Puppy Love • Seungchan

•⊱•••• 1 ••••⊰•

Seungmin pushes the door to Jeongin's room open, stepping out into the hallway with a sigh. He shouldn't be here. It felt wrong.

Seungmin was a sucker for unexpected thrills, and kissing his ex boyfriend? Now that was unexpected.

Seungmin thrived on thrills, he loved dipping his toes into the unknown, and uncovering those spontaneous moments in life. It made his small world exciting.

It's that chase for excitement that led him to take up photography and eventually join the journalism club. Not only could he take photos of those spontaneous pockets in time, but he could also write about his discoveries and share them with others too. Now as of his final year he was the club president, and he couldn't be happier.

Maybe it's because he'd had an ordinary life growing up; he had no siblings, no relatives nearby, no pets to occupy his time. Maybe deep down that's why he knew he had to step out of his bubble, he had to chase his own path, otherwise his existence would continue to be mundane.

But Seungmin had tread too far, he'd stepped too close to the fire of his past and ended up burning not just himself but his ex as well.

Seungmin knew, from the moment he arrived at Hyunjin's 18th and had run into Jeongin at the front gates, that he was already tempting fate. They both now lived two separate lives, lives that no longer had reason to cross paths. But as Seungmin had bantered with Jeongin he remembered the friendship he had before things got complicated, and he couldn't help indulging in their friendship just one more time.

But his indulgence for the past put him in the front-line position when Jeongin's heart was consequently broken once more by someone else, someone the younger cared deeply for.

When Jeongin lent in unexpectedly to kiss him, it was clear he was trying to fill the void that had just been shot through his heart; in that moment Seungmin should have set boundaries between them. He shouldn't have lent in again, allowing their lips to crash and their hearts to dive deeper until their lonely souls were fighting forwards in a means to get back out.

From the beginning of the night, Seungmin should have kept his distance, just like he always had anytime he was capturing the action through the viewfinder of his camera. He shouldn't have slipped to the opposite side of the lens.

Don't get him wrong, Seungmin cared for Jeongin a lot more than an ex-boyfriend should, but he didn't like him any more than a friend. It's what they should have always been.

Truth be told, when Seungmin first met Jeongin, he had no plans on even being a friend, let alone a boyfriend or even his frenemy. Seungmin had approached Jeongin for completely different reasons. The boy was merely a stepping stone to greater things.

See, Seungmin had a crush on Jeongin's older brother, Chan. Chan was in his 11th year when Seungmin started school, and as the popular, handsome, vice captain of the school hockey team Chan had quickly come onto Seungmin's radar and caught his eye.

But being almost 4 years older than himself, Seungmin thought he'd have no hope of ever approaching, let alone getting close enough to actually date Chan...that was until he discovered Chan had a younger stepbrother, and it just so happened that they were in the same class.

Jeongin was completely unlike his older brother Chan, he didn't join in on extra curriculars, and he kept very much to his own company. He was quiet and soft spoken, always hiding behind his hands. Seungmin had no idea how he was supposed to get close to Jeongin, but he had to if he ever wanted to be closer to Chan.

So Seungmin watched him, he studied him; looking for a way in, a way that they could connect. It took some time but halfway through the first term of school, Seungmin finally struck gold. Other than the hockey games he attended there was one other thing Jeongin loved to do: study.