Mid Summer

fifty,

In all of Mark's nineteen years on earth, he didn't think he'd ever lose a person.

Because how do you lose a person?

A whole person?

Jeno is a whole five feet and ten inches of human being, but here Mark was, kind of starting to sweat because he couldn't find the younger.

I mean, how do you do that? How does that happen? Mark would understand losing someone small; Donghyuck for example.

But Jeno wasn't small. And Mark had been looking for the past forty minutes.

Jeno has a bad habit of not answering his phone, and Mark has never found it an issue until now.

In all fairness though, it was a party. A loud one, a crowded one, their first one. Jeno was probably fine, right? Lost in a crowd of people, maybe dancing his heart away. Or maybe even getting beyond wasted; Mark doesn't judge.

But Mark doesn't have friends.

And yeah, that sounds pretty fucking lame, but it was the truth. The only reason he's here is because Donghyuck and Jeno had quite literally begged him to attend with them. The first party, the most fun party, and they're just university freshmen. Barely legal and in the presence of alcohol. Jeno didn't strike Mark as a party type, but the more you know, right?

Either way, Mark entered with Jeno and now he is lost in the crowd. It was ridiculous, really, he couldn't even find one of his thirteen other friends. Mark was a loser sometimes, and he'd say that now would be a good, prime example.

I mean truly, everyone was supposed to be at this party. And here Mark was, nursing a cup of cheap, warm booze while trying to find one of his boyfriends because he was a lonely loser like that.

Mark hates parties. And crowded parties. And house parties. Oh what Mark wouldn't do to be able to leave right now.

But instead, he walks, trying to find a familiar face, or, god forbid, make a friend or two. Sure, he's on the soccer team, he has one or two friends from there, but no one he'd want to spend a party with. Unless it was Jeno. Or Jaehyun. Or Yuta. Or Jungwoo. Okay so maybe there were a few people he wouldn't mind partying with but it didn't matter, because he couldn't even find them.

So yeah, bottom line, Mark was a loser, he's alone in a packed house party, he can't find anyone sociable who isn't drunk out of their mind or grinding on someone, and it's funny if you think he has even the briefest idea of where Donghyuck and Jaemin are. The two of them entered together and were either somewhere in the large ass house together, probably making out (because ever since their first kiss, they've been doing a lot of that), or they were going their separate ways. Knowing Mark's luck, Jeno, Jaemin and Donghyuck probably found some of their other friends or even made new ones.

So Mark walks down a slightly more quiet hallway, intending to find somewhere where he could hear his own thoughts and then give himself a pep talk before going out to make some new acquaintances.

"Oh hey! Mark Lee?"

Startled by someone calling his name, Mark turns around to where the voice came from.

"Hey?" He tries, seeming to not recall the face of the person who called his name. He truly can't put a name or place to the face, and feels kind of bad for it since the other person clearly knew him.

The person walks a bit closer to Mark, out of the shadows, and now Mark can see that it's a boy, and that he has cropped black hair with an angular face. He kind of reminds Mark of Taeyong, but this boy was clearly younger. Plus, Taeyong's hair was still that obnoxious red colour it had been for the past month.