The Contract (complete)

Baekhyun: Chapter 11

All sense of time halts at that moment. The only thing you're remotely aware of is Baekhyun, and his lips, and his face, and his lips, and his voice, and just his lips, for goodness sake. 

He just kissed you. He just kissed you, this kid, this guy whom you've known your entire life, whom you've only started to have romantic feelings for just recently, feelings you're so desperate to conceal, so desperate to deny. He kissed you. It was short. A kiss so fleeting, so sweet, so tender, so, so short. But it had happened. You know it did, because your lips still burn at the memory of his touch.

He laughs nervously and takes a giant step back, as if all of a sudden, the pressure has gotten too hot to handle. From the corner of your eye, you see Min gape at you, her jaw slacked open as she tries to form coherent words. Chanyeol winks at you, as if he's known all along that Baekhyun would do this - and maybe he has. They did, after all, form a really quick bond over dinner. Maybe they conspired together. You don't know. You don't know anything. Right now, you just want to go home and bury your face in the pillow and try not to freak out.

"Uh, okay, night," you somehow stutter. You turn around and stagger home, almost bumping straight into a streetlight. You blush as you walk, your head filled with thoughts of Baekhyun, thoughts of his smile, and all you want to do is stop thinking. Just for one second, can't your thoughts just shut up? But they won't, and you realize you don't have the strength to stop them, or the will. You don't want to think about it. And yet, you could go on thinking forever.

You don't know how you do it, but you arrive home. You hadn't even been paying attention to your surroundings, but you don't question it. You're just glad to be home, to be behind the safety of these walls, to have the privilege of locking yourself in your bedroom, collapsing on your bed, and hugging your pillow to your chest as tight as you can.

Geez. How can you expect to sleep tonight? How can he ... stupid, stupid Baekhyun. Why did he do that? You don't want to face him ever again. You don't want to look at him ever again. You fear that, if you do, you'll crumble. Whatever walls you had built up over the past days, months, maybe years, will dissipate when held underneath the gaze of those eyes. 

You're not supposed to like him. But you are.

And he's not supposed to like you, either. Does it mean that he does, then? That he likes you? Or had he only done that due to the Contract, due to Min, due to, well, for whatever reason you might fail to understand?

You're really starting to dislike having signed the Contract. If you hadn't done that, if you hadn't agreed to the proposition, you wouldn't have been thrust into this kinda of situation. And you would have never known what it was like to have his lips touch yours.

You could break the Contract. You could. It's not that hard to tell him that you don't want to do it anymore. You could go back to being your usual, invisible self, and he could go back to politely rejecting every girl. But you don't want to. Breaking the Contract means forgetting what just happened, and you don't to forget. Because honestly, as selfish as this sounds, you want to do as many things as you can with Baekhyun - just you and him.

-----

You hate school. Hate it, hate it, hate it. Can't you not go? Can't you stay home, make up some sort of excuse, suddenly be affected by a random illness? 

Why does tomorrow have to be today already?

How did you even manage to fall asleep last night when your thoughts were supposed to keep you awake?

How are you supposed to talk to Baekhyun when you're pretty sure you're going to be staring at his lips instead of listening to his words?

You pull yourself out of the bed and prepare for school reluctantly. You go through your morning duties lethargically, stalling as much as possible. Time insists on your late arrival, and while calls of encouragement press your head, you continue to slowly but surely eat your breakfast or get dressed. When you've finally gathered your books and are headed for the school, you stare at the ground and hope with all hopes that you don't act weird around Baekhyun. It's one thing to have him kiss you. And it's another to lose him as a friend.

The first few classes drift by way too fast. It's suddenly lunch, and of course you dread that, because you know you'll have to face Baekhyun. What will he say? What will he think? How will he act? You expect him to be his usual self. Judging from how he had backed off the other day, the kiss probably hadn't affected him as much as it had done to you. Things fly right over his head, and he doesn't even know it's happening until he decides to take a step back and pay attention to what he's missed. You hope he won't treat you any differently. If he treats you like he always does, then, for a moment, you can at least convince yourself that nothing happened.

He's sitting at the table near the center, a book in front of him and a straw in his mouth. After filling a tray with food, you sit down next to him and force yourself to brightly say, "Morning!"

He doesn't reply. He doesn't reply, and you fidget in your seat. You stare at him, at his ducked head as his eyes go from left to right across the page of his book, as he chews on the tip of the straw, but he doesn't say anything. He could at least look up. Move. Acknowledge you a bit. But he stays still, doing the exact thing you had hoped he wouldn't do.

So what does this mean? Does he like you? Is he embarrassed? What the heck does this mean?

"How's, uh, lunch?" You ask him.

"Do you feel like the Contract has changed anything?" He speaks up, his voice strangely wrong.

"What?"

"I mean ... " he seems to remember what he had done last night and steers clear of the subject. "At school. We're 'dating'," he clarifies, quoting the air with his fingers. "I hear your name a lot, you know? Spoken around at the halls. People talk about you. Not necessarily in a good way. Because you're 'dating' me." He quotes the air, again.

You wish he'd stop highlighting the sham of that label. It just makes you feel worse. "I guess. I haven't noticed. But that makes sense, since you're ... what, popular? With the girls. Girls only."

"Well, not lately," he says, still staring at his book and refusing to meet your eyes. Why won't he look at you? "Actually. Besides not getting confessions every day. It's nice to get those, but ... it's weird. Now I hear your name more than I hear mine."

"Hey, what the heck is that supposed to mean?" You question him teasingly. He shrugs, deflating the playful energy that you had allowed to seep through.

"I don't know. I guess maybe the Contract is benefiting you more than it is me."

You're utterly confused. "Um. But you don't get confessions anymore. Isn't that what you wanted?"

"But it's not ... I don't know. Look at you, I mean, tons of people didn't even know who you were until recently. How does that make you feel?" He finally looks at your eyes then, and the color in those irises hold an emotion you're afraid to grasp. 

"Nothing," you lie. Is it a lie, you wonder? It sounds wrong in your mouth as soon as you say it, but your heart seems to suggest otherwise. You don't know what to feel anymore, or if you should be feeling anything in the first place. At times like this ... isn't it better to go with the response people can predict?

"Hm. I was just thinking about it," he sighs. Something is weird. Baekhyun isn't acting at all like his usual, dorky self. 

An idea crosses your mind, and although you don't want to ask it, your tongue moves on its own. "Do you ... regret the Contract?"

His eyes stop skimming the paper, and after a heartbeat, he murmurs, "I'm starting to."