Lovely - TAEGYU ✔️

twenty-one

The day of the festival.

Taehyun and his classmates gather in the smaller gym hall where their host club will be held. It's interiors are decorated well, and since their paperwork to rent sofas, couches and bean bags were approved by their principal, the gym do be looking like a high class and cozy host club.

"Taehyunnie's packed from 10am to 3pm, with breaks in between." Jisung says and everyone coos.
"As expected of our sweetheart." Eunsang says and Taehyun rolls his eyes.

"We have ten minutes before we start, so let's go through what we've discussed already." Ningning says and holds up a remote in her hand.

"There's two buttons here. The one on top will light up when your time with your clients are over and the one on the bottom is for you to press if your clients are problematic. Now let's open up the host club!!" Ningning and the others exclaim.

Everyone then disperse to walk to their respective spots. Since Taehyun and Kai's spots are near each other, they walk together.
"Will you be okay, though? That's a lot to handle." Kai asks.

"Nothing I can't handle." Taehyun smiles reassuringly.
Kai nods. "Don't forget to take your meds, you need the iron and fibre in you."

After a few minutes, the door of the gym opens and a few students swarm the gym and heads straight to their respective hosts. And that's how the whole few hours went by.

Taehyun especially doesn't feel tired at all despite him being booked for hours straight. It's not like he needed rests in between when he's sitting on a couch with his clients and enjoying small talks with pastries in front of them to munch on.

And Taehyun feels comfortable with how it is. Most of the students, or clients or anyone who came to him are one's who would seek for advice.
Despite his sharp tongue, Taehyun's known to give the best advices and that's on periodt. If there's one thing he's really good at, it'd be counselling.

After a while, Taehyun was done with a few of his customers and glances at his wrist watch, finding it's almost 2pm.
'Ahh.. Beomgyu-hyung's about to perform.'

He sighs and shakes his head.
He had made up his mind yesterday when he saw Beomgyu with Minju.
He's not going to go. And it's not like Beomgyu will be searching him in the crowd when he probs has a hundred more people cheering him.

'Yeah. He's fine.'

+×+

Beomgyu runs his fingers against the wood of his guitar with his other hand tuning the instrument while plucking on the steel strings. He taps his foot on the ground, matching the rhythm as he lightly strums the guitar strings.

He glances up the wall clock and sees he's got five minutes before him and his band mates go up stage. Just when he feels himself fidgeting with anxiousness, he feels a soft tap on his shoulders and turns around to see I.N beside him.

"Nervous?" I.N asks.
Beomgyu sighs and nods. "You know why."
I.N smiles. "You'll do great. C'mon, pour your heart out. We're about to perform."

"Guys!! You're up now!!" Winter calls out and the boys nod before proceeding to go on stage.
Beomgyu watches the crowd below him and smiles widely at the number of people who turned up. The whole auditorium is packed with so many faces, some of them were familiar and some were complete strangers.

He straps his guitar over his shoulder and inserts the amp into the guitar, strumming it lightly to test the audio. Even with that, it earns an applause from the crowd.

His eyes search the sea of people below him; row by row, column by column in case he'd miss out a certain black hair boy.

But, it turned out he was expecting too much.
Taehyun's not here.
'Maybe he's running late.'