"Jackson!" Chorong shouts, waving her hand in front of his and managing to get the attention of the Hong Kong native who was too busy tapping on his phone to acknowledge their existence.
"Huh? Oh, hi, guys. How long have you been standing there?"
Jinyoung rolls his eyes and pushes Jackson's feet off of the chair so he could sit, and once in front of him, his expression suddenly becomes serious. Jackson's eyebrows fly up into his fringe at the sudden change.
"Mark's dying." Jinyoung says seriously, looking into Jackson's eyes.
His eyes widen as he stands up immediately and looks at all the others in alarm, silently asking if it was true. Jaebum and Youngjae look away, Yugyeom, BamBam and Chorong lower their heads, and slowly, Jackson looks back at Jinyoung, who's staring at the table blankly.
Jackson takes it as an answer that yes, Mark is really dying and sinks down onto the floor, his mouth open slightly and eyes beginning to water.
A few minutes later (a few minutes that feels like hours to Jackson) Yugyeom suddenly coughs, and it sounds suspiciously like a laugh and Jackson's attention focuses on him. Mere seconds later, the door swings open with a bang and Mark steps in.
"Why is this place so quiet?"
And then there's chaos.
Jackson ends up crying at the sight of his friend, which is an extremely rare sight, and fails to notice that the others are already laughing silently around him, and Mark's just really really confused at what's happening. He just separates from the group for less than twenty minutes to head over to the convenience store and buy drinks for everybody and when he comes to their meeting point, it's quiet and feels like somebody has died.
Well, Jackson thought Mark was really dying, so yeah...
When Jackson stops crying, his eyes red and nose looking like those of Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer, a realization hits him that he had just been pranked.
"You guys are such terrible friends," he mutters and goes over to the corner of the room to bang his head against the wall repeatedly for being such an idiot.
— ｓｅｅｔｈｅｌｉｇｈｔ—
It's around five in the afternoon when Youngjae finally escapes from their group of friends and drags Chorong with him. She's still giggling at Jackson being pranked.
"Yah," he frowns, "Stop laughing,"
"But it's so funny!" she says in between giggles. "Jackson really thought Mark was–"
Youngjae suddenly presses his lips against hers for a second, for her to stop talking about Jackson and to stop laughing for even a moment.
"You're making me jealous, Rong,"
"Sorry," she shrugs and a smile forms on her lips again, "But Jackson's really too funny. He really loves Mark, doesn't he?"
"Yeah, but–"
"Markson or never," she says, chuckling, remembering a line that Jackson says often these days, "Wasn't it 'JackBam is real' a few months ago?"
"Yeah, but can we please stop talking about the guys now? Isn't this supposed to be our date?"
He frowns at her. The reason why he pulled her away from the others was for them to have their time alone, to be able to have a proper date (because really, nobody can have a proper date with those guys hanging around)
