best of both worlds

(slides in and crashes into wall) what’s up gamers :D introducing to you my second character, noah jung. he is a former pre-med major and current food & nutrition major, aka the premade 010. here’s his about page and his app and originally i was going to write up a plot page but didn’t manage to do so in time for acceptance ;; 

i will be putting some info about noah below and some basic wanted connections!

please like this to plot and i’ll message you <3

“good! prepare to be more excited!” yohan grins at noah, his nose scrunching up in delight as he grabs at this seatbelt, clicking it into place before moving to back the car out of the parking spot. 

the roads are practically empty due to the late hour especially around their campus and before they know it, they’re almost on the highway headed towards their end destination. here’s a very small pit of anxiety in his yohan’s stomach as they drive, a worry that noah won’t be as excited about yohan’s surprise as he is right now. and yohan is terrified of disappointing his friend. but it’s easy to bury the feeling as he continues to be overwhelmed by the sheer giddiness that yohan is also feeling, seeing noah’s excitement. 

“here,” yohan says as he hands over his phone to noah. “pick out something for us to listen to.” as he drives, the car dark save for the illumination of streetlights they pass. “i have a few playlists but feel free to pick whatever you’re in the mood for." 

they’ve only been driving for an hour or two when yohan pulls over in a rest stop that’s teeming with life. he pulls up to the gas pump and gets out, stretching his legs as he fills the car up. despite the very late hour, there’s buses and families pulling into nearby spots and heading into the large building next to them to take advantage of the food and bathrooms. yohan stretches his arms above his head as he finishes pumping gas and leans down on the window to talk to noah. "did you want to head in and get something to eat or did you just wanna eat some of our snacks and get back on the road?”

     he has to look away from the other’s face as they get onto the road, his gaze going to whatever is outside the window instead. it’s dark out, so there isn’t really much to see but at the same time, he’s felt better than he has in a long time. considering it’s finals season, he probably should be studying for their upcoming exams but he’s not as stressed as he used to be in medicine. 

     and also it’s yohan. 

     he’s expected for a long time that he has a small crush on the older, but as of late, it’s only been getting worse it seems. he’s always been a romantic and he’s always been the type of person who falls and falls hard, but even when he’s imagining things with his future, it’s sad to say that the person next to him has slowly started looking more and more like a certain hyung that he’s in a car with, going to an unknown (at least for him) destination. and it feels like a date.

     dangerous territory, noah, get out of that mindset. 

     danger, danger, danger.

     he gets distracted from his thoughts (about yohan) by yohan (which isn’t a great distraction since he’s the source) handing a phone to him and he brightens, always enjoying being in charge of aux. “i have a few driving songs! not that i drive but, like, you know. to listen to on the bus,” he comments, quickly finding the songs and playing them.

HAYUN

     for someone who has been through what he has, seo hayun is a remarkably calm and well-adjusted individual. in fact, he might even be a little too well-adjusted. his friends have certainly gotten frustrated with him for his lack of reaction, and hayun does understand where they are coming from, even if it doesn’t seem like it. so somehow, along the lines, he had become somewhat of an older, almost… mentor figure? for some of the other students who have been struggling with high levels of stress. 

     the knock on his door comes on a good day, and hayun makes his way (slowly) to the door. he’s always careful, never wanting to overextend himself and cause more damage that he doesn’t need to put up with. 

     opening the door quietly, his eyes widen slightly to see his former classmate, now transferred into a different department. “noah?” he questions gently, his expression softening as he steps back to allow the younger foreigner room to enter the apartment. “why don’t you come inside? do you want something to drink?” 

    he’s not exactly sure what’s wrong, but at the very least, he can provide noah with somewhere to decompress and someone to talk to, if that’s what the other needs. 

     mentally, he’s probably not in a good place to be good company right now.

     but also, he knows himself well enough that if he had allowed himself to stay alone, he probably would’ve had a mental breakdown and started crying alone in his room or something. and he doesn’t really want to do that. though, he guesses hayun has gone through enough of those that at least if it happens anytime soon, the older male will know what to do. 

     probably.

     “i made brownies,” noah offers meekly once he’s inside hayun’s apartment, trying to give a smile that falls short of his usual bright ones. he feels bad, considering he’s definitely intruding on his hyung’s alone time and he probably shouldn’t be. 

     he holds up the large container, his smile drooping a bit at the corners. “oh ... i meant to separate it so you could keep a tupperware to yourself ... ah ...” he trails off, thoroughly disappointed in himself for forgetting even something small like that. never mind that he had intentionally done it earlier. it feels stupid now. 

KIYONG

determined to reach the damn book, he manages to find an empty chair that he can lift himself onto in order to reach the said book. kiyong prays silently in his heart to all the deities out there observing his foolish desperate self as he places his feet gingerly onto the chair. 

“put your soles down firmly so you won’t fall over, just like how you stand on the blades,” he coaches himself quietly, trying to not give into his fear of ‘what if he falls over’ or ‘what if the chair tips over’. he’s a seasoned olympian figure skater so he can absolutely do this simple task of fetching a book from the top shelf.

or maybe not. just as he’s about to retrieve the precious book, someone quickly passes by his chair in a rushed manner, bumping their bulky backpack full of textbooks into the bookshelves. before his brain can fully compute on what is about to happen, the sight of books falling from the top shelf makes him to let out some indescribable noise which is soon drowned out by the sound of books cluttering all around him.

it is not his day.

     he watches as the student grabs a chair and brings it over to the shelf. part of him wonders if this is even a good idea to begin with, and he bites on his bottom lip as he tries not to be obvious. no one seems to have picked up on the fact that he’s watching someone random in the library and he hopes that no one will. 

     but that doesn’t stop him from watching.

     it almost feels like everything happens in slow motion, having stood up when he had seen the other student pass by with the backpack. he watched as the shelf was bumped, and how the chair had wobbled and then. finally. as all the books came crashing down. he doesn’t say anything, the noise having been enough for multiple heads to have turned and perhaps for the librarian or a helper to be alerted. 

CORY​

    a part of him doesn’t want noah to bring anything up. doesn’t want either of them to bring any thing up. 

     the spoon moves smoothly through the pancake batter. the ingredients finally mixed together and ready to cook. he sets the bowl on the counter by the stove top and hovers a hand over the burner to see if its hot. a nod and then a pan is placed on the hot burner, butter already in the middle and beginning to melt. 

    he wonders if they could go the whole morning without mentioning anything. or perhaps that is the wrong way to look at it. a childish notion that they could pretend nothing happened instead of addressing it–them. it’s not that he regrets it, its just that cory is someone who does not do conversations of intimacy very well. embarrassed? yes, that could be a good word to use. though he knows he has been called worse things in the past that he dares not repeat right now. 

      the pancake batter sizzles on the pan as he places two smaller circles to cook. one hand wrapped around the handle of the pan while the other balances a spatula . only then does he turn his gaze onto noah. a softer expression on corys normally so serious face. 

      “i enjoyed it, yes.” he replies, voice steady despite how internally flustered he is feeling. “surprised I did as I heard the first time can often be a… disappointing experience. that said, I was not disappointed.” can he sound anymore lame? the pancakes are flipped and they sizzle as if mocking him. 

     he’s not quite sure what he should say, fidgeting slightly even though he recognizes that the look on cory’s face is different from the stoic one that he’s usually on the receiving end of. his shoulders practically sag with relief at the admission that cory had enjoyed it as well. he’s about to say something else when he hears the fated words come from the other’s mouth.

      the first time.

     THE FIRST TIME?!

     the microwave beeps at that exact moment as if to punctuate all the blood draining out of his face as he stares at the other male who had dropped that on him like it was nothing. “cory,” noah says slowly, his braincells slowly computing everything that was trying to run through his thoughts. there was too much he wanted to think about but he didn’t even know how to function right now, considering he had just woken up.

     “that was—i was—your first?” he tries to lower his voice but he’s on the verge of shrieking, his tone higher pitched than usual. it’s probably not a big deal, considering the whole concept of virginity is a social construct created to shame people but noah is a firm believer that your first time should be a special one with someone you genuinely like. and he’s pretty sure he and cory are not at that point. 

YOUNGHYUN

when he sees a certain individual named noah jung playing genshin impact at the top of his friend list on discord—that alone isn’t enough to raise any alarms. besides, noah had been busy. he knows that noah had been too busy to login, can see it on the game itself whenever he gets on. another reason why he hasn’t been asking the other to coop too.

but when younghyun notices that noah had hit the 13 hours mark, he thinks that’s a cause for concern. he already knows he has very few friends, he doesn’t want one of them to drop dead just like that. who does? let alone with genshin freaking impact being the cause of death.

( not that he isn’t guilty of the same crimes. he’s currently feeling salty towards the game though. please refer to his current discord username. )

like any worried friend, he shoots noah a message. he isn’t surprised to see that he gets a reply a minute after. looks like the boy is wide awake. younghyun can’t decide whether that’s a good thing or not.

50000 primos no yelan     today at 3:38AM

> gotcha. won’t ask any questions > glad to see u alive at least lol

well, it’s not like younghyun is feeling any sleepier. he has his fair share of insomnia-induced thoughts that he can’t beat tonight. nothing wrong with dragging noah down with him, or vice versa.

50000 primos no yelan     today at 3:40AM

> want some mcdonalds? > might keep u alive a while longer

     he’s genuinely not sure how he had wasted so much time—mostly it was the fact that he hadn’t logged in for a while so he had a lot of catching up to do. he had missed a few updates as well, which was why it had taken so long to get into the game at the beginning in general, since he had needed to wait for everything to download and then had finally been able to log in. 

     oh his precious genshin. how he missed it so.

     now that it had been mentioned though, noah can feel the strain in his shoulders and in his neck and in his lower back from the way he had been sitting in his desk chair for the last thirteen hours apparently. his ears ache a bit from is headphones too and his wrists are aching. ahn younghyun, a lifesaver. he’s going to have to pay for the other’s mcdonald’s for this alone.

huwutao     today at 3:41AM > i’m down > let’s go > the usual one?

     he closes out of the game after making sure he’s not somewhere that he’ll load back in and get immediately attacked, teleporting to liyue city just in case before shutting it down. he stretches, feeling everything in his back pop and then shuts down his computer too. if he comes back and it’s open, he might accidentally be tempted into loading in again. checking his outfit, noah deems it decent enough to wear out—sweats and a tshirt, which is all he usually wears anyway. he throws a hat on to counter whatever he might’ve done to his hair and checks for his wallet and keys before heading out to their usual mcdonald’s.

✨  ——  time for noah’s regularly scheduled mental breakdown  /  @kwhayun

     the figurative weight of the world (just the weight of his parents’ expectations) (which is arguably worse) (honestly) on his shoulders is something that he’s coming to dread. he had never thought he was the type of person who cared so much about what other people thought—which is definitely a lie because heck, he’s always cared but he’s just gotten better at hiding it—and with the whole cory thing and then seongbin and. maybe. maybe he just needs to stop thinking. 

     his brain goes into overdrive, set firmly into DISTRACTION MODE and he finds himself robotically getting ingredients to make brownies with. it’s been a while since he’s baked at all, so he’s hoping it’s enough of a distraction that he won’t be thinking too hard. 

     it doesn’t work. 

     when he’s finished with the brownies, he lets them cool as he mindlessly goes to wash the dishes. but once he’s done that? he’s back to spiraling. it takes a long while before he realizes what he needs is probably just another person, and the person who’s the easiest access as well as probably the best mental support (or just someone who knows about all the problems he’s going through and won’t ask too many questions and will just let him chill) is just down the hall. 

“ yes, noah… i only hangout with you because you smell good, ” roha returns, his eyes rolling playfully as he continues digging into his dessert. there’s a level of comfort between he and his comrade that he doesn’t have with many others, and he’s thankful to noah for allowing him to just… be himself. “ that’s, like, literally the only reason, too. like, i actually think your personality sucks and find you to be kind of creepy. ” it’s said in the driest possible fashion, his sense of humor an acquired taste. luckily though, he knows that noah understands that most of what he says is in jest and he shouldn’t be taken so seriously. truth be told, that’s largely apart of the reason that roha clung so closely to noah whenever he was in seoul. he always felt like anyone really understood him, but all of that changed the instant the two of them met, and the thought of his friend possibly ditching him for other friends felt like the worst thing in the world. now he’s able to look back and laugh about his past behavior, and he hopes that noah does the same. at the end of it all, it was out of love.

broken free from his thoughts at the mention of being brought leftover pastries, roha’s eyes open wide with wonder; his excitement evident. “ have i ever told you how much i love you ?? ” he chirps, scooting closer to his pal on the curb; one arm swinging over his shoulders as he balances what’s remaining of his ice cream in his opposite hand. “ it’s kinda like you read my mind because i’ve been way too lazy to go shopping for anything and i just ran out of ramen, so you’re saving me a trip not only to the store, but also to the cafeteria. ” sloppily, he brings his treat back to his lips and finishes off the cream before taking a bite of its cone. with his mouth pretty full still, he pipes back up. “ i gotta do somethin’ for you now, though. is there anything i can get, or do, for you ?? got some math homework you don’t wanna do ?? i’m your guy !! ” he doesn’t think that noah would want to cheat like that, but if he did, roha wouldn’t mind. it’s not like it’d be hard for him anyway. he’s certain of that.

     “i knew it ... you break my heart roha,” he comments, dramatically clutching at his chest and then acting as every following word was a gunshot to his already broken heart. it’s a bad performance honestly, and he’s sure this is the reason he could never become an actor. (among other things ... obviously.) but he’s never been able to tell a lie, every thought of his so clearly written across his face. he’s an open book, most of the time, and he likes to think that that’s his charm though he’s sure some people would probably think otherwise. either way, he knows roha is only joking and teasing and that’s what causes him to give his friend a playful nudge with his shoulder to show that everything that he’s said is also only in jest.

     if only all friendships were this easy.

     he’s glad his dramatic acting performance hadn’t upset his ice cream though, and he goes back to munching on the cone happily before roha slings an arm around his shoulder. noah grins, leaning into his friend and he really does enjoy any and all types of skinship, especially when it’s initiated by the other party. “it’s in my backpack—i’ll grab the bag for you after i finish my ice cream,” he promises, before his eyes widen at his friend’s offers. “oh—no no, i really don’t need anything in return. in fact, you’re doing me a favour by taking the pastries off my hands!” it’s true too, because he’s been working at the bakery for so long now that he feels like he’s been overdosing on carbs since he was first hired. he can’t get sick of the pastries though, of course not, but he also does think he should probably cut back, if only for health reasons and nothing more.  

as yohan makes his way down to the lobby from noah’s dorm room, his excitement continues to rise. he knows he should probably feel a bit of guilt at the fact he’s literally running away from responsibility and should be holed up in his dorm room like the other half of campus slaving over his textbooks and notes. but at this moment, there isn’t a shred of guilt to be found. sure, he knows he’ll feel it later when he’s suffering during his exams but he’ll worry about that later. 

although this trip initially was born out of the want to help noah relax, it’s been so long since yohan had done anything spontaneous let alone seen the beach for himself. so needless to say, yohan is ready to get on the road and put miles between him and his responsibilities. 

yohan smiles as noah meets him in the lobby, eyeing up the packed bag glad he took his suggestion at bringing a change of clothes. knowing the two of them, they’re going to end up soaked and covered in sand before the end of his trip. yohan’s smile turns mischievous as he shakes his head, “it’s a surprise surprise, of course. otherwise, where’s the fun in that? now, come on, let’s go!”

yohan turns on his heel and leads noah out of the dorm’s lobby and down the short walk to the lot. the parking lot was empty full of parked cars but yohan was lucky to snag a spot near the door. “i’ve got a cooler of snacks and some other food for later.” yohan says, as he reaches out for noah’s bag before hitting the alarm on the car. the car isn’t very big to begin with, but yohan definitely made it seem a lot smaller with his supplies. the car door beeps as he opens it and slides noah’s bag into the very small space he made for it earlier. 

once he’s satisfied with how everything looks, he climbs in the drivers side and starts the car. “last chance to back out.” he teases noah as they sit in the parking lot, the night dark around them with the only light being from a old streetlight and the cars headlights. 

     “oooooh,” he responds, excited about the prospect of a surprise surprise as he had called it. it’s exciting, honestly, to suddenly have yohan show up and tell him he’s taking him somewhere and just to trust him. noah hasn’t experienced excitement like this in ages and he genuinely can’t contain the grin that spreads across his face at the older male’s words. 

      following along after yohan, he nods excitedly, letting him take his bag. “i packed some chips and a few sticks of instant coffee,” he adds helpfully, watching as his bag is added into the rest of the supplies already in the car. he can feel the excitement building as he climbs into the passenger seat, checking his pockets once more to make sure that he hadn’t forgotten his phone or his wallet, not wanting to be a burden to yohan.

     after all, this was an impromptu trip and noah was just going along for the ride. 

     “no way! i’m not going to back out on a trip,” he exclaims, grinning. especially not with you. he keeps that last part to himself though, cheeks slightly pink though he only turns to look out the window to hide the blush on his cheeks. it’s exciting, and he has to remind himself not to think too into this little trip with yohan or he might get ahead of himself and start dreaming up different scenarios. he can’t let himself get carried away though and he shakes his head slightly to try to get rid of those thoughts, to stop them from going down a path he shouldn’t let them go down.

JUN

embarrassing doesn’t feel like the right word to use to describe this situation.

you see, embarrassing is when you do something silly in front of a crush, or when you spill a drink all over yourself in the middle of the restaurant, or when you dm your celebrity crush and your ex girlfriend decides to steal your phone, convinced that you’ve been seeing another girl, only to see that you’ve been blocked by said celebrity for spamming their instagram dms with ( ‘where is the music queen’, ‘my ears are so lonely without you’, ‘please respond’, ‘my band makes music! we could feature in your new album if you ever decide to release it!’ ). thanks a lot rihanna. 

but is embarrassing something you’d say to describe accidentally slapping the ass of someone you weren’t too close to yet, while thinking they were your best friend that you may be a little bit more than too comfortable with.

yeah, maybe.

because junyoung’s ears go red and he places a hand quickly over his mouth. “yea! it’s just something i do as like… a way to say hello! sometimes i’d give it a squeeze? i mean, it depends on the mood but ––” by now he knows he’s just running his mouth, because while junyoung would love to get to know noah on a much more deeper, personal level –– he thinks this isn’t the way about it.

“but, i’m sorry! i wouldn’t have done that if i knew it was you! i seriously thought you were eden. but i kinda guessed you weren’t afterwards…” his voice trails off, he doesn’t say that the amount of cushion differed slightly from eden’s. that’s almost like admitting he’s a professional at this, which he is not. still, junyoung feels terrible for this, and wants to find a way to make it up, preferably quickly and amicably. “you know what, i feel awful. you can slap mine back as a way to get back at me if that’ll make you feel better!”

     honestly, noah doesn’t know how to process this. he’s genuinely not sure what just happened from when he had heard the door open behind him to the moment that junyoung’s hand had slapped his ass. it’s a weird situation to be in, and part of him just wants to melt into the floor and become one with the material that was used to make the school. he’s sure anything would be better than this, and he finds his brain slowly trying to dissociate from his physical body.

     no, noah, you can get through this.

     part of him wonders if junyoung realizes that he’s just sort of digging himself a deeper hole with every word that comes out of his mouth. it’s a bit funny actually, if he wasn’t feeling so mortified that junyoung had slapped his butt as a friendly greeting towards someone who he had thought was his best friend. it’s so ridiculous that it’s honest to god funny now and noah has to hold back the inappropriate giggle that’s trying to force itself up through his throat and past his lips. 

     it doesn’t work, and he lets out what could be classified as a nervous giggle. it’s awful and he hates it immediately, but the situation only feels like it’s gotten more ridiculous with the solution that junyoung offers into the air. noah stares at him like he’s grown a second head for a long beat between them before he just gawks.