CHAEBEOL | minsung

thirty-four

| ♡ |

Felix was used to feeling anxious before a party.

He's used to feeling anxious a lot of the time, really, swallowed by it, and it had only seemed to get worse since he came to Korea. Australia was warm, and he felt like it loved him. Korea was unnerving. He wasn't sure anyone loved him here.

Felix wasn't going to go to the party. He hadn't left the house since his argument with Changbin, and part of him was hoping he could just keep skipping school and never have to face him or his friends ever again- but then there was a furious hammering at the front door and a frantic Jisung sticking his face against the glass pane running down the middle of it. This meant code red; it had to be dire circumstances for Jisung to come here.

"I'll be quick," he hushed, slipping past Felix. "And quiet."

Rolled eyes gave Felix a moment of peace, a moment where he didn't have to relive a scene that he had lived a million times before- Jisung, fleeting, a shadow skimming up the stairs towards Felix's bedroom.

It seems even Han Jisung could reminisce, too, because it took Felix a minute to follow him up there but Jisung was still stood at the threshold. Felix could tell from the way his hands gripped the doorframe just a little bit too tight. It didn't seem like he wanted to go in.

"It hasn't changed," Jisung mumbled, not turning to look at Felix but knowing he had followed him up the stairs.

"It probably never will."

The wood might have splintered and cracked if Jisung had squeezed it any tighter, but before it could, his hands were freed and he was hurtling into Felix's bedroom and tumbling onto the bed. Felix hovered by the door. He felt his heart hum in his chest, the familiar fluttering wings of apprehension.

"Not coming in?" Jisung was pouting.

Felix stepped into his own room with the hunched figure of someone who didn't belong there. Skirted around the bed, sat at his desk instead. Felt that sensation in his chest take flight when he flicked his eyes and caught Jisung staring at him.

"Why are you here?" Felix asked. His voice was uncharacteristically moody.

"Why haven't you been answering your phone? I tried to call when you didn't turn up to school the first time," Jisung frowned. He'd redirected his eyes to his own hands and was fumbling with the thick rings on thin fingers. Anyone else might think the question was small talk, the speaker not really caring about the answer. Felix knew better. "Changbin's been threatening to come over here himself."

Changbin. Fuck.

"What's he been saying?" Felix couldn't stop himself from asking.

He knew what Changbin had been saying.

Felix's phone was turned off, but sleepless nights are lonely, so he'd switch it on when he knew his friends would be asleep and skim through missed calls and unanswered texts.

"Can we talk?" Changbin's voice had filtered through the speaker a few hours after he'd left the message. The day that they had argued: "I can't stop thinking about what you said and I want to talk- or I can listen, if that's what you need?"

And then the day after, an hour after school had started: "You're not at school? At least tell me you're okay?"

"I'm outside your house. Your parents told me you're sick. Why won't you talk to anyone?" In this one, Felix had to convince himself that Changbin wasn't crying, that his voice was cracking just because of the cold weather and the thickness in his throat was simply sleep that hadn't quite been dispelled.