I Promise You

I'll Follow You

"Jinho hyung."

The Japanese boy sat up quickly, putting his book down on the bed, beside him and looked at his hyung, a bit surprised to find him in his room this late.

"Can you..." Jinho looked over at Wooseok's sleeping figure for a second before looking back at Yuto. "Can we hang out?"

"Now?" The taller of the two, raised his eyebrows slightly in question, but moved nonetheless, already getting out of bed and pushing Jinho gently out of the room, following him and closing the door behind him.

"Is everything alright?" He whispered, trying to disturb the silence of the dorm as less as possible.

"I just want to go out." The older replied simply, almost impatiently taking Yuto's hand and pulling him towards the door. "Put some shoes on..." he added, already crouching down to wear his own shoes.

"But, where are we going?" Yuto blinked, looking down at his sweatpants and t-shirt, his usual sleeping attire, before noticing Jinho was dressed similarly. "We're not going out like this?"

"I want some air. Let's go up." The shorter boy offered a small smile and then waited for Yuto to wear his shoes as well.

Jinho was physically and emotionally drained. That was his current state and he knew he needed to take a break, to chill. He was trying not to strain himself, but with the comeback it was really hard, they barely had time to breathe, let alone do anything else. Yanan's absence wasn't helping either and half the time he was finding himself looking over at Changgu, making sure he was alright. He knew he wasn't the only one as much as he knew Changgu had Hongseok to lean on, like most of the Pentagon family. It was still making them all that much more vulnerable, easy to break under pressure and the effort to stay strong and do well that much more exhausting.

If half of the time he was looking out for Changgu, the other half was reserved for Yuto. That was nothing new, but with his current emotional state and the way his heart decided to act up during the last month it was becoming harder for him to control his mind. The Japanese boy was just everywhere – of course he was, the time when he hadn't been was already a blur to Jinho, but even if he hadn't been, the small vocalist would've felt his presence – to the point that he wasn't sure if he were sane anymore.

He was trying his hardest not to act any different than he used to. However, he knew that at some point he started acting weird and maybe that's why sometimes it felt like he wasn't the only one aware of his feelings for Yuto. It felt like the majority of Pentagon family, if not all, secretly rooted for them to get together. At least that was what it looked like to Jinho. He noticed all the subtle stares he was getting from his dongsaengs or the way they would slip out of the room from time to time, leaving the two of them alone.

It wasn't exactly helpful, simply because Jinho had no idea how to act anymore. He was trying to be "normal", but that was so tiring as well – on top of everything else. And it started getting so uncomfortable, hiding something he would've rather just spilled and showed and at the same time doing all the skinship they were used to, like it wasn't affecting him at all. Sometimes, he would ask himself was it worth it and then questions about possible scenarios that could come out of his feelings getting exposed would follow, throwing his mind and heart into even bigger despair. He was sure he was rather obvious by this point, yet Yuto was acting the same. He had no idea what was going through the younger one's head, the only thing he could notice were small questioning looks he was getting when he was particularly off, but Yuto kept it at that, patiently keeping his mouth shut, only his eyes stating the familiar 'I'll wait for you'.

The vocalist also started paying more attention to the taller boy – if that was even possible. Or well, he started paying attention to different things, trying to find some clues. The feelings that only seemed to grow as time passed were threatening to spill over after all, make themselves known, so he figured it was time to take some precautious measures – meaning he had to try to see if there really was something there on the other side or was he destined to one-sided love. Jinho wasn't fond of the idea of taking the role of a tragic character. He just had to find out what he was dealing with here before that happened.