, Jisung,” Hyunjin said, sounding exasperated and Jisung smirked at how he could easily rile the other up. “Please do your part of the assignment.”

With a groan that had the whole class look in his direction, he lifted his head off the desk and stared at his partner. Hyunjin had a stupidly unreadable look on his face, reminding him of Seungmin, and with another loud, dramatic moan he snatched the palm-cards out of Hyunjin’s hands.

“Uh -” he squinted at the perfectly written English where the response was laid. “I liked to… p-play wih- with toy trains and… Fuck - Screw this shit, Hyunjin, I can’t read it.”

“Try!” Hyunjin motioned to the cards again and Jisung felt simmering rage rise up in him. How dare Hyunjin firstly take over his lunch-table and his friends and then forced him to read sit he didn’t know!

“I can’t!” Jisung growled and threw the carefully lined cards onto the table. He felt his ears turn red when the students at the tables closest to him started to stare.

“You can,” Hyunjin rebutted and gave him a card again. “Ask me the question.”

Jisung felt his lips draw into a snarl and the palm card’s sharp edge dug into and crumpled under his hand.

“I -” he started to argue but suddenly Woojin’s stupid book of quotes came back to him.

‘ Hatred does not cease through hatred at any time. Hatred ceases through love. This is an unalterable law.’

He looked back at the card, that had now a fold in its corner. Hyunjin’s careful English stained the paper. The words were on the tip of his tongue.

What good would fighting do? Hyunjin… Hyunjin was trying to help.

He sighed, the beginnings of an outburst furling up in his chest like a dying fern.

He was okay, he had the quote, he wouldn’t get angry for no reason – he was fine.

He opened his mouth.

“W-What were your…hobbies as a child?”

Hyunjin smiled, his eyes almost disappearing into happy little crescents.

And despite it all, Jisung felt the urge to smile back. (He didn’t of course, brought the paper to cover his mouth as Hyunjin expertly answered, but it was the sentiment that counted.)

He flipped to the next palm card and slowly read out the English words, Hyunjin helping him every so often, and not getting frustrated when he took his time.

And it went on, Jisung asking and Hyunjin answering.

And before he knew it, English class, the very class he despised with a passion and spent the last year ditching out of hatred, was over.

Hyunjin looked… almost proud.

And Jisung wondered why reading out a few English words was so difficult in the first place.

It was the seventh Sunday of the anger-management-program and the routine had finally become normalcy. Maybe something more than normalcy – something… to look forward to.

“Excited for your second last session?” Mrs. Gwan asked cheerily when he got in the car, rugged up in knitwear and a bright red scarf Seungmin had knitted for him (don’t ask, he thought it might have been a late Christmas present, but he wasn’t one to refuse gifts.)

“I guess so,” he responded mildly, not exactly knowing his stance on the sessions coming to a close.

One half of him was glad he wouldn’t have to give up his Sunday afternoons to go drive for half-an-hour to talk about everything he’d rather forget – not finding the whole venting phenomenon cathartic at all. But the other half of him secretly enjoyed the sessions. He liked talking to Woojin and weirdly even considered the man a close friend. He liked learning about Buddhism, even if some elements of the religion he wasn’t quite sold on.

Besides, the program had helped. He was definitely less anxious and could control his anger much better than before. Another plus was that he also didn’t have to rely on nicotine to calm him like he had before Felix, and then after Changbin.

“Thank you for driving me,” he said carefully as Mrs. Gwan hummed. The woman glanced at him in the rear-view mirror and smiled.

“it’s been my pleasure. There’s something amazing in seeing you change into a strong young man, Jisung. You should be proud of yourself.”

Jisung squirmed happily in his seat but preferred to look out the window, at the snow that was starting to fall, rather than try to formulate a response. He was sure that after all these weeks of driving him, the teacher would be able to understand that he appreciated the kind words.

When they pulled up at the clinic, Jisung got out with a wave and strolled comfortably into the waiting room, routinely signing himself in and only grabbing one mint.

The girl he had scared away from his first session was sitting diagonally from him. They had come to share some sort of mutual bond just from seeing each other once a week despite never talking, For the first time, Jisung gave her a small wave.

She smiled and waved back.

“Jisung,” the receptionist called out and at the call of his name, Jisung stood up and gave the woman a quick bow before wandering down the hall to his therapist’s familiar office.

“Woojin!” he called out, welcoming himself in, “I’m here!”

As soon as he walked in it was like his whole day brightened at Woojin’s calm but endearing small smile.

“Jisung, take a seat,” he motioned to the armchair where Jisung happily obliged.

However, as soon as he saw Woojin frown at his computer screen, clicking through some files, he felt a flicker of anxiety light in his chest. Why did he look so focused? He was definitely reading something – was his answers from the mood test last week?

“Woojin? Is it about my test results?” he asked, clasping his hands together when the elder nodded.

“Jisung-ah,” he started, his serious clouded expression not matching the soothing tone of his deep voice. “After your several sessions, as your therapist, I have – uh found a diagnosis that might best fit our situation.”

Jisung sunk his teeth int his bottom lip until it stung. A diagnosis? He knew there was something not exactly right with him and his temper – hence being sent to these sessions in the first place – but a definition of it all sounded do formal. So, serious. Like he couldn’t wish the issue of his anger into denial any more.

“O-Okay,” he stuttered, his heart racing. “W-What is it?”

“Based on your previous actions, Jisung; the tendency to explode into fits of elevated and overt verbal and physical aggression, characterized alongside by your general anxiety would conclude that you have a case of Impulse Aggression, otherwise known as IA. Have you heard of it?”

Jisung licked his lip, tasting the tang of iron, and prayed Woojin wouldn’t notice. “Um – no. I haven’t.”

Woojin nodded, then typed something – his finger falling on keys like the pitter-patter of rain, before looking back at him.

“You’ve improved a lot already Jisung, just in… two months?” Woojin peered at his computer screen again. “Ah, seven weeks, yes.”

“Next Sunday’s our last session,” Jisung stated bluntly. Woojin just blinked at him owlishly, like he already knew.

“Yes,” the man agreed. “However – it doesn’t have to be. If you are willing Jisung, you are welcome to continue these sessions even after your mandatory course is complete.”

Jisung paused. Continue the sessions?

He hadn’t really thought about it – but… maybe it would be good. Woojin’s therapy was definitely helping him with his anxiety and his anger, and his friends would be proud if he voluntarily went again.

Besides, over the weeks, he had started to enjoy the sessions, and along with it Woojin’s presence.

“Yeah,” he decided determinedly. “I would like that – as long as we have a celebration for completing my program?”

Woojin laughed fondly. “Of course, Jisung. I’ll make sure to bring the bowl of mints too.”

Jisung smiled and Woojin relaxed before they started to chat, about common things such as the week’s events and Jeongin’s failed attempt to dye his hair back to black to deeper topics like his anger, or his father.

Soon enough, the clock finished its cycle.

It was time to leave.

“W-Woojin-” he started, standing up out of his chair.

The elder peered up at his, his expression as calm as usual. “Yes?”

Jisung paused, stumbling for words. “I – I just want to say thanks, for everything.”

Woojin frowned slightly at the unexpected confession and Jisung’s own mind screamed at him to backtrack – vulnerability almost a sign of weakness.

“It’s just-” he cut off again. He sure as hell had no idea where this spiel was going, but he wasn’t going to stop it. “It’s just, these sessions have really changed me. My perspective on stuff and-” he motioned to the elder’s book-filled bookcases, “Religion… It’s all given me… hope.”

Woojin looked perplexed, but in the good sort of way – surprised, honoured.

“Thank you Jisung,” he answered after a beat of silence. “Actually,” he rummaged in his desk for a moment, before pulling out a rectangular-shaped box. “I… was supposed to give you this next week, but… I feel like now is the right time.”

Jisung stared at the wrapped present, his mouth agape.

“Open it.”

So, with a shaky hand, he unravelled the bow and opened the box.

Laying there was a brown, ancient book.

Confusedly, he lifted the thick text and opened it to the first page.

‘Samsara; a Collection of Buddhist Quotes and Values.’

He turned to the bookmarked page.

‘ Hatred does not cease through hatred at any time. Hatred ceases through love. This is an unalterable law.’

It was the quote.

“Thank you,” Jisung whispered, the paper smooth under his fingers. “I-” he chuckled, scanning the list of sayings. “I don’t know how to thank you.”

“No need,” Woojin replied with a smile. “I’ll see you next week for the final session, yes?”

“Yeah,” Jisung promised. “I’ll see you then.”

”And then Hyunjin-hyung fell off the diving board and got soaked!” Jeongin finished up with an evil cackle, his strange black-brown-red hair bobbing as he spoke.

Like himself, Jeongin had grown out his hair slightly, so they both had to constantly brush it out of their eyes. Unlike his fried half-grown out orange locks however, Jeongin’s hair was still fluffy and sleek despite the bad dye job. (Although the hair change meant Jisung couldn’t pick the boy easily out from a crowd anymore. Most times he didn’t recognise the other from far away.)

It was good. Jeongin was good.

The younger was finishing up a detailed and (overly) dramatic retelling of his weekend; both in the assigned classroom – Jisung sitting on the desk despite the teacher’s scowl and Jeongin on the chair. Seungmin, Jeongin and Hyunjin had started going out (not as in Jisung’s type of going out including getting smashed, dancing and making out with randoms, but cutesy karaoke, arcade or picnics) on Sunday afternoons.

When the outings had started, of course, the ugly monster of pained jealousy had reared his head but hearing about getting pushed into swimming pools such as Hyunjin, he decided he was much happier in a cozy little office with Woojin.

“That’s nice, Innie,” he parroted simply, like he did every Thursday morning at their mentor sessions (he had no idea why Jeongin was telling him about last Sunday when it was now Thursday, but it was better just to let the younger talk, and talk, and talk.)

“Are you excited for tomorrow?” Jeongin asked, changing course.

Jisung wracked his brain for any school event, or anything Jeongin could have possibly told him that week that was seemingly planned for the next day, but he came up blank.

“Uh – yes?” he tried and watched as Jeongin rolled his eyes in humour.

“Hyung, tomorrow’s a day off! We don’t have classes.”

Jisung frowned, wondering why he hadn’t heard of the spectacle before. “For real?”

“Yeah – for real. Didn’t Hyunjin tell you? Because remember your English oral was scheduled for tomorrow but it got moved.”

Jisung blinked. “Oh, seriously? But I spent two hours last night memorizing all my lines for it!”

Jeongin smirked. “But hyung!” he started teasingly. “Why would you bother doing work for someone you hate? I thought you said, and I quote, that ‘the day I ever like Hwang Hyunjin will be the day I die-’”

Jisung hit the younger at his rendition of his own words, his ears burning red at his statement.

“I so didn’t,” Jisung muttered, knowing all well that he in fact did when he first got the assignment.

“Well, it’s on Monday, now,” Jeongin supplied, dropping his impression (which had a deep voice? Did Jisung have a deep voice? Because he used to wish he had a deep voice-)

“-So, don’t forget your lines! You better show up, alright?”

Jisung sighed but nodded. It would be a complete waste if he spent all this time memorizing the confusing English words to not even show up for the oral performance.

Besides – even if Hyunjin wasn’t his favourite person, he didn’t want to be the reason the other failed their joint assignment.

“You study hard these days, hyung,” Jeongin said quietly after a few seconds.

Jisung looked at the younger, surprised by his serious tone after literally making fun of him.

“Thanks, Seungmin started it,” he replied, rather embarrassed to have his work pointed out.

“You’ve changed a lot from when this whole mentor program started. Remember when you literally almost fought Headmaster Dok for me?” Jeongin reminisced and Jisung was once again flattered and taken aback by the boy’s wise-sounding words, and old-tone.

“Yeah,” he agreed, swallowing the lump that had formed in his throat at recalling the memories. “Five-six months ago? A lot has happened…”

Jeongin didn’t speak for a second, so starkly different from his chatter-box element. Jisung wondered how such opposite extremes could be contained in one person, but Jeongin was just interesting that way.

For once in a long time, Jisung thought about how lucky he was to know the boy.

“A lot has changed for us – you, me, Seungmin-hyung… and even Felix and Hyunjin-hyung,” Jeongin continued, ignoring the swirl of low chatter beside them.

Jisung swallowed and nodded. The other was right – a lot had changed for all of them, not just him.

Especially with Felix leaving due to Changbin’s passing – he was once an integral member of their group.

Jeongin could seem to read his mind. “Have you talked to Felix-hyung?”

Jisung looked away.

“No.”

Jeongin hummed, once again sounding years beyond his age. “Maybe you should.”

The bell rang ending the morning session and with a sigh, Jisung clambered off the table, glaring at someone who looked at him funnily for a few seconds too long.

“What have you got?” Jeongin asked as they walked side-by-side out of the classroom and into the bustling hallway.

“Chem,” he replied, peering over the snake of students in an attempt to find Seungmin, which didn’t work at all.

“See you at lunch?” Jeongin quipped, a bright smile on his face.

Jisung gave him a nod before the younger got swept away with the crowd, fading into the river of students rushing to first period.

Why is Jeongin bringing up Felix now? Ages after he left?

The question stayed in his mind until he reached the chemistry classroom at sat down on his signature seat back-right corner. He kept his feet of Felix’s old chair where they used to reside before he met the freckled boy, but where now Seungmin sat.

Speaking of, the boy came into the classroom at that exact moment, bowing politely to the teacher Jisung hadn’t realised was there, and plopped down eagerly in his seat.

“Hey, hyung,” he said, adjusting his glasses and grabbing his textbook with the other hand.

“You’re excited,” Jisung grumbled, sinking into his seat when more and more students entered the room.

“Yeah – today we’re learning about life and death – it’s an interesting topic.”

Jisung froze. “The… scientific explanation?”

Seungmin nodded and neatly laid out his pens and pencils on the desk. “Yeah. Guess it’s a bio-like lesson today.”

Jisung bit his lip, observing how methodically the other boy lined and titled the page, in neat, red Korean strokes. Seungmin was so… logical. It was the reason he excelled in math and sciences, was the dux of sophomore year with countless awards.

But, Woojin’s lessons and his late-night deep-dives into the query of spirituality and reincarnation made his next question linger in his mind; on the tip of his tongue.

“Seungmin, do you believe in something after death?”

The brown-haired boy turned to face him, a calculating look on his puppy-dog-like face. The pair was quiet for a second and Jisung drew his head back in uncertainty – unsureness of the other’s response.

“No,” he said, his voice firm with no hesitance. “I don’t.”

Jisung bit his lip harder.

“There’s no empirical basis for the idea of an afterlife like heaven or re-living anything,” Seungmin continued, twirling his pencil in his lithe fingers. “I believe that when you die, you die. That’s it.”

Jisung felt like he had a bucket of ice thrown over him – like Seungmin had been the perpetrator.

Those words; that head-strong attitude, had been him two months ago; atheism definitely bordering on antagonism.

For that, he couldn’t fault the younger’s words. As it had been him.

“Why do you ask?” Seungmin questioned finally, his face soft, but eyes hooded – almost dark.

“Just wondering,” Jisung shrugged his shoulders and turned to the front of the classroom where the teacher had written ‘life’ and ‘death’ on the chalkboard in large, sharp lines.

But for the rest of the lesson, he felt… sad.

Seungmin was stubborn if anything and Jisung couldn’t just be aversive towards the other just for his own beliefs. That would be stupid.

But having faith in something larger than himself; what Woojin taught him, even if he didn’t believe in every aspect of Buddhism, gave him… hope.

Something he had never used to have before. Something Changbin maybe had too much of.

Glancing away from the board he peered at Seungmin again.

And the boy was writing down everything the teacher was, a concentrated expression gracing his fine features.

Wordless, Jisung looked away from the younger and back at his notebook he hadn’t been writing in; too lost in his own thoughts.

All he had written was the title.

'Life and death.'

Not knowing how to feel, he closed his notebook with a sigh.

And waited until the heavenly bell rung.

Four hours later, Jeongin asked the question he always did when Jisung was unusually quiet; “You good?”

Jisung nodded quietly and ate his meal, not even making a snarky comment when Hyunjin sat beside him.

Today felt… different, and it wasn’t the fact that Jeongin had brought up the past, or Seungmin had told him his views on religion.

He didn’t know why, but he felt like he needed to do something he couldn’t think of- a tugging feeling on his brain like the looming sense that he had forgotten something.

He glanced around the cafeteria, expecting something to be wrong like maybe the people there he didn’t recognise, or there was a weird portal opening beside the lunch-lady, but there was nothing. Minho was even present, chatting with his friends and waved when Jisung turned to him.

“Hey,” Seungmin’s voice cut through his zoning off. “Are you alright? Did you even hear what I said? Hyunjin-hyung, Innie, and I are going out on Saturday instead of Sunday, so do you-”

“Yeah,” Jisung interrupted, frowning; trying to convince himself that everything was fine. “I’m okay.”

Seungmin stared at him like he wasn’t quite sure what to think, but reluctantly nodded, adjusted his glasses (his nervous tick) and started to eat.

“I’m gonna’ go to the bathroom,” Jisung said, getting up wobblily and ignoring Jeongin’s ‘hey’ from behind him.

When he exited the crowded cafeteria and found himself locked in a safe, bathroom cubicle, with no memory of the journey there, he let out a loud sigh.

Why did it feel like he was forgetting something? It wasn’t Changbin’s anniversary – that fell on the first of every month, and it wasn’t anyone’s birthday, or he didn’t have a meeting and -

What had today tried to tell him, tried to teach him?

He frowned, trying to level his breathing and rested his head in his hands, seeming almost manic.

“No,” he murmured into the empty room; his head started to throb. This feeling – it’s not like I’m missing or forgetting something, it’s like there’s something I need to do that I don’t know of – like it has to be today.

His mind raced, recalling the day’s events and who he saw and what people said to him and-

Then, his phone chimed.

With a shaky hand – the result of his anxiety and thundering heart, he reached into his pocket and took out the device.

            <Lee Felix has sent you a friend request.>

His heart almost jumped out of his throat. He remembered Jeongin’s words.

“Have you talked to Felix-hyung?”

Jisung looked away.

“No.”

Jeongin hummed, once again sounding years beyond his age. “Maybe you should.”

And at once, the looming fear that he was running out of time, faded away.

Felix. Felix was the answer.

His vision still slightly blurred, he swiped away the notification and clicked on his contacts app. His heart starting to beat faster again, he scrolled through the few names on his phone until he reached the person he was looking for.

And with a deep breath, he hit ‘call.’

The phone dialled.

Felix would be awake – there wasn’t a large time difference between Australia and South Korea – but would he pick up?

The phone reached its fifth dial.

His heart pounded.

Thud, thud, thud.

“Jisung?”

Felix’s deep, cracked and smooth voice felt transported him to months ago when they leaned against buildings; whether school or community therapy rooms, and Jisung smoked or chewed refreshing watermelon gum. He remembered the chemistry lessons, their friendship, car rides with the boy and Chan and Changbin as they rapped with the wind tousling their hair; all beginning from a tiny-yellow- post-it-note with a skewed happy-face.

Felix was like the sun; freckled cheeks, almond eyes, a wide smile.

If Felix had been the sun, then Jisung had been the moon; dark, brooding, ghostly, lonely.

But he guessed Felix, like any glorious star, had burnt out too soon.

“Felix,” he choked out, grasping the phone tighter in his hand. “Hi.”

“H-Hey,” Felix’s voice cracked and Jisung could pretend it was the bad quality of the school’s Wi-Fi rather than a boy on the other side of the world, sounding close to tears.

‘I miss you’ is what Jisung wanted to say. Something anyone would say to their friend they hadn’t been in contact with in months, something anyone would say to reassure, to comfort, to pretend like they were fine.

But it would be a lie.

“How are you?” is what he hesitantly asked instead.

Felix didn’t respond for a moment.

“Shit,” the Australian replied with a bitter chuckle.

Jisung bit his lip. It was a joke – he should laugh, but he knew his September twin well enough that he was in pain, some figment of unalloyed anger behind the single word.

It that one world, he knew that Lee Felix, the boy once so full of smile and passion and curiosity that led him to try, and try again, was gone.

Almost as dead as Changbin was.

“Shit,” Jisung replied his tone a mix of sympathy and loss.

“Yeah, shit,” Felix agreed.

And there was a woosh of air and an exhale, Jisung had grown so accustomed to over the years; a sound he made so frequently at the beginning of the year, a sound so familiar, yet so heart-wrenching.

It was the sound of an inhale of nicotine and an exhale of smoke.

The boy had taken up smoking.

“What brand you got?” Jisung asked, a final attempt to reach out to the boy that seemed so far away.

Felix hummed for a second, the took another drag. “Marlboros.”

Jisung let out a tilted breath, almost laughing at the irony of it all – how they had switched places., how much they had both changed

The end-of-lunch-bell rang.

“You in school?” Felix asked quietly, his voice tinged with something Jisung couldn’t quite recognise.

Jisung leaned against the stall’s thin walls. “Are you?”

Felix didn’t answer, and that was enough for Jisung to know.

The sound of the bathroom’s main door opening and closing made Jisung take the phone down from his ear and look at the time.

He was two minutes late to his last period; English.

“I’ve gotta’ go,” he stated, wondering why this phone call felt so final. “Goodbye.”

“Bye,” came Felix’s sorrowful voice from the other side of the phone.

With that, Jisung hung up and left.

“I’ll see you on Monday, okay?” Hyunjin clapped him on his back as the pair walked out of the English classroom, three-in-succession-successful-oral-practices (without the cue cards) under their belts.

“Got it,” Jisung rolled his eyes and looked away to hide the smile creeping up onto his face. “We’ll do fine, I’ve memorized it anyway.”

“I’m not doubting that!” Hyunjin exclaimed, his face turning from humorous to something more serious. “Thanks for doing it. At all. You… did a lot better than I thought.”

“Well, you’re not so bad yourself,” Jisung muttered, referring to both the boy’s stellar knowledge of the foreign language and personality in total.

As they reached the fork in the hallway – one towards Hyunjin’s locker and the other towards Jisung’s own, they parted with a wave.

“Hyungie!” a boisterous call from behind him called and Jisung looked to find Jeongin pushing through the crowd to catch up with him, Seungmin like a Labrador on his heels.

“What do you guys want?” Jisung asked, pretending to be exasperated.

“We’re just saying goodbye,” the youngest pouted with the same chaotic look in his eyes.

“It’s the last day of the week,” Seungmin celebrated in a much calmer manner. “Hey, nice scarf.”

“Yeah, well, I’ll message you alright?” Jisung opened his locker, giddy playfulness filling his heart. He adjusted the red scarf Seungmin had given to him with a pointed grin towards the younger, trying to say he really liked it without actually having to speak the words.

“We missed you at lunch,” Jeongin said dramatically and Jisung scoffed fondly at the younger’s expression.

Seungmin nodded, “Where did you go?”

Jisung faltered, remembering the phone call. “I talked to Lix.”

“Hm?” Seungmin cocked his head. “How is he? Only Innie’s been keeping in contact.”

Jisung looked at Jeongin, who now looked rather sad at Seungmin’s innocent question.

“He’s uh-” Jisung stammered, searching for the right words that wouldn’t be a lie, or send Seungmin into a spiral of panic. “He’s working through some stuff, ya know?”

“It’s good you talked to him, hyung” the boy finally responded, seemingly happy with the answer. “It’s good.”

Jisung smiled, understanding the younger’s unspoken ‘I’m proud.’ “Thanks, Min.”

“You wanna walk with us?” Jeongin chirped up.

“Nah,” Jisung responded, the English oral palm cards in his hand. “I’m going to stay here for a bit.”

And with that, he watched as his two best friends walked away, the afternoon winter sunlight streaking in from the above window and gave them a final wave, laughing at how Jeongin almost tripped over when he turned back to cheekily smile, and at how Seungmin lightly smacked the back of the youngest’s hair.

Jisung could imagine the intelligent boy’s words already; most likely explaining the dangers of falling over and head trauma.

Jisung watched until the pair got swept into the crowd.

Then he packed his bag, waited until the hallway’s masses thinned out and left through the back door, his feet walking him to the little patch of dirt he had sat so many times.

With a sigh, he slumped against the wall, remembering all the times he had snuck out for a smoke and come to the exact area last year.

It was almost as if life was repeating itself, but he was changing every time he returned.

For the next half-an-hour he worked on the oral, fixing parts he messed up and talking aloud to himself despite having already memorized it.

Sure, Hyunjin may be a picture-perfect idiot, and sure Jisung would never admit he enjoyed the other’s presence, but the least he could do was try and get a C.

“My fav-favourite activity is making music,” he looked up at the sky, trying his hardest to remember his lines. “I like to make music with my friend. He is twenty years old-”

“Hey!” a voice called his name and Jisung looked away from the overcast grey sky and to where Minho, with his blazer filled with golden badges, was walking towards him, a cocky smile on his face.

“You can’t be here!” Jisung called out just as Minho said his line, their unified voices breaking the quiet of the late afternoon.

Minho laughed then strolled up, so he was leaning against the wall, his jet-black hair shiny as always. “You have a good accent, clear pronunciation,” he complimented.

Jisung felt his cheeks heat up in embarrassment that the elder heard his English, shoved the palm cards into his hoodie pocket and re-wrapped his scarf so it shielded his lower-face.

“That’s not proper uniform,” Minho dipped his head at the grey hoodie.

“School’s ended, cap’,” Jisung pointed out. “You have no jurisdiction over me.”

Minho snorted and rolled his eyes. “Sure, whatever you say, Sung.”

The two lapsed into a comfortable silence and meekly Jisung grabbed out his cue cards and scanned the English phrases.

“Need any help?” Minho asked after a while.

“Nah. Wait – were you just staring at me?”

Minho laughed again. “Well, I don’t have anything else to look at.”

Jisung convinced his ears tinged pink was because of the chilly breeze that swept through the grove.

“It’s cold out here, huh?” Minho said, rubbing his hands together then blowing into them. “I think I’m allergic to the cold.”

“How the hell can you be allergic to the cold, hyung?” Jisung scoffed but picked up his schoolbag anyway and headed towards the door.

“It’s a real thing!” Minho justified and waddled through the door. “I promise you it’s real!”

Jisung huffed and leaned into the warmth of the school, a few degrees warmer than the outside word. But with one look at Minho, and how the boy was shivering almost violently, he rolled his eyes and took off his scarf.

“Here,” he grumbled holding out the scarlet-coloured cloth in the elder’s direction. “Take it.”

Minho stopped walking; his face almost confused. “But didn’t your friend knit you that?”

“God, you can’t have it forever, just for the weekend – I don’t want to talk to the police and ambulances when you suddenly die of hypothermia,” Jisung muttered, his cheeks on fire. “You know what, I’ll keep it-”

“No, no!” Minho gently took the scarf out of Jisung’s hands, the long stretch of fabric slipping warmly between his fingers. “Thank you, Jisung. I’ll give it to you next week.”

“Whatever,” Jisung murmured looking at the locker-filled walls rather than Minho as the boy cozily wrapped the scarf around his neck.

He scanned the walls of the school, some filled with posters and notices, others just a rather ugly cream. He stopped when reached Minho’s locker.

Across it, were images, statistics, protest posters – everything relating to one single thing; stopping human trafficking.

“Hey,” Jisung started softly, staring wide-eyed at the posters. He remembered his first day of school; Minho’s ‘sparky’ voice that used to irritate him to no end. “Hey, do you still have that petition I can sign?”

Minho turned to him, his face flushed, matching the red scarf. “Yeah, Jisung, of course.”

They were quiet when Minho opened his locker, exposing the neat but still slightly chaotic inside, before carefully grabbing out a slip of paper.

Jisung scanned the document. On it was names, dates, email addresses; all united to stop one thing, one thing that had impacted Minho’s life so much.

The boy’s name was at the very top of the list.

And delicately, in an empty row, he wrote his name.

‘Han Jisung.’

“Why did you do it now?” Minho asked quietly, taking back the paper and pen.

Jisung looked at the elder, who was much closer than he had previously been; the sleeves of their respective coat and hoodie brushing together at every motion. “Well, if you aren’t going to stand up and fight for what you believe in, then who will?”

Minho smiled then looked away, his cheeks flushed by what seemed to be the wintry cold. “Stop stealing my words.”

Jisung snickered, his heart light. “Stop saying such great words then.”

Minho laughed but didn’t respond.

“I should get going,” Jisung said quietly as if his voice alone would break the tranquil comfort between them.

“Okay,” Minho replied with one of his charming, but genuine smiles; all bunched up in the red scarf. “See you later.”

“See ya’” Jisung replied and cheekily copied the elder’s signature salute before walking away from the boy and the locker, his backpack swung heftily over one shoulder.

And as he left the school, the wintry fading sun poking out from behind the sheep-like clouds and illuminating his path, he smiled. Because he realised that today, with his friends, all his friends at his back he was truly happy.

And for once, life didn’t seem so complicated as he had once thought it to be.

All he had to do to enjoy it, was to live.

Jisung leaned over the heavy-duty brick of a desktop computer, his orange USB stark against the black device, the sound of his rap filling the studio.

Today was Friday – the day he and Chan had decided to release their first album as 3RACHA.

It had almost been three months since Changbin’s passing, and although they had initially planned to release it on the anniversary date, the music and lyrics and beats came all too naturally to them.

Besides, Changbin was never one to wait, never one to find such symbolism in days and dates.

He did whatever whenever he wanted. (He had even once thrown Chan a birthday party in February two years ago despite the elder not being born anywhere close to the day. When Jisung had asked why, Changbin had just stated simply, that he ‘wanted to.’)

So with Changbin almost guiding them (alongside two mental breakdowns from each of them; one including shaving a line into Chan’s eyebrow, and several hours of nit-picking each song’s composition and bass drop) Chan and Jisung huddled around the whirring computer, Chan’s finger over the mouse.

“Click it!” Jisung squealed, hiding behind Chan’s broad shoulders. He peeked out at the SoundCloud page, where they had uploaded their first album but were yet to hit publish.

“I can’t!” Chan laughed, his finger hovering over the button.

“You can!” Jisung yelled through a nervous laugh.

“Let’s countdown,” Chan suggested and Jisung squeezed his eyes shut and nodded.

“One,” he started, thinking of the blonde-haired, eyebrow-slit boy in front of him.

“-Two,” he continued, thinking of himself; how he had changed from his perspective to his rap.

“-Three!” he finished thinking of the boy who had hope even in the worst of times.

He blinked open one eye and read the website.

            < 3RACHA, ‘Even a Shadow Needs Light to Exist’ album of eleven tracks has successfully been published.>

The words filtered through his brain before the meaning of it all caught up to him. “C-Chan-hyung! We did it! It’s up, it’s up!”

He bounced around with joy and laughed giddily as Chan sat back in his desk chair, his mouth agape in astonishment. With a final leap, he gave the elder a back-hug.

“We did it, hyung,” he said, quieter this time. “It’s up.”

Chan still looked like he had seen God from the way his face was slack in wonder and Jisung fondly shook the boy’s shoulders from behind to bring Chan back into reality.

“Hey, you okay?” he giggled as Chan dorkily smiled at him. “It’s up, and you know what that means, right?”

“Celebration?” Chan asked, already knowing the answer.

“Celebration!” Jisung gave the elder finger guns and a smirk. “Let’s go get drunk!”

Chan rolled his eyes, a very Jisung-habit he seemed to be picking up on but got up off his desk chair and swung an arm over Jisung’s shoulder.

“Get your party pants on,” the elder said and Jisung judged him immensely for that comment.

“Why?”

Chan grinned. “Cause I know exactly where we’re going tonight.”

When Jisung found himself at the Chinese-themed slightly-culturally-inappropriate bar he had been at all those months ago, he thought he had fallen into a space-time-vortex.

Yet, when he blinked harshly again, wondering if he was already way too drunk and jus hallucinating, the rather shabby bar stayed in his vision.

“Here?” he questioned, pointing at the neon nightclub, while Chan ushered him in.

“Here,” the Australian confirmed. “We celebrated your first day of junior year at this place, remember?”

Jisung didn’t have time to reply before the pounding trap music filled his ears and the hotness of dancing bodies surrounded him.

He raised an eyebrow cockily as a waitress offered him a drink and a fortune cookie with a bow.

Maybe tonight wouldn’t be that bad after all.

So, with Chan at his side, looking extremely impressed with himself, he ordered some vodka, downed a few with his friend and started to dance.

He danced until the beat was all he heard in his ears, the buzz of life returning to his body, fuelling him, his anxieties thrown out the window.

He laughed and took shots with Chan as the pair celebrated, even getting the DJ to play one of their hype-style rap tracks and Jisung felt alive as the crowd around him cheered and partied like there was nothing else in the world.

“M’ going outside,” Jisung said, pointing to the back door he had escaped out of all those months ago.

Chan nodded and continued to dance as Jisung stumbled through the crowd and out into the cold, cold air.

He took a deep breath to clear his mind, sober him up, and he wasn’t sure if it was the cold air or his will that made it slightly work.

A sense of déjà vu and nostalgia filled him as he walked over to the brick wall he had once leaned on. He ran his hand against the surface. It was so familiar – each divot and crack in the same place, harsh but grounding against his fingertips.

It was funny, really. How much he had changed since he had last stood here, but how little the surrounding had.

He looked up at the sky. Some of the clouds had cleared, and it was not cold enough for any snowfall. A few stars peeked down at him, flickering in the moonlight.

Habitually, he ran his hand to his pant’s back pocket. But instead of Marlboro’s, there was one single thing, one thing he had picked up earlier that night.

A fortune cookie.

Laughing at the irony he broke open the pale shelling to reveal one slip of paper.

Carefully unfolding it, he brought it up to his face.

‘The true victor is not necessarily the one remaining standing, but the one who fell for what he whole-heartedly believed in.’

He stared, rather perplexed at the fortune’s meaning and message.

But unlike before, he slipped the paper into his back pocket, remembering that the last fortune he got, had been strangely poetic, though he couldn’t explicitly recall its words at all.

I swear Changbin got a weird one too, Jisung frowned, wishing his stupid-slow-drunk mind would work and remember, but he gave up as soon as he started.

He looked up at the night sky again.

The stars shone brighter than ever.

Glancing back at his palm, where the edible element of the fortune cookie was resting, he placed the cookie into his mouth.

And at once the sweetness of the treat burst into his mouth, making his shiver, and making him wonder how he could have found this taste bland before.

So, with a smile on his face, he walked back towards the club’s backdoor, where inside Chan would still somehow be dancing, and opened it.

The warmth of the venue hit his face and he laughed quietly.

Because that warmth, the warmth he had once found suffocating; something to escape from for a smoke break, was the very spirit of human activity; of being alive.

Chan spotted him with a grin and a wave, a tray of vodka shots in his spare hand; the epitome of true friendship.

So, Jisung smiled and wondered how his life could get any better than this.

Jisung woke up on the couch, somehow hangover-less and took it as a blessing by God.

Groaning he rubbed his eyes and sat up, recognising his surroundings to be his living room, not Chan’s. With a frown he peered around the room, the scent of fried egg hitting his lagged senses. His neck aching, he looked towards the kitchen.

“Morning, honey.”

Clearing his gaze, he found his mother, cheerily cooking breakfast. “Mum?”

“You brought Chan home last night,” she explained, giving him a pointed look that showed her playful disapproval. “He’s in your bed.”

“Ah,” he nodded, the early morning’s events slowly returning and sank back onto the sofa. “Sorry, about us.”

His mother laughed; the sound bright and loud. “Don’t worry, Sung. You know I’d rather help you two than let you get back here yourselves. It’s what any mother would do.”

“It’s what a good mother does,” he corrected, running a hand through his hair. “So, thanks. For everything.”

His mother set down the plates she was holding. “Honey,” she crooned, “I’m always here for you, and Chan, okay?”

He smiled. “Yeah. Mum. Okay.”

“Mornin’” Chan’s tired voice cut through the room and Jisung got off the sofa at the elder’s entrance. “I’m sorry for crashing here.”

“Don’t be silly, “the woman replied, passing the blonde a glass of orange juice. “Drink this – it’ll make you feel better.”

Jisung watched the interaction fondly. His mother treated Chan like he was her other son. She had done the same for Changbin too.

His heart felt heavy, yet light at the same time. How could he have ever hated her, when all she had ever done was give him love and support?

He didn’t know. But, not for the first time, he was glad he changed.

“Got a hangover, Sung?” Chan asked from his position at the table. Meekly he looked towards Jisung’s mother at just admitted they both drank, but she just snickered and flipped an egg.

Jisung wiped his forehead, expecting pain at the touch. “Nah,” he sniffed, walking over to the table. “Not today.”

“Weird,” Chan shrugged his shoulders.

Jisung nodded, knowing how usually he got a terrible headache. “Yeah, strange.”

All through breakfast, the same feeling of overall strangeness stayed with him; when he ate his eggs, when he showered, when he got dressed, when he and Chan checked their album (thirty-seven listens, nice) and blasted a few songs around the house. As they cleaned (an apology to his mother, of sorts.)

It was li hovering over his shoulder at every move. But alongside it, was a visceral sense of… knowing.

Calmness.

Trying to shake off the feeling, he grabbed his shoes.

“Mum! Chan! I’m going on a walk!” he called out, tying up his laces at the door.

“Bye honey!” his mother’s voice drifted from down the hall.

“Want me to come?” Chan asked, piping up from the sofa.

Jisung paused. It would be nice to walk somewhere with the elder – maybe take him to Changbin’s grave. Chan still hadn’t visited it yet; not since the funeral.

But there was something deep in his bones, a feeling, that this was something he had to do alone.

“All good, Hyung,” he said instead, giving the elder a reassuring smile. “I’ll be back before five, okay?”

“Yep,” Chan said, a stupid dorky smile lazily on his face. “See you then.”

And with that Jisung closed the door.

As he walked, he listed to Changbin’s music – the album he finished but never released.

Maybe I can talk to Chan and on the third-month anniversary we can publish this, Jisung thought, remembering the blue USB on Chan’s crowded desk. It would be… good. To remember him.

He kept strolling along the labyrinth of streets, sometimes in beat to the rap and sometimes matching the strides of other passers-by. The grey city seemed warm today; like the sun was shining down directly on him.

He passed the shipping crates, the last place Changbin had taken him to. Colourful containers were littered across the dock, looking so different to the concrete jungle that was Seoul.

He considered stopping there, sitting up upon one of those huge crates and watching the fluid movement of Han River beyond him.

But, no. He had a destination in mind already – the Seo’s graves.

Feeling that same odd sense of calm, he thought about his week; from Jeongin’s vivid story-telling to Seungmin’s smart-assed smile, to his English oral practices with Hyunjin and giving his red scarf to Minho on the cold after-school evenings.

I wonder if that petition I signed will even get anything done, he wondered, kicking at a stone on the pavement, watching it roll to a stop. Maybe I should tell Woojin about it tomorrow; he’ll definitely want to help out.

He bit his lip at the thought of the elder. Tomorrow would be his final mandatory session at the clinic. He had already discussed the idea of going back to see the elder, albeit less frequently, with his mother who agreed it was a good idea.

And yet the idea of the small change to his routine still seemed a little scary.

But now, he had the support system Woojin had so strongly emphasised, to help him out.

Who knew, maybe he could even try calling Felix again so they could talk about their shared anxiety.

At least with the change of my therapy sessions, I’ll be free on Sunday afternoons to go with Jeongin, Seungmin and Hyunjin and do whatever fairy-tale crap they want to do

He laughed softly at the compelling thought, shoving his hands into his hoodie pockets.

With only fortnightly sessions, he’d have more time to work on 3RACHA music too.  Chan’s tired eyes, but bright laugh. When he got back he’d have to check out many people had listened to their album.

Despite the ludicrously of going to watch PG-rated movies at the cinema, or spending money at arcades, when his idea of fun was almost nothing of the sort, he still wanted to spend more time with his friends.

Friends? Since when have I considered Hwang-picture-perfect-Hyunjin a friend? He thought, trying to rid the scandalous concept out of his head, but despite it all, it stuck.

No matter how much he tried to deny it, maybe after all those hours of English with the guy, he had come to like him, just a teensy-weensy bit. God, his past-self would be struck down at the thought.

Taking another deep breath of the sharp air, he rounded a corner, deciding to take the short-cut through some shady alleyways so he could reach the graveyard faster. Maybe it was getting a little cold, he’d need to ask his Mum where the coats were when he got back home.

“Stop movin’ kid!” a muffled growl came from around the corner, and instinctually, Jisung whipped around, expecting a man to there, possibly holding a gun, but there was no one.

What the fuck? his mind scrambled, and when another yell sounded out from up ahead, he pressed his back to the brick wall of an abandoned building, keeping out of sight.

His years of fighting trickled back into his blood at once, and his mind cleared of everything that didn’t relate to his situation. His heart pounded in his chest, his ears straining to pick up any form of sound, and the smell of smoke and gasoline sat heavily on his tongue.

Collecting himself, nerves racing across his whole body, he peeked around the corner.

And then he saw it.

It was a gang, baseball bats and pipes in their hands, surrounding a smaller group of boys who looked around his age. He spotted the open white van beside them before quickly resting his head back against the wall again.

He sucked in a breath, forcing himself to remain calm.

It was a kidnapping. Trafficking. Everything he had just signed against yesterday.

The thing that took away Minho’s cousin. The very thing that took away Changbin’s life.

He had to do something.

Images of his fights from the previous two years flashed through his brain. Sure, he could throw and take a punch, but this time he didn’t have Chan or Changbin to save him if anything went wrong.

This time he was all alone.

He clenched his fists, trying to channel up some rage inside of him, but fear, sickening fear, over-powered it.

C’mon, Han Jisung. You can do this - Just go out there and… and…

He gasped in another breath, swallowing down the lump already forming in his throat.

At once, Minho’s words filtered through his mind.

“If you aren’t going to stand up and fight for what you believe in, then who will?”

If I’m not going to stop this, then who will?

“Get the hell in!” the menacing yell sounded again, then a whimper of fear.

It was time.

And with a preparatory bounce, anger making his vision sharp and fists clench tighter, he turned the corner.

“Hey!” he snarled out, his eyes tunnelling on the largest man who held one of the teenagers tightly in his grasp. “Get the fuck away from them!”

Then he heard something that made him stop.

“Hyung!”

He faltered in his steps, the voice ringing in his ears.

He looked at the boy. The boy’s black-brown-red terribly dyed hair. The boy’s scared, pained wide eyes.

It was Jeongin.

Yang Jeongin.

Feeling like his heart had stopped, he scanned the rest of the gang, his gaze falling on the final two boys being held back like dogs on a chain.

Seungmin. And Hyunjin.

His three best friends were about to get kidnapped, trafficked, maybe even killed.

He couldn’t lose another friend. Not ever. Not again.

Jisung let out a breath and turned his eyes back to the leader of the operation, his four boys around him.

Now he was really mad.

“You’re going to fucking pay for touching my friends,” Jisung growled out, cracking his knuckles with a dark laugh. “You’re going to fucking pay.”

Then, he leapt.

When he heard the ‘thwack’ of his fist connecting with the big guy’s cheek, he knew it was a good shot. A metal pipe connected with his waist, but he barely felt the pain, striking at the man in front of him. A nose cracked beneath his fist.

Good.

He panted, kicking out the knee of someone who got to close, before ducking to avoid a baseball bat that whooshed past his ears.

“You fuckin’ brat,” someone hissed, the breath hot on his neck. “Why don’t we take you with ya little friends, huh?”

Jisung didn’t reply, just elbowed the man in the face.

Another metal pipe clanked down on him, this time to his ankle, and Jisung let out a sharp cry of pain before punching one of the idiots with the bat.

The guy went down easy, knocked out on the dirty alleyway ground.

Quickly, Jisung swivelled out of the way of a metal pipe that swung at his head and looked to where Seungmin and Hyunjin were. There was only the bald guy with them now, pulling the two to the van. And so, Jisung ran, picking up the dropped baseball bat and aimed for a homerun.

‘Crack!’ It worked. Baldie crumpled to the floor too, releasing Hyunjin and Seungmin from his grasp.

“Jisung,” Hyunjin choked out, but the immediate throb of a metal pipe to his own head made him fall to the ground, dropping his weapon.

With a groan, he rolled over, covering the back of his head which felt strangely wet.

A kick to his ribs. Thud.

A pipe to his shoulder. Thud.

A swing to his chest. Thud.

Get up, get up, get up-

Jisung scrambled back, away from the man snarling down at him, rocks cutting open his soft palms.

“You’re going to fuckin’ pay, kid,” he grinned and raised the pipe.

Jisung stretched his hands in front of his face, to soften the blow and maybe keep his nose, but the hit never came.

He put down his hands.

Seungmin stood over him, his face red and the wooden bat in his hands. “Hyung-”

Jisung took the boy’s outstretched hand and got up, examining the scene. The van was abandoned, Hyunjin and Seungmin were next to him, the creep who just tried to attack him on the ground.

Quickly he counted the bodies unconscious on the floor.

One – One, two, three.

He swung his head to search the rest of the alley, his body aching and heart pounding.

Jeongin.

Jeongin was gone. And so were the two other men.

“Hyung!” Seungmin’s panicked voice cut through the haze that had started to buzz around his mind and Jisung carefully pushed the younger away.

“They go’ Innie,” he whispered out, his words slurred.

“I-I know,” Seungmin said and pointed at Hyunjin. “Look, Jin-hyung’s calling the police right now, okay? Y-You can’t go after them, Hyung, you’re bleeding a-and head trauma is serious!”

“’M fine!” Jisung growled, pushing the other more harshly out of his way. “Stay here, I’ll get Innie myself.”

He didn’t hear Seungmin’s reply before he started running.

He barely thought anything as he twisted through the alleys of Seoul’s gang-ridden backstreets. The sound of Jeongin’s screams for help fuelled him, made his legs pump faster, his pain disappear.

When he found the two men, with a begging Jeongin in their tight, suffocating grasp, Jisung’s mind went blank.

A punch, a duck, another hit, a kick, a tackle.

The movements seemed so simple, so basic, and soon enough he was on top of the last man, Jeongin safely behind him.

It was all going too well. A hit, another and another; the man gurgling for breath under his heavy knuckles.

But life was never kind to Han Jisung.

It was a rookie mistake, really.

He should have seen the knife coming.

Pain erupted in his stomach as cold steel met warm skin, hot blood.

Jisung felt his eyes go wide as fire danced on his abdomen and then moved to his chest.

Hot, too hot. Burning, burning, burning-

“Jisung!” someone screamed, but all he did was fall to the side, to the floor.

A hand wrapped around his throat as the coldness met his warmth again, his lungs almost deflating like a punctured balloon.

Then, suddenly, the weight on top of him was gone.

“H-Hyung,” Jeongin’s pale face came into his blurry eyesight again. The boy was crying and as much as Jisung wanted to get up and give him a hug, it felt like his body was frozen still.

It was like everything had gone numb, but everything was on fire at the same time.

He coughed, then choked, tasting sourness at the back of his throat., sitting there like a pool.

A bead of sweat ran down his forehead and his fingers twitched in effort to move.

“Hyung!” Jeongin screamed again, “Jisung-hyung, please! Don’t leave me!”

The ground vibrated beneath him. A siren rang in the distance.

Jisung smiled weakly when he saw Seungmin’s face come into his field of vision too. He wondered where Hyunjin was; if he was practicing his English oral for Monday.

His friends.

He had saved them.

Black spots danced in the corners of his eyes like how fire sizzled on his skin.

Maybe life was a simple thing after all.

He closed his eyes, the world, the screams, going silent.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

Thud.

And then he opened his eyes again.