SBB entry #2: Seaside (Part 2)
"Well." Jinki stares down at the phone, attempting not to draw attention. He presses a few buttons here and there, frowning at the lack of progress, and eventually settles for glaring at it. Stupid phone. Stupid him, for screwing it up. Around him, the table's distracted with deciding whether or not Kibum is lying about his two aces, so he takes the phone off his leg and presses a few more buttons, determined to fix it.
"Jinki?" he ignores it. "Jinki, twos."
"Oh," he smiles sheepishly, pulling up the ridiculous amount of cards he's acquired, and picks out a few to put down. "I've got four." Kibum laughs out loud, and Jinki returns to the mystery of making Jonghyun's phone work again.
He's not quite sure how he's managed to mess this up. He was just trying to add a ringtone Jonghyun had been whining about wanting with his laptop, and somehow ended up with a dead phone that didn't belong to him. He doesn't know much about phones or laptops, despite owning both, but he's determined to correct his own mistake. There's the slim chance that Jonghyun might be able to fix it himself, but Jinki isn't willing to take that risk and get kicked out of the house.
"Sixes, Jinki." He's about to take out his hand and play when the offending phone makes ominous beeping noises. He looks down at the device and gulps. "Here, just give it back." Great. Jinki hands the phone to Jonghyun, fingers shaking slightly. "Oh, that's weird." He frowns at the phone, pressing a few buttons that make Jinki bite his lip. "Jinki, was my phone working okay when you sent the ringtone to it?"
He looks down at his cards, placing one in the middle of the table. "Yeah. One six."
"Are you sure?"
Jinki's never been very good at lying, it's why he has so many cards in his hand. "No," he says quietly, avoiding eye contact.
"What the hell, there's like thisÉgravestone graphic on it." Jonghyun frowns at the phone. "Is this its bitchy little way of telling me it died?"
There's worry spread across Jinki's face, and Kibum picks it up. "You haven't had that phone for long, they'll probably replace it for free," he says.
"But all my special ringtones!" Jonghyun flails his arms for emphasis, nearly knocking over a few soda cans. "And I downloaded Tetris and Super Mario last week for the boring work shiftsÉ"
"I'm sorry," whispers Jinki, but it's all he can manage to say.
Jonghyun plays with the phone for a while, with what seems like no luck. He's quiet for a long, uncomfortable period, drumming his hands on the table rapidly, and finally looks back up at Jinki. "I can't believe you managed to kill my phone," he says, shaking his head. "It takes real incompetence to pull that off."
Jinki closes his eyes, trying to make the whole situation go away, and a whole list of worries runs through his head as the room falls silent. There's a sigh and an awkward laugh from the seat next to him, and Jinki jumps, startled. "It also takes real incompetence to have a hand as big as yours," He opens his eyes to see Jonghyun grinning at him, and blinks a few times to make sure it's not a hallucination. "One seven, I win," he says, and places a seven of diamonds, face up, on top of the pile.
"I can't believe I'm losing to such idiots," Kibum says, as Taemin steals another handful of marshmallows from the older boy's bag.
"You're notÉreally mad at me?" Jinki asks, in complete disbelief.
Jonghyun shrugs. "It's not that big of a deal," he says, and with a smirk, adds, "You can just be my personal slave or something and make it up."
Jinki smiles, a little more at ease now. "Okay."
Jonghyun wakes up the next morning to a bedroom that smells much nicer than he remembers, and wonders, faintly, if he's still dreaming. He rolls over to find his bedside table strangely cluttered; a slightly droopy blueberry muffin sits atop a nice red plate next to a tall glass of orange juice. When he moves his arms, slowly, to pull the muffin plate closer, he sees a bright red Coke can, white daisies from his mother's garden poking out of the top. For a minute, his groggy mind considers that his parents made him breakfast in bed, and then he remembers they haven't done that since he was thirteen, and he'd been sick then, bedridden with bronchitis. He pokes the muffin, as if to test its edibility, and then his bedroom door slowly starts to open.
"Good morning!" Jinki whispers, smiling earnestly. "I didn't wake you up, did I?"
Jonghyun's thought process grinds to a halt. "How did you get in here?"
"Your mom let me in." Jinki says, blinking. "It's not like I came in to steal anything, I just wanted to make you breakfast."
Jonghyun pulls off a piece of the muffin and eats itÑit's nothing compared to his mother's cooking, but it's surprisingly satisfying. "ButÉwhy?"
Jinki's smile increases by a few thousand watts. "I'm making up for killing your phone, remember?" When Jonghyun gapes at him, he adds, "Like you told me to."
"I never told you anything aboutÉ" he faintly recalls the conversation in his mind, and then sighs. "You took me seriously?"
"Of course," says Jinki, as if the question (and not his answer) is completely preposterous. "I'm having Kibum run some manicotti by for lunch, but what do you prefer, brownies or chocolate chip cookies?"
"Jinki, this really isn't necessary?"
"Yes it is," he says, frowning. "But what do you want, because I'm preparing them from scratch so I need to start now."
"Neither," says Jonghyun, taking another bite of the muffin. Jinki glares, rather uneffectively, but he gives in anyway. "Okay, fine, whatever you want."
Jinki folds his arms. "This isn't about me."
Jonghyun rolls over and stuffs his face in his pillow, groaning from the hopelessness. "Okay, okay, I pick the cookies."
Jinki's satisfaction seems to light up the room. "I'll call you down for lunch," he says, and leaves. As soon as he's safely gone, Jonghyun smiles into his pillow, devours the muffin in two oversized bites, and decides he's never met someone quite as nice as Jinki Lee.
Jinki doesn't know where they're going or why; Jonghyun refuses to tell him and turns the radio up louder when he protests. He also doesn't know why he was picked up in a bright red convertible circa nineteen-sixty-something instead of the sleek, ordinary sedan he's grown accustomed to, but Jonghyun waves off this question as well, saying it's (whatever Ôit' is) more fun this way. Jinki attempts to make a joke here, says he's not interested in antique car shows or following torn-down highways, but the driver scoffs and says he'd rather die than do any of those things.
So Jinki is quiet, and lets the wind have its way with his hair while he watches green blurs rush past the car. It's the first time he's seeing the local flora and fauna, having been asleep for the entirety of the ride to his new home, and he finds that it's both rather ordinary and uniquely beautiful.
The car comes to a sudden halt and Jinki is thrust forward, hearing Jonghyun apologize loudly for the old brakes as he turns into a fire lane. They're in a forest now, the sunlight blocked by mighty trees and hills, a deer disappearing into darkness as they drive past. There's a fork in the road soon after that, with one end going up a hill and another on a flat path, and Jonghyun takes the one going up the hill. It's bumpy and frightening and the road doesn't have anything to stop them from falling off the edge; Jinki leans towards the driver's end of the car and bites his tongue to keep from expressing his fear vocally. He then makes the mistake of looking down into a valley full of potentially painful tree branches and can't stop himself from making a strangled whining sound and shutting his eyes. If Jonghyun notices, he's nice enough not to comment.
Jinki opens his eyes when the car stops for the last time, and now they're perched on top of a dune, overlooking the water. He unfastens his seatbelt and spins around to find Jonghyun lying on the back of the car, shielding his eyes from the sun. He notices the lack of road beneath them and shivers. "Is this safe?" he asks.
"Yeah," he answers, sitting up. "Although, if it wasn't, I wouldn't tell you, forÉobvious reasons."
"Is that why Kibum and Taemin aren't here?" he asks. "Because they know it's not safe?"
"I told you, it's fine," Jonghyun smacks the car, hard, as if the fact that it doesn't fall right down the dune from the impact is reassuring. "Kibum has work, and Taemin isÉwho knows. They've been here before as it is."
"Oh." Jinki gets out of the car carefully and walks around, marveling at the warmth and softness of the sand under his shoes. "It's pretty," he says.
"You think so?" he jumps off the car, landing perfectly on even ground. "My parents used to take me hiking up here, and I hated it. It's much more rewarding when you drive, I think." He lifts open the trunk and pulls out a cooler, setting it in the sand. "There's some coke and sandwiches in there, if you're interested. Oh, and chocolate-covered fruit, too." He takes some for himself and closes the trunk, sitting atop it again. Jinki follows suit (though, admittedly, he skips the sandwich entirely, going solely for the coke and fruit) and sits next to him, still somewhat afraid he'll break the old car with a sudden movement. "This isn't boring you, is it?" Jonghyun asks.
Jinki shakes his head, looking out at the beach below them. "I'll get over being scared eventually."
"Seriously, Jinki, this is perfectly safe."
"I know." He smiles reassuringly. "Do you just have picnics here? All the time?"
"Not exactly," Jonghyun says, popping open his coke. "We're not big fans of the public beach, the three of us, so if we want to go to the beach we come here. It's a bit out of the way, if you couldn't tell, and we're probably trespassing on private property right now"ÑJinki squirms guiltily at thatÑ"But nobody's stopped us yet."
"What if we get arrested?"
"You worry too much." He answers, grinning. "Isn't it tiring?"
Jinki nods stubbornly, hoping he doesn't notice, and continues eating quietly. He took considerably less food than Jonghyun (he makes quick work of two sandwiches and moves on to the fruits) and finds himself satisfied far sooner, laying back on the trunk. The breeze coming off the lake is pleasant, and he smiles at the way, when he looks straight up, that the tree branches frame the sky. He's not worried now about falling to his death or potential prison sentences, but he asks a different question when Jonghyun, finished, lays down next to him. "Do you feel sorry for me?"
"Hmm?"
"I mean, you don't feel bad for me or something, do you?" he laughs uncomfortably. "Because if that's why you take the time every day to drag me out of my house, I'd feel guilty."
"No, that's not it," he answers. "I don't befriend people out of sympathy."
"Oh."
"Did you not have friends in your old town or something?" he continues. "Because you don't seem to understand that we don't, you know. Hate you."
"No, I did," Jinki says. "But I wasÉborn friends with them. I've never really made my own friend."
"Do you think you have now?"
Jinki pauses, running a hand through his hair, and nods. "Yeah."
This seems to please him. "Well, good, because we wrote a theme song for you, and that makes it official."
"Theme song?" he says, looking over at Jonghyun.
"Mmhm," he taps his fingers lightly against the car. "'The Jinki Condition'. It's really just a list of awkward things you do put to music, but it could be worse." He pauses, for dramatic effect. "You could have Taemin's theme song."
"Which is?"
"Stacy's Mom."
Their combined laughter is heard across the lake.
"I saw you with Jonghyun Kim a couple of days ago," Minho says in a tucked away corner of the living room, the next time their families meet for dinner. "Actually, I've heard you've been around him a lot in the past month."
Jinki doesn't see why this is a topic of enlightening conversation, or why Minho cares the slightest bit about it. "We're friends," he says simply. "He's fun to be around."
"Okay." Minho taps his fingers against the wall, thinking. "Look, it's not really my place to say this, and it's not my concern, but you might not want to hang around him. Or any of his friends, for that matter."
"Why?"
His cousin winces, and there's a long pause before he answers. "They're not exactlyÉpopular people here."
"Really?" Jinki asks, and then thinks because they've certainly been nicer to me than you have. "I don't see why."
"They're just considered unnatural," he says. "Kibum and Taemin have somewhat more flattering reputations, but as a whole people think the three of them are justÉdifferent. It's kind of like they don't belong here." He sighs. "Honestly, it doesn't matter to me what you do, butÉjust so you know."
"What do you think of them?"
He shrugs. "They're loud." he answers, neutrally, and then smiles ever-so-slightly. "So are a lot of people."
"So you're pretty indifferent to them," Jinki concludes.
"I guess you could say that," Minho says, and turns to leave the room. Jinki grabs on to his wrist before he can, impulsive words spouting out of his mouth.
"We're going to watch the sunset tomorrow. Wanna come?"
He doesn't remember why he extended the invitation, but the thing that worries him more is that Minho accepts it. Jinki doesn't see any reason why Minho would bother with him, much less his apparently lackluster friends, but he gets in the car when they pick him up, taking the seat next to Jinki. He doesn't talk for the duration of the ride to the beach, nor does he say a word as he follows them carefully down the dune, but he flashes a few smiles, which fascinates Jinki. He supposes he doesn't know the first thing about Minho after all.
They don't actually make it to the sunset, the sky already darkening as they find themselves on the beach, but they're not about to leave when they just arrived. Jonghyun chases Kibum around with a stick he finds, which descends into the two throwing sand at each other after Jonghyun professes to be too tired for running. Taemin disappears up the dune, and Jinki samples the lake water (too cold) before sitting next to Minho, who wordlessly offers him a drink. "Are youÑ" Jinki begins to ask, but Taemin sits between them, quietly pulling a few boxes from behind his back.
Minho's eyes light up in recognition at them. "Fireworks?"
Taemin nods, and Jinki squirms. "Be quiet though, because they"--He points to Jonghyun, who's currently attempting to throw Kibum in the lake "Ñwon't let me set them off if they hear."
"I see." Minho picks up a box, and Jinki's surprised to see a pinch of excitement on his face. "You'll need help with this."
Jinki steps back, wanting no part of the operation, and the pair rip the boxes open like it's Christmas morning. Minho digs a ditch for the first rocket and Taemin pulls a lighter out from his back pocket (how did he get his hands on that? Jinki wonders), setting the bottom afire. Satisfied, they run backwards, falling with their stomachs pressed to the sand as it goes off with a crack. It's loud, but it's Jonghyun and Kibum's screeches of fright that make Jinki cover his ears, wincing. Kibum yells a variety of incoherent curses, and Taemin laughs into the sand, hugging his arsenal to his chest.
"I KNOW YOU DID THAT, TAEMIN LEE," Kibum screams as he runs to him, kicking his back. "Cough up the rest of them, now,"
"No," Taemin grumbles, pulling the boxes closer. Minho's laying on his back now, covering a sly smile with his hand.
Kibum glares. "You know we hate fireworks," he says, as Jonghyun appears behind him, nodding vigorously.
"You're just scared," Taemin replies, kicking Kibum back. He tosses the lighter to Minho, gesturing with his other hand. Minho seems to understand, pulling out a sparkler and lighting it, chuckling when the pair jump back.
"This is terrible," Kibum pouts, as Taemin rolls onto his back, taking the lit sparkler from Minho. "Enlisting innocent bystanders to help you hoard drinks, how low of you." Taemin laughs and tosses them the cooler, far more amused by the sparkler in his hand. Jonghyun's lost interest by now and turns around to find Jinki, sitting down next to him. "I'm not really scared of fireworks, you know," he says. "It was Kibum that screamed."
Jinki knows he heard both of them, but gives a supporting nod. "Of course," he says.
Jonghyun seems pleased by this and lies in the sand, eyes flickering to the battle in front of them. "It looks like they're enjoying themselves," he says, yawning.
"Is it safe for them to be waving those things around like that?" Jinki asks.
"Probably not."
"Oh." He frowns and sits up. "Shouldn't weÑ"
"No," Jonghyun says sleepily, pulling Jinki back down. "They'll be fine, they're not children."
Jinki blinks, but lets Jonghyun slowly lace their hands together. "You okay?"
"Just tired," he answers, sighing. "Too much excitement for one day, you know?"
Jinki laughs. "You sound like an old man," he says, and is then met with a fistful of sand. "Hey! Fine, I take it back,"
"You should," Jonghyun says, smiling a bit. "Wake me up when they've exhausted themselves, okay?"
Jinki smiles back, looking up at the stars. "Okay."
"You seemed close," Minho says the next day, paying a visit to Jinki's house. He quells his cousin's worries with easygoing smiles, saying he enjoyed the night, and Jinki muses that he didn't give him a fair chance.
"The four of us?" he asks, twirling his spoon around the cereal.
"Mmhm," he says. "But you seemed pretty comfortable around Jonghyun."
"Oh," Jinki isn't quite sure how to respond to that. "Is that a problem?"
"No," Minho answers, laughing a little. "You just seemed a little lessÉuptight is all," he smiles in a way that suggests something else, but Jinki can't quite decipher it, he's never been too good at reading others.
"I guess," he answers, neutrally, and decides not to think about it.
It's the night that Kibum takes them water-skiing that Jinki begins to notice. Jonghyun claims to not understand the sport, to which Kibum mutters something about chickens under his breath, but he sits in the back of the boat anyway, singing and mocking whoever mounts the skis. Jinki himself takes one pressured turn on the contraption and falls a countless number of times before swimming back into the boat and throwing his lifejacket at Taemin.
Taemin is about as good at the sport as either of them, Minho slightly better, but Kibum is remarkable, and Jonghyun quickly loses interest in attempting to mock near-perfection. He changes the subject to how school is far too close for his liking, and at first Jinki asks sincere questions about what high school in the town is like. The problem, of course, is that Jonghyun does most of the talking, seeing as Taemin hasn't started there either, and Jinki gets distracted by watching his mouth as he talks loudly and animatedly about just how terrible gym classes are (Jonghyun's infectious by nature as it is, which is distracting enough). He decides that his face is rather unique in itself, defined and narrow, and wonders how it would feel in between his hands. Jonghyun asks him a question, and he turns his attention to his lips again, wondering what would happen if he leaned in andÑ
He answers with a safe huh? and Jonghyun sighs and repeats himself. "You're so spacey," he says, frowning. "It's not normal."
Jinki concludes that he had too much caffeine at dinner, and doesn't consider another option. He also doesn't look at Jonghyun for the rest of the night.
"You're a bit more than responsible for him, aren't you?"
Kibum spends his lunch break twirling in a chair behind the counter at the chocolate shop, eyeing the fountain lustfully while claiming to be keeping Jonghyun "alert and ready for customers". "Responsible for who?" Jonghyun asks. "The fountain?"
He rolls his eyes. "I'm talking about Jinki, idiot," he pokes Jonghyun in the side. "Remember? You said you felt responsible for making sure he adjusted or whatever? I expected you to sincerely try for a week before he got weirded out and got other friends."
"When IÑ"
"You haven't left him alone since you met him."
"Not true," Jonghyun says, leaning over the register. "Neither of us talked to him for a week after the party, if you recall."
"You're the one who drove to his house and then happened to see him at the grocery store."
"Beside the point, and it was a coincidence." Jonghyun sits up lazily, not looking back at him. "I don't see what you're getting at," he says.
"It's not rocket science," he then makes a diagram in the air which Jonghyun can't really decipher and doesn't really want to. "You. Jinki."
"Not a chance." he says, the words rushing out of his mouth.
Kibum ignores him. "I wouldn't care, if you're thinking about that," he says. "Taemin wouldn't, either, probably."
Jonghyun forces a laugh, trying hopelessly to relax. "Before you get carried away, no one said you were right."
"I don't need you to tell me to know that it's true." He pokes him again. "Are you going to say anything to him?"
"Why would I need to?"
"Don't be annoying," Kibum says. "I don't want to watch you two walk around each other, it'll drive me crazy."
Jonghyun winces, biting his lip. "There's no reason you would."
"Oh, so you're going to do something?"
He glares at him. "No."
"God, you're so difficult." Kibum stands up to leave, and Jonghyun breathes a sigh of relief. Nothing like afternoon interrogations, he thinks, before Kibum's lips curve into a warning smirk. "You realize I'm not going to let this go, right?"
He walks out of the shop in a flurry, and as he disappears down the street it occurs to Jonghyun that Kibum has keys to his house, knowledge of almost every significant detail of his life, and a very sick mind. He gulps.
Five such incidents later, Jinki admits to himself, begrudgingly, that something more complex is going on. He admits it, for a moment, and then decides to leave the feeling alone, shuffling it away like an unimportant file. He can live without thinking about it, he decides, and it's better for everyone involved.
It doesn't quite work out that way, howeverÑJinki pales furiously when Jonghyun calls him, eventually turning off his phone entirely. There are only two other people that would think of calling, anyway (Would Minho? he wonders, and then worries about what he'd think), and talking to either of them would be equally disastrous. He can't sit through a meal with his parents without thinking about how they'd react to it, to him, and he shies away from the locals that visit his mother throughout the day. He stops going into town again, shivering when he thinks of hearing his name come off stranger's tonguesÑwould they call him abnormal, if they learned of it?
It doesn't take long for the worries to get to him, and as he fails at concentrating on a book instead of his own thoughts his eyes fall on his dusty driver's license, sitting patiently on his bedside table. A rather half-baked but enticing idea hatches in his head.
He picks up his license, blows on it, and runs to the garage.
It's been longer than Jonghyun can remember since someone called on the landline for him, probably since childhood, and he's not sure who would call him at this hour. He takes the phone from his mother regardless, putting it to his ear. "Hello?" he asks.
"Hi, is this Jonghyun?" It's an older, female voice; he has a vague idea of its identity.
"Yeah." He says. "Is thisÉJinki's mother?"
"Yes, I was just wondering if he's with you right now."
Jonghyun doesn't mention that he hasn't been returning his calls, or that he hasn't seen Jinki in at least six days. "No, he's not."
Her voice immediately takes on a frantic tone. "Do youÉdo you know where he could be? He took a car, wherever he went, and Jinki hates driving."
He raises an eyebrow. "He took a car?"
"And his phone is in his room and his wallet is gone and we've been at a party all night and it's dark outsideÑ"
"I'll look for him," he says. "My friends and I will. It won't take long, I promise. Jinki doesn't know his way around, he can't go far."
"I know," she says softly. "Thank you."
"It's fine," he answers. "Good night, Mrs. Lee."
He hangs up the phone and sighs, smiling as earnestly as possible. "Jinki went out on his own, so his parents are worried," he explains. "Can I go out and find him? It'll only take a minute."
His mother nods, and he pulls out his phone and calls Kibum.
It occurs to Jonghyun, after twenty-five minutes of fruitless searching around town, that something might be going wrong. Kibum pulls over next to a blueberry field and Jonghyun follows, getting out of the car and leaning against the door.
"We checked the whole town," Kibum says, twirling his keys around a finger. "Are they sure he's not just hiding in a cupboard or something? It doesn't seem like him to just run off, especially if he's doing the driving."
"Maybe he got lost on the highway," he suggests, laughing humorlessly. "It sounds like a Jinki thing to do."
Kibum looks over his shoulder at the road, sighing. "I'll go check the dune, and then keep going after that."
Jonghyun nods. "I'll go the other way, then."
"You'll call me if you find him, right?"
"Of course."
Kibum opens his car door and slides into the driver's seat. "Let's go."
Jinki really, really hates driving. He especially hates it at night, on highways, when he remembers what his destination looks like but not where it is. Eventually he tires of the search and pulls over in a town he's never heard of, and when the first thing he sees at the exit is an ice cream stand he stops. After nearly killing himself parking the car he orders a small chocolate fudge in a cup, sitting on the highway rail once it's ready.
His original plan had been to reach the train station his family arrived in the area in, taking it back to his hometown and living with his grandmother, but he's not sure if he can make it there now. His driving, of course, leaves a lot to be desired, and he's pretty sure he has no idea how to get to the station as it is. He'd go home, but he isn't sure he can find his way back there either, and then there's the whole reason he left so impulsively in the first place.
Jinki demolishes the ice cream and hears a hurried, painful-sounding turn on the street behind him. The car pulls clumsily into the shop and he winces, placing the empty cup on the table in front of him and pulling out his car keys. It's best to leave, he'd always been taught, when drunkards arrived.
"Jinki!"
He freezes.
"Jinki, what are you doing here?"
He takes a sudden interest in his fingernails. Jonghyun hops onto the rail next to him, smacking his shoulder playfully. "Your family is having a heart attack," he says, smiling. "You're lucky I found you. Seriously, there's better ice cream places in town."
"That's not what I came out here for," he says, quietly. Jonghyun's mouth opens slightly but he ignores him. "I'm going to the train station to go home."
He laughs it off like a joke. "You can't do that," he says. "You don't have a place to stay."
"I do too."
Jonghyun's expression falls, and there's something like stubborn determination in his gaze. "Why would you go?"
Jinki's quiet for a moment, considering how to safely arrange an answer. Finally he says, "I can't stay here."
He laughs again, though there's no real humor in it this time. "We're too boring for you?" he asks.
"My parents like it here," Jinki says. "And I knew I was going to have trouble fitting in here, but I promised myself I'd try it out because they were happy. And things justÉhappened and it's not going to work out that way."
"You don't think you fit in," Jonghyun states, sighing. "BecauseÉ"
"You wouldn't understand." Jinki intends to close the conversation there and gets up to go to his car, but Jonghyun grabs his arm and pulls him back down on the rail, deftly pocketing Jinki's car keys in the process. "Look, you wouldn't get it, okay? I'm just awkward and I hear too many things and everyone else has been here foreverÑ"
"I moved here when I was five," Jonghyun says, folding his arms. "It was hard then, too." Jinki's shamed into silence, and he continues. "See that billboard on the highway? The red one? What does it say?"
"I said I could hear thingsÑ"
"It's an ad for the Karma Vista winery," Jonghyun tells him. "I can read it from here." He smiles. "I was one of two kids in elementary school that didn't wear glasses."
"Oh." Jinki stares at his shoes, conflicted between somehow retrieving his keys and getting back on the highway to the train and begging to be driven home. He's always had trouble defying Jonghyun. "Still," he says, softly, "Things won't work out here."
"Why?"
Jinki looks away. "I can't tell you."
Jonghyun sighs exasperatedly next to him, and when he taps Jinki's shoulder there's a small hope in him that he's getting his keys back. He turns, however, and their faces are far too close for his liking; he tries to turn back before Jonghyun's hand finds his cheek and stays there. He breathes slowly, nervously, closing his eyes in denial of what's happening, and then Jonghyun's lips are on his, hesitant and sweet.
It takes a while for it to register in Jinki's mind, and he leans in to the other boy's body, placing his hands on either side of his face to pull him in closer (he finds it feels better than he imagined). He can feel Jonghyun's smile under his lips, and when they finally pull away he's smiling as well, blushing and averting his gaze. Jonghyun starts humming an unfamiliar tune, but he knows him well enough to guess that it's the Jinki Condition, and that makes him laugh in spite of everything. "How sweet," he says. "Reminding me of my own ineptitude."
Jonghyun shrugs. "Love songs don't work in practice."
"I guess," he says. "Pick-up lines, however, areÑ"
"Don't even think about it."
"Fine," Jinki bites his lip. "But, IÉI meanÉaren't you worried about peopleÉsaying things? Doesn't it bother you at all?"
The question seems to confuse Jonghyun, who shrugs. "I try not to think about that."
"I can't be like that," He admits, frowning.
"It takes practice," says Jonghyun, as if he's had to do it himself; Jinki can't imagine him being so conscious. There's a long pause before he speaks again. "But you'll still be an outsider with me, right?"
Jinki focuses on Jonghyun's smile, illuminated by the street light just above them, and finds it's a lot harder to worry when he's right next to him. "Yeah. I will."
"That's good." Jonghyun grabs his hand and presses the keys into them, leading him to the parking lot. "I'll show you how to get home, then."
The first day of school they walk in as a quartet, Jonghyun and Kibum standing in the middle, jointly warning Jinki and Taemin of the various perils of the hallway. Taemin smiles sweetly at every adult that walks by, and Minho joins them halfway, saying little but seeming engaged. Jinki's mostly paying attention to Kibum's explanation of where, exactly, the art room is in the rather confusing building. Occasionally his mind wanders and he hears other conversations more clearly, some of which he appears to be the topic of discussion. There's a part of Jinki that wants to defend himself or just try to embarrass them for gossiping, but he stays quiet, eyes not even falling on the other students in recognition (they lock with Jonghyun's instead).
They drop Kibum off at his first-hour class, then Taemin and Minho at the gym, and finally the two of them enter a small math room, Jonghyun leading him to two desks in the back. There are a number of whispers going around the room, but Jonghyun drowns them out with his own voice, talking about nonsensical and ridiculous topics that eventually progresses into him singing loudly. Jinki laughs the whole time, only stopping when he notices the teacher casually walking into the room.
As the teacher explains the syllabus, Jinki looks down at his own copy to see a small note lying atop it. It's in Jonghyun's handwriting, which is really more like trying to read seagull prints in the sand, but he manages to make it out. Did you hear anything? It asks.
Jinki scribbles on the other side and hands it back. Nothing at all.