CHAEBEOL | minsung

thirty-three

ᯓᡣ𐭩

"Hyunjin, you're sulking."

Hyunjin wondered to himself if being accused of sulking ever made anyone sulk less. Not that he was sulking, not really. But he might start, if Jeongin kept this up, and not just because it was a Friday night and they were spending it in the library together.

"Shut up," Hyunjin muttered back. 

"Need me to fight someone?" Jeongin paused. "Sorry, need me to get Minho to fight someone?" 

The image of Jeongin fighting someone was funny, funny enough that Hyunjin's lips quirked at the corners. He'd been friends with Jeongin the whole time he'd been at this school, and he liked to think he knew the younger pretty well. 

The smile dropped when the fighter in his imagination shifted, sharpened, became Minho. He'd been friends with Minho for even longer. Hyunjin didn't think he knew him at all. 

"C'mon," Jeongin whined. He was twisted round in his chair in the library, the wood of the chair pressing into his forearms and leaving dents that his fingers would run across every now and then. "Tell me. Something's up, what is it?"

"Nothing." 

How was Hyunjin supposed to start? Where was Hyunjin supposed to start? 

I think my past is coming back to haunt me. I might be on the brink of some kind of Romeo and Juliet love story. Something, anything, everything feels like it might go wrong. 

Hyunjin stayed quiet. He cocked his head at Jeongin, squinted. "What's up with you?" 

"Don't try that, idiot," Jeongin laughed. "I'm not the one who's been moping around for the last- what- three days? Hanging around the lunch hall, skulking around the car park like your shitty step-dad doesn't make you get the bus home. Who you waiting for, Hyunjinnie?" As he spoke, Jeongin leaned further over the desk the two were sharing, edging closer to Hyunjin. 

Hyunjin pushed him a way, perhaps a little too rough, as Jeongin was sent sprawling off of his chair. The older tried not to laugh even as Jeongin huffed and swore and dragged himself up off of the floor. 

"Not waiting for anyone," Hyunjin muttered. He tried to ignore the way that Jeongin's glare melted holes in the side of his head. He and Jeongin had argued before, what was another fight? 

"You're being annoying." Jeongin was frowning. "Just say you're waiting for Felix. Why do you think I would care? Think I'll be jealous that you have posh friends?" 

There were no other students in the library- rich kids had their own private tutor sessions, walnut-wood desks and expensive laptops- but if there were, they probably would have jumped at the sound that snapped like a gunshot round the room. Hyunjin had slammed his pen against the desk, rubbed a hand against his forehead, felt the throbbing pain behind it. 

Jeongin was right. That's what was most irritating. Felix hadn't been answering Hyunjin's texts, hadn't showed up to school the last few days, and every time Hyunjin checked a blank phone screen, another what if? bloomed in his head. By this point, his brain was a bouquet. A field in spring. A funeral. 

Jeongin was right, but Hyunjin was proud to a fault. "You don't know what you're talking about." Proud, and of the same upbringing as Minho, the same tendency to scatter minefields around sensitive subjects: "Acting like your parents aren't literally millionaires, hmm? You act so hard-done-by, Jeongin, but you don't get it. Me and Minho don't have a choice. We have to be here."

Foxes are predators, and the slant to Jeongin's eyes makes Hyunjin feel like prey. It's unfamiliar. "What do you mean by that?"

"That you don't understand." It was a habit, pushing people away. "You get to go home to a big house, you get to eat fancy food and buy expensive clothes, you get to live without worrying. You choose to slum it, and then act like you aren't fucking privileged."