ely

you and kai settled on having dinner at a fancy steakhouse restaurant. over the course of dinner, you were slightly nervous for your confession and over what kai wanted to say tonight.

"so, uh y/n are you and yeonjun still together?" Kai asks as he digs through another bite of steak.

You shake your head vigorously while swallowing your food before responding.

"No, we broke up last week." You reply and you see a small smile plastered on kai's face which makes you curious as to why.

"Oh why?"He asks.

"We weren't anything serious plus I could tell he wanted to dump me soon so I decided to dump his ass first. But okay joke, we actually mutually agreed on it."

"Why do you ask?" You tilt your head and furrow one of your eyebrows. He was never really interested in your love life, so was he perhaps hinting on something.

"Oh nothing just curious." He says nonchalantly and continues to dig in his food.

"Okay, Kai I have something to tell you but uh I'll tell you later after dinner."

"Alright, I'll tell you what I need to say later as well."

"Well that was a pretty good meal to be honest and the coffee was good too." He says and you nod your head.

You both sat on a bench by the river, with the wind breeze and sound of the flowing river accompanying you.

You lay your head on kai's shoulder and he rests his head on top of yours. You hear the sound of a heartbeat beating fast, and you couldn't tell whether it was yours or his.

You both let yourselves stay comfortable in the moment until you hear Kai speak up.

"Y/N."

"Hmm?"

"Honestly, I've been feeling very different around you lately." You feel a sense of nervousness take over and your heart begins to skip a beat.

"Everytime I'm around you I think I feel my heart beat so fast like I feel a whole different way.." You felt your heart jump at every word and you felt butterflies in your stomach.

"I think…" You lift your head up and turn your head towards kai and you both lock eyes.

At that moment, you feel the world stop for a moment with only the two of you sharing a gaze. There was this sort of tension between the two of you and you felt the tension at this moment would lead to something you hoped could happen.

He takes a deep breath and places his hand on his chest.

You look at him with a hint of nervousness and excitement over what he was going to say. Were you and kai's feelings mutual? Was he going to confess? Were you unexpectedly going to win your game?

"I think I got heart problems?" Your mouth fell agape and you facepalm yourself. All the heart fluttering feelings disappeared and you feel slightly disappointed.

 All that tension for what?

"Do you think I should go see a doctor? Wait..what if I get heart cancer...I really need to be careful, I searched up about it WebMD and it's really scaring me." A concerned expression paints his face and you hung your head low, cursing at yourself in your head.

"Do you only experience this around me?" You look at him again, give him a confused look and he scratches his head.

"Everytime we eat out we always get something unhealthy like just a while ago we had steak then right after dinner, we drank coffee, like this is the winning combo for heart palpitations. then last time we went to a burger joint and honestly those fries were like an oily feast. When I eat at home or with my mom, you know we mostly just eat healthy stuff."

He wasn't wrong though so you couldn’t really blame him. You however, feel slightly disappointed at what he said but now you feel a little guilty after kinda being blamed as a catalyst for his “heart problems.

"Yeah maybe..but are you sure?"You cross your arms.

“Well yeah! We eat lunch together almost everyday you know.”

You were left slightly confused. is it really about food?

"Oh uh one more thing"

"yeah?"I swear if this is about something stupid again.

"Hmm y/n, there's someone who's actually interested in you. He said he's been keeping an eye on for a while now."

"oh?"

And that someone is me, I like you and I've been meaning to tell you.

"and that someone is soobin from the psych department. He approached me in the school library, he knew we were friends so he asked me to tell you hehe. Oh and soobin is kinda a new friend of mine."

“E-eh.” You end up stuttering and you feel your soul is crushed once again.It’s not a confession and to make matters worse, he instead encourages you to meet someone new. And a week right after your breakup too. Great.

"He's been wanting to approach you for a while now but he didn't know how to so he wanted me to give you his number. And I promise you, soobin is really nice! I think you’ll get along. You’re really popular until now y/n, still having people asking me for your number like in high school." Kai says followed by a light chuckle.

"Haha okay sure I’ll meet him, yeah I guess, I’m just really charming you know ahaha I got a lot of boys wrapped around my finger, I’m almost like a fuckboy."You say and start awkwardly laughing out loud. You were planning on confessing today but upon hearing kai telling you to meet someone new, you feel dispirited. Maybe a part of you just regrets meeting kai today.

"Oh y/n didn't you say you were also going to say something?"

"Ah no, it wasn't anything serious and I forgot it!" You stood up and collected your belongings, plastering a fake smile on your face to hide how annoyed and upset you were.

"Are you okay?"He holds your wrist and sends you a concerned look.

"Actually uh I think I want to go home now? It's getting pretty late and I think I still have some assignments to do. So yeah.. thanks and bye!" You shrug off his wrist and hurriedly walk away.

"Oh uh okay, I'll text you soobin's number later by the way!"

When your science teacher unveiled the name of the student who managed to score full marks in the exam, everyone turned to you and you got up, ready for the praise coming your way. Unexpectedly, the teacher revealed the shy boy, “hueningkai” earned those marks and for the first time, someone had beaten you.

It was truly the most humbling moment of your life.

You didn’t think much of it, though, thinking that it’s just one exam, it can’t hurt. You also happened to discover the boy came from a lower class family, so you felt apathetic for him and accepted the defeat.

But it didn’t stop there.

From then on, he managed to consistently earn top marks in all the exams and you always landed second place. He even joined the track and field team in your school and ended up becoming the star player, pushing you out of your place.

Oh, it made your blood boil. You did everything you could and he just managed to beat you in everything. Your parents weren’t pressuring you to place first or anything, though. They were happy with whatever performance you had. In fact, they were encouraging you to accept your losses.

You could never accept defeat. You just had to think of something you could beat him to.

You guys were in elementary school and you’d often hear your friends gush about their crushes and excitedly talking about what romantic love is like. You even received multiple love confessions from different boys. And that’s when it hits you. What if you emotionally tormented him instead?

You then develop an evil plan to befriend him, make him fall in love and break his heart at the end, finally proclaiming you as the winner. Your friend Taehyun tried to stop you and convince you that your plan was very illogical and that you were most likely to lose, but you didn’t care; you were desperate for a taste or victory against him.

First, to start up the plan, you have to befriend him, of course.

You approach him first, inviting him to eat lunch with you, even preparing an extra meal for him.

 To your surprise, he accepts it (well who would turn down free food?) . You then initiate the conversation with him, but it’s just mostly you talking and him replying with a word or two, a whole sentence if you were lucky. The entire time, he kept a stoic expression on his face.

From then on, you started talking to him more. You figured he was probably just shy at first. Maybe sooner or later he’ll warm up and be talkative.

But years past and you’re in high school, you always approached him every chance you got and often hung out with him. You were pretty much chasing him all the time.

You were always talking to him in the library after school or even during the free class hours, being a nuisance to him while he was studying. He wasn’t really bothered by you, though, and you were the only person he talked to.

Although talking to him felt mostly like an inner monologue, you felt a sense of comfort with his presence around. He was still pretty mysterious to you, seeing as his only personality trait happens to just be studying.

You realized you and kai had never really hung out outside of school. So you plan on hitting the arcade with him today. You informed him the day before and he just casually agreed.

Upon entering the arcade, kai turns to you and his eyes widen in amusement as he scans the place.

“You’re acting as if it’s your first time in here.”

“the last time I've been here is probably from when I was still a toddler.” He says, and you were taken aback. You look at him, confused.

“Really? Well let's go!" You took his hand in yours and dragged him first towards the basketball shooting game.

"Okay so let's do this side by side, whoever gets the higher score gets to choose the next game, okay?" Kai nods and you both position yourself in front of your own game.

"Ooh you better watch out Kai, I'm a pro at this game."

Once it started, you managed to make a few misses but you felt confident you were going to get a higher score.

When the game ended, you checked your score and you've gotten a score of 800 , you punched the air and put your tongue out to Kai, acting all arrogant, you were so sure you were going to win .

You got to look at his score and your eyes widened. He managed to hit a score of 1000 and you immediately look away and you hung your head low.

"Oh y/n I got 1000." Kai points at his own score.

It was another moment to be humbled again.

You guys went on to explore all the other games in the arcade. You enjoyed playing the shooting games the most and as expected, Kai managed to score higher than you Every time you were playing against each other, which is why you just opted to play only the games as a single player instead.

Once you guys arrived at the claw machines, Kai was surprisingly good at them. You begged him to get you one of the molang keychains.

"And here..y/n I got it." He passes the keychain to you.

"thank you I didn't expect you to be so good at claw machines, well you're good at everything so it's kinda expected." You chuckle at your statement and just then, you hear a buzz coming from Kai's pocket.

He took his phone out and found an unknown number calling him.

"Hello?"

Kai's blank expression turns to a nervous one. Once the call ended, he panicked and you weren't sure on what to do.

"My mom's in the hospital right now, Apparently she got hit by something. I need to go." He started biting his nails as he walked towards the exit. You walk next to him. It was your first time seeing Kai this tense.

"Kai I can go with you."

"No it's okay, thanks for inviting me to the arcade though." He says. You realize the hospital would be too far and seeing him only go there on his bike, it would take far too long for him to even get there.

"Kai going there on bike would take too long, just let me come with you, I came here by car with a driver so I can take you there." Kai turns to you and his eyes widen. He takes a moment to process things and you just grab his hand.

"Come on, you don't have much time."

You sat outside the room, patiently waiting for the nurse to give you the go signal to enter the room.

Kai was still in panic mode and you had been caressing his back for the past few minutes in an attempt to calm him down.

"what if my mom's severely injured for life? what if it's so terrible? what if she's in a coma? what if-"

"We have yet to hear from the nurse, don't overthink too much. I understand you're a bit anxious but let's wait for a bit okay?" You take his hand in yours, rubbing it in circular motions. You give him a small smile.

"You're right, I shouldn't overthink much, I'm just really afraid of losing her..my mom just means so much to me. You know..the only reason I live and work hard is for my mom, she works so so hard for me and the reason why I study hard is not because I love it so much..I do it because I feel this is the only way I can repay her efforts. "He sighs and tears begin to form in his eyes. It broke your heart to see Kai in a vulnerable state.

You did find this to be quite endearing. You never knew the boy was very thoughtful and caring.

You pull him in a hug and continuously rub his back like a mother trying to calm down her baby. 

"It's okay kai, I'm here for you." He hugs you tighter and the tears fall and you can hear him sobbing.

"uh sorry to interrupt your moment . But are you Ms. Huening's son?"

Kai slowly pulls away from you before rubbing his eyes, turning to the nurse and nodding his head.

"You may come in now." The nurse gestures towards the door and you and Kai get up.

Kai holds your hand before opening the door, and you were slightly surprised as he had never willingly taken your hand in his.

As soon as the door opened, you were greeted with the sight of kai's mom smiling with a cast on her arm. You and kai were relieved to see that she didn’t seem to suffer from any serious injuries.

" Hello Kai!" She chuckles. Kai lets go of your hand, bursting into tears once again as he rushes to his mom, pulling her into an embrace.

"Ouch not too tight!"

"Sorry!" Kai loosens the embrace and flashes a smile at his mom through his tears.

"Honey I'm so sorry did I make you worry? It's nothing serious alright don't worry it's just an arm fracture." She continues to reassure him as she rubs his back to let him finish his cry.

"Mom."

"Yes dear?"

"I actually need to go to the bathroom can I excuse myself?"

"of course." She lets out a light laugh and nods.

Kai takes his exit and you stay in the same position, standing by the door, awkwardly, fidgeting with your hands.

"Oh dear, Are you perhaps y/n?" You look up and nod.

"ah yes." you go forward and stand near her.

"so you're y/n! I've heard a lot about you from Kai." Your eyes lit up and you were surprised over what she said. If anything, you always thought Kai would never think much of you.

"Really?"

"you know what, Kai has never been doing much besides well, studying and studying and studying. After school, he’d come home and he does the chores and prepares me dinner, although I’ve scolded him already multiple times, he really didn’t need to do those things, he’s always stubborn and I just let him. Then when I arrive home from work, I always ask him how he is or if there’s anything new, he usually says nothing much and I've always been trying to encourage him to make friends, experience more of the outside world, trying to get him to stop worrying too much about me. and last year, when he told me he met you, I've been so happy hearing about new stories with his new friend, I was just happy to know he's trying new things."

You smile upon hearing what she said.

"And thank you so much for that..for letting him see more of the outside world besides school and well taking care of me. I'm very happy to know that Kai has at least another person he can rely on." She takes your hand in hers.

"I hope you continue being there for him. Please take care of my Kai well."

You grin from ear to ear and you feel your heart warming over everything his mom said. Despite befriending him in the guise of rivalry, you didn't know how much your friendship might've meant to him.

"I will."

You stood near the entrance, waiting for your driver to fetch you.

You hear the sound of loud footsteps coming your way and when you turn your back to your surprise, Kai comes rushing towards you.

"Slow down, this is not a 500 meter race."

You laughed at him and he was still catching his breath.

"y/n I just forgot to say something." You raise your eyebrows, anticipating what he's trying to say .

"uh thank you. like thank you really"

You smile and wave your hands in the air. "It's no big deal Kai and we're friends after all that's just what friends do."

Just then, you see your car stopping in front of you. You waved at him and before you could open the door, Kai had one last thing to say

"but thank you, actually not just for day but for everything. I really owe you a lot. anyways uh take care y/n." He waves back at you and sends you a warm smile.

You feel your heart warming up as you've never, ever seen Kai smile that way.  If anything, you’ve never felt like you cared so much about kai. But after today, you realized how much you meant to him... and perhaps how he meant to you, too. 

You felt your heart skip a beat thinking about him. And that's when it hits you.

oh no.