WHEN I WAS 15 :: seungjin ✔︎

16

HAPPY (one day late) CHANGBIN DAYYYY

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When I was sixteen, I asked Seungmin out.

February 14, 2017. One year since we'd met, ironic though that was. I hadn't even realized it until a few months later, when my side of our unlikely and newfound friendship had evolved into something more.

In all honesty, I'd fallen for him the moment he'd uttered his "Lucky me." With a voice like caramel, eyes of chocolate, and a personality with sweetness to rival the combination of both of those candies, I was surprised to be the first and only person asking Seungmin out.

And relieved.

Because no competition meant my chances were higher, assuming Seungmin even liked boys. Which he probably didn't. I was risking everything that I'd poured into our relationship—time, trust, tears, and endless laughter—by simultaneously coming out to him and revealing my feelings for him.

"Lucky me."

Though our meeting wasn't out of a fairytale, the conversation which lead to our dating was.

"Hey, Seungmin, can I ask you something?"

"You just did, but go ahead again."

His smile. A bit lopsided, one eye closing a little more than the other.

We'd been at his house. Sprawled on the couch, limbs a little tangled, the way that friends' sometimes are. A TV droned on in the background, his mom watching the news in the kitchen.

Seungmin lived alone with her, his father long gone, buried when Seungmin's age had taken only one digit to represent. They had a small apartment, but it was infinitely more comfortable than my own house, huge and empty and cold and so devoid of the love a family should have. My parents were always at work, often in other countries, leaving their only child to his own devices, with only a wheelchair-bound grandfather to care for him—for me—most of the time.

None of these thoughts, however, survived in the dancing light that reflected in Seungmin's eyes, making them sparkle in a way that emptied my mind of all other things. He did that to me. All the stupid time.

"What's your opinion on the friends-to-lovers trope?"

I held my breath. Hoping.

Seungmin tilted his head, disengaging himself from me, sitting back on the couch, regarding me curiously. "I hate it," he said. "Because it means that the friends feel things for each other in silence, unable to voice them."

I stared at him. That hadn't been the answer I expected... or one of them, at least.

"Why?" he went on to ask. "Is there someone... are you asking because you like someone? Do I know them?"

Panic lurched in my heart—panic that he would misinterpret more than he already had. "You," I said hastily. "You. I want to date you."

"Oh."

A beat of silence. It was enough time for my heart to sink to my stomach, through my stomach, through my feet and the floor and all the apartments beneath us, the world, and to circle around the endless universe, only to somehow plop back into its rightful place between my ribs at the amazing words:

"Well, that makes my life easier, because I was planning to say the same thing to you today. Except I had a whole thing planned out." Seungmin smiled at me, first a shy grin, but then it unfurled and grew into an unrestrained beam. "Tonight can be our first date instead, I suppose."

I practically leapt over the couch to land on him and hug him. "I suppose that will have to do," I agreed, and bliss was not even close to being a word for describing the complete and utter happiness that consumed me.