RULES. seungjin.

【Ｃｈａｐｔｅｒ １０】

December 31st. The day before the letters for The Choosing comes. Everyone is anxious for their pairs, especially some of the older people, such as Minho and Changbin, who wait anxiously every year for their 2nd letter, hopefully in a white envelope, to arrive. In their cases, their pairs are younger than them. When they were in their senior year, they got their letters, which were in black envelopes, telling them to wait patiently, as their soon to be significant others were not of age yet. Therefore, they had to wait for their significant other to become seniors. Until then, others like Minho and Changbin had to wait for their days to come.

On the other hand, the current seniors were having all types of emotions. There are those lovesick seniors who are praying for their actual girlfriends or boyfriends to be paired with them, there are those like Hyunjin who didn't give a shit, and last, but most importantly not least, there are those like Seungmin who are not able to sleep, nervous about the results.

In Seungmin's case, he had not been able to sleep for the entire week of winter break. He was just so nervous about this letter that it kept him up all night. Even with the lack of sleep, Seungmin functions as he usually does. This is probably because of his long term insomnia that he has due to stress from school. Seungmin was just always pushing himself past his limits. He wanted to excel at everything, even though no one was really pressuring him to be "the best". Felix was and still is always telling Seungmin to take it slow, since, as Felix quotes, "There is nothing and no one who is 'the best'. Strive to do your best, but don't push past or you'll be at your worst". Seungmin keeps Felix's words close to his heart, but clearly not close enough. Every time he tried to take those words into thought, they'd be buried. Buried behind the stress, the worries, the thought that he was never doing his best.

"Seungmin~ You there, mate?" Seungmin hears Felix say.

The two were at Moonlit Cafe waiting for Jisung to arrive. They had all agreed to meet up at the cafe, and wait together to pass time before going home to get their letters, only to once again come back to the cafe to open them all together.

The bell on the door of the cafe rings and both Felix and Seungmin look up, expecting it to be Jisung. However, to Seungmin's dismay, it is Hyunjin.

Woojin and Chan walk to Hyunjin to greet him.

"Hey, Hyunjin!" Woojin says, giving him a big hug, Chan following to do the same.

"Are there any seats for me?" Hyunjin asks Chan and Woojin, who has now let go of Hyunjin.

"NO EMPTY TABLES LEFT!" Changbin yells from somewhere deeper in the cafe.

"You heard him," Chan says beginning to look around.

"Aha! Seungmin! Felix! Do you guys mind Hyunjin sharing the table with you guys?" Chan asks.

Seungmin slightly grimaces and looks at Felix, praying that he'd say no. Felix looks at Seungmin but then faces towards the three standing by the door. Chan gives Felix a look of pure desperation. A look that Felix cannot just simply ignore.

Felix sighs and says, "Yeah, sure".

"Thanks, Felix!" Chan says, pushing Hyunjin towards the two.

Seungmin watches Hyunjin as the boy slowly smirks and walks towards the duo. As Seungmin sees this, he immediately moves from his seat across from Felix to the seat next to him, not wanting to risk the chance of having Hyunjin sit next to him.

"Thank you for letting me sit with you guys. You guys won't even realize I'm here," Hyunjin reassures, placing his bag on the floor next to him as he proceeds to take his laptop out.

Seungmin and Felix look at each other, then reach for their cups and sip their tea. Realizing that they did the same thing, the two burst out laughing.