Dazed and confused with the revelation that there really is a test tomorrow, Taehyeon can barely lift his feet as he walks along the dark street. He usually writes important things like this down. This sort of stuff is supposed to happen to bad boys who go to parties on school nights and don't care about their grades.
Taehyeon flops down to crouch on the pavement. He wants to cry. Bada was clearly trying to remind Taehyeon who he is. Taehyeon is a good boy who cares a lot about his grades and should be having study dates with shy nerdy boys if he is so desperate for a social life.
"What's the matter?" Minjun asks, crouching beside him. This is even worse. Taehyeon has no idea why Minjun decided to come with him. He isn't helping. He's just compounding every poor decision Taehyeon has made in his life. "Are you unwell? I can give you a piggyback if you like. Do you live far?"
"All the way home?" Taehyeon wails. "I'm walking to get the bus."
"Oh." Minjun laughs to himself and leans heavily against Taehyeon's back. "I would have tried to take you all the way home if it would have helped. Do you want a piggyback to the bus stop?"
Taehyeon sighs and lifts his head. The twinkling in Minjun's eyes is too much. Taehyeon isn't going to be able to get mad if Minjun keeps smiling at him like this. Taehyeon shakes his head, resigned to the fact that the boy he likes is really here with him right now. All he has done today is embarrass himself, yet Minjun is still here.
"I can just walk to the bus stop."
"I'll walk with you then."
Minjun jumps up to his feet and offers a hand to help Taehyeon up. Taehyeon is suspicious of the hand but he takes the offer anyway. He snatches his hand away as soon as he is upright. Maybe that made it clear that he isn't going to be tricked. No way.
Minjun smiles like he doesn't have any thoughts about that (why would he when he doesn't know what Taehyeon is thinking about anyway?) and waits for Taehyeon to lead the way to the bus stop. Taehyeon doesn't even know how long he will need to wait for the bus. He digs his phone out of his school bag, not sure why he thought chucking it in there was a good idea in the first place, so that he can look up the bus timetable. Despite the fact that he is already multi-tasking, he is asked a question.
"What's your favourite colour?"
Taehyeon stops walking for a moment and looks at the fresh curiosity in Minjun's face.
"I don't know. Blue," Taehyeon replies with a shrug. "Why are you asking?"
Minjun grins and stretches his arms out wide. One hand comes to rest at the nape of his neck whilst his mouth opens and closes a few times. This is weird. Taehyeon doesn't even know how to take the question back seeing as it is apparently so difficult. Minjun eventually forces out a response.
"I invited you to the party so that we could talk to each other and stuff — and I know I ruined that — so I want to at least try to get to know you now." After the strangled rush of words, Minjun giggles awkwardly and sways his body away from Taehyeon. The fact that he is also uncomfortable isn't much consolation for Taehyeon. This is actually driving him a bit mad. All the same, Taehyeon pretends that none of this is weird and he pretends that he isn't annoyed that he has lost precious seconds of maybe getting to the bus stop just in time.
Taehyeon adjusts his bag strap on his shoulder. He chucks his phone into the largest pocket of the bag and decides he will wait to be disappointed by the timetable when he reaches the bus stop. He needs to start walking so that he has hopes of getting there soon.
"What's your favourite colour?" Taehyeon asks as he walks like a totally normal person who doesn't have chilly ankles. He hears the scuff of a sole against the pavement and Minjun catches up to his pace. When Taehyeon glances at Minjun he is smiling so there is hope that he might not keep acting strange.
"Red," Minjun says. "Definitely red."
"Great."
Whether or not Taehyeon actually sounds enthusiastic, his response encourages Minjun to start up a volley of questions with varying degrees of insignificance. Taehyeon doesn't even have real responses to questions about his favourite school subject, or his number one favourite song, or what he wants to be when he grows up, where he'd like to go most in the world, and his favourite food.
Minjun seems happy enough to hear answers like P.E., Bad Day, a teacher, deep sea diving in the Great Barrier Reef, and fried chicken. He is practically skipping after asserting that the place he'd like to go to most in the world is the moon. And then he asks, "When is your birthday?"
"It was a bit over a month ago," Taehyeon says cautiously. He supposes he has nothing to lose by being honest. "It's usually around Chuseok so my parents always make sure to go all out. Sometimes my sister buys me something too. Everyone else tends to forget though."
"Oh," Minjun says. "Did everyone forget this year too?"
Taehyeon shrugs. "Sort of. I don't really expect extended family to remember. As long as my parents remember and I get a chance to hang out with Bada it's fine."
"That's a nice way of looking at things," Minjun says. "How long have you been friends with Bada?"
"Just since last year. We went to different middle schools. Last year we kind of just became friends naturally because we were in the same class. We live relatively close too. He's alright to partner with in projects too. We're not in the same class anymore but he's the closest friend I have."
Minjun laughs. "That's great. He sounds like a great friend in every way."
"He is," Taehyeon agrees. He sighs. "I don't know what I would do without him. We got close quickly and we found out that we have a lot in common. Being able to confide in someone is nice when they understand you."
Minjun doesn't laugh this time. Strolling along the dark, sloping road, he smiles as he looks up at Taehyeon. "That's nice. I'm glad for you. I think everyone needs someone like that."
Everyone does need someone to support them. Taehyeon can't ask Minjun whether he has someone like that in his life. Something in Minjun's tone strikes as wistful. Taehyeon is worried that Minjun will say that he doesn't have anybody to support him like that. If Taehyeon asks and Minjun answers the way that he suspects, there is nothing that Taehyeon will be able to do about that.
Lee Minjun is the coolest guy in school. He's athletic, and handsome, and popular. He might not have the best grades in school but the person Taehyeon sees has it all. He has everything. He is supposed to have everything. If Minjun doesn't have something as basic as someone to talk to, what else is missing?
"It's not all great," Taehyeon says quickly. "We hold grudges sometimes. I haven't forgiven him for the time he farted in assembly and blamed it on me. He probably won't forgive me for telling someone that he kissed a random girl in our year."
Minjun grins. "Isn't it good? Boys on the basketball team always try to get as many girls to kiss them as possible."
Taehyeon supposes that being known as a person who can kiss lots of people is good in a way. That sort of social currency is hard to come by but Taehyeon knows that Bada would rather not be the subject of rumours like that.
"It's difficult," Taehyeon says. "What I said wasn't true. The way I told the lie wasn't good either. I can't really explain it."
Taehyeon also can't explain the fact that he was in the toilet cubicle whilst Bada tried again to put him off Minjun. Regardless of the fact that Bada had everyone's best interests in mind, it still wouldn't be a good idea to reveal that much.
"If he's not the same as the boys on the basketball team, I think I understand why Bada wouldn't want things like that going around," Minjun says. They both come to a stop at the edge of the pavement and Minjun holds his arms across Taehyeon until he decides it is safe to cross the deserted street. It is weird, but Taehyeon doesn't think it is weird enough that he would sound sane if he brought it up. On the other side of the road, Minjun has something to say anyway. "Were you fighting with Bada before you found out that the kissing rumour wasn't true?"
"No. I knew it wasn't true, I just said it," Taehyeon says awkwardly. "I made it up."
Minjun's eyes are wide when he looks at Taehyeon and he seems to be trying very hard to frown in the next second. He says, "you shouldn't do things like that. Don't make things up about your friend."
"It was an accident."
"Make sure you don't do it again. Fibs like that can make things hard for people."
"What do you mean?" Taehyeon asks. He swears that just a moment ago Minjun said it was good to kiss girls.
"Just as an example," Minjun says with a grin, "lots of boys at school don't want to be friends with me. They don't want to be friends with me because they think I'm kissing the girls they like. It's not true. Those girls are all just my friends or people who would give me the chance to be a friend. I need to hang out with someone, so I hang out with girls. Because I'm always with girls, boys are always spreading rumours that I'm kissing all these girls. At best, the boys just ignore me and make me feel like an outcast. At worst they try to fight me as if they think that is more use than, I don't know, talking to a girl. You know. That sort of thing."
If Taehyeon wasn't looking at Minjun, he would assume that the smile had left his face. The smile is still there, as affable as ever, but the voice that made its way through the grin sounded very heated. Taehyeon wonders if this relates back to the thing Minjun said before about not having anyone to confide in. Hopefully not. Maybe Taehyeon is getting ahead of himself and this is something that all the dozens of girls Minjun spends his time with have heard countless times.
"That sounds rough," Taehyeon says. It is a useless thing to say but he doesn't know where to start with any of this. He doesn't tend to comfort popular people in his daily life so he has walked into this entirely confusing day unprepared. All the same, Minjun grins up at him.
"It is rough," Minjun agrees. "I can't really complain. If I ignore the fact that boys don't want to be friends with me, I like that girls want to rely on me. Honestly, they sometimes ask me to pretend to be their boyfriend to put other guys off them. I'm useful. That's a good thing. But if I factor in the fact that boys don't want to be my friend, you want to be my friend and you're a boy. That's cool, I think."
Taehyeon wouldn't consider any of what Minjun just said cool. He wonders what would happen if other people found out that Minjun pretends to go out with girls so they won't be harassed. His thoughts on that matter need to stay hypothetical. Under no circumstances should someone like serial secret spreader Kim Minjeong ever hear something like this. Taehyeon won't even breathe a word of this to Bada just in case.