Fight for it? RESQ - Stray Kids Hyunjin FF (RESQ SAGA PART 2)

21.

After playing more minigames, we finally finished recording. We had lost, but I was okay with it. I didn't mind too much. I would only have to do the laundry for Mika and I for a month and I already did it almost always, so it wasn't that much of a difference.

Our managers had allowed us to hang out with each other for longer, so we stayed on the set after everyone left while they both went to a nearby cafe.

"Okay, we get that you two are close and all, but how can you actually know those little things about each other?" Changbin asked Hyunjin and I. "I'm pretty sure you know the weirdest things about each other like a mole on a weird place."

"She actually has a mole on the palm of her hand." Hyunjin said and took my right hand to show it to them. "She didn't have it when we met, though. It appeared later."

"Okay, this is starting to become creepy." Seungmin said. "And, by the way, are you both okay?"

"Yes, why?" We asked him at the same time.

"No- nothing..." He said and changed the subject of the conversation.

Naturally, small groups began to appear but I wasn't in any of them. Instead, I went to the vending machine nearby and took a tea bottle from it. When I turned around, though, Hyunjin was there.

"Are you okay?" He asked me. 

"Yes, fine." I told him. "Why did you come here? Weren't you talking with the boys?"

"I wanted to check on you. You seem... distant." He said awkwardly. "If it's about what happened earlier, I'm so sorry. I shouldn't have done that. I don't know what came to me. I hope you understand."

It then became clear to me that he had no interest in me whatsoever. He just did it without notice. Not knowing why, there was this weird pain in my chest when he said it.

"I- It's okay..." I said and looked away. "I'll get going. I think Mika and I had something to do soon."

Running back to where the rest were, I pulled Mika to the side.

"Please, Mika, can we leave?" I asked her with teary eyes.

"What happened this time?" She asked me without  even looking at me in the eyes. "I was talking with them, you know?"

As she didn't seem to pay any attention to me and wanted to spend more time with Chan, I left alone without even saying goodbye. I did send Sooyeon a text telling her I left alone, though.
Instead of going to our dorm, I decided to go to the JYP building to dance for a while and clear my mind.

On my way there, a group of girls somehow managed to spot me under my disguise.

"Look, it's the disgusting Lee Soojin!" One of them said.

"2TEAM should be the ones debuting, not you!" Said another one of them.

"Mika is so much better than you, anyway. She should have debuted as a solo artist and not with scum like you." Said a third one.

I tried to ignore them and quickened my pace to arrive at the JYPe building as soon as I could. That day just couldn't get any worse.

Once I arrived, I quickly went to the dance studios and thankfully one of them wasn't booked for the following fifteen minutes, so I immediately went inside and searched for music on the laptop to be productive and unwind.

At first I was going to rehearse our songs, but when I saw the song <Stay With Me> on my playlist, I felt a sudden need to play it.

As soon as the song began, I improvised a dance and sang along to it. As I sang, the lyrics suddenly struck to me and I began paying more attention to them instead of focusing so much on the dance.

I had been extremely confused about my feelings for Hyunjin even before Mika asked me. Hyunjin and I were extremely close ever since we met, so I thought everything I felt around him was simply friendship. Thes previous year, though, something changed. I started to feel a certain something around him which I couldn't quite place and getting near him made me feel strange. I thought it was normal until Mika told me her feelings for Chan:

"I feel different around him compared to other boys." She told me. "Even if there is a hundred people in the room he always seems to shine brighter than the rest, he is always there for me, I know I can tell him anything without fear of what will happen, I feel good being next to him but, ultimately, he makes me feel things no one has. I love him, Soojin. I don't know how or when it happened, but I have fallen for him."

Thinking back again about those words she said, I thought about everything she told me. I did feel different around Hyunjin and even if we were all together, he always managed to have all my attention. He had always been there for me and even noticed the slightest changes of humour I had. No matter what happened or how crazy my thoughts were, I knew I could tell him anything. I felt I could be myself around him and, ultimately, as Mika said, I felt something when I was with him that I had never felt around anyone else.

I, Lee Soojin, had fallen for Hwang Hyunjin.