flower boy | seungjin

18

"Seungminnie! How are you?"

"I'm okay mum," The pads of Seungmin's fingers brush mindlessly over the pages of his textbook, flipping between pages. "Are you sure you wanna talk now? It's like 2 am in Seoul."

His mother chuckles lightly through the phone. "It's fine, I know you're busy a lot and don't want to bother you too much."

Smiling, Seungmin thanks her. "How's dad?"

"He's working on a big job, so he's a bit more tired nowadays. But don't you worry about him, he'll be happy to know you're okay." There's a moment of silence, before his mother speaks again. "How's university anyway? And didn't you mention you got a job last time too?"

"Uni is going good, and yeah, I got a job at the weekends at a flower shop, but the work is piling up so I don't know if I'll be able to stay there." Seungmin hears his mum hum in agreement.

He leans back in his chair, swivelling round on the tips of his toes and staring round the room. Changbin had left just before midday, leaving Seungmin with an entire afternoon of blissful solitude. Although as he tried to focus on studying, Seungmin's mind kept drifting away to one thing... one person. He hasn't seen Hyunjin in a couple of days, and the two of them have barely even texted. 

"It would've been nice if you'd gotten into Oxford instead..." Seungmin starts, suddenly realising his mum has been talking the whole time he spaced out. 

"Huh?" he says.

"Oxford is so much cheaper than New York, and it has a higher reputation. And the time zones are closer together."

Seungmin sighs, "Sorry. I tried to get the grades, I promise."

"I know you did Honey. But where you are now is good too. How about everything else? Outside of work?"

 "It's alright, I guess." Twiddling a pen between his fingers, Seungmin purses his lips, "I'm spending a lot of time with Jae, especially now because we have a project together. Honestly, there's not much time for things outside of studying and work."

"No lovers?"

Seungmin scoffs, "You ask me that every time Mum, and 'lover' is such an old fashioned word."

"And you always deny it straight away, but you didn't this time." He can practically hear the smugness in her voice as she knows she's caught him out.

"Jesus," he sighs, "It's nothing. Nothing you need to know about right now, anyway."

"I bet your father will love to hear that."

"Nope, he won't be."

There's a gasp, followed by a pause. Them, "Oh my goodness, it's a boy?" 

"I'm not pregnant, no."

"You know what I mean!" Seungmin's mother yells, albeit quietly because of the time at night. When Seungmin hesitates answering, she talks for him, her voice lowering to one of comfort that always used to calm him when Seungmin fell over, or when he broke a toy as a child. "I won't mention it to him. But next time we call, I want to hear everything, okay? I'm proud of you, Minnie."

He smiles brightly, "Thanks, Mum."

They end the call not long later, and just in time, because not a second later Seungmin's phone lights up again, with another incoming call. He grins when he sees the name, belonging to a friend he hasn't spoken to in so long.

"Chan!" he beams, seeing the older's face appear on the screen. Behind Chan, Seungmin can see blue skies and clusters of leaves poking through the edges. A yell sounds from off camera, and Seungmin's sure he recognises the voices. "What are you doing?" he asks as he sees Chan's gaze flicker to somewhere else and his face suddenly lights up with a smile.

Chan turns back to the screen, "I'm hanging out with Felix, Jisung and Minho. You know the two boys from the cabin... ah, when was it? The year before last?"

Seungmin nods. "I remember. It was just before I moved." He studies his phone for another second, "Where are you?"

"We're back there, for old time's sake. Felix and I are still helping maintain it but Minho spends a lot more time here now. Oh, he and Jisung got together by the way." Seungmin almost spits out his drink.

"Oh my god, really?" he exclaims. "How is Jisung?" Chan had explained very briefly that day that Jisung was going through a rough patch at the time, and even though they only saw each other for a couple of hours, Seungmin still wants him to be okay.

Chan grins, "He's doing a lot better." Suddenly he screams out the boy in question's name, waiting a few seconds before handing the phone over to someone. A very smiley face appears out of nowhere.

"Seungmin! Hi!" Jisung yells, his hair now a darker shade compared to the bleach blonde it had been when Seungmin met him. "How are you?"

"I'm good thanks." Seungmin replies, propping up his phone to lean back and watch the chaos happening on his screen right now. "What's going on?"

"Minho and Felix..." Jisung pants, "They're chasing me down! And Chan is just LAUGHING!!" From what Seungmin can see, Jisung ducks behind a bush, pressing his finger to his lips and raising his eyebrow at Seungmin. The boy doesn't make a sound. Seungmin watches until with no warning Jisung leaps forward, the camera shudders, someone screams and it's all followed by a riot of laughter, amidst which is a grumpy Minho.

Jisung finally thinks to turn the camera around, which shows Minho soaking wet in the middle of a pond, glaring at the person behind the camera. Seungmin joins in the laughter, chuckling at his friends antics. Chan takes the camera back from Jisung, jogging away from the havoc. "You should come back and visit, Minnie," he says.

Seungmin sighs. "I want to, but I don't think I have the money or the time to come and stay even for a few days. Maybe over Christmas though."

Chan groans, "That's at the end of the year though! We'll help you pay for it, Minho's dad's pretty loaded so..." he hesitates. "Don't tell Minho I said that." He heads back in the direction he just came from, the yelling getting louder and louder. "I'd better go," he quickly decides. "Minho's trying to tackle Jisung again."

"Again?" 

"Bye!" With that, Chan's face disappears from the screen and it goes dark. Once again, Seungmin's room is filled with silence, but now it doesn't feel so comfortable. Seeing his two best friends and two others he wanted to call friends having fun together, seemingly without a care in the world makes Seungmin long for the same thing - to get on a plane, go back to Korea and abandon his education. But as lovely as his parents are, they'd never forgive him for that. Seungmin knows that they work their asses off to pay for his tuition, he can't just throw it all back at them.

And you'll have to leave Hyunjin, his brain so gracefully reminds him. Yeah, there's that too.

Shaking his head free of thoughts, Seungmin tries to go back to studying. He manages for a while, until the FaceTime call with Chan keeps resurfacing in his head and Seungmin chucks his pen to his desk, groaning, and slumps back in his chair. 

A text pings on his phone. Glancing at it, his attention is drawn when he sees Hyunjin's name at the top in bold letters.

Hyunjin
Hey flower
Meet me at the diner? 10pm

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a/n: stream fucking back door y'all somehow stray kids get better every comeback istg they have NO limit... also like the dance during Changbin's rap hhhhh holy shit amazement. And the endingg I love it. The whole album is fire.