look, world—

( sight )

the location is easy enough to find, thanks to dongwoo’s help. they’re on such short notice that they have to call in police units on the way, but myungsoo reminds the police chief not to have any lights on. this is supposed to be a surprise, after all, and myungsoo intends on making it as startling as he possibly can. they’re greeted at the hotel lobby doors by guards, and myungsoo doesn’t know whether they know just what they’ve been protecting or not.

they’ve already jammed all the communications in the area around the hotel, and they have other units on standby in the surrounding streets prepared in case any of them try to make a getaway. myungsoo leaves some men behind to make sure that no one in the lobby tries to contact the auctioneers. then they’re off, zipping through the hallways and bounding through the stairwells.

myungsoo hadn’t had any idea what kind of weapons they would have on them, so he makes sure his men are armed to the teeth. they reach the auditorium in the very back of the hotel in no time at all, and they stop just in front of the double doors. myungsoo flips up his visor to press his ears to the door to listen to what they’re saying inside.

— and next, the one you’ve all been waiting for, the one you all can’t seem to get enough of a taste of—

myungsoo’s heard enough. he flips his visor back down and motions to the men behind him to get ready, and he steps behind so they can take care of the bolted doors. there’s a loud explosion, and before the smoke clears, they’re running through the doors and down the stairs. there are men, dressed to the nines in suits and black ties, sitting in the rows in the middle of the auditorium, who automatically stand up to stare at myungsoo and the rest of his men.

“police!” myungsoo barks out, watching with no small amount of satisfaction as the suited men try to climb their ways out of the seats. there are guards, of course, and myungsoo wonders why he hadn’t seen them before when they start firing. he ducks behind a row of seats to avoid the firing bullets as he makes his way down the stairs, and he sees some of the other officers do the same. he’s almost to the stage when he finally notices that there’s a man kneeling in the center of the stage, and when he gets closer, he realizes that the man is a pet.

then one of the men in suits runs in front of myungsoo, clearly trying to block his path, and myungsoo tackles him to the ground, pinning his wrists behind his back and handcuffing him. “stay here,” myungsoo growls, even though he knows that he can’t be heard through his visor.

he looks around quickly to make sure that all of the enemy shooters have been taken down before he hoists himself up on the stage. the pet is kneeling so quietly and so stiffly that myungsoo wonders if he’s deaf to have not reacted at all throughout the entire shootout. his hair is long and wavy, curling under his ears and along his neck, and there’s a thick black blindfold over his eyes. his wrists are tied behind his back with what looks to be the same material as what’s blinding his eyes. he’s wearing a thin cotton shift that barely leaves anything at all to the imagination, and myungsoo knows that it must’ve been air conditioned in the auditorium.

myungsoo exhales. he clicks the safety back onto his gun, setting it down next to him as he kneels in front of the pet. he slowly takes off his visor and his gloves, and with barely trembling hands, he reaches forward to lift the pet’s blindfold from over his head. the pet’s eyes had been closed, but when he opens them in alarm and surprise, his eyes are wide and round. he has very pretty eyes, myungsoo thinks. “we’re the police,” myungsoo explains, slowly and clearly. “we’re here to save you. you’re safe now.”

the pet stares at him, unblinking, and myungsoo is about to repeat his words when the pet speaks. “safe?” he says, in a voice that’s barely above a whisper. his voice is hoarse, like he hasn’t spoken in a very long time. “really?”

myungsoo nods vigorously, and he smiles in the way that he knows will make dimples form in his cheeks as he taps the badge that reads seoul metropolitan police on his chest. “you’re safe.”

the pet continues staring at him for so long that myungsoo starts to become just a little bit unsettled, but then the pet smiles, small but sure, and tears drip from the corners of his eyes. “safe,” he murmurs as myungsoo reaches behind him to untie his makeshift handcuffs, as he brings his hands up to his face. “safe.”

they find more pets in the small rooms behind the auditorium. myungsoo and his men separate within themselves: some of them go with the men they’ve captured, to bring them in for booking, and some of them go with the pets, to bring them to the hospital for checkups. myungsoo follows the pet to the hospital, and he waits outside of the examination rooms as the doctors take the pets in to check them over. some pets are allowed to go back to being pets, but myungsoo knows from past cases, that most of the pets from this case have been too emotionally and physically damaged to continue.

some of the pets are offered the chance to request to be put down. myungsoo’s heard that it’s only available for those with such a low quality of life that to make them continue living would be making them suffer in and of itself. the pet that he’d found on the stage, he hears, is offered that choice. he also knows that by the way he walks out of the room, his head held high, that he’d declined. myungsoo is actually thrown aback by how casual he seems about it, about the way that he’d answered the doctors’ questions with ease.

he stands up when he sees the pet walk out. “did you refuse?” he asks, and the pet nods. “we have some options for you. we can send you into a rehab center if you want to get used to living normally again. or we can put you up in a small place by yourself until you can get back onto your feet. or—” and myungsoo hesitates, because he’s never, ever, offered this to anyone before, but there’s something about this pet that makes him want to help him. “you could stay with me.”

the pet swallows, and myungsoo knows by the way his eyes are darting this way and that, that he’s thinking about it. “i— is it alright if i stay with you?” he adds, hesitantly, like he doesn’t know whether he should or not, “master?”

“of course,” myungsoo says, already planning how he’s going to adjust his schedules for this pet. he notices, finally, now that he’s not kneeling anymore, that he’s almost a head shorter than the other man. “of course you can. but you don’t have to call me master. you’re not a pet anymore. just myungsoo is fine.”

“myungsoo,” he repeats. “myungsoo.” then his mouth breaks out into a toothy grin. “my name is sungyeol.”

( smell )

the second day after the raid, myungsoo decides to take sungyeol shopping. all of his clothes are too small for sungyeol to wear, and he thinks that sungyeol would be more comfortable in a shirt that doesn’t cling to him as tightly as myungsoo’s does. myungsoo usually takes the subway to work, but he thinks that that might not be the best choice for sungyeol when he’s just barely begun to recover.

sungyeol sits in the passenger seat almost gingerly when myungsoo turns on the ignition. he seems like he’s afraid of leaving too much of a mark on the seat, like he’ll leave some kind of permanent imprint on it. “i won’t crash,” myungsoo says mildly, trying to divert the topic, and sungyeol blanches.

“i’m sure you’re a great driver,” sungyeol says quickly, and then he stops. myungsoo looks over at him to see if he’s alright, but he’s looking out of the window. he doesn’t think he’ll get any more answers out of sungyeol right now, and they spend the drive to the department store in near silence. myungsoo stops when sungyeol stops just outside the car as well.

“is something wrong?” myungsoo asks, and sungyeol stares back at him.

“i don’t have any money,” sungyeol says, and myungsoo can see him fidgeting.  

“oh, that’s fine,” myungsoo says, dimpling. “the department already gave me some money to use for your essentials, so things like clothes and whatever else you might need.”

sungyeol visibly relaxes, and he starts walking once myungsoo does. but myungsoo’s lying. the department hasn’t given him anything. those who decide to take on pets as temporary cases do so out of their own pocket, and he’s heard stories of other officers on the force who take in rescued pets and then force them to do things for them in exchange for shelter and food. myungsoo’s determined not to be like that, though. he’s seen the conditions which sungyeol had been forced to spend nearly the last twelve years of his life in, and he’s not about to replicate them.

it’s fine. he’s been saving up money for emergencies like these. he lets sungyeol take as much time as he wants in each store, and he watches as sungyeol flips through the racks with an almost childish and eager fascination. he picks out a few t-shirts and some pairs of jeans, as well as some pairs of underwear and sweatpants for sleep. sungyeol looks to myungsoo after nearly every item he picks up, as if he’s trying to assess whether or not it’s a decent choice, and myungsoo just nods. he doesn’t mind using a bit of his money if it’s to make sungyeol feel more comfortable.

they pass by a pet accessory shop, and myungsoo stops when sungyeol does. he watches as sungyeol fingers the collar at his throat while staring up at the mannequins in various states of undress, collars of fine material wrapped around their plastic necks. then almost as if he’d been in a trance, sungyeol starts walking again, and when they pass a bath store, myungsoo reaches out to lightly grab sungyeol’s elbow.

“did you have any trouble with showering?” myungsoo asks, and he hopes that sungyeol can tell that he’s not asking for the sake of wanting to land sungyeol in trouble. “we can go here if you want to choose a kind of shampoo you like.”

sungyeol stares down at myungsoo again, as if he’s trying to discern myungsoo’s motives, before he nods, a sharp jerk of his head. they leave the department store with bags of clothes and a smaller bag with shampoos and bath soaps. myungsoo’s wallet suddenly feels lighter, but when he looks at the seat next to him as they’re heading home, he knows that it’s worth it.

( sound )

myungsoo gets a temporary leave of absence from work. he doesn’t really want it, doesn’t really need it, but the superiors tell him that he’s been performing suboptimally ever since the raid. myungsoo stares down at the thick carpeted floor, knowing that he’s been distracted with thoughts of sungyeol ever since that day.

he goes home early, and he sits on the couch for minutes just staring at the wall opposite him. he doesn’t know what to do on his time off. he’d always spent his years working towards this goal, and he doesn’t quite know what else he can do to occupy his time. then he sees out of the corner his eye his old guitar, abandoned from years of disuse.

he scoots closer to the edge of the couch, picking his guitar up and plucking at the strings listlessly. a melody comes to him. he’s halfway through the song when he feels the couch shift next to him, and he’s nearly done when he hears a soft humming. when he finishes, he opens his eyes to see sungyeol sitting next to him. sungyeol’s staring at him, his eyes shining.

“can you play more?” he says, awe in his voice even though myungsoo knows that what he’d just played was nothing special at all.

but myungsoo knows how long sungyeol must’ve gone without having any access at all to any kind of music or art. he’s read through sungyeol’s file. he knows. so myungsoo hefts his guitar up closer to him and grins at sungyeol. “sure. any requests?”

they sit there for so long that myungsoo doesn’t even remember when they’d even started playing and humming, and it had somehow turned into them just making up songs and melodies on the spot. sungyeol smiles more easily now, and myungsoo thinks that he likes this sungyeol a lot. sungyeol makes him laugh. he knows jokes that other people don’t know, and myungsoo wonders just where he’d learned it all from.

one day, sungyeol asks, quietly, if he can borrow the guitar. he wants to learn, he explains, but he immediately backtracks. “but it’s completely alright if you’re uncomfortable with that,” he says, waving his arms around. “i understand.”

myungsoo passes his guitar over to sungyeol, and he teaches sungyeol how to hold it properly, where to put his fingers on the string, where to pluck. sungyeol is a fast learner, and he picks it up almost instantly. “you’re good at this, sungyeol,” myungsoo says in awe. “you’re really, really good at this.”

sungyeol looks at him, and myungsoo wonders how just one glance can convey so much. he realizes, suddenly, that sungyeol must not have gotten a lot of compliments back then, and sungyeol’s life seems just that much darker. “thank you,” sungyeol says. “thank you.”

myungsoo has never been one for conversation, preferring to let other people talk as he observes, but with sungyeol, he doesn’t feel like he has to overcompensate for anything. he can just be himself.

( touch )

myungsoo doesn’t remember how it happens, not really. all he knows is that one morning, he wakes up with his face pressed into sungyeol’s chest and sungyeol’s arms around him. he tries to blink the sleep out of his eyes enough to register what’s going on, to check what time it is, but the headache pounding away behind his forehead makes him want to just shut his eyes and go back to sleep. he drifts away back to sleep without changing their positions at all.

when he finally wakes up, the headache he has doesn’t hurt quite as much anymore. he groans when he shifts, feeling sore everywhere. he must’ve tried to out drink howon last night, and by the looks of it, he hadn’t been the winner. he makes a mental note to text sungjong and ask just who won. the bed is empty next to him, and he wonders if waking up with sungyeol had been just a figment of his imagination or if it had actually happened. what he does know for sure, though, is that he’d slept the best he ever had.

myungsoo has always had a problem with this. his friends tell him that he’s too clingy, and they’re right. sungjong usually pushes him away once he’s tired of being myungsoo’s portable body pillow, but dongwoo actively encourages it, latching onto him with an almost equal ferocity. he supposes that that’s why he’d slept so well. it’s not his fault that he prefers being around other people. not his fault that he’s had an almost insatiable urge to touch people.

he wanders out into the kitchen, where sungyeol is sitting on the ground and eating a sandwich. myungsoo squints. there are layers of ham inside, and he distantly remembers buying that some time ago. sungyeol notices him arrive at nearly the same time that myungsoo figures out just what’s inside his sandwich, and his eyes flicker down to the bread in his hands. he looks up in alarm. “er— you said it was alright to use any food i found in the refrigerator—”

“it’s fine,” myungsoo says, waving his concerns away. he knows that sungyeol must’ve been limited in what he could and couldn’t do, and he doubts that sungyeol had much freedom and independence at all. he sits down on the ground next to sungyeol, and he pauses as he considers if he should ask or not. he decides to go for brutal honesty. “did you sleep with me last night?”

there it is, the look of alarm again. “i did, but— your friend told me to put you to sleep, but you wouldn’t let go of me. i’m sorry—”

myungsoo shifts closer, putting his chin on his closed fist. he wonders if sungyeol’s going to hit him if he asks, but he decides that it wouldn’t hurt to try. “is it okay if i sleep with you from now on?” sungyeol’s face goes blank before myungsoo sees a wide range of emotions pass through his eyes, and he backpedals. he should’ve known this was going to happen because of sungyeol’s past, but he had to go ahead and ask anyway. “i’m sorry, i just slept really well, but you don’t have to, that was a really stupid question so i’ll keep sleeping on the couch—”

“okay,” sungyeol says, and myungsoo stops. “i felt bad about making you sleep on the couch, too, and you wouldn’t let me sleep on the couch either.”

myungsoo stares at sungyeol before he feels his face break out into a wide smile. “really?” sungyeol nods, and myungsoo leaps forward so he can hug the other man. as soon as he does, he feels an enormous warm dissipate through his body. he’s always loved hugging. sungyeol returns the hug, the hand that doesn’t have his sandwich in it coming up to pat him on the shoulders.

that night, he sleeps better than the last. and then the next night is even better. and then he stops keeping track.

( taste )

myungsoo gets used to living with sungyeol. he gets used to waking up and seeing sungyeol’s face, gets used to ordering dinner for two, gets used to drying sungyeol’s hair for him after a shower. he doesn’t remember what it had been like not to hear sungyeol singing in the shower anymore, doesn’t remember a day he hasn’t spent with sungyeol. he supposes that that had been his first mistake.

his first mission when he gets back ends up being a raid on a gang in the northeast corner of seoul. it’s supposed to be a routine extraction: get in, do what they have to, get out. but it goes south, and myungsoo has no idea who he should blame for the way his vision’s blurring in front of his eyes or for the way he can’t quite feel his legs anymore, but he thinks that blaming the gunmen would be a good start. then his vision goes black, and he can’t think anymore.

he wakes up in a hospital bed to sterile white walls and the steady beeping of the monitors next to him. he only has time to register a blurry and startled face with wide eyes staring down at him before he drifts back into unconsciousness again. when he wakes up again, there’s a hand in his. myungsoo tries to move, but his muscles won’t listen to him. just that small movement ends up startling the figure next to him into wakefulness, and myungsoo blinks.

“you’re awake,” sungyeol says, barely restrained emotion in his voice. “do you know how long you were out for?”

“no?” myungsoo tries to say, but his mouth feels like it’s full of cotton, and it comes out like a sort of garbled sound.

“six days,” sungyeol says, leaning in closer to myungsoo, and he supposes that he really should be more surprised, but he’s not very taken aback, given how stiff all his muscles feel. and besides, sungyeol is distracting when he’s this close. “six days you were in the hospital, and i was waiting in your apartment completely unsure if you had gone and died on me.”

“i’m sorry,” myungsoo tries to say again, but his mouth is still full of cotton, so another garbled mess comes out instead. sungyeol at least seems to notice that myungsoo’s eyebrows are knitted together in apology, because his expression relaxes as well. myungsoo thinks, dumbly, that this sungyeol is a lot different from the sungyeol he’d rescued so many months ago.

“it’s okay,” sungyeol says, patting myungsoo’s hand. “you lost a lot of blood, after all.” but sungyeol’s not looking at myungsoo, instead looking at a speck on the wall that’s, for some reason, more interesting than myungsoo is.

myungsoo stares at sungyeol, stares at the way he keeps picking at his cuticles, stares at the barely concealed concern in his face, and he knows what he has to do. he tries to clear his mouth of cotton, swallowing as much saliva as he can, before he puts his hand over his mouth and speaking up. “sungyeol.”

“yes?” sungyeol’s eyes are on him again, but not for long, and myungsoo realizes that he just wants sungyeol to look at him. he thinks that it must be the drugs that they gave him to not hurt everywhere that’s making him feel weird and strangely sentimental and lovey-dovey, and he doesn’t know if he’s imagining the flowers blooming behind sungyeol or not. probably not. sungyeol is very pretty, like a flower.

“is it okay if i kiss you?” sungyeol’s eyes widen, and myungsoo realizes the problem. he hasn’t been awake for six days, which means that he hasn’t brushed his teeth twelve times. and his lips must be super dry and super chapped. no wonder sungyeol seems to be having reservations. “um, my mouth probably tastes really bad right now, so is just a kiss with closed lips okay?”

sungyeol’s eyes are still wide, and his mouth is open so wide that myungsoo thinks that a fly might fly in soon. he tries to reach forward so he can tap sungyeol’s jaw closed, but sungyeol grabs his wrist before he can move. myungsoo stares down at where sungyeol’s hand is over his wrist, and he’s momentarily surprised at how big and strong sungyeol’s hand is. he guesses that he should’ve really known beforehand, given that sungyeol is so much taller than he is, but it’s still a little bit shocking. he wonders how nice sungyeol’s hands would feel. then he notices that sungyeol’s lips are moving, and it takes a few seconds for his brain to catch up to his ears so he can process what sungyeol is saying. “really?”

myungsoo stares at him, not comprehending what sungyeol’s trying to ask. he wonders if his brain somehow managed to mess up what sungyeol had said, somewhere along the complicated branches of neurons and axons and dendrites. he doesn’t think that it’s too difficult to comprehend that myungsoo thinks that he must’ve really missed sungyeol in the six days that he’d been out of it, and that sungyeol must’ve really missed myungsoo as well. “yes?”

“okay, then.” sungyeol leans in even closer, and his eyes are so close and his nose is so close and the moles on his collarbone are so close and his lips are so close, close enough for myungsoo to lean upwards just a little bit so he can peck sungyeol on the lips. sungyeol’s lips are warm and soft, and myungsoo knows that his were probably very dry and chapped, and he feels very sorry to sungyeol for that.

xii.

howon hates the shelter. he doesn’t remember what it’s like to be loved and to be wanted, what it’s like not to be woken up by the sharp rapping of his handler’s knuckles against the door. the shelter is a miserable place. none of the trainers and handlers there want to be there, and howon knows that whatever money they get from the government goes into their own pockets.

howon wakes up that morning as the sun rises. if he’s late, they’ll take away his food for breakfast and he’ll have to go hungry until dinner. he’d tried to make a case for himself, but the handlers had laughed in his face and asked him if he thought he was special. “you think you’re the only one who’s gone through that?” a woman he’d once thought was pretty had said, scoffing down at him. “go ask any of the other kids here what happened to them. you’ll see.”

he doesn’t talk to the other pets there, not even during the communal meals. there’s something lifeless about all of their gazes that makes him think that the woman’s comments really had merit to them, that makes him think that maybe what they’ve gone through is worse than what he’s been through. he’s tried to distance himself from it personally, tried to build up a personality as a wall around himself to prevent prying eyes from finding out too much about him, but it’s written in his file for anyone who wants to know to see.

howon stares at the ceiling, wondering when the breakfast call is going to be. they have thirty minutes in the morning for breakfast, thirty minutes at noon for lunch, thirty minutes in the evening for dinner, and then they’re done for the day. they’re allowed a shower once every other day, but other than that, there’s not much to do in his room other than to stare at the wall. rinse, wash, and repeat.

howon startles when there’s a loud banging on his door, different from the usual tap-tap-tap that he’s become accustomed to over time, and he scrambles to sit up when the director of the shelter, a man he’s only seen once in his life when he was brought in for the first time, opens the door. “get up, kid,” he barks. “someone wants you.”

he doesn’t have any personal belongings. the only thing he has with him is the shabby leather collar around his neck that the shelter had provided for him. when they’d brought him into the shelter just under three months ago, they’d asked him if he’d wanted to keep the collar around his neck. he’d almost laughed in their faces. the thought of keeping something that those people had put on him still makes his stomach turn over, but he’s used to it now and just clenches his teeth until he feels normal again.

the people who’ve bought him are a couple, and when he looks upwards into their eyes, the uncomfortable sensations in his stomach relax. he sees nothing in their gazes but warmth and openness. it’s different from the first time he’d been bought, when he’d felt a prickle of fear run down his spine when he’d looked at them. because he had been a ten year old at the time, and he had wondered what so many adults had wanted to do with him, and then he hadn’t had to think about it anymore.

“your name is howon, right?” the woman asks, letting go of the man beside her and bending down to be eye level with him. he nods, and she smiles. “do you want to come home with us?”

howon doesn’t have a choice. he doesn’t know if these people are genuine, if they’re kind, or if they’ll treat him as badly as the last people did. but he doesn’t have a choice, and anywhere would be better than the shelter, so he nods. he doesn’t see the shelter again.

xv.

sungjong is at school for most of the day. howon’s used to it by now, so for the ten hours from eight in the morning until six in the evening that sungjong’s not there, he wanders around the house. there isn’t a lot to do since the games he likes to play are more fun when he plays with sungjong. he could dance, he knows, but he prefers to dance when no one is home at all. so he goes downstairs to where sungjong’s mother is preparing dinner for the night.

he watches her mix together some seasonings for a few minutes before she notices him standing there, and she waves him over with the smile he’s learned to associate with warm meals and even warmer hearts. she passes him a bowl of carrots and a knife. “could you dice these for me, howon?”

he takes the carrots and the knife from her. “of course, mis— eomeoni.” he gives her a smile, and she returns it before going back to marinating the meat for tonight.

it’s only been three years that he’s been here, but she’d told him, very early on, that she hadn’t wanted to be called mistress and that her husband hadn’t wanted to be called master. after all, she’d explained, they had bought him to be a friend for sungjong, and they hadn’t felt comfortable at all with him referring to them like that. they had also told him that he wouldn’t have to call sungjong by anything other than his name if he didn’t want to. but he feels more conscientious of that than anything else, since sungjong is technically his master, so he’s refrained from calling sungjong by name. he’d blinked at her, not understanding what she had meant, until she had clarified and said that just calling her his mother would be fine.

howon knows that pets aren’t supposed to have mothers. he doesn’t even remember his own. in his childhood, he’d concocted up an image of someone who might’ve been his mother, once upon a time. she had been beautiful and kind, and she would sing to him in his dreams, and when he woke up in the mornings, she would be gone. he doesn’t think about childish things like that anymore, though.

he knows that it’s even worse for pets to call their owners anything but master and mistress, that if he’d even considered calling his previous owners with anything but the utmost respect, he would’ve been beaten so badly he wouldn’t have been able to walk the next day. he had wanted to die back then, had wondered what use there was in living a life that held nothing but pain and hurt for him, had prayed desperately every day that it would all end.

he’s glad that he’s here now, though. when he looks over at sungjong’s mother, he notices the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes that hadn’t been there years ago. he’s fifteen now, and he’s taller than she is now. he remembers how she’d had to bend down that time in the shelter years ago, but now, he can see the top of her head. as if she’s reading his thoughts, she looks over at him and says, “thank you for taking care of sungjong for so long. he’s rowdy, isn’t he?”

howon doesn’t know how to answer. if he’d been with anyone else, if he’d had any other owner, he’d have lowered his eyes and said, “no, mistress, not at all.” but he’s with sungjong and his family now, and so he grins at her with his teeth showing and he says, “he is, i don’t know how such a kid is related to someone as dignified as you are, eomeoni.”

she laughs, a loud and clear sound, and pats him on the shoulder after taking her gloves off. “you’ve grown up well, howon. you really have.” her hand lingers on his arm, and he knows that she feels where he’s been trying to bulk up by just doing push-ups and sit-ups. “howon,” she starts. “there’s an unused weight room in the house. that door at the end of the hallway by the laundry room? the previous owners of this place had it, but you can probably tell that sungjong and sungyu don’t use it. you’re free to, if you’d like.”

he stares at her, gratitude blossoming through his body. he doesn’t remember the last time anyone had done anything for him without expecting something in return. “i—” he chokes out. “i don’t know what to say.”

“you don’t have to say anything,” she says, and her eyes are honey-sweet and warm, and he knows from the sincerity in her voice that she means it without any reservations at all. “you’re family now.”

later, sungjong will get home and stand next to howon and his mother until she shoos them both away, and howon will let sungjong tell him about what happened that day at school and sungjong will listen as howon tells him what he’d done with his mother just before. they’ll play some games, and sungjong will read with howon for a bit before they go to bed, howon in the room next to sungjong’s bedroom. sungjong will lie in his own bed for a few minutes, just long enough for his parents to peek in to make sure that he’s sleeping, before he’ll dash over to howon’s room and curl up next to him. they’ll fall asleep like that until the morning comes, and the day will repeat again.

but for now—

family, howon thinks with a smile as he goes back to cutting the carrots. he likes the sound of that.

xviii.

howon isn’t stupid. he knows that sungjong watches him. he doesn’t kid himself into thinking that sungjong comes into the weight room with a book for no reason. sungjong’s parents have been more than generous to him, and every time he says that he doesn’t need any more equipment, that the old ones are good enough for him, he finds a newer model of the same thing there the next day. “i think my parents like you more than they like me,” sungjong jokes once, poking howon in the thigh to let him know that he’s just kidding.

howon doesn’t think sungjong is kidding now, not when he can feel the weight of sungjong’s eyes on him as clearly as a touch on his skin. he’s been doing this for weeks now. whenever sungjong doesn’t have anything to do, and even when he does have things to do, he brings his books and his papers to read for school and he sits, quiet and unmoving, on the ground next to the wall. howon doesn’t talk to him when he’s working out. it would ruin his concentration, but more than that, he knows that if he even considers the thought that sungjong is right there in the room with him, he’ll start thinking about things he really shouldn’t be thinking about.

he doesn’t sleep with sungjong anymore. he’d had to kick sungjong out after sungjong had started growing into his features, after sungjong’s eyes had sharpened and his lips had started to fill out. it had started to get too uncomfortable sleeping with sungjong when sungjong always threw a leg around howon’s hips and wrapped his arms around howon’s torso, when howon always woke up with sungjong’s breath against his neck and sungjong’s hair tickling his face. he knows that as a pet, he’s not supposed to, but at this point, he doesn’t think that anything will happen to him if he disobeys just this one rule. but he can’t bring himself to do anything, so he just lies awake and thinks of too-small rooms and too-large hands on him, and before he knows it, he doesn’t feel as uncomfortable anymore.

sungjong always leaves around an hour after he comes into the room. every time, the slam of the door is louder than howon expects, and today, it’s no different. once he finishes his last rep, howon looks over at where sungjong had been sitting, and for the first time, he notices that there’s a water bottle there. howon pauses before bending down to pick it up. he thinks at first that sungjong might’ve left it behind, but there’s a note written on the label of the bottle in marker.

pets like him don’t learn to read. sungjong teaches him every day. they’d started out with learning to read words first, but now, they’ve moved on to reading books every day after sungjong gets home. he was never one of those expensive pets, those that he knows are delicate and bend at their master’s slightest whim. he supposes that pets like that don’t ever go through a single day of hardship, not when their lives are filled with simply pleasing their masters. he shakes his head. he has to concentrate.  

remember to eat! don’t exhaust yourself! talk to me if you need to! sungjong’s drawn a frowny face at the end of the message, and howon suddenly feels a twinge of guilt. he hasn’t talked to sungjong in a while. he knows that sungjong must think that it’s his fault, but it isn’t. it’s howon’s own fault that he can’t control himself when he’s around sungjong. he’ll talk to sungjong tonight, if sungjong has time. he forces those thoughts out of his head for now. just three more reps, and he’ll be done.

sungjong is in bed when howon drops by his room that night. he’s finished helping sungjong’s mother wash the dishes, and although she tells him that she doesn’t need his help, he knows that she’s grateful. sungjong is busy studying for school, and sungyu is studying to get into high school, and howon knows that she doesn’t want to interrupt either of their routines. “take this upstairs for sungjong when you go, okay?” she says, handing him a bowl of oranges, and he does.

“what’s that?” sungjong asks, sitting upright in bed once howon pushes the door open even more. he has his laptop in front of him, and howon thinks that he might be working on an assignment. but sungjong closes his laptop right away, and his eyes fix immediately on the bowl in howon’s hands. “is that for me?”

“it’s from your mother,” howon says, stepping into the room and closing the door behind him. he steps closer to the bed, and sungjong makes room for him, scooting over to the side. howon hesitates before getting on. “won’t this stain the sheets? master?”

“not if we’re careful,” sungjong says, his lips curling at the edges in a way that makes howon’s heart leap. he pats the space next to him. “come here, howon, i haven’t seen your face in years.”

they sit in silence just eating, and howon realizes that he’s missed this. he’s missed the way sungjong looks at him whenever he talks to him, the way sungjong leans into him to see him better. he’s doing well in school, sungjong says. he’s in his first year of high school right now, and howon would be more worried if he didn’t already know how good sungjong is at making friends. “i have one now,” sungjong says almost shyly, looking down at the blanket before looking back up at howon. his eyes are big underneath his lashes. “his name is myungsoo. he’s nice. i think you two would be good friends.”

pets don’t have friends. pets can only have masters. but somehow, howon feels something that he can’t quite put a name to yet pulling at his heartstrings, and if he were someone like sungjong and not a pet, he’d say that it was jealousy. but he stares down at his hands and says, stiffly, “i think so, too,” before he takes the empty bowl and slips out of bed. he tries to calm the beating of his heart before he goes downstairs to put the bowl in with the dirty dishes, and he pretends that he hadn’t seen the way sungjong’s face had looked when he’d closed the door.

xxv.

howon knows, as soon as the door of their apartment opens with an almost violent ferocity in the middle of the day, five hours before sungjong gets off of work, that sungjong knows. sungjong had moved out as soon as he’d started university, and he’d taken howon with him. howon looks down at the weights in his hands, and he waits for sungjong to open the door of their bedroom, waits for the confrontation that he knows is going to happen.

sungjong appears then, strangely beautiful in his anger, and howon notices with an almost detached air that he’s still in his work clothes. he must’ve run here from the prosecutor’s office, then. he wonders how sungjong had found out. maybe he’s seen the video. maybe he won’t want howon anymore.

“why didn’t you tell me?” sungjong chokes out when he sees howon sitting there on the ground by the bed. he sinks to his knees in front of howon, burying his face into his hands, and howon realizes that he’s crying. there are tears streaking down sungjong’s cheeks, and howon thinks that sungjong shouldn’t waste his tears on him. he leans forward, his hands fisting into howon’s tank top. “why didn’t you tell me?”

howon looks at the wall behind sungjong. he looks anywhere but down at sungjong’s face, because he knows that if he sees sungjong’s eyes, he’ll lose all of the resolve he’s spent the past thirteen years he’s been building up. “are you disgusted, master?” he asks instead, and sungjong’s head jerks upwards.

“no, never,” sungjong whispers. “why would you say something like that? i want to kill them, howon, not you—never you. it’s not your fault those sick fucks got their hands on you.”

it’s howon’s turn to stare at sungjong. sungjong is almost always mild, preferring to talk things out before resorting to yelling, and this is the first time he’s seen sungjong like this in nearly thirteen years. but there’s one thing he wants to know and doesn’t want to know at the same time, and he decides to ask. “master, how did you find out? about it?”

sungjong moves closer to howon, and he hadn’t known how reassuring a touch could be before the moment sungjong puts his hands gingerly on howon’s face. sungjong’s gaze drops, and howon knows that he’s thinking when he’s quiet for a long time. “my friend. he found it in the files that were recovered from— you remember that trial, right? the one i told you about? and they didn’t know who it was, but i saw— i saw that birthmark on your thigh. and i knew it was you. i’m sorry.”

that means people have seen it. howon’s face burns with shame before sungjong squeezes howon’s face again. “howon, no, don’t be like that. it’s not your fault, it wasn’t your fault that happened to you.” sungjong’s voice is getting higher and higher, and howon keeps staring at him. of all of the scenarios he’d expected every time he’d lie awake at night after a nightmare imagining, acceptance hadn’t been one of them.

then a thought seems to cross sungjong’s mind, and he lets go of howon almost violently. he claps his hands over his mouth, and his eyes are suddenly wide and round when they fix on howon’s. “howon,” he says, and his voice is barely even a whisper now. “did i force you?”

howon knows what he’s thinking about, when sungjong had asked to kiss howon after a lifetime of howon gently refusing. sungjong had leaned in close, so close that howon could see the mole on his nose, and when howon had breathed out a soft “yes,” sungjong had leaned in to close the distance between them. the first time sungjong had slipped his hand underneath howon’s shorts after they’d kissed in sungjong’s bed for what had felt like an hour, howon had frozen and grabbed sungjong’s wrist. he hadn’t known before then, that being touched could ever feel good, that being touched could ever feel anything but immensely painful.

then sungjong had pulled back and told howon to look at him, to keep looking at him, and that sungjong would take care of howon’s problem for him. he had nearly fallen off of the bed at the feeling of sungjong’s hands on him, so soft but yet firm at the same time, and when he’d come, the world had exploded in front of him. he’d laid there in the aftershocks of it all, his thighs trembling and his entire body covered in sweat, and he’d looked over at where sungjong was looking at him and sungjong had asked, a hint of worry in his face, “was that good?”

he’s learned since then. he’s learned what makes sungjong run his nails down howon’s back so that there’ll be red marks over his shoulders and back the next day, what makes sungjong tighten his legs around howon’s waist to draw him in closer, what makes sungjong bury his hands into howon’s hair and tug at it. he’s spent the last few years mapping out each one of sungjong’s expressions and reactions, and he considers it a win on his part whenever sungjong can’t speak afterwards, whenever sungjong can only pull howon back down to him to turn in for the night.

howon doesn’t think that sungjong could ever want something howon doesn’t want, and he knows the shock must show on his face because sungjong’s face crumples. “i’m so sorry,” sungjong murmurs. “i didn’t think— i was being selfish— i’m so sorry, howon, i made your life even worse.”

“master, no,” howon says quickly, pulling sungjong back to him. “it’s all in the past now. they can’t hurt me anymore, not when i’m with you.” he smiles at sungjong, hoping that he’ll understand that being taken from that shelter was what turned his life around so many years ago. he wouldn’t have understood how beautiful life could’ve been, how much joy he could’ve felt just from one person, without that. “you’ve made my life even better, please don’t say things about yourself like that.”

sungjong doesn’t look convinced, and howon leans in so he can kiss sungjong over his eyelids, on the mole on his nose, on his cheeks, at the corner of his lips. sungjong’s cheeks are wet, and howon reaches up to brush it away with his thumb. his fingers linger over sungjong’s cheeks. “you should’ve told me,” sungjong mutters, a little petulantly now, and howon grins at the tone of his voice.

“i didn’t want you to give me back to the shelter,” howon says, and sungjong drops his head against howon’s chest. his suit is going to be wrinkled later, howon knows, and he’s going to blame howon for it, and he’s going to tell howon to iron it for him again, and sungjong will end up doing it all himself as always.

“i would never give you back to the shelter,” sungjong says, muffled against howon’s tank top, and howon laughs, the low and rumbling laugh that sungjong calls his old man laugh. “idiot.”

that, of course, leads to howon pushing sungjong down onto the ground, and he watches the way sungjong’s hair fans out around his face. “i was scared,” sungjong whispers, reaching upwards to tangle in howon’s hair again. “because you were so small.”

howon swallows. “i know. but it’s over now. and you’re here.” he brushes his thumb over sungjong’s cheekbones, and sungjong leans into the touch, closing his eyes before taking howon’s hand and kissing his palm lightly.

“i’ll always be here for you,” sungjong says, looking at howon from the corner of his eyes. “idiot.”

( case number sy0827 )

dongwoo’s worked with the precinct for years. he’d been recommended to the special investigations unit straight out of university, and it’s there that he’s stayed ever since as a forensics expert, although the type of forensics he does doesn’t have anything to do with blood or grime or anything like that.

dongwoo specializes in photographs. he specializes in photographs and videotapes and anything that’s left a digital footprint. he supposes that he should count it as a win that he’s garnered enough of a reputation in the circles to be known as a hyena, although whether or not it’s due to his signature hooting laugh or due to his skills in tracking down the source material, he’s not sure.

he takes a long swig of his energy drink, downing nearly half of it in one gulp, before he cracks his knuckles and turns his attention back to the screen in front of him. there’s not that much time he has to crack this before it’s too late: last week, while browsing the dark web for suspicious items, he’d found a heavily encrypted message. he’s spent nearly a week trying to tease its contents out, trying nearly every encryption method he can, but it’s near impossible to break.

he feels hands on his shoulders, and without even looking back, he knows who it is. there’s only one person in the entire city, no, the entire world, who would touch him like this without a real reason to. “myungsoo!” dongwoo exclaims, leaning back into the touch as myungsoo starts to massage his shoulders. “what brings you down here? for me?”

dongwoo laughs, the sound reverberating in his office, and he can nearly see myungsoo’s grin in his mind’s eye. “it just got boring up there,” myungsoo whines, and he steps closer to dongwoo, looping his arms around his neck. “what are you working on, hyung?”

dongwoo sighs. he’d hoped that myungsoo wouldn’t ask, but he supposes that that was a near-impossible request, given myungsoo’s penchant to ask about anything and everything under the sun. “hmm, it’s just something weird i found a while back. i can’t figure out what it is, though?”

myungsoo cranes his head to the side, leaning over dongwoo’s shoulder to stare at the screen before he pulls back to look at dongwoo. he points at several letters in the middle of the message. “i might be wrong, hyung, this is just a wild guess, but don’t you think those look like formatting for a date and time?”

dongwoo stares at myungsoo before the puzzle pieces start to fall into place, and he brings his keyboard to him to type up a code he’s neglected to use because he hadn’t thought that it would be that easy. but it is, and he watches as the letters fall apart to reveal an address and a time, and below that, a short line of text. he wordlessly inclines the screen so myungsoo can see it better, and he knows, by the way myungsoo’s shoulders stiffen, that he knows what it means just as well as dongwoo does.

dongwoo gladly gives all of the information over to myungsoo when he says that he’ll be leading the investigation. he turns back to his keyboard once myungsoo’s left, staring at the lines of text again and again. it’s tonight. the location is a hotel not too far from city hall, one that dongwoo knows is pricier than most others in the entire country, but dongwoo knows that he’ll remember the text the most.

your favorite pets for sale. come get them before they’re gone~

( case number hw0328 )

dongwoo hears that sungyeol’s adjusting well. myungsoo drops by to give him updates whenever he can, although he knows that he’s having some trouble, too. myungsoo looks like he hasn’t slept well in days, but dongwoo suspects that it’s more out of worry than actual sleeplessness.

he’s heard about how myungsoo had broken up the auction, how he and his team had stormed the building and arrested all the participants, whether they were active buyers or not. he’s heard about how they’d deliberated on putting the pet that had been on stage down at the time, how they’d considered it a blessing to end his suffering before he could hurt any more. he’s heard about how the pet had refused to be put down, instead saying that he’d testify at the trials for all of the accused.

dongwoo knows that with the way that the judicial system is so backed up, so hindered with red tape, that the case might not even go to trial until months, maybe even years from now. even then, dongwoo admires him for being willing to stand in front of his abusers to confront them. he’s more than eager to give them all the help they need to parse through all of the video and audio recordings they’d dug up from the ringleader’s laptop to find the most incriminating evidence—with the absolute dearth of material, dongwoo doesn’t think that he’ll have any trouble at all.

he’s in the middle of filtering through all of the files when he gets to the videos, and he decides to go from the oldest to the newest first. his eyes narrow when he notices the timestamp on the earliest one: it’s from nearly fifteen years ago, which is strange in and of itself. he doesn’t usually find video files this old as evidence, but he knows that it could be related to other cases, solved or unsolved.

there are heavy encryption layers placed on it, and dongwoo spends a good hour and a half trying to decode it. when he does, he’s suddenly glad for the fact that he hasn’t had lunch yet, because he knows that whatever he’d have eaten for lunch would be completely regurgitated back over his keyboard. he minimizes the window, tries to stare at the wall, and he wills himself to think of anything, anything else, but all he sees is that boy, so, so small, surrounded by so many other older men.

when myungsoo comes downstairs to give dongwoo an update on how sungyeol’s doing, myungsoo brings sungjong with him from the prosecutor’s office. “he’s on his lunch break,” myungsoo explains, gesturing at where sungjong’s tucking away the rest of his spinach wrap, and dongwoo swallows.

“i might have a new case for you,” dongwoo says after he sees sungjong swallow the rest of his wrap, and he sees the way their eyes light up. he hesitates before turning his screen back on and showing them the video. “it’s bad. it’s really bad.”

he sees the way their eyes widen before narrowing again, and he knows that they’re plotting out the best ways to get revenge, any kind of justice, for the boy. then myungsoo leans toward the screen, where he points to what dongwoo had thought had been just a speck of dust on the screen. “what’s that?”

dongwoo leans in, too, trying not to notice the rest of the image. “it looks like a birthmark? i think? on his thigh?” he swivels to sungjong, turning around in his chair. “what do you think, sungjong?”

but sungjong’s not looking at him. all of the blood’s drained from his face, and he has a hand clapped over his mouth even as he stares, with his eyes wide, at the paused video frame. “i have to go,” sungjong mutters, his eyes still fixed on the screen. “sorry, hyungs.”

without even waiting for a reply, sungjong dashes out, the door slamming behind him, and dongwoo and myungsoo share equally perplexed glances. myungsoo tells dongwoo later that sungjong hadn’t gone back to work, and dongwoo wonders what sungjong could possibly be doing instead.

( case number ??? )

he doesn’t find this until much later. dongwoo is combing through the fine details of the files, long after the trial’s ended, when he finds a schematic for a protoype tucked into a hidden folder in the design for a shock collar that had been used on some of the pets. he zooms in on the image, and he squints when he sees that there’s no maximum voltage listed. it had been a protoype, after all, so it’s not too surprising to him that they wouldn’t have concrete details planned out fully, but he still thinks that they should’ve had a limit—

and then dongwoo clicks over to the next image and his eyes widen when he sees that there had been, indeed, a maximum voltage. but it’s so much higher than the maximum voltages listed for the other pets’ collars. it’s nearly twice that of the amounts used on the pets that had been rescued with myungsoo and his team, and dongwoo takes a deep breath before clicking over to the photograph immediately after.

it’s worse than he’d imagined. it’s a simple photograph, nothing too special about it except for the cruelty that dongwoo sees depicted in just a collection of pixels. the photograph had been taken just below the pet’s chin, so even if he’d wanted to, he doesn’t think he can identify the pet at all using any type of recognition software. there are what look like third degree burns all over the pet’s neck, red and angry, and smaller circular marks all over his torso. cigarette burns, dongwoo knows. he’s seen many of those before, too.

he doesn’t want to look at the photograph for too long, but as he clicks through them, he realizes that there are more of them than he’d imagined. he also realizes that the pet is the same one in all of the photographs. dongwoo can tell by the shape of his wrists, the thinness of his waist, and most strikingly, the familiar burns on his neck. in some images, the burns look to be healing and starting to scab over underneath the metal collar around his neck, but in a larger percentage of those pictures, the burns are angry and open wounds. they’re new every time. they’re constantly inflicted, constantly burning the pet that the collar’s made into a slave.

dongwoo can’t do this anymore. he closes out of the folder entirely, and he doesn’t know how long he spends just staring at the colorful figurines he’d arranged on his desk. he’d brought them from home when he started working at the precinct, fully aware that he would be seeing horrors upon horrors, day after day. he reaches out to squeeze one of the hedgehog-shaped stress balls. he keeps them here as a reminder to everyone who passes by, but most importantly, to dongwoo himself, that there’s sitll good in the world, that there’s still color and happiness and life out there.

( sight )

sungyeol has always hated the dark. he doesn’t fall asleep, even when he has myungsoo’s blankets wrapped around him, even when his head is resting comfortably on myungsoo’s pillows, even when where he’s sleeping now is so much nicer than where he’d slept for the past five years. it’s pitch black in the bedroom, and although sungyeol knows that there’s a window just to the left of him, although he knows that if he reaches over to tug the curtains away, the lights from the surrounding buildings and the stars above them will shine through, he can’t.

but he can’t move, not when it feels like the darkness is choking him and making him unable to breathe, not when he sees and hears things in the darkness that make shudders run down his spine, not when it feels like a blindfold’s been wrapped around his eyes and his ears. he doesn’t know how long he lies awake there for, unblinking and unmoving.

then the lights click on, flooding the entire room with brightness, and sungyeol jerks almost violently, and a sudden tightness overtakes his breathing. they’re going to take him to the room now, they’re going to make him take off his clothes and dance for them, they’re going to—

“sungyeol, are you alright?”

sungyeol stills. the voice isn’t one that he remembers, before he realizes that he’s not there anymore, that he’s safe now. he’s been rescued, and—that’s right, he’s staying with myungsoo, one of the lead investigators on his case. that’s right. he’s safe.

“i’m fine, mas-myungsoo,” sungyeol says, and he doesn’t know why he says that when he’s not fine at all. he’s glad that he’s remembered that myungsoo doesn’t want to be called master, wants to be called by his name instead. old habits are hard to break. myungsoo stands in the doorway, his figure illuminated in the light.

“you’re crying,” myungsoo says, softly, and sungyeol reaches up to brush a hand over his cheeks. there’s wetness there, he realizes with a start. “do you need anything?”

sungyeol thinks about it, then shakes his head. “just—could you leave the light on? please?”

myungsoo walks over, his footsteps soft against the carpet, and turns on the lamp by the bed before turning off the ceiling lights. “is this better?” he asks, and sungyeol nods.

that night, when he manages to fall asleep, he doesn’t dream.

( smell )

myungsoo tells him that he can use his shower whenever he wants, but when he finally does decide to, sungyeol stares down at the array of shampoos and conditioners and soaps and wonders just which one to use. myungsoo had given him a pair of his shirts and sweatpants to wear, and he’d apologized for how small they would probably be on sungyeol’s frame. he’s not used to this kind of luxury, and then he blinks and stares at the wall and wonders in what kind of world would daily showers be considered luxuries.

he pops the caps open of each bottle, sniffing each one just to make sure he doesn’t walk out smelling like an arrangement of fruits. not that he thinks that myungsoo would even have those kinds of shampoos, but sungyeol could always be surprised.

he’s halfway down the line, capping the ones he doesn’t quite like the smells of, when he opens one and brings it to his nose and immediately freezes. he’s smelled this before on his previous owner, the man who’d bought him for his own children, the man who’d passed him around the conference room table to sweeten business deals and to get certain laws fast-tracked through the government.

he breathes through his nose, trying to calm himself down. it’s in the past now, he knows it’s in the past, but he can’t forget that. sungyeol grabs the next shampoo, the closest one that’s uncapped, and he steps into the shower.

he realizes, halfway through the shower, that that’s the shampoo that myungsoo seems to use, and when he sniffs himself afterwards, he finds that he doesn’t really mind.

( taste )

“sungyeol, what are you doing?”  

sungyeol’s head whips up toward the source of the sound. myungsoo is staring down at him, two plates of food in his hands. sungyeol knows that he’d ordered chicken from a place down the street, since myungsoo evidently can’t cook, judging by the way he’d ended up burning eggs that morning.

he looks down at the ground and then up at myungsoo again and he wrinkles his nose. he doesn’t think he’s doing anything wrong, at least nothing that myungsoo hadn’t already told him not to do. “don’t call me master,” myungsoo had said on sungyeol’s first day living with him. “you don’t have to do anything even if you feel like you have to pay me for living here, but i guess some help every now and then with dishes or laundry or things like that would be fine. but other than that, go wild.”

“nothing?” sungyeol tries, and it’s true. he’s sitting on the ground and watching television, some apocalyptic drama about the aftermath of an earthquake or something like that. myungsoo’s frown deepens before he sighs.

“there’s a couch right there, sungyeol, you don’t have to sit on the ground,” myungsoo huffs, and sungyeol realizes that myungsoo’s right. he shifts uncomfortably at the thought of sitting on furniture again, but myungsoo’s sitting down next to him and passing sungyeol a plate of chicken before sungyeol can say anything else. “i guess since you like the ground so much, i should try to see what’s so good about it, too.”

sungyeol doesn’t remember the last time he’d tasted something this good, but he’s not focused on that at all. he watches myungsoo eat, watches the way myungsoo licks his fingers after biting all of the chicken off of the bone, and he realizes that myungsoo doesn’t call him anything but his name. he supposes it’s to be expected, since sungyeol has never been anything but just sungyeol to him, but the way myungsoo calls his name like he’s someone who actually matters sends a curious warmth through his body that he hadn’t known he could ever feel again.

( sound )

myungsoo is drunk. sungyeol doesn’t know how much he’s had to drink, since myungsoo’s friend, the one with the pretty eyes, had dropped him off and said, exasperated, “if he tries to hug you, just push him off. just let him sleep on the couch, he’ll probably wake up in the morning and he’ll be back to normal.”

it’s easier said than done, especially when myungsoo’s hands wander everywhere, clinging onto sungyeol with a ferocity he’d thought was only reserved for octopuses and squids. he still doesn’t feel right making myungsoo sleep on the couch while he takes his bed, so he somehow manages to wrangle myungsoo into his bedroom even though myungsoo doesn’t seem to want anything to do with turning in for the night.

sungyeol finally has myungsoo on the bed, although he’s giggling now, winding his fingers through sungyeol’s hair and scratching his scalp, and he thinks that this was definitely not on the job description when he’d chosen to live with myungsoo instead of being sent off to a state-controlled facility. he takes myungsoo’s socks off for him, tossing them into the laundry hamper, before he stands up to take myungsoo’s coat off of him. he hangs it up on the chair next to myungsoo’s bed, and he turns to see that myungsoo’s already drawn the blanket up over himself.

he’s momentarily surprised at how fast myungsoo seems to fall asleep, but then myungsoo opens his eyes, his gaze still unfocused, and reaches forward to tug at sungyeol’s shirt. “sleep here with me tonight,” myungsoo murmurs softly, “please.”

sungyeol should refuse. he really should. he shouldn’t take advantage of myungsoo’s kindness like this by seeking human contact, not when myungsoo already lets him live in his apartment without paying a single won. but his feet move on autopilot towards the bed and before he knows it, he has myungsoo’s face pressed into his chest and myungsoo’s arms wrapped around his torso. he breathes in and breathes out, just slightly, so that he doesn’t disturb myungsoo too much, but he’s already asleep.

sungyeol means to leave so he can sleep on the couch tonight, but it’s near impossible to move myungsoo without waking him up, and sungyeol ends up letting himself be lulled to sleep by the soft sounds of myungsoo’s steady breathing. for the first time in years, sungyeol dreams.

( touch )

sungyeol doesn’t end up watching the rest of the trial. he doesn’t need to, not when he already knows, by the way he sees the jurors whisper amongst themselves when he gives his testimony, what the verdict will be. he looks at the faces of the men who had used him and broken him and reduced him to nothing, and he says, in a voice so venomous he can see their thin veils of composure start to falter, “i hope you will live out the rest of your lives with the knowledge that you have all lost, that you have all lost your humanity and your sense of morality, and i hope that one day, you will be able to find peace with it.”

myungsoo tells him, later, when sungyeol is sitting on the edge of myungsoo’s bed, that the verdict had been unanimous, that the men in charge of running the entire operation had been sentenced to life in prison without parole, that there’s no chance they’ll walk as free men again. sungyeol only peripherally processes what he’s hearing as he stares at the collar in his hands.

he’d ceased to be a pet once they’d rescued him and sent him to the hospital and determined that there was no way he could continue being a pet again, not with the emotional and physical injuries he’d sustained as a result. it’s been nearly a year since then, since he’d started to live with myungsoo, but this is the first time that it’s felt real.

“are you going to keep that?” myungsoo asks, quiet, and without any pressure in his voice to answer at all. sungyeol likes that about him. he’s lively and cheerful, but he’s also thoughtful in a way that makes sungyeol feel like he and his words are cared about.

he doesn’t know. he’s elated to be done, but at the same time, he feels empty, somehow, like he doesn’t have a purpose in life anymore. he’s only ever known what it meant to be a pet, only ever known how to serve and touch and please, and he doesn’t know if he knows how to do anything else. he hates the collar in his hands, hates what it’s done to him, hates that it’s robbed him of so many years of his life, but on the other hand, he doesn’t know if he would give it up.

“i think i will,” sungyeol says, soft. he turns the collar around in his hands, fingers smoothing over the thin satin. “that sungyeol—he’s endured a lot. he fought for a long time, and he’s finally free. he was strong and brave and—” sungyeol’s voice hitches. “i’m so proud of him.”

“i am, too,” myungsoo says, moving to stand in between sungyeol’s legs. he takes sungyeol’s hands in his, his smaller hands wrapping lightly around sungyeol’s, so that they’re holding the collar together. “i’m proud of him, too.” then myungsoo bends down just slightly, so he can look sungyeol in the eyes and smile at him, and sungyeol’s struck with an overwhelming desire to kiss him. “but i’m proud of you as well, sungyeol.”

sungyeol lets go of myungsoo’s hands just enough so that he can put the collar on the nightstand before he reaches upwards to thread his hands through myungsoo’s hair. “thank you,” sungyeol whispers before he leans up to close the short distance between their lips.

i. 

they’re at a small get-together with sungjong’s friends when it happens. it’s just them, just sungjong and howon, and of course myungsoo and woohyun and dongwoo as well. it’s getting late into the night, so sungjong passes howon a glass of soju when he pours himself one, too.

then woohyun looks over, and says, with his nose high in the air, “sungjong-ah, you know pets aren’t supposed to drink, right?”

sungjong hates this side of woohyun. this is the trainer side of him, the side of him that trains the humanity out of pets and teaches them to be nothing but broken dolls. he knows dongwoo and myungsoo don’t have any real opinions about this, as they don’t own any pets, but sungjong does.

he’s seen what that kind of training’s done to howon. he doesn’t know exactly what happened to howon, but he knows that he won’t speak about it. he doesn’t like the far-off look in howon’s eyes whenever sungjong asks about the master he’d had before sungjong himself, so he just doesn’t ask anymore.

but howon relaxes whenever he’s around sungjong now, and he relaxes even more once he starts drinking. howon seems to forget whatever it was that happened in his past when he’s with sungjong, and for that he’s glad. it’s also fun just to drink with howon for the sake of it whenever they have time and nothing else to do, and it usually culminates in them falling asleep on the couch.

he’s discovered that howon has a much larger tolerance for alcohol than he does, and he remembers that they’d invited myungsoo over for something or other, and sungjong had ended up passing out in the middle of the night. he doesn’t remember anything that happened before he’d woken up the next morning with a blanket covering his body. he only remembers how he’d blearily blinked awake to see howon on the ground underneath the coffee table and myungsoo slumped over on the side of the couch with howon’s collar around his neck. it’s almost like a contest between them now, to see who can drink more every time sungjong goes over to myungsoo’s or myungsoo comes over to sungjong’s.

it’s memories like these that sungjong keeps fondly in his heart, and it’s memories like these that make sungjong force a smile on his face, say to woohyun, “sure, hyung,” and pass howon the glass anyway.

ii.

howon talks too much. sungjong’s glad for that, actually, since he knows that he doesn’t quite manage to fill in gaps in conversation on his own. howon is charming and witty and sharp-witted, and sometimes he has things to say about local politics or the state of the nation’s economy or even why the lawn outside today seems greener than it did yesterday that make sungjong’s head spin.

he likes the sound of howon’s voice a lot. he likes it when howon curls up next to him on the couch and leans over to whisper dirty things into his ear that make his toes curl, likes it when howon climbs into bed with him and talks to him until he falls asleep.

it’s why when howon is quiet, sungjong knows that something’s wrong.

they’re at a hotel close to city hall today, one that reeks of opulence and far too much money for sungjong to be particularly comfortable with. there are paintings of the mayor and his daughter hung up on the walls, and sungjong wanders around, taking plates of food and letting howon eat all of the appetizers he wants. howon’s dressed in something sungjong had gotten specifically based on howon’s own preferences: he’s said before that he doesn’t work out for nothing, and when howon’s arms are on full display in the summer heat like this, sungjong doesn’t think anyone will particularly mind.

then the main event starts: the mayor’s daughter appears in front of the crowd, beaming at everyone, and sungjong claps along with the crowd. it’s her twenty-first birthday, after all, and sungjong’s been invited to celebrate. the mayor then comes up next to her, and smiling brightly, he tells her that he has a fantastic surprise for her.

sungjong doesn’t expect what he sees next, and when he feels howon tense up next to him, he knows that howon hadn’t expected this, either. woohyun comes up on the stage with a man who’s very clearly a pet next to him. he’s tall and built, and even from a distance, sungjong can see how the sheer material of his clothes clings to his body.

when sungjong looks down, howon’s hands are clenched into tight fists by his sides, and he knows that if anyone, anyone at all, were to see howon, a pet, openly displaying aggression like that, he would be in trouble. so he reaches down for howon’s hand and laces their fingers together, squeezing just slightly, and he hopes that howon will sense that sungjong understands.

later, woohyun comes to find him when he’s already flushed red with wine. he tells sungjong, shaking his hand at him, “sungjong-ah, you shouldn’t let your pet sit on the couch next to you like that. he should be on the ground. i trained the mayor’s daughter’s pet, sungjong-ah. listen to me, i know my stuff,” and sungjong waves him off to go bother someone else. he doesn’t think woohyun will ever understand what it means to care so much about someone that the lines between master and pet blur.

iii.

sungjong has had howon for what feels like a lifetime.

of course, he hasn’t had howon for his entire life, only since he was around ten. that makes it fourteen years that sungjong’s had howon, and when sungjong leans over the side of the bed to poke howon in the shoulder to tell him so, howon swats his hand away.

“master, please, i’m ten points away from beating myungsoo, and i swear, if i lose to him one more time—” the rest of his sentence is quickly forgotten when howon groans and throws the phone upwards onto the bed. sungjong watches him sulk for a while before he pokes howon again.

“you lost, didn’t you,” sungjong teases, and howon stiffens from where he’s been lying facedown on the ground. “it’s okay, myungsoo-hyung always beats me, too.”

“but you’re terrible at games, master, of course you’d lose,” howon mumbles out against his folded arms, and when he turns his head just slightly to the side so he can look up at where sungjong’s staring down at him, there’s a smirk playing across his lips. “no offense.”

even when sungjong leaps from the bed and tackles him back down onto the ground, howon’s grin doesn’t waver at all. they roughhouse like that until the air between them shifts just slightly, until sungjong has howon’s hands pinned over his head, until sungjong’s sitting on howon’s hips with his legs thrown over the sides of howon’s waist.

sungjong leans down to howon, so close their lips almost touch, and he whispers, “you should be nicer to me, howon.”

“but i am nice to you, master.” howon stares up at him, his eyes wide in a mockery of innocence, but there’s nothing nice about the way howon’s lips still curl up in that irritating way or about the way howon’s tank top shows the hard planes of his chest or about the way howon’s eyes are soft, so soft, when he looks up at sungjong with something sungjong would be hard-pressed to call anything but love.

woohyun had told him, once, that the cardinal rule of owning a pet was to never fall in love with them, but when howon rolls his hips against sungjong’s and licks his lips, that insufferable smirk still on his face, sungjong decides that firstly, he doesn’t care about whatever dumb rules woohyun wants to live by, and secondly, that he has no choice but to kiss that stupid grin off of his lips. so he does, again and again and again.

( +

woohyun is happier now. he’s a far cry from the shell of a person he’d been when he’d had nothing in his life except for his job training pets. sungjong doesn’t usually like to take credit for things, but he thinks that he deserves to take some sort of credit for how openly woohyun laughs now, with his entire body and with zero restraint at all.

sungjong presses closer to howon, fiddling with the bracelet on howon’s wrist, and when howon’s not looking, sungjong reaches over to steal one of the chicken wings from his plate. howon looks at him with mock affront, or maybe it’s real, sungjong can never really tell when it comes to howon and food, and flicks him on the nose. sungjong sticks his tongue out at him, but he eats the chicken anyway.

woohyun’s seated on the leftmost seat of the couch across from them, and although there are two more seats to his right, when sunggyu walks over with a heaping plate of fries in his hands, he nudges woohyun to the center. “move, please, master,” sunggyu says, but he’s already sitting down and squishing his body in between woohyun’s and the arm of the couch. “thanks.”

sungjong sees the way woohyun looks at sunggyu when he’s not looking, when the pet is too busy trying to flag sungyeol down to bring him more fries. he sees the way woohyun’s fingers curl around sunggyu’s waist, fingering the hem of those oversized shirts sunggyu always wears. he sees the way woohyun jokes around with sunggyu about how he might be eating too many fries, and he sees the way woohyun grins even more widely when sunggyu snaps back that maybe woohyun should consider working out more as well.

when sunggyu falls asleep onto woohyun’s shoulder, a shot glass hanging limply from his fingers, woohyun reaches over to take the glass from him and set it down on the table. sungjong watches as woohyun tucks a stray lock of hair behind sunggyu’s ear, watches as woohyun’s fingers linger just briefly on his earlobe and brush over the silver earring there, watches as woohyun’s lips curl into a small and soft smile.

“what?” woohyun asks suddenly, his eyes fixing on sungjong’s, and sungjong realizes that he must’ve been noticed. sungjong’s half asleep by now, his eyelids threatening to shutter closed, but he can’t stop watching the way woohyun’s fingers tighten around sunggyu’s waist.

they’d said that the first few days would be the hardest. they’d thrown around words sunggyu didn’t quite quite catch, words that sunggyu didn't quite understand, but woohyun had been there listening intently to every single word the doctors had said and nodding every so often and, sunggyu remembers with a deep ache in his chest, not looking at sunggyu at all.

it had been almost too easy to adjust. even now, sunggyu’s legs are too heavy and too stiff, for him to move around too much when they’re encased in thick white casts. they’d recommended that he stayed in bed for as long as he could, and woohyun had taken each and every one of their notes to heart. he’d told sunggyu the day they’d gotten back from the hospital that sunggyu was not to leave his bed at all unless he needed to relieve himself or to shower.

woohyun had shown sunggyu a small white remote and placed it on the bed next to sunggyu’s pillow. “this is linked to my phone,” woohyun had said without looking at him, staring at a point on the ground far behind sunggyu’s head. “just press it whenever you need me to come help you with anything.”

he’d swallowed almost imperceptibly, such a small motion of his throat that sunggyu wouldn’t have noticed anything at all had he not been watching woohyun’s every move. sunggyu had looked up at woohyun then, willing the trainer to just look at him, to acknowledge his existence, to do anything but to look past him as if he were just a speck of dust on the wall. “yes, master,” he’d said, inclining his head and lowering his eyes to the blanket, and when he’d looked up again, woohyun was gone, the door swinging closed behind him.

it’s been nearly two weeks since sunggyu had gone to the hospital, but it’s still hard for him to use the remote. it’s not that it’s particularly difficult to use, as it’s just a simple button with nothing else. but even though it’s a different size and a different color, sunggyu can’t stop seeing it as a thinner black one, one that’s meant not to heal, but to hurt. his fingers instinctively reach for his throat, and he shudders, the phantom pain of electricity passing through his body coming back to him again.

he shakes his head, willing himself to forget those memories for the time being. it won’t do for him to be thinking such things so early in the morning, not when there are other things that he really should be doing. that’s a lie, of course. as a pet, or a pet-in-training as he currently is, sunggyu has no real jobs or obligations other than the most important one: to please his master. but he has no master now, and he can’t even properly please his trainer, so he supposes that he’s fairly useless now.

he hesitates for just a split second before pressing the button, and he knows that it’s gone through by the way the small light above the button flashes green. green for good, red for bad, red for bad pets who don’t listen— sunggyu clenches his teeth and curls his hands into fists, and his nails, long and untrimmed, dig into the soft skin of his palms.

he lets out a long exhale, willing himself to relax again, and he pulls himself up in bed and straightens his clothes. he’s wearing just a loose cotton shirt, but since the doctors had deemed it too much of a hassle for him to constantly be putting on sweatpants and taking them off again, he has a long robe to pull over his body to make himself more presentable. he pulls the shirt down, trying to straighten out as many wrinkles as he can, and he knots the ties of the robe together. his clothes don’t hang as loosely as they’d used to, and when he holds his hands up to the light, watching the way his fingers move, he notices that his wrists aren’t as thin as they’d been before.

he puts his hands down into his lap and looks around. this room is significantly larger than the room downstairs that sunggyu had been put in for the first week. there’s a large window on the side of the room, one that lets in copious amounts of light, and if sunggyu listens hard enough sometimes, he can hear the birds singing outside. this room must be a guest room, as there are just enough furnishings for it to look fitting for someone like woohyun to sleep in for a night, but there are no personal effects, nothing that would indicate that it’s actually lived in.

he wonders if woohyun only put him in here because he felt bad, if he had noticed the way sunggyu had blacked out at that party and brought him home and felt some kind of remorse or guilt, and he remembers that woohyun had, in fact. he’d done something no master should ever do to their pet and he’d apologized to sunggyu with an earnestness that made him believe that none of his words were empty lies. sunggyu doesn’t quite understand, though. it would be well within woohyun’s rights to be angry with him, to be furious that a pet with his name attached to it would react so upsettingly to what is only a necessity of the business.

he should make it a point to tell woohyun that he’d had no need to apologize, but he forgets things, sometimes. sunggyu had used to pride himself on having a quick and limber memory and for being one of the more intelligent pets at the shop he was raised in, but his recollection of people and events isn’t as good as it used to be back then. perhaps it’s due to his age. sunggyu doesn’t want to think too deeply about what else could’ve caused these gaps in his memory.

the door opens with a click, and sunggyu looks over at the figure in the doorway. he bows his head, low, and his hands bunch up into the blanket. “good morning, master.”

woohyun crosses the room in a few long strides, and he stands by the side of sunggyu’s bed before he responds, his eyes fixed downwards, “good morning, sunggyu.”

this part of their morning routine is always the same. woohyun takes the edge of the blanket covering sunggyu’s body and lifts it to the side, slowly and gently, as if he’s letting sunggyu get used to the lack of warmth. then he maneuvers an arm underneath sunggyu’s knees and puts an arm around sunggyu’s back and lifts him up. woohyun never looks at him throughout this entire process, and sunggyu doesn’t push him to. he knows that it would be easier for woohyun to carry him if he wound an arm around woohyun’s neck, but for some reason, even though woohyun is right next to him, he still feels so far away. so sunggyu keeps his hands in his lap and lets woohyun carry him downstairs to where his wheelchair is waiting.

as soon as woohyun reaches the foot of the stairs, he goes to look for where they’d left the wheelchair last night. sunggyu’s room is upstairs now, and woohyun had decided that it would be far easier for him to carry sunggyu the short distance from his bed to the stairs and downstairs rather than having to bring the wheelchair upstairs and downstairs day by day. sunggyu doesn’t hate this part because pets aren’t allowed to feel anything but overwhelming positivity for anything their masters do, but when woohyun sets him down in the wheelchair and pulls back, the loss of warmth is as jarring as if he’d been dropped in a pool of ice-cold water.

sunggyu doesn’t quite have enough strength in his arms to wheel himself around for too long, so woohyun steps behind the wheelchair and pushes him towards the kitchen, stopping at the table. sunggyu watches, with his hands in his lap again, the stiff lines of woohyun’s back as he takes the eggs out of the refrigerator and the loaves of bread out of the pantry. his movements are measured and precise, and although he’s only cracking eggs into the pan and cutting out slices of bread before popping them into the toaster, it looks like he doesn’t waste a single ounce of energy at all.

when woohyun puts the plate of toast and eggs in front of sunggyu, he does so wordlessly. sunggyu doesn’t need to look at the plate in front of him to know that the toast is perfectly crisp and lightly browned on both sides, that the eggs are perfectly cooked and in the middle of being too runny and too overcooked. they’ve been like this, ever since—

woohyun sets his fork and knife down on the table with a clink. he’s finished, sunggyu knows, but he won’t leave the table until sunggyu’s done so he can put both of their plates into the sink. sunggyu looks down guiltily at his untouched food. he’s not hungry today, but he shovels as much food as he can into his mouth as quickly as he can.

it shouldn’t be like this.

it shouldn’t be like this, where woohyun is constantly taking care of sunggyu’s needs and wants, where woohyun is practically bending over backwards to accomodate for sunggyu when he’s like this. sunggyu is the pet and woohyun is his trainer, and it makes zero sense at all for sunggyu to be waiting and watching as woohyun does the jobs that sunggyu is supposed to.

sunggyu curls his hands into the fabric of his robes. he can’t sit around and watch woohyun take care of the jobs that he’s supposed to anymore. but he remembers just where he is and who he is and what he can and cannot do, and his fingers unclench and relax. there’s no use in pretending he’s someone he’s not. “i’m finished, master,” he says, and he wheels himself out of the kitchen and into the living room. he doesn’t wait for the reply that he knows won’t ever come.

he spends the time until lunch staring out of the windows. the view outside is cloaked with lush greenery, but sunggyu doesn’t see much beauty in that. it all seems so artificial, so planned out, that when the clock strikes twelve, he wheels himself to the kitchen again. anything to not have to stare at the same leaf for four hours.

today, woohyun’s made some kind of pasta. sunggyu knows it’s good, that the ingredients have been carefully blended in and mixed together, but it tastes bland and flavorless in his mouth. he tells himself that it must just be him and not due to the lack of company. sunggyu wonders how it’s possible for two people to be sitting so close together, but the distance between them to be what feels like miles apart. he excuses himself the same way he had during breakfast, and he doesn’t wait again.

there’s a piano in woohyun’s house. it’s a beautiful one, with mahogany wood and polished white and black keys. but it’s clean, too clean, in a way that tells sunggyu that he has it only to keep up appearances. sunggyu uses the strength that he has to push the piano bench out from underneath the piano so he can wheel himself into place. the song he plays is a simple one. it’s one he’d heard before, back when he’d been in training at the shop, one that he can’t forget no matter how much he tries.

when he stops playing, he realizes that everything is silent. he can’t hear the sound of woohyun washing the dishes anymore, and then once a lull settles in the house, the water turns back on. sunggyu places his fingers back onto the keys and continues playing. he sits there for too long, until his arms start to ache and his fingers start to grow numb, playing and playing and playing until he doesn’t know what he’s playing anymore. then there are hands on the handles of his wheelchair, and his fingers nearly slip off of the keys in his surprise.

“it’s dinnertime,” sunggyu hears from behind him. he realizes that those are the first words woohyun’s said to him since breakfast, and his chest clenches in an odd way that makes him reach up to place a hand over his heart. he wonders just what that was when woohyun moves to his side, and sunggyu doesn’t know if he’s making up the way he sees woohyun reach for him before he pulls his hand back. “are you alright?”

“i’m fine, master,” sunggyu says, and he doesn’t know whether he should smile up at him or if he should bow his head instead. he settles for bowing, keeping his hands on his lap and his eyes trained downwards at the bottom of woohyun’s feet. “please don’t worry about me, master.”

then there’s a lull when woohyun hesitates, like he’s about to say something, but he stops. sunggyu doesn’t question this. he’s learned too well what happens to pets who step too far out of line, and although he knows by now that woohyun wouldn’t be the type of person to do anything like what that person had, he doesn’t know about the person who’ll own him after his legs heal, after woohyun takes him back to the shelter, after he’s bought and sent to a new house.

after dinner is over and the dishes have been cleared, sunggyu waits, and woohyun goes to his side as soon as all of the dishes have been washed and put away to dry. being lifted is easier than being set down, and sunggyu leans back against woohyun’s chest as he’s carried up the stairs. he knows he shouldn’t. he shouldn’t, but he only has so many weeks left until he has to leave woohyun, and it’s been weeks since woohyun’s touched him. sunggyu bites his lip as he shifts just slightly, and there’s a voice in his head that tells him not to do it, not to do anything that would make him mad, not to face the punishment again, but he shushes it.

sunggyu knows that he’s not imagining the soft exhale of breath from woohyun’s lips when he winds his arms around woohyun’s neck. his footsteps stop on the stairs, his right leg poised on the step just above, and sunggyu’s about to mutter out a quick apology before woohyun starts moving again. they ascend the stairs one at a time, and before he knows it, they’re at the door of the room sunggyu calls his now. “would you like to shower now, sunggyu?”

he says sunggyu’s name like it’s unfamiliar in his throat. sunggyu swallows. “yes, please, master.”

sunggyu had used to shower in the downstairs bathroom, the one with only a single setting for temperature and little ventilation. now, woohyun lets him shower in his own bathroom, the one that’s connected to his bedroom. there’s no way to properly clean himself on his own, not without causing himself more injury, so woohyun has to do it for him. sunggyu sits down on the floor of the shower, extending his legs out as far as he can so that none of the water will get on the casts. woohyun averts his eyes as sunggyu shucks off his robe, then his shirt, and folds them all neatly and places them just outside the shower.

woohyun is quiet the entire time. he holds the shower handle just above sunggyu’s head so he can lather shampoo into his hair on his own, but every time sunggyu looks up at him, woohyun’s looking at the wall of the shower behind him. he’s undressed to his shorts, and sunggyu supposes that it’s because he doesn’t want to get any of his shirts dirty with soapy water. it makes sense, he reasons to himself. woohyun’s shirts are far nicer than his own are, and probably ten times more expensive.

sunggyu remembers a time when he had complained for too long, when woohyun had told him to just use the shower in his room, when sunggyu had closed the door behind him but not locked it, when woohyun had come in and undressed completely and grabbed the shower handle from him and pointed it straight at sunggyu’s face. he remembers the way they’d started fighting over the shower handle, the way that shower had devolved into something decidedly less clean.

sunggyu stares up at woohyun now, stares at the hard planes of his chest and the muscles of his arms, and he wonders how it’s possible to miss woohyun so much even if he’s right in front of him. woohyun doesn’t touch him anymore, not even the glancing brushes of his fingers across sunggyu’s arms whenever he passes him, and when he does, his fingers feel cold and distant.

the water shuts off, and woohyun hands sunggyu a towel to dry himself off. he tugs a new shirt on, one that woohyun’s already prepared, and takes the robe and wraps it around himself. this time, when woohyun lifts him up to go to his room, he doesn’t try to touch woohyun any more than what’s necessary.

woohyun carries him to his bed, and he stands there as sunggyu draws the covers back over his legs. he turns to leave, and sunggyu’s struck with something. “master,” he says, and his voice is faltering, wavering. woohyun stops at the door, his hand hovering over the door handle, but he doesn’t budge. he tries again. “master, please. come here.”

when woohyun sits down at the edge of sunggyu’s bed, what he sees confirms what he’d already guessed. the lines of woohyun’s back are tense and drawn, and sunggyu reaches out without really knowing that he’s doing so. he rubs his thumbs into woohyun’s shoulder blades, down his spine and into his lower back, then up again. “i’m sorry, master,” sunggyu whispers, barely an exhale against woohyun’s neck, “you’ve been so tense lately. i’m sorry. it must be because of me.”

then woohyun jerks up so violently that sunggyu’s almost sent sprawling backwards, and sunggyu sees the way that his hands have balled up into fists at his sides. he’s shaking. “sunggyu. stop, just—please. just stop. just go to sleep already.”

sunggyu hadn’t known that it would be possible to feel anything like what the electric shocks had felt like again, but now, he realizes that he doesn’t need a collar with electricity running through it to hurt anymore.

he sleeps fitfully, just as he always has since the day he’d chosen to give up his previous master's affection for his hatred. he tosses and turns and just when he thinks he’s fallen asleep, he wakes up in his old home, the one he’d shared with his previous master, and he already finds himself stumbling backwards to the door when his master turns around, and it’s not him, but it’s—

woohyun smiles at him, but the curls of his lips and the curves of his eyes are all wrong wrong wrong, and in his hand is a thin black remote, and sunggyu stares at the remote, then up at woohyun’s face, then back down to the remote, and when he feels like he can’t breathe anymore, his throat constricting even though there’s no real reason to, his fingers find their way to his neck, and they meet only the cold and unforgiving bluntness of metal, and sunggyu nearly trips over backwards in his haste to get away from woohyun because this can’t happen again, not now, not when he’s finally—

sunggyu jolts upright, a scream lodged in his throat. he’s breathing heavily, his breath coming out in labored and long sghs, and sweat beads at his collarbones, soaking his shirt. it had been a nightmare, but it had felt so real, almost as if it were really happening. sunggyu knows there’s no way it could ever happen, not when his previous master had rewarded sunggyu’s years of obedience with a cruel twist of his lips, not when woohyun had watched sunggyu clamber all over his furniture and blatantly disregard all of his ground rules and only grinned at him and asked if it gave him that much joy to be scampering around like a monkey.

he realizes that his hand’s hovering over the remote beside his pillow, his fingers just mere inches from pressing the button, and he stares down at it before he pulls his hand back. he doesn’t need to call woohyun now, not when he’s most likely already asleep. calling him now would be making himself into more of a nuisance than he already is, and he can’t have that, not when he’s been more of a burden to woohyun in the past few weeks than most, if not all, pets have and will ever be to their masters in their entire lifetimes.

he reaches over to turn the lights on, and he starts singing to himself as quietly as he can. he sings things he only half-remembers from his childhood, songs that he must’ve learned from the closest semblance of a maternal figure he’d had in his formative years, and he hopes that it’ll help him calm down enough to go back to sleep. then he hears two short raps at the door, and his heart sinks to his stomach. he’s woken woohyun up. “can i come in?”

sunggyu swallows. “yes, master,” he says, and his voice is hoarse and choked. he watches woohyun’s eyes as he takes in what he sees. sunggyu, awake and sitting up against the headboard. sunggyu, with his sweat-soaked shirt and his fists bunched up in his blankets. sunggyu, halfway through a song.

“what’s wrong?” it’s just an innocent question, sunggyu knows. woohyun is a kind person. he’s fundamentally a kind person, and he cares so much, too much about sunggyu. sunggyu needs to repay the favor by being kind to him.

“nothing, master. it’s fine, really, please don’t trouble yourself with such trivial matters.” sunggyu tries to smile, and he hopes his smile reaches his eyes. he lowers his gaze to his hands. “i’m very sorry for waking you up in the middle of the night, master.”

he hears footsteps, and before he knows it, woohyun’s standing beside his bed again, and the look on his face is so earnest, so concerned, so human, that sunggyu thinks that the pet who inevitably ends up with him as a master is a very lucky one indeed. sunggyu can only hope that his next master will be as kind as woohyun has been to him.

“if you were truly alright,” woohyun starts, and his voice is soft and warm, “you wouldn’t be crying right now.”

sunggyu hadn’t even realized. he wipes his hand across his eyes, trying to blink away the wetness, and he stares up at woohyun’s face, searching for any sign of resentment and hatred, searching for any sign that woohyun’s waiting for him to mess up so badly that woohyun has no chance but to return him once more, and he finds nothing. “it was just a nightmare, master. i’m sorry. it’s nothing to worry about.”

woohyun’s eyebrows furrow, and he stops in his tracks. sunggyu watches the shift of emotions on his face, and although he’s been taught to recognize many, he can place none of them. when woohyun finally speaks up, none of the words are what he’s expected. “would it help if i—” he stops again. “would it help if i slept here tonight? just in case you need any water. or if you need someone to wake you up if you’re having a bad time.”

sunggyu blinks at woohyun. “master,” he starts, before he realizes that he hadn’t thought any of it out. “why?”

why would woohyun concern himself with the wellbeing of a pet enough to put his own health at risk? why would woohyun leave the comfort of his own bed to put himself at the beck and call of a pet?

the smile woohyun gives him is small and, sunggyu realizes with a start and a painful lurching of his heart, tired. he sits down on the floor next to the wall, and he looks up at sunggyu. “if that’s not a no, i’ll make myself comfortable here.”

“master, no,” sunggyu says automatically. it’s unheard of for someone to sleep on the floor when they could sleep on a bed, and even more unheard of for someone to sleep on the floor when a pet is occupying the bed already. he moves over to the side, enough so that he’s pressed almost against the edge. “master, please sleep on the bed if you must.”

the bed shifts as woohyun climbs onto it and slips underneath the covers. his eyes are almost already partway closed when he murmurs out, “wake me up if you need me. goodnight, sunggyu.”

sunggyu knows he must be tired. he watches the way the lines on woohyun’s face relax in sleep, the way his chest rises and falls with every breath he takes, the way he looks so much younger than he does in his waking moments. as he watches woohyun sleep, sunggyu’s struck with an almost insane desire, one that he knows would have him severely punished if he were ever found out, one that violates what sunggyu’s been taught since childhood, to not touch his master first without permission. but tonight there’s no one to see him except himself and the moon shining outside the window. he leans forward just slightly, enough that he can brush his lips against woohyun’s cheek, and he whispers, as softly and as gently as he can before he reaches over to turn off the lights, “goodnight, master.”

woohyun prides himself on his training. not his own training, of course, but the way he helps others train their pets. they come to him, bringing their pets and their wallets with them, and woohyun greets them all at the door. he’ll screen them first just to make sure none of what the owners are asking is impossible: he remembers the one time he’d had to train three pets for one master. that had been a struggle on him, having to juggle all of that at once. he limits himself to just one at a time now.

he gets his next assignment from a shelter on the outskirts of seoul. they’ll pay handsomely, the receptionist assures him, and there’s no doubt that she’s heard about how much he usually charges per assignment. his prices are a bit higher than those of other trainers’ in the area, but where training is concerned, people get what they pay for, and woohyun’s one of the best. it’s late when he drives out to the shelter, but they’re still open and they wave him to the lobby to wait.

woohyun gets the file for the pet he’s supposed to train next as he waits in the lobby. most pets he works with are from higher end shops, those that are known for their pets’ obedience and elegance. some pets become too relaxed when they’re bought from a shop, and it’s usually about a year or so into living at their new home that they start to act up. he can tell as soon as he opens the plain manila folder that this one’s one of them.

this one is no different. his name is sunggyu, and woohyun’s eyebrows go almost to his hairline when he reads where sunggyu had come from initially. it’s one of the most expensive shops in the entire country, and woohyun’s more than surprised that someone like him would be sent to a shelter.

his file reads that he’d stayed with his previous owner for almost fifteen years before he was sent back to a shelter for the usual reconditioning before being bought again, and when woohyun looks for the reason why, the file says, in small black letters, that he’d had persistent and inflammatory behavioral problems. it’s more than unusual for someone to have owned a pet so expensive for so long only to discard them just because of some behavior issues, but woohyun brushes the thought aside.

it’s not his place to question the past or why these pets were brought in to him in the first place. all he can do is to make them into what their masters want to see from them once more.

one of the in-house trainers appears from the door woohyun knows leads to where all of the pets are housed, and woohyun rises. the pet walking behind the trainer is definitely sunggyu, judging by the small photo that’s attached in his file. when he gets closer, woohyun notices several things.

the first thing he notices, the most glaring one, is that sunggyu’s not wearing a collar. when he gets closer, woohyun can make out a band of skin that’s lighter than the rest of his skin. such tans don’t usually happen with pets, as most of them are indoors pets, but woohyun supposes that sunggyu might’ve gone outside quite a bit before. that doesn’t explain why sunggyu isn’t wearing a collar right now, though, since most pets, even if they’re in transit from a previous owner to the next one, keep their collars. maybe his previous owner hadn’t let him keep his collar, for whatever reason.

the second thing he notices is how thin sunggyu is. most pets are slim, true, but woohyun can see the jut of sunggyu’s collarbones through the thin cotton shirt he’s wearing. his clothes hang off of his frame, rather than snugly fitting him, and the joggers that make other pets look relaxed and comfortable make him look like he’s wearing clothes two sizes too large for him. there’s always the chance that he’s one of those people who looks better with such a thin frame, but he knows that that’s not the case when he sees the way sunggyu tries to hide it all by curling into himself just slightly when he notices woohyun’s eyes on him.

the third thing he notices is the way sunggyu walks. there’s something different about his gait, something that he can’t quite put his finger on. he walks like he doesn’t know how to walk, and woohyun doesn’t know if this is something that he’s always done or if it’s something he picked up from his last master, but what woohyun does know is that most masters wouldn’t be as easily tolerant of such a habit. he makes a mental note to ask sunggyu about it and then, if possible, to correct it.

when the trainer and sunggyu cross the lobby to where woohyun’s standing, the trainer gives him a wan smile. “he’s all yours now,” the trainer says, and woohyun has no idea why something about that statement seems odd, like he’s glad to be rid of sunggyu. but the trainer’s face is carefully blank, so completely devoid of emotion that woohyun pushes the thought away.

sunggyu is quiet the entire car ride to woohyun’s place. the pets usually kneel at their masters’ feet during trips like these, but as soon as the woohyun opens the door in the back for him, he slides into the seat, folding his hands over his lap as soon as he buckles the seat belt. woohyun glances at him every so often in the rearview mirror, just to see what sunggyu’s doing since he doesn’t seem to be making any noise at all, but he’s just looking out of the window.

then it keeps happening. pets aren’t allowed on the furniture without express prior permission, and sunggyu, considering the shop he’d originally come from, should know this by heart. as soon as they get back to woohyun’s place, a spacious house he’d bought with the money he’d made from trainings, sunggyu goes to the couch and sprawls all over it. woohyun stares at him, and he turns his head to look back at woohyun. “what?”

at least he’s not mute, he thinks, but woohyun shouldn’t be annoyed. he knows that this is what sunggyu’s here for, to get all of these habits stamped out of him, but he’s had to deal with a pet acting out of line far too many times. still, he lets it happen. he likes to give them a grace period so woohyun knows exactly what he’s working with and what kind of training he has to give them. he just smiles back at sunggyu, already firmly aware that this is just one of the things he’s going to have to work on, and says, “nothing.”

sunggyu’s room is one of the ones on the lower level he’s set up specifically for pets. it’s bigger than the cells they had in the shelter, but woohyun doesn’t really have enough space in his house for each pet to have that much space for themselves. there’s a mattress with sheets on it and a pillow and a blanket, and he figures that that should be enough. he stands just behind sunggyu when he leads him to the room, and when he’s standing behind the pet like this, woohyun can almost count each knob of his spine.

“there’s a bathroom just down the hall if you ever need it,” woohyun says, inclining his head down the hallway. sunggyu turns to face him, and his eyes follow the movement of woohyun’s head when he looks back at sunggyu. “breakfast will be at eight tomorrow morning. you’ll have three days to get comfortable here, so don’t hesitate to let me know if there’s anything you need.”

“okay,” sunggyu says shortly. “are we done here?”

woohyun’s hand hesitates on the door, and he doesn’t know why. “yeah. we are,” he says finally, before he shuts the door on sunggyu.

sunggyu is definitely different. woohyun has no idea what happened with his previous owner to make a pet worth nearly millions act so recklessly, but there it is. sunggyu spends breakfast not sitting on the floor with his head bowed and his legs tucked underneath himself like any regular pet would. he sits at the table with woohyun, digging into the plate with an almost animal ferocity, nothing like the delicate motions pets are supposed to have.

sunggyu’s head jerks upwards when the doorbell rings, and woohyun stares at the door in confusion. he hasn’t been expecting any guests, and he has no idea who it could be. he peeks through the peephole, and as soon as he sees who it is, his fingers fly to unlock the door for the people outside. myungsoo smiles at him, with sungyeol behind him and waving. “thought you’d never open up."

“you should’ve called,” woohyun says, leaning against the doorframe. “or texted. or whatever.”

then myungsoo—perceptive, too perceptive for his own good sometimes, but woohyun supposes that being perceptive is a useful trait to have when working in the special investigations unit of the seoul police force—peers over woohyun’s shoulder, and his eyes widen as he, with no doubt at all, notices sunggyu sitting there at the table. “oh, i didn’t realize you had a friend over.”

“he’s not a friend, myungsoo. he’s just my next assignment.” woohyun steps aside. “come on in.”

he knows what they’re thinking. he doesn’t miss the way they give each other a look, like there’s something strange about this behavior, and they’re right: there is, but he’s not going to dwell on that. he introduces myungsoo and sungyeol to sunggyu as soon as they get back to the kitchen, and sunggyu barely looks up before he’s mumbling around a mouth full of food, “i’m sunggyu.”

they don’t overstay their welcome. myungsoo explains that he’d just wanted to drop in since woohyun’s place was on the way to the office, and he’d brought sungyeol in since he was getting bored of doing nothing in myungsoo’s apartment all day. woohyun leads them back to the door, and myungsoo goes to bring the car around when sungyeol grabs woohyun’s elbow. woohyun looks down at the hand in surprise, then up at sungyeol’s face. “don’t wanna leave?”

“no, there’s.” sungyeol hesitates. “there’s something weird about the pet you have with you. i don’t know how to explain it, but there’s something off about him. there’s being disobedient, and there’s unnatural.”

woohyun stares at sungyeol before he laughs incredulously. he knows sungyeol’s past. there’s no way no one living in seoul and keeping up with the news doesn’t know about how sungyeol had been a pet rescued from corrupt government officials who’d passed him around the table in order to get bills signed into laws, who doesn’t know about how it had been myungsoo’s unit to break up an auction the officials had set up and take custody of all of the pets there, who doesn’t know about how sungyeol had testified at the trials a few years back and landed them all in prison.

myungsoo had said once to him, his fingers lazily entwined with sungyeol’s, that he’d chosen to give up being a pet. woohyun doesn’t blame him. but— “it’s fine, sungyeol, seriously. this is my job, remember? i’m sure he’s fine. now go, myungsoo’s getting impatient, and if you linger for too long, he might just fall asleep at the wheel.”

he pushes sungyeol out the door, his fingers itching with an uncomfortable feeling he can’t quite place, and as he closes the door and locks it again, he thinks about what he’ll dress sunggyu in when he has to go to that gala hosted by some gangnam shop owner. he doesn’t really want to go, given that he’s working on sunggyu now, but he supposes he’ll have to if he wants to keep the connections he’s forged already. he’s not too clear on the specifics yet, but he’ll have to show them that sunggyu’s being well taken care of with him.

one hour, two minutes, and nineteen seconds. twenty. twenty-one.

you count out the seconds in your head, forcing yourself to keep your breaths even and your eyes down. your legs are almost numb by now, the weight of your body cutting off circulation, and you know that with every passing second, your heart only beats faster and faster. it’s getting harder to keep your face as carefully placid as it is now, and you’re glad for how long your hair’s been getting so that it hides your face when your head is bowed like this.

there really isn’t any reason to count. counting only makes the length of time you’re forced to spend like this seem longer and longer, and you think that you really should stop counting.

you can’t, though, not when keeping your mind focused on counting is the only thing keeping the memories at bay, keeping the thin black fabric around your throat from getting too much to bear. but then it feels like you’re drowning, like you can’t breathe even though you know that everywhere around you is air, and—

you try to fight back. you really do. but he’s stronger than you, larger and bigger in every way, and he forces you down onto the ground, his body pressing down against yours. he pins your wrists up over your head, and he leans down, so close that his lips nearly touch your ear, and he says, “will you wear your collar now, pet?”

“no,” you growl out, thrashing in his hold, but it’s futile. you can angle your head back just enough to look him in the eyes, and where you’d expected to see blazing fury, you see only cold ice. it sends shivers down your spine. you haven’t eaten in what must  be days, haven’t had anything but cups of what must be muddy water, but you force yourself to gather enough saliva in your mouth that you can spit it out at him. “never.”

his eyes spark, and that’s all the warning you have before he grabs you by the hair and smashes your face into the ground with a sickening crack. even without feeling, you know that it’s your nose that’s broken now, that there’ll be angry blue and black bruises blossoming across your cheekbones tomorrow.

“maybe this will teach you a lesson or two.”

there’s the familiar cold press of metal against your neck, and you try to throw him off, but the collar clicks into place. his weight leaves yours, and even though there’s sickness and unease roiling in your stomach, you sit up.

“i’ll get out of this, you know i will, just like the rest of them,” you say, as bravely as you can, and he laughs in your face. you stare up at him, into the eyes that hold only malice and anger, and you wonder just where the him you’d used to call master with adoration went.

“really? are you sure?” he pulls a small remote out of his pocket, and your blood turns to ice when you realize what it is, and you start crawling towards him, begging.

“no, please, no, please don’t, please stop,” you repeat like a litany, over and over again, but the smile on his face only widens, like he’s just heard the funniest joke in the world.

“i don’t think so,” he says, in a mockery of a child’s voice, and he presses the button.

you don’t stop screaming until after it’s all over, after all of the shocks have subsided. you’re on your side now, curled into yourself, and you’re only very vaguely aware that you’re lying in a pool of your own vomit, of just water since there’s no food in you to regurgitate in the first place.

“good boy,” he coos, and you have neither the will nor the drive to look up at him. he drags you by your arms across the floor, tossing you back into the corner of the cell you’ve started to call home, and you crumple. “good pet.”

one hour, twenty-seven minutes, and fifty-six seconds.

you don’t know how it is that you’ve managed to hold the screams in. maybe you’ve internalized it by now. maybe you’ve learned not to make any noise because any noise that you make results in another shocking. maybe your body remembers what happened to you.

you only know that you’ve tried your best to forget, but—

he opens the door the next day, letting in the first light you’ve seen since he put the collar on you. your cell is permanently dark, without any windows or natural light, and you think that even the room you’d had before—before you acted up, before you tried to test his limits, before you tried to see if he would love you even if you showed your true self—would be better than this. anything would be better than this.

you squint up at him, your eyes unused to the sudden light.

“look who’s awake,” he says, sickeningly sweet and filled with false cheer. you could vomit again, but there’s nothing in your stomach at all. then shadows start appearing behind him in the doorway, and your eyes widen. “you must be lonely in there. i brought you some friends.”

“no,” you whisper, hoarsely, and your arms don’t obey you when you try to push yourself backwards. your body doesn’t seem to want to cooperate, and you only watch as they come into your room. “no, please, no, please.”

“strange, isn’t it? somehow you’re so eager to act like a pet again. you don’t want this, do you?” he cocks his head to the side. you shake your head rapidly from side to side, but when you dare to look up, he’s smiling again, and in his hand is the small remote. “i don’t want to do this either, but you need to learn your place. don’t think about fighting back.”

the other men start shedding their clothes, taking themselves in hand, and as they walk towards you, you know what’s about to happen.

they fuck you until you don’t remember what it’s like not to hurt. they enter you without any preparation at all, using your blood as lubricant, and you know that the only sounds in the cell are your own choked sobs and their harsh grunts. they fuck you one, two, three at a time, in your ass and in your mouth, and when they’re done, you know without even having to look at yourself that you’re covered in red and white.

your tears have long dried on your face. there’s no use in crying anymore.

you barely look at him when he steps towards you, after the other men have pulled out and stepped to the side. the boots he’s wearing clack against the concrete ground, and you have never heard an uglier sound in your life. he bends down just enough that he can take your chin in hand, moving your face this way and that.

“kneel for me, pet.” his face is distorted and twisted when he says these words, and you wonder if he’d always been this grotesque of a person, if you’d only deluded yourself into thinking he was a good master.

“never,” you whisper with the air that you have left in your lungs. you shut your eyes, waiting for the shock that you know is about to come, but it doesn’t come. instead, you hear him tutting at you.

“i knew you would say that,” he says, and you open your eyes. then his face twists again, a hateful smile making its home across his lips. “too bad you don’t have a choice.”

you have but a split second to wonder about what he could possibly mean before  you hear two sickening crunches behind you at the same time a white-hot pain hits you once, then twice, and you know that by the way your legs don’t feel like they’re your own anymore, that you really will have no choice but to kneel for him from now on.

one hour, forty-two minutes, and thirty-nine seconds.

you’ve tried. you’ve tried to keep the black at the edges of your vision from advancing too quickly, and you try to count out the time while keeping your breathing steady. nothing works, and black spots start to appear in your line of sight, and your palms start to become clammy and damp, and your breaths come out in sharp and shallow gasps.

17:29 nam woohyun: sup 17:30 lee howon: lolol hi 17:30 lee sungyeol: lol u guys r so stupid 17:30 nam woohyun: says the idiot who got a 68 on korean 17:30 nam woohyun: are u even korean? 17:30 lee howon: lmaooooo nice one 17:31 lee sungyeol: omg shut up ssaem likes me 17:31 lee sungyeol: more than she likes u 17:31 lee howon: yeah well too bad 17:31 lee howon: ssaem isnt coming to high school with us next yrrr 17:31 nam woohyun: loooooooool 17:31 nam woohyun: can we come over today 17:32 lee sungyeol: idk 17:32 lee sungyeol: lemme see if my dumb brothers home 17:32 lee sungyeol: his dumb friend might be here too 17:32 lee sungyeol: oh yeah they r 17:32 lee sungyeol: :( sorry 17:33 lee howon: can we still come over 17:33 lee howon: ur house is the biggest 17:34 nam woohyun: yeah i like ur house the most 17:34 nam woohyun: pls can we come over 17:34 lee sungyeol: ughghhhhh fine 17:34 lee sungyeol: but not for long i think my bros friend is sleeping 17:34 lee sungyeol: so dont be too loud 17:35 nam woohyun: lmao ok what are u his boyfriend??? 17:35 nam woohyun: kissy kissy 17:35 lee sungyeol: ew stop theyre like babies 17:40 lee howon: lololol ok we’re here 17:40 nam woohyun: open up

20:09 woohyun: lmao howonie u DOG 20:11 sungyeol: what happened 20:11 woohyun: u wanna tell him or should i 20:11 woohyun: i saw him making out with hyojin-noona after school 20:11 sungyeol: DUDE 20:11 sungyeol: HOWWOOONNN 20:12 howon: -___- 20:12 howon: woohyun u fucking voyeur 20:12 woohyun: it’s not called voyeurism if literally everyone saw 20:13 sungyeol: do u have pics?? 20:13 sungyeol: lol 20:14 woohyun: Image sent. 20:14 woohyun: Image sent. 20:14 woohyun: Image sent. 20:15 sungyeol: oh damn 20:15 sungyeol: you went IN 20:15 sungyeol: ooooh howonie 20:15 sungyeol: oooooooooooh 20:16 howon: i hope you die 20:16 howon: i hope i die 20:16 howon: i never want to see u ever again 20:17 howon: ever 20:17 woohyun: what about hyojin-noona 20:17 woohyun: u wanna see her again? 20:17 woohyun: ;) 20:18 howon: fuck off man 20:18 howon: hate you 20:18 woohyun: ilu too

12:36 sungyeolie: omgomgomogmogmgomg 12:36 sungyeolie: woohyun come here 12:36 sungyeolie: we have juicy gossip 12:36 woohyunie: wait i cant :( im stuck in meeting 12:37 woohyunie: tell me anyway?? 12:37 sungyeolie: sigh ur such a goody two shoes 12:37 sungyeolie: howonie lost his virginity 12:37 sungyeolie: HAHAHAHAH 12:37 sungyeolie: our baby is grown up 12:37 sungyeolie: our little baby 12:38 woohyunie: omg what the FUCK 12:38 woohyunie: why do i have meeting omg 12:38 woohyunie: who was it 12:38 woohyunie: when 12:38 woohyunie: where 12:38 woohyunie: how 12:38 woohyunie: most importantly 12:38 woohyunie: WHY 12:39 sungyeolie: who knows 12:39 sungyeolie: she mustve been desperate as hell 12:39 sungyeolie: our little sweet potato 12:39 sungyeolie: goguma 12:39 sungyeolie: he lost his everything before we did 12:39 sungyeolie: we are so good 12:39 sungyeolie: waiting until marriage 12:40 woohyunie: speak for urself 12:40 woohyunie: im waiting for sunggyu-hyung to notice me 12:41 sungyeolie: lol gross 12:41 woohyunie: ur the one who wants to fuck a middle schooler 12:41 sungyeolie: omg i do NOT want to fuck a middle schooler 12:41 sungyeolie: imma sue ur ass for libel and slander and defamation 12:41 woohyunie: wow such big words sungyeol 12:41 woohyunie: now can u use them in a sentence? 12:42 sungyeolie: fuck u lol 12:55 howonie: i literally hate you all so much

15:38 goguma: uh what the fuck 15:38 goguma: change it back 15:39 sungyeolie: no u lost lol 15:39 sungyeolie: keep it for a week potato 15:41 goguma: omg the terms were just 50000 won 15:41 goguma: not this 15:41 woohyunie: wtf ur more worried about ur chat name 15:41 woohyunie: than u are about actual money???? 15:41 woohyunie: whats wrong w u 15:42 goguma: fck off 15:42 woohyunie: anyway now that i know sunggyu-hyung is experienced 15:43 sungyeolie: lmao what makes u think hes gonna like u 15:43 sungyeolie: like literally if hes fucked everyone important here 15:43 sungyeolie: why u 15:44 woohyunie: bc im smarter than him and it pisses him off 15:44 woohyunie: :3 15:44 sungyeolie: u have the strangest kinks 15:44 sungyeolie: ever 15:45 goguma: -___- 15:45 goguma: woohyun has a problem i thought we alr established this 15:46 woohyunie: nuh UH 15:46 goguma: yeah u do 15:46 woohyunie: if my problem is loving sunggyu-hyung 15:46 woohyunie: then i don’t want to not have any problems 15:47 sungyeolie: barffffffff

17:32 dead because sunggyu killed him: i did it 17:32 dead because sunggyu killed him: i asked him out 17:33 dead because sunggyu killed him: and myungsoo said yes 17:33 dead because sunggyu killed him: yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay 17:33 howonie: are u sure he just doesnt have a hearing problem 17:33 howonie: or like a comprehension problem 17:33 howonie: bc i feel like he might 17:33 howonie: to go out with someone like u 17:34 dead because sunggyu killed him: also just fyi woohyun 17:34 dead because sunggyu killed him: sunggyu didn’t even kill me 17:34 dead because sunggyu killed him: so theres no need for this name 17:34 dead because sunggyu killed him: HAHAHAHAHAHHAHA 17:34 dead because sunggyu killed him: sucks to suck loser 17:35 dead because sunggyu kissed him: whatever 17:35 dead because sunggyu kissed him: im the one hes kissing sooo 17:35 dead because sunggyu kissed him: idc!!!!!! 17:35 dead because sunggyu kissed him: sunggyu-hyung is smarter 17:35 dead because sunggyu kissed him: anyway 17:35 dead because sunggyu kissed him: and cuter 17:36 dead because sunggyu killed him: omfg literally do u wanna fight 17:36 dead because sunggyu killed him: bc we will go 17:36 dead because sunggyu killed him: nam woohyun 17:36 dead because sunggyu killed him: fight me 17:37 howonie: u guys r so fucking stupid 17:37 howonie: why am i even here 17:37 howonie: ugh 17:39 dead because sunggyu killed him: bc u looooove us 17:39 dead because sunggyu kissed him: smoochy smoochy

20:18 a fucking cradle robber: is no one gonna ask me how my date went 20:18 a fucking cradle robber: bc it went amazingly 20:18 a fucking cradle robber: sungjong is so cute 20:18 a fucking cradle robber: and so nice 20:18 a fucking cradle robber: and his hands are soft 20:18 a fucking cradle robber: and his lips? 20:18 a fucking cradle robber: even softer 20:19 currently dating the cutest person ever: i didnt need to know that 20:19 currently dating the cutest person ever: about my own brother 20:19 currently dating the cutest person ever: literally disgusting 20:21 currently dating the cutest hamster ever: im not even involved 20:21 currently dating the cutest hamster ever: and thats disgusting 20:21 currently dating the cutest hamster ever: what kinda third year 20:21 currently dating the cutest hamster ever: dates first years anyway 20:22 currently dating the cutest person ever: …… 20:22 currently dating the cutest person ever: does the name 20:22 currently dating the cutest person ever: kim sunggyu 20:22 currently dating the cutest person ever: ring any bells 20:22 currently dating the cutest person ever: ?????? 20:23 currently dating the cutest hamster ever: he doesnt count 20:23 currently dating the cutest hamster ever: its PURE 20:23 currently dating the cutest hamster ever: the purest love ever 20:24 a fucking cradle robber: ewwww my god why 20:24 a fucking cradle robber: what did i ever do 20:24 a fucking cradle robber: to deserve this……. 20:25 currently dating the cutest person ever: you 20:25 currently dating the cutest person ever: robbed 20:25 currently dating the cutest person ever: my 20:25 currently dating the cutest person ever: baby 20:25 currently dating the cutest person ever: brother’s 20:25 currently dating the cutest person ever: cradle 20:25 currently dating the cutest person ever: you 20:25 currently dating the cutest person ever: deserve 20:25 currently dating the cutest person ever: to 20:25 currently dating the cutest person ever: die 20:27 a fucking cradle robber: :(

02:38 i love kim sunggyu: i am so scared lol 02:38 i love kim sunggyu: sunggyu-hyung’s housemates 02:38 i love kim sunggyu: are so scary 02:38 i love kim sunggyu: omfg 02:38 i love kim sunggyu: i swear they both want me dead 02:38 i love kim sunggyu: ahhhHH 02:38 i love kim sunggyu: if my pretty face ends up on the news 02:38 i love kim sunggyu: tell them i was a good person 02:45 i love kim myungsoo more: nah 02:45 i love kim myungsoo more: you can just rot 02:45 i love kim myungsoo more: and your reputation can rot too 02:45 i love kim myungsoo more: srsly 02:45 i love kim myungsoo more: cant believe u literally 02:45 i love kim myungsoo more: went allllllll the way 02:46 i love kim myungsoo more: to fuckin gwanak 02:46 i love kim myungsoo more: just to bone someone 02:47 i love kim sunggyu most: wait omg 02:47 i love kim sunggyu most: lol apparently 02:47 i love kim sunggyu most: he didnt even know im an alpha 02:47 i love kim sunggyu most: like 02:48 i love kim myungsoo mostest: wait what lmao?? 02:48 i love kim myungsoo mostest: how tf does that happen 02:48 i love kim sunggyu most: like i mean we fucked right 02:48 i love kim sunggyu most: oh i guess u wouldnt know 02:48 i love kim sunggyu most: our poor sweet resident virgin 02:48 i love kim sunggyu most: anyway we fucked 02:48 i love kim sunggyu most: and obv my knot popped in him 02:48 i love kim sunggyu most: and i was like oops 02:49 i love kim sunggyu most: and he was like WTF 02:49 i love kim sunggyu most: and i was like WTF? 02:49 i love kim sunggyu most: because he was like WTF 02:50 i love kim sunggyu most: and like 02:50 i love kim sunggyu most: i guess he just thought i was a beta or smth 02:50 i love kim sunggyu most: lol like u 02:50 i love kim sunggyu most: but ye lol 02:50 i love kim sunggyu most: its been cleared up 02:50 i love kim sunggyu most: and hes sleeping next to me rn 02:50 i love kim sunggyu most: so cute <3 02:52 i love kim myungsoo mostest: wow that was actually disg 02:52 i love kim myungsoo mostest: from start 02:52 i love kim myungsoo mostest: to finish 02:52 i love kim myungsoo mostest: eugh i need a shower 02:53 i love kim sunggyu mosterest: love u too 02:53 i love kim sunggyu mosterest: lmao 02:53 i love kim sunggyu mosterest: <3

22:15 namu-ssaem: omg how did it go 22:16 bora-ssaem: details plz 23:10 dooly-haksaeng: okay 23:10 dooly-haksaeng: it was 23:10 dooly-haksaeng: really 23:10 dooly-haksaeng: really really 23:10 dooly-haksaeng: really really really 23:10 dooly-haksaeng: fucking good 23:11 dooly-haksaeng: and thats all i’ll say :) 23:16 namu-ssaem: awwww omg 23:16 namu-ssaem: we r gonna get details u know 23:16 namu-ssaem: one way or another 23:16 dooly-haksaeng: lol nah 23:16 dooly-haksaeng: never 23:18 namu-ssaem: but we’re ur teachers 23:19 dooly-haksaeng: and hes my bf so no :) 23:20 namu-ssaem: wow that was 23:20 namu-ssaem: actually 23:20 namu-ssaem: inspiring 23:20 namu-ssaem: i almost shed a tear 23:20 namu-ssaem: howonie? 22:26 bora-ssaem: me too 22:26 bora-ssaem: out of how sad he is 22:26 bora-ssaem: jk it was cute 22:26 bora-ssaem: ur cute yeolah 22:26 bora-ssaem: looooooool 23:29 dooly-haksaeng: thanks tho 23:29 dooly-haksaeng: u guys rly came through 23:29 dooly-haksaeng: u helped a lot 23:29 dooly-haksaeng: thanks <3 23:30 namu-ssaem: SCREENSHOT THIS 23:30 namu-ssaem: SAVE IT FOREVER 23:30 namu-ssaem: ON EVERY PLATFORM 23:31 bora-ssaem: DONE 23:34 dooly-haksaeng: ㅗㅗ

16:24 namunamunamu: lmao sooo uh 16:24 namunamunamu: is anyone gonna talk abt 16:24 namunamunamu: the proverbial 16:24 namunamunamu: elephant in the room 16:24 namunamunamu: ??????????? 16:25 namunamunamu: lee howon 16:25 namunamunamu: i found a fuckin red tie 16:25 namunamunamu: on the dance prac room floor 16:25 namunamunamu: u and i both kno 16:25 namunamunamu: what year wears the red ones 16:26 namunamunamu: if i texted a certain 16:26 namunamunamu: idk 16:26 namunamunamu: lee sungjong 16:26 namunamunamu: would he be missing a tie?????? 16:27 namunamunamu: omfg u know hes a good catholic boy 16:27 namunamunamu: u know that right 16:27 namunamunamu: omg answer me 16:27 namunamunamu: i hate being ignored 16:30 hoyahoyahoya: omfg its just some rando first years 16:30 hoyahoyahoya: sungjong alr went on his youth field trip 16:30 hoyahoyahoya: calm ur tits 16:30 hoyahoyahoya: srsly 16:30 hoyahoyahoya: i kno hes a good catholic boy 16:30 hoyahoyahoya: :) 16:32 yeolieyeolieyeolie: … 16:32 yeolieyeolieyeolie: …….. 16:32 yeolieyeolieyeolie: ……………. 16:32 yeolieyeolieyeolie: …………………….. 16:32 yeolieyeolieyeolie: …………………………….. 16:32 yeolieyeolieyeolie: ……………………………………. 16:32 yeolieyeolieyeolie: listen up 16:33 yeolieyeolieyeolie: listen up reeeaaaaal fukin close 16:33 yeolieyeolieyeolie: if i ever hear u 16:33 yeolieyeolieyeolie: or see u 16:33 yeolieyeolieyeolie: or even feel u 16:33 yeolieyeolieyeolie: thinkin ANYTHING 16:33 yeolieyeolieyeolie: about how 16:33 yeolieyeolieyeolie: hes gonna 16:33 yeolieyeolieyeolie: be good on his knees 16:34 yeolieyeolieyeolie: as a good catholic boy 16:34 yeolieyeolieyeolie: imma rip ur balls from u so hard 16:34 yeolieyeolieyeolie: ur fucking grandpa is gonna feel it 16:34 yeolieyeolieyeolie: k? 16:36 hoyahoyahoya: i wasnt thinkin that before 16:36 hoyahoyahoya: but thx fr the image :) 16:37 yeolieyeolieyeolie: DIE OMFG

19:43 day 18 of where is sungyeol: yeol 19:43 day 18 of where is sungyeol: wanna come to movie with us? 19:43 day 18 of where is sungyeol: the four of us r havin a double date 19:43 day 18 of where is sungyeol: :)))))))) 19:45 i havent seen u guys in days: nah 19:45 i havent seen u guys in days: im good 19:45 i havent seen u guys in days: thx tho 19:45 i havent seen u guys in days: sry 19:48 sometimes we can hear his voice: wait dude 19:48 sometimes we can hear his voice: srsly whats up 19:48 sometimes we can hear his voice: u havent been coming to anything 19:48 sometimes we can hear his voice: is smth wrong? 19:48 sometimes we can hear his voice: u can tell us 19:49 i havent seen u guys in days: guys omg 19:49 i havent seen u guys in days: im srsly fine 19:49 i havent seen u guys in days: lol thx for worrying 19:49 i havent seen u guys in days: sry my job starts now 19:49 i havent seen u guys in days: gtg 19:52 sometimes we can hear his voice: wait i thought u dont work 19:52 sometimes we can hear his voice: like on weekdays 19:52 sometimes we can hear his voice: ??? 19:52 sometimes we can hear his voice: i thought this was a parttime 19:52 sometimes we can hear his voice: why r u in so often 19:52 sometimes we can hear his voice: yeolie?? 19:54 day 18 of where is sungyeol: who knows 19:54 day 18 of where is sungyeol: lol 19:54 day 18 of where is sungyeol: maybe he loves waiting tables 19:54 day 18 of where is sungyeol: ok it starts in like 6 mins lets go lol

21:45 second place: that was cute man 21:45 second place: like 21:45 second place: super cute 21:47 first place: aw thanks 21:47 first place: :) 21:48 third place: why am i third place 21:48 third place: why 21:50 second place: bc u didnt get ur bf a 200000 won camera 21:50 first place: bc ur a cradle robber 21:50 first place: oh that too 21:52 third place: :(

00:21 woohyun: sungyeol 00:21 woohyun: dude 00:21 woohyun: if you ever 00:21 woohyun: need to talk 00:21 woohyun: we’re here ok? 00:24 howon: dont keep it in 00:24 howon: just tell us whats wrong 00:24 howon: please 00:30 sungyeol: im fine u guys :) 00:30 sungyeol: rly i am 00:30 sungyeol: thx for asking 00:32 woohyun: :( 00:32 woohyun: im sorry 00:33 sungyeol: lol u dont have anything to be sorry for 00:33 sungyeol: its fine

15:23 seoul national university: omg !!!! 15:23 seoul national university: we’re all going to college!!!! 15:23 seoul national university: you guys!!!!!!!!!!! 15:23 seoul national university: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 15:25 hongik university: YAAA 15:26 sungkyunkwan university: ahahhahaha 15:26 sungkyunkwan university: yoooo 15:26 sungkyunkwan university: yeol 15:26 sungkyunkwan university: ur in hongdae 15:26 sungkyunkwan university: but dont party too much lol okk 15:27 hongik university: lol 15:27 hongik university: dw i wont

15:38 business school fucker: dude i havent talked to u guys in ages 15:38 business school fucker: miss ya 15:38 business school fucker: :( 16:02 engineering school fucker: i miss ur ugly face 16:02 engineering school fucker: but dont tell anyone 16:02 engineering school fucker: just got outta class 16:02 engineering school fucker: fuck 16:02 engineering school fucker: i hate physics 16:08 business school fucker: yeolie u alive? 16:08 business school fucker: we comin down to hongdae tonight 16:08 business school fucker: we gon party 16:08 business school fucker: its friday night 16:28 business school fucker: yeolie????? 16:32 engineering school fucker: lemme try 16:32 engineering school fucker: sungjong looks good on his knees 16:48 engineering school fucker: holy shit no response 16:52 business school fucker: shit man 16:52 business school fucker: somethings up 16:52 business school fucker: we gotta 16:52 business school fucker: stage a rescue mission

04:23 woohyun loves sunggyu: lmao i cant believe 04:23 woohyun loves sunggyu: he punched u in the face 04:23 woohyun loves sunggyu: lmaaaaoooooooo 04:23 woohyun loves sunggyu: i love it 04:36 howon loves sungjong: i cant believe he had that strength in him 04:36 howon loves sungjong: like 04:36 howon loves sungjong: physically 04:36 howon loves sungjong: AND 04:36 howon loves sungjong: mentally 04:36 howon loves sungjong: kim myungsoo u go 04:36 howon loves sungjong: u go boy 04:50 sungyeol loves myungsoo: lol fuck off 04:50 sungyeol loves myungsoo: my face rly hurts 04:50 sungyeol loves myungsoo: so much lool 04:53 woohyun loves sunggyu: at least u got ur bae back 04:53 woohyun loves sunggyu: we told u it was stupid 04:53 woohyun loves sunggyu: bc myungsoo doesnt care abt like 04:53 woohyun loves sunggyu: things like that 04:53 woohyun loves sunggyu: srsly 04:53 woohyun loves sunggyu: hes not that kinda person 04:56 howon loves sungjong: dude u shoulda told us before tho 04:56 howon loves sungjong: :( 05:00 sungyeol loves myungsoo: its fineee 05:00 sungyeol loves myungsoo: all in the past ok 05:00 sungyeol loves myungsoo: thx guys 05:00 sungyeol loves myungsoo: for being here n shit 05:00 sungyeol loves myungsoo: <3 05:03 woohyun loves sunggyu: <3 05:06 howon loves sungjong: <3

15:00 sungyeol loves myungsoo: uhhhh dude u know 15:00 sungyeol loves myungsoo: sungjongs going away 15:00 sungyeol loves myungsoo: for a semester right 15:00 sungyeol loves myungsoo: hes going abroad? 15:02 howon loves sungjong: yeah i know 15:02 howon loves sungjong: why 15:04 sungyeol loves myungsoo: ok just wondering 15:04 sungyeol loves myungsoo: dont keep ur thoughts to urself k.. 15:04 sungyeol loves myungsoo: we all know how badly that turned out 15:04 sungyeol loves myungsoo: last time lol 15:07 woohyun loves sunggyu: :( howonie 15:07 woohyun loves sunggyu: its ok u guys can still like skype sex 15:07 woohyun loves sunggyu: or whatever 15:08 sungyeol loves myungsoo: OMG DIE

14:19 what the fuck?: um nam woohyun 14:19 what the fuck?: what the fuck man 14:19 what the fuck?: dude 14:19 what the fuck?: u cant go upstaging us 14:19 what the fuck?: and proposing like that 14:19 what the fuck?: omfggggggggggggggggggggg 14:23 what the fuck woohyun: yeah seriously omfg 14:23 what the fuck woohyun: hate u so much 14:23 what the fuck woohyun: god 14:25 i won: heheheh 14:25 i won: they hate me 14:25 i won: cuz they aint me 14:25 i won: suck on it bitches 14:25 i won: im a married man 14:26 what the fuck?: ur engaged 14:26 i won: technicalities schmechnicalities 14:26 i won: one day lee sungyeol 14:26 i won: u too 14:26 i won: will understand 14:26 i won: the days of being married to a kim omega 14:27 i won: they were the best of times 14:27 i won: they were the worst of times 14:28 what the fuck?: im telling him u said that lol 14:28 i won: NO

19:30 I WON: GUESS WHO’S PREGNANT 19:34 WHAT THE FUCK?: OMFG 19:35 WHAT THE FUCK WOOHYUN: YOU DID NOT 19:36 I WON: HAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHA 19:36 I WON: I WIN 19:36 I WON: YOU LOSE 19:36 I WON: MY BABY IS GONNA BE 19:36 I WON: THE CUTEST FUCKING BABY IN THE ENTIRE 19:36 I WON: GODDAMN 19:36 I WON: UNIVERSE 19:36 I WON: HAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA 19:37 WHAT THE FUCK?: i hope sunggyu-hyung kills u 19:37 I WON: dw he already tried lol 19:37 I WON: but i escaped 19:37 I WON: with my manly reflexes 19:37 I WON: hauhauhauhauhahehauhae 19:38 WHAT THE FUCK WOOHYUN: oh my god….

10:38 dooly is designing a house: hey 10:38 dooly is designing a house: do u wanna be there 10:38 dooly is designing a house: when i ask myungsoo 10:38 dooly is designing a house: to take pics 10:38 dooly is designing a house: ? 10:39 im a married man now: wait u wanna ask myungsoo 10:39 im a married man now: to take pics for you? 10:41 my boyfriend’s job hates me: no you dumbfuck 10:41 my boyfriend’s job hates me: hes going to ask 10:41 my boyfriend’s job hates me: myungsoo to MARRY HIM 10:41 my boyfriend’s job hates me: and he wants us to take pics 10:41 my boyfriend’s job hates me: omfg ur so stupid 10:42 im a married man now: ohhhhhhhh 10:42 im a married man now: why didnt u just say so

18:29 sadface: yo can one of u drive me to the airport 18:29 sadface: i have a flight to catch 18:29 sadface: to paris :) 18:31 THREE WEEKS LEFT: shit man 18:31 THREE WEEKS LEFT: i would 18:31 THREE WEEKS LEFT: but i gotta take sunggyu-hyung to the obgyn 18:31 THREE WEEKS LEFT: later 18:31 THREE WEEKS LEFT: :( 18:32 sadface: wait so late? 18:32 sadface: is everything ok 18:32 sadface: with the kids 18:33 THREE WEEKS LEFT: yah they wanna just keep him there 18:33 THREE WEEKS LEFT: for observation 18:33 THREE WEEKS LEFT: n shit 18:33 THREE WEEKS LEFT: idk 18:35 JUST MOVED IN: yo i can 18:35 JUST MOVED IN: when should i pick u up? 18:35 sadface: i knew u loved me 18:35 sadface: thx dude 18:35 sadface: like maybe in 30 mins or so? 18:37 JUST MOVED IN: k sounds gud

20:39 IM A DAD: BITCHES 20:39 IM A DAD: Image sent. 20:39 IM A DAD: COME QUICK 20:39 IM A DAD: PLSSSSSSSSSS 20:39 IM A DAD: THEYRE SO CUTE 20:41 IM AN UNCLE: DUMBFUCK 20:41 IM AN UNCLE: MYUNGSOO AND I ARE ALR HERE 20:41 IM AN UNCLE: WE’VE BEEN HERE FOREVER 20:42 IM A DAD: I KNOW BUT HOWONIE ISNT 20:42 IM A DAD: BITCH COME ON 20:42 IM A DAD: GET UR ASS HERE 20:43 IM ALSO AN UNCLE I GUESS: FUCK U MAN 20:43 IM ALSO AN UNCLE I GUESS: TRAFFIC FROM AIRPORT 20:43 IM ALSO AN UNCLE I GUESS: SO GODDAMN CLOGGED 20:43 IM ALSO AN UNCLE I GUESS: OMFG 20:43 IM ALSO AN UNCLE I GUESS: THEY HAVE NO EYES LOL 20:43 IM ALSO AN UNCLE I GUESS: HANG ON 20:44 IM ALSO AN UNCLE I GUESS: LEMME LET SUNGJONG TEXT 20:44 IM ALSO AN UNCLE I GUESS: theyre cute!!! :) 20:45 IM A DAD: THANKS SUNGJONGIE 20:45 IM A DAD: CANT FEEL MY HANDS ANYMORE 20:45 IM A DAD: BUT IT WAS WORTH IT 20:45 IM A DAD: SO FUCKIN WORTH IT

09:32 may or may not be a dad soon: so uh 09:32 may or may not be a dad soon: sungyeolie 09:32 may or may not be a dad soon: :) 09:32 may or may not be a dad soon: did your brother text u? 09:32 may or may not be a dad soon: :)? 09:34 zookeeper: uh hang on 09:34 zookeeper: wait 09:34 zookeeper: whys ur name… 09:34 zookeeper: LEE HOWON 09:34 zookeeper: ILL KILL U 09:34 zookeeper: OMFG 09:35 zookeeper: ILL RIP UR FUCKING KNOT OFF 09:35 zookeeper: I SWEAR TO GOD 09:36 hyunwoo and hyunsoo’s appa: LMAOOOOOOO 09:36 hyunwoo and hyunsoo’s appa: AYYYYYY 09:36 hyunwoo and hyunsoo’s appa: CONGRATS HOE 09:36 hyunwoo and hyunsoo’s appa: KNEW U ALWAYS HAD IT IN U 09:36 hyunwoo and hyunsoo’s appa: MY MAN 09:38 zookeeper: ill kill u so dead

01:02 daewon’s appa: :) 01:02 daewon’s appa: Image sent. 01:02 daewon’s appa: :))))))) 01:03 hyunwoo and hyunsoo’s appa: omg 01:03 hyunwoo and hyunsoo’s appa: WE’LL VISIT 01:03 hyunwoo and hyunsoo’s appa: IN THE MORNING 01:03 hyunwoo and hyunsoo’s appa: also how does sungjong 01:03 hyunwoo and hyunsoo’s appa: like 01:03 hyunwoo and hyunsoo’s appa: how does he look so damn good lol 01:05 zookeeper: bc my baby always looks good 01:05 zookeeper: :) 01:05 zookeeper: lee family genes ya kno 01:06 daewon’s appa: oh my god 01:06 daewon’s appa: get out 01:06 daewon’s appa: but ur right lol

15:38 junki’s appa: Image sent. 15:56 daewon’s appa: WAIT 15:56 daewon’s appa: WAIT WHAT THE FUCK 15:56 daewon’s appa: WAIT?????? 15:56 daewon’s appa: WHAT????????????? 15:56 daewon’s appa: THE FUCK??????????????????? 16:02 hyunwoo and hyunsoo’s appa: OMG WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS 16:02 hyunwoo and hyunsoo’s appa: WHERE THIS 16:02 hyunwoo and hyunsoo’s appa: WHERE 16:02 hyunwoo and hyunsoo’s appa: HOW 16:02 hyunwoo and hyunsoo’s appa: WHAT 16:02 hyunwoo and hyunsoo’s appa: WHEN 16:02 hyunwoo and hyunsoo’s appa: WHY 16:02 hyunwoo and hyunsoo’s appa: WHERE???? BABY 16:02 hyunwoo and hyunsoo’s appa: ITS SO FUCKING CUTE? 16:03 hyunwoo and hyunsoo’s appa: OMG WHO IS JUNKI 16:03 hyunwoo and hyunsoo’s appa: OMG IS THAT THE BABY 16:03 hyunwoo and hyunsoo’s appa: WHAT THE FUCKKKKKKKK 16:06 daewon’s appa: WAIT I SAW MYUNGSOO LITERALLY 16:06 daewon’s appa: LIKE 16:06 daewon’s appa: JUST 16:06 daewon’s appa: TWO DAYS AGO 16:06 daewon’s appa: AND HE WASNT PREGNANT 16:06 daewon’s appa: WAIT WTF?????????????? 16:07 daewon’s appa: FUCKING REPLY OMG 16:07 daewon’s appa: I SHOWED SUNGJONG 16:07 daewon’s appa: AND HES GONNA KILL ME 16:07 daewon’s appa: IF YOU DONT REPLY BACK 16:07 daewon’s appa: SO PLEASE 16:07 daewon’s appa: REPLY 16:09 hyunwoo and hyunsoo’s appa: YEAH 16:09 hyunwoo and hyunsoo’s appa: SUNGGYU IS LITERALLY 16:09 hyunwoo and hyunsoo’s appa: LIKE 16:09 hyunwoo and hyunsoo’s appa: THIS CLOSE 16:09 hyunwoo and hyunsoo’s appa: TO MURDERING ME 16:09 hyunwoo and hyunsoo’s appa: AND IM NOT EVEN RELATED TO THIS 16:09 hyunwoo and hyunsoo’s appa: OH MY GOD LEE SUNGYEOL 16:09 hyunwoo and hyunsoo’s appa: WHAT THE FUCK 16:10 hyunwoo and hyunsoo’s appa: WHAT THE FUCK???? 16:10 hyunwoo and hyunsoo’s appa: WHAT KINDA SECRETS 16:10 hyunwoo and hyunsoo’s appa: DO YOU HAVE 16:10 hyunwoo and hyunsoo’s appa: OMFG 16:10 hyunwoo and hyunsoo’s appa: OMFGGGGGG 16:10 hyunwoo and hyunsoo’s appa: REPLY BITCH 16:10 hyunwoo and hyunsoo’s appa: REPLY 16:27 daewon’s appa: open your fucking door 16:27 daewon’s appa: we aint playin 16:27 hyunwoo and hyunsoo’s appa: ill call ur property manager 16:27 hyunwoo and hyunsoo’s appa: swear to god 16:27 hyunwoo and hyunsoo’s appa: are u sleeping 16:27 hyunwoo and hyunsoo’s appa: we comin in

13:37 hyunwoo and hyunsoo’s appa: yo i heard 13:37 hyunwoo and hyunsoo’s appa: abt sungjong’s move 13:37 hyunwoo and hyunsoo’s appa: good for u guys 13:37 daewon’s appa: yeah its been a long time coming 13:37 daewon’s appa: imo 13:38 junki’s appa: :( 13:38 junki’s appa: im happy for u guys 13:38 junki’s appa: at least until things settle 13:38 junki’s appa: hopefully he stays 13:39 daewon’s appa: you know what 13:39 daewon’s appa: i really hope so too

05:23 daewon and haewon’s appa: surprise bitches 05:23 daewon and haewon’s appa: Image sent. 05:23 daewon and haewon’s appa: lmao 06:10 junki’s appa: your baby picked 06:10 junki’s appa: literally the most inconvenient time 06:10 junki’s appa: to come out 06:10 junki’s appa: like what the fuck 06:11 junki’s appa: lmao dude…… 06:11 junki’s appa: ur kids…. 06:11 junki’s appa: r less than a year apart... 06:12 hyunwoo and hyunsoo’s appa: i havent slept in four years kill me 06:12 hyunwoo and hyunsoo’s appa: congrats on baby 06:12 hyunwoo and hyunsoo’s appa: wish it didnt have ur eyebrows 06:12 hyunwoo and hyunsoo’s appa: lol jk 06:12 hyunwoo and hyunsoo’s appa: u have cute eyebrows 06:12 hyunwoo and hyunsoo’s appa: lmao 06:13 daewon and haewon’s appa: lolol die 06:13 daewon and haewon’s appa: wish ur kids didnt have ur nose 06:13 daewon and haewon’s appa: surprised their noses 06:13 daewon and haewon’s appa: didnt break sunggyus water for him 06:13 daewon and haewon’s appa: lmao 06:14 hyunwoo and hyunsoo’s appa: i am proud of my nose 06:14 hyunwoo and hyunsoo’s appa: and i believe 06:14 hyunwoo and hyunsoo’s appa: that sunggyu is too 06:15 daewon and haewon’s appa: k keep telling urself that lolol

16:20 junki and jieun’s appa: Image sent. 16:25 daewon and haewon’s appa: OMG 16:25 daewon and haewon’s appa: DUDE 16:25 daewon and haewon’s appa: WHY DO U ALWAYS DO THIS 16:25 daewon and haewon’s appa: THERES ANOTHER ONE? 16:25 daewon and haewon’s appa: OMG 16:25 daewon and haewon’s appa: JEUN 16:26 daewon and haewon’s appa: JIEUN 16:26 daewon and haewon’s appa: ITS A GIRL 16:32 hyunwoo and hyunsoo’s appa: CAN U LITERALLY 16:32 hyunwoo and hyunsoo’s appa: CAN U STOP 16:32 hyunwoo and hyunsoo’s appa: DOING SHT LIKE THIS 16:32 hyunwoo and hyunsoo’s appa: OH MY GODDDDD 16:32 hyunwoo and hyunsoo’s appa: LEE FUKING SUNGYEOL 16:32 hyunwoo and hyunsoo’s appa: WHY ARE U LIKE THIS MAN 16:32 hyunwoo and hyunsoo’s appa: FUCKING HATE U 16:35 hyunwoo and hyunsoo’s appa: SUNGGYU JUST SAW 16:35 hyunwoo and hyunsoo’s appa: AND HE WAS LIKE 16:35 hyunwoo and hyunsoo’s appa: WHY DIDNT U GIVE ME ANY GIRLS 16:35 hyunwoo and hyunsoo’s appa: AND IM LIKE 16:35 hyunwoo and hyunsoo’s appa: ???? 16:35 hyunwoo and hyunsoo’s appa: SORRY??????? 16:36 daewon and haewon’s appa: OMFG SUNGJONG LITERALLY 16:36 daewon and haewon’s appa: HE DID THE SAME THING 16:36 daewon and haewon’s appa: LOL FUCK 16:36 daewon and haewon’s appa: SUNGYEOL WYD 16:36 daewon and haewon’s appa: OH MY GOD SERIOUSLY 16:36 daewon and haewon’s appa: shes so cute :( 16:36 hyunwoo and hyunsoo’s appa: i kno she cute :( 16:36 hyunwoo and hyunsoo’s appa: good thing she looks nothing 16:36 hyunwoo and hyunsoo’s appa: like sungyeol lol 16:40 junki and jieun’s appa: thx bitches 16:40 junki and jieun’s appa: be fucking jealous 16:40 junki and jieun’s appa: Image sent. 16:41 hyunwoo and hyunsoo’s appa: :( 16:42 daewon and haewon’s appa: :(

12:20 woohyunie: guess what fuckers 12:26 howonie: what 12:26 sungyeolie: no one cares 12:26 woohyunie: obviously you guys care 12:26 woohyunie: otherwise you wouldn’t have responded 12:26 woohyunie: lmao 12:26 howonie: ugh just spit it out alr lol 12:26 howonie: so we can all continue with our lives 12:27 sungyeolie: ur literally the most annoying person on this planet 12:27 woohyunie: thank you :) 12:27 woohyunie: i appreciate that 12:27 woohyunie: you know 12:27 woohyunie: i really do 12:27 woohyunie: it warms the cockles of my heart 12:27 woohyunie: anyway guess who got into snu 12:27 woohyunie: for business 12:27 woohyunie: that’s right it’s me 12:28 howonie: congrats 12:28 howonie: also what the fuck 12:28 howonie: is a cockle 12:28 sungyeolie: no one cares 12:28 sungyeolie: jk gj woohoo do u want a gold star 12:28 sungyeolie: oppa ur so cool!!!! 12:29 sungyeolie: wow namu!!!! gj!!!!!!!!! 12:29 woohyunie: shut the fuck up dooly 12:29 woohyunie: sunggyu-hyung is gonna marry me now 12:29 woohyunie: since i’ll be making bank 12:29 woohyunie: and i’ll be there for him forever 12:30 woohyunie: we are gonna have a house 12:30 woohyunie: with a white picket fence 12:30 woohyunie: and as many children as he can give me 12:30 howonie: ok u can stop now 12:30 howonie: like srsly its getting gross 12:30 howonie: dont think i dont see u doodling on ur notes 12:30 howonie: “nam sunggyu” ??? rly ??? 12:30 howonie: btw he would never take ur last name 12:31 woohyunie: but our kids will have my last name 12:31 woohyunie: and that’s all that matters :) 12:31 sungyeolie: ugh shut up lmao 12:31 woohyunie: don’t be salty :D

it’s been building up for a while. sungyeol knows that he really doesn’t have any right to be angry or upset or annoyed, even, about all of this. it’s just biology. it’s just nature. but he thinks that in a world where the majority of the population is comprised of betas, that he would have the luck to have friends that aren’t two of the most testosterone-driven alphas he’s ever had the misfortune of meeting in his entire life.

that’s not true, of course. he loves howon and woohyun, loves them like the older brothers he wishes he had instead of a younger brother whom he thinks might possibly hate him sometimes. but they just don’t understand.

they don’t understand what it could possibly be like to want someone he’s not ever supposed to be with. they don’t understand what it’s like to be sneered at whenever he walks myungsoo down to 2-b, to be stared at through the windows by the alphas in the classroom. you’re not supposed to be with him. because you’re a beta, their stares read. go find a cute beta girl who’ll make you happy and leave him for us. because we’re alphas.

but that’s the exact reason why he walks myungsoo down to his classroom like this— so he can duck his head down so that myungsoo will lean up to kiss him, and sungyeol knows that they know, that they’re watching as well. myungsoo would blush a fierce shade of red if he ever knew, but sungyeol’s desperate to keep myungsoo with him here, and he hopes that if he loves myungsoo enough, he won’t leave.

it’s what keeps him going through all of those overtime work shifts, all of those times where he could’ve just gone home and rested his head, all of those times where he’d stayed behind at the restaurant and helped clean up. it’s what keeps him busy, methodically and almost detachedly counting every single won he earns until he reaches the amount he needs for the camera— for myungsoo’s camera.

he hadn’t known cameras could cost so much until myungsoo had sat down next to him one day when they’d gone to the riverbank together, until myungsoo had leaned his head against sungyeol’s shoulder and sighed, heavily, that sunggyu had spilled all of their parents’ soju on his camera. the memory card was safe, myungsoo had said, but the camera was ruined. how will i take pictures of you now? myungsoo had asked, turning to face sungyeol and taking sungyeol’s face in his hands, turning it this way and that. ah, it’s really too bad. sunggyu-hyung owes me big.

he’d gone home that night and searched up the brands of cameras he knew myungsoo used, and his eyes had popped when he saw the price tags listed under each one. it had been amazing to him how calm myungsoo was about the entire thing, but myungsoo had told him later that that camera was old, and he’d wanted an excuse to get a new one anyway.

it’s what had made him swallow his pride and ask howon and woohyun how to make an omega feel good on their first time. they'd stared at him for what had felt like hours before bursting into loud and raucous laughter, and when sungyeol hadn’t laughed along with them, when sungyeol had only stared back at them with his eyes unwaveringly level, they stopped. get on your knees, sungyeol, this is a student-teacher relationship now, woohyun had ordered, and sungyeol had complied almost immediately.

wow, he’s serious about this, howon had said, surprise evident in his voice, and sungyeol had been. he still is. he isn’t serious about many things, but if there’s one thing, one person, he’s willing to put on a brave front for, it’s myungsoo. he’d only seen myungsoo in passing before, seen him in quick glimpses in sungjong’s bedroom or passing through the hallways at school, but myungsoo was cute and sungyeol wanted him.

it had been on their first anniversary that sungyeol had turned to myungsoo and asked if he wanted to. myungsoo had looked up at him, his eyes shaking, and whispered that i’ve never— i’ve never done this before, and sungyeol had leaned down to kiss myungsoo on his forehead and say, quietly, that i haven’t either. he’d laid myungsoo out over on his bed on a night when his parents were out and sungjong was at a friend’s place and he’d kissed down the line of myungsoo’s jaw and down the column of his throat and nipped softly at the juncture of his neck and his shoulders.

is this okay? sungyeol had asked so many times, just to make sure that myungsoo was feeling alright, that myungsoo was comfortable, because none of it would’ve mattered at all if myungsoo didn’t feel good. myungsoo had nodded, wordless, and he’d clutched sungyeol closer to him and said that i want you now, sungyeol-hyung. he’d stared at sungyeol like he hadn’t ever seen anyone else naked before, which he probably hadn’t, and he’d stared down at sungyeol’s length and swallowed, his throat bobbing.

myungsoo had been wet, so slick between his thighs, when sungyeol had lifted his hips to take off his underwear. don’t look at me, it’s embarrassing, myungsoo had mumbled, turning his face to the side, and sungyeol had seen the splotches of red forming all over his chest and his neck and he’d thought that myungsoo was beautiful in his daily life, but he was the most beautiful when he was spread out for sungyeol like this, where sungyeol was the only one to see him so open and pliant and willing.

he’d taken his time with myungsoo, scissoring him open with his fingers wet with lube until myungsoo was writhing around and pushing his hips back against sungyeol’s fingers and saying, low and desperate, please, sungyeol, i want you— i need you. sungyeol had pushed into him, a long and slow thrust of his hips, and when he’d been fully seated inside myungsoo, he’d buried his face against myungsoo’s shoulder to catch his breath, and he’d known by the way myungsoo’s eyes were closed and the way his breath came out in quick huffs, that he was doing the same.

myungsoo had felt so amazing around him, and sungyeol had stared down at how he’d looked up at sungyeol with only the fondest expressions on his face, and he’d wondered how it was possible for his chest to feel so suddenly full and overwhelming with a feeling he hadn’t known if he was ready to name yet. he’d jerked myungsoo off until he came, spilling white all over his own stomach, and after he’d cleaned myungsoo off, he’d pulled myungsoo to him, his legs intertwining with myungsoo’s and he’d tucked myungsoo’s head underneath his chin and he’d linked their fingers together and he’d said let’s sleep now.

it’s what makes him look over at myungsoo whenever he’s not doing anything at all, whenever myungsoo’s staring at the wall and thinking of what next to write in his paper, whenever myungsoo’s biting his lip and wondering what to eat for dinner. if he really loved myungsoo, he would tell him that he would be exponentially more beautiful if he switched out his thick framed glasses for contact lenses, if he straightened his hair from the wild curly mess that it always was.

it’s really just a fact of life that people who are more beautiful are going to be more liked, and that’s why sungyeol keeps those thoughts to himself. it’s selfish and mean, but he wants to keep myungsoo for himself, wants for myungsoo to never take off his glasses for anyone else, wants for myungsoo to never straighten his hair, so that he’ll be the only one who’s ever had myungsoo in front of him and begging for him with an almost inhuman desperation.

but he also knows that since he loves myungsoo, he should do what’s best for him. he’ll never be able to give myungsoo the kids that he loves so much, he’ll never be able to love myungsoo the way an alpha would, but more than that, more than anything else, he’s keeping myungsoo for himself. he’s keeping myungsoo for himself and selfishly away from someone who could give him the kids he wants. he’s seen myungsoo watching the kids at the playground. the moms all know him by name, know him as the younger kim boy who wants to teach elementary school some day, who loves their kids almost as much as they do.

he watches myungsoo with the kids, and he wonders to himself what kind of monster would do this to myungsoo. what kind of monster would keep myungsoo so stubbornly locked in with himself, what kind of monster would keep myungsoo from finding real happiness, what kind of monster would keep myungsoo from an alpha. they’re so cute, myungsoo rambles on and on and on, his right hand in sungyeol’s left as they walk back from the playground. he sighs, almost dreamily, i want.

sungyeol can never give myungsoo this. he can give myungsoo as many false promises as he wants to, he can give myungsoo as many cameras and origami paper stars and stuffed animals as he wants, he can give myungsoo as many nights with his hips up on sungyeol’s thighs, with his face pressed into the pillow, with his legs hooked over sungyeol’s shoulders, as he wants, but he can never give myungsoo this.

he can never give myungsoo what woohyun can give sunggyu, what howon can give sungjong, and he hates them for it, in a completely unjustifiable and mean and hateful way, but above all, he hates himself for it the most. so he tells himself that it’s for myungsoo’s own good when he goes to myungsoo’s house that night, and when he walks away, he pretends that he doesn’t see, doesn’t hear, doesn’t know that myungsoo is crying behind him. he clenches his fists, stuffs them into his pockets, and walks home, ignoring the way that the tears that fall from his own eyes are hot and uncomfortable.

it’s better this way, he tells himself until he starts to believe it. it’ll be better this way for the both of them.

20:15 yeolie: hey 20:15 yeolie: myungsoo 20:15 yeolie: can you come outside? 20:20 soosoo: whats wrong 20:20 soosoo: ? 20:20 yeolie: i’m outside 20:20 yeolie: come outside please

myungsoo doesn’t really listen. not really. he knows that sungyeol’s lips are moving and he knows that words are coming out, but he can’t process any of it, can’t make any sense of what sungyeol’s saying. he’d stopped listening after sungyeol had taken myungsoo’s hand in his and looked directly at him and said those six words. sungyeol looks at him now, concern and worry etched into the lines of his face (lies, myungsoo thinks, bitterly, if he’d cared what myungsoo felt, he wouldn’t have done this in the first place), and he says, “i’m sorry, myungsoo. i really, really am.”

myungsoo watches him walk away, his fists tucked into the pockets of his jeans and the line of his back curved and bent over, before he can even reply. he’d wanted to say, spitefully and hatefully, that myungsoo’s not sorry at all, that myungsoo will be just fine without him, that myungsoo could not care less whether or not sungyeol wanted to break up with him or not. but really, he’d wanted to ask sungyeol why, wanted to ask sungyeol if it was because of myungsoo, wanted to ask sungyeol if it was something that myungsoo could change about himself to make sungyeol stay.

he wants to run after sungyeol and beg him to take him back, but he clenches his fists by his sides and forces himself to stay still. he forces himself to stay where he is, standing outside of his house in just the t-shirt and the shorts he’d worn to take a nap earlier. the summer heat is almost oppressive, but he stays there, feeling sweat bead on the skin of his arms and legs and on the nape of his neck. i think we should break up, he keeps hearing, over and over again. i think we should break up.

it isn’t until he tastes salt at the corner of his lips that he realizes he’s crying. he tries to wipe them away, bringing his hand up to brush the wetness from his cheeks. myungsoo shivers then. it’s uncomfortably warm during the day, but it’s breezy at night, and myungsoo needs to leave, to get anywhere else but here. he’s glad, suddenly, that no one but him is home right now. his parents are out, and sunggyu is out with woohyun somewhere.

that way, no one’s around to see the way he runs upstairs, nearly tripping on the steps. no one’s around to hear the way he slams his door closed, falling onto his bed. he waits for the tears to come, but he’s numb. myungsoo’s eyes fix on the camera on the desk beside his bed, and he reaches for it as he pulls his phone back out of his pocket.

there aren’t that many photos in the camera. he’d only gotten it three months ago for his birthday, and he hasn’t had much time to fill it with memories. he’d planned on spending time this summer taking pictures with and of sungyeol, but he supposes that that’s not happening anymore. he clicks through the photos that he does have. there are just a few. some are of the scenery around them, some are of sunggyu and his parents, but the majority of them are— and myungsoo’s breath catches in his throat— they’re of sungyeol.

click.

sungyeol and the broad lines of his back, stretching the starched white dress shirt of his school uniform wide. myungsoo remembers how it had felt against his cheek whenever he’d pressed himself up against sungyeol’s back. what are you, an octopus? sungyeol had asked too many times for myungsoo to remember, but he’d always let myungsoo cling onto him during their lunches together. howon and woohyun had always pretended to vomit, but it hadn’t mattered, not when sungyeol was warm next to him.

and sungyeol had always walked myungsoo back to his own class, back to 2-b on the floor below, even though they both knew that sungyeol hadn’t had to do anything of the sort. don’t i deserve some kind of payment for walking you back so nicely? sungyeol had joked, grinning down at myungsoo with his eyes in half moons, leaning down just enough that myungsoo knew exactly what kind of payment he’d wanted. myungsoo had leaned upwards, curling his fingers into the hair at the back of sungyeol’s neck, and murmured your hair’s getting long, you should cut it against his lips, and sungyeol had grinned into the kiss. the next day, he’d come to school with his hair trimmed just slightly, and myungsoo hadn’t been able to resist burying his hands in sungyeol’s hair and mussing it up again.

click.

sungyeol and the moles dotting the jut of his collarbone and underneath his ear, out of reach whenever they were in school. but myungsoo’s parents weren’t home often, making it easy for myungsoo to just bring sungyeol in through the front door. he’d always come over with only the most innocent of intents, myungsoo knows, bringing his textbooks and his notebooks over. they’d done their homework together, their arms pressed neatly against each other, until the touch that had been lazily resting on myungsoo’s thigh turned into something more.

sungyeol had always taken his time with myungsoo, twisting his fingers inside myungsoo and stretching him open, pulling myungsoo closer to him and pressing in and making his eyes roll back into his head with every short and shallow thrust of his hips. sungyeol had always fallen asleep after pulling a tissue from the dispenser on myungsoo’s desk and wiping the come off of myungsoo’s stomach. then it had been easy, so easy, for myungsoo to prop himself up on his elbows so he could watch sungyeol sleep. he’d traced the lines of sungyeol’s face, connecting the dots between sungyeol’s moles, and he’d laughed quietly to himself when sungyeol had scrunched up his nose when myungsoo brushed his knuckles against his cheeks.

click.

sungyeol and his legs, long and thin and beautiful, stretching all over myungsoo’s bed and letting his feet dangle over the side. myungsoo’s clothes had always, always been too small for sungyeol to wear, and eventually, sungyeol had ended up bringing some of his clothes over to wear every time he’d fuck myungsoo through a heat. 

myungsoo had tried on one of sungyeol’s shirts, one of his loose and worn sleep shirts, and he’d stared at himself in the mirror at the way that the sleeves ran halfway down his arms and sungyeol had stared at him, too, and his eyes had darkened and he’d pulled myungsoo back into bed. he’d always said that myungsoo was the most handsome, the most handsome man he’d ever seen, but myungsoo hadn’t seen any of that in himself at all. no, he’d thought while watching sungyeol move above and inside him, sungyeol was the handsome one here.

he’d heard some of the other students in his class talking about how spending heats with an alpha was so much better than spending them with a beta, about how the knot was really the best part of it all, but myungsoo hadn’t paid attention to any of that. he’d thought them shallow at the time, but after sungyeol, he’d thought them outright stupid. because what use was a precious knot if you had to worry the entire time if something was going to happen, if you were going to walk on eggshells the entire time? when sungyeol had said, hesitantly, that he’d brought protection just in case, myungsoo had surged upwards to take sungyeol’s face in his hands and kiss him with every ounce of energy he’d had in him and whisper against his lips that he’d wanted to feel all of sungyeol inside him.

he knows he should’ve been more upset that nothing was going to happen. it had been a terrible, such a terrible thing to think, but he’d thought that he could handle it if something did happen. he’d spent so much time at the local playground with the kids there, kids from infants to elementary schoolers, that he’d known that he’d be willing to brave any obstacle just to have them himself. 

but he’d met sungyeol and fallen in love with the way he’d touched myungsoo with a gentleness that belied his size and with the way he’d said myungsoo’s name with a reverence that told him that nothing else mattered to him and with the way that he’d trusted myungsoo enough to tell him the secrets he couldn’t even tell sungjong— that he was deathly afraid of growing up and facing the future, that he wasn’t sure what he wanted to do with his life, that he wanted to spend as much time with myungsoo as he could before they ended up going their separate ways, sungyeol heading off to university and myungsoo remaining behind in high school.

myungsoo wonders if he’ll ever have someone like sungyeol again. probably not, he thinks. he’d seen sungyeol for the first time when he was over at sungjong’s house after elementary school, when sungyeol had burst into the front door with his arms slung around two other boys, their uniforms clearly that of the local middle school, and when sungjong had turned to myungsoo and said with a grimace on his face, sorry, that’s my stupid brother and his stupid friends, myungsoo had thought that someone who laughed and smiled like that couldn’t possibly have been that stupid of a person. 

and when the doorbell had rung one day a few years later, when he was a third year in middle school, he’d opened the door to see sungyeol on his front step. he’d stood there, unmoving and unblinking, until sungyeol had said that i’m here for kim sunggyu? the math tutor from 3a? and myungsoo had snapped out of his reverie and led sungyeol to his brother’s room.

he’d never considered for a single moment that sungyeol would look back at him, not ever, not once in his life. because he’d been that awkward kid with the ugly curly hair that whipped around his face like a tornado and the strangely pointy nose. at least the kims’ younger boy has pretty eyes, he’d heard the neighborhood ahjummas say about him on more than one occasion. too bad he’s not smart like his brother. guess you can’t have both in one son. he’d stood there, shaking in the aisles of the grocery store, until his mother had found him and asked him why he was crying and he’d said that he didn’t know.

then on a blustery spring day a year ago, when the flowers were all in bloom around them, sungyeol had asked myungsoo if he’d wanted to go get ice cream after school and myungsoo had asked why he’d want to get ice cream when they had ice cream at home and sungyeol had flushed and looked to the side and said i’m asking you out, myungsoo, and myungsoo had blinked at him and said then i’ll go out with you, hyung, and that was it.

the camera beeps when myungsoo gets to the end of the photos. no further data, it reads. it’s heavy in myungsoo’s hands, somehow even heavier than it had been when sungyeol had bought it for him— and that’s right. sungyeol had bought this camera for myungsoo, bought it with his hard-earned money from his part-time job waiting tables. 

myungsoo hadn’t even thought that sungyeol was listening when he’d said that he wanted a new camera since his old one had broken when sunggyu had accidentally spilled their parents’ soju on it. he’d wanted this specific model for a while, and he’d tracked all of the technology blog posts and articles and checked the specifications on it— its aperture, its lens width, its frame rate, its angle of view, its shutter speed— all things that he’d expected sungyeol to just nod and smile at and humor him for talking so animatedly about.

he’d cried when sungyeol had told him to open up a small and neatly wrapped box, when sungyeol had only grinned when myungsoo had asked him, shock in his voice, how much it had cost, when sungyeol had told him not to worry about it. happy birthday, myungsoo, he’d said. don’t cry, it makes me only want to hug you more, okay? oh, don’t cry, really. ahh, i knew you would be like this. such a crybaby. come here, myungsoo. the first photo he’d taken with his brand new camera was of sungyeol, smiling as brightly as the sun shone on them, with the same striped shirt stretching across his chest as he’d worn on their first date.

he scrolls nearly aimlessly through their texts together. it’s been almost a year and a half; it would’ve been two years this coming spring. sungyeol had told him once, his fingers intertwined with myungsoo’s, that they could last forever, and now myungsoo wonders if they’d had different definitions of forever all along.

just last week—

03:28 yeolie: go sleep myungsoo 03:28 yeolie: its late 03:29 soosoo: im not tired tho 03:29 yeolie: sleeeeep 03:29 soosoo: ur not my mom 03:29 soosoo: or my brother 03:29 yeolie: ur right 03:29 yeolie: im more than that 03:29 soosoo: ewwwwwwwww 03:30 yeolie: gn bb <3 03:30 soosoo: <3

last month—

16:20 fartypants: can u stop changing my name???? 16:20 fartypants: myungsoo srsly?? 16:20 snugglebuns: only when u change mine back 16:20 snugglebuns: :T 16:20 fartypants: but u r a snugglebuns 16:20 snugglebuns: and u r a fartypants 16:20 snugglebuns: so idk what the problem is here 16:21 fartypants: kim myungsoo 16:21 fartypants: do u wanna die 16:21 snugglebuns: lee sungyeol 16:21 snugglebuns: do u wanna die 16:21 fartypants: ok thats it 16:21 fartypants: ur going down 16:22 snugglebuns: k fartypants 16:22 snugglebuns: come at me 16:22 fartypants: just u wait kid 16:22 fartypants: dont regret it too much 16:23 fartypants: when i make u cry for mercy

a few months ago—

23:40 myungsoo: omg im so sorry 23:40 myungsoo: i didnt kno 23:40 myungsoo: my brother had his bf over 23:40 myungsoo: :( 23:40 myungsoo: ah that was embarrassing im sorry 23:41 myungsoo: i shouldve checked if anyone was over 23:41 myungsoo: before 23:41 myungsoo: you know 23:41 sungyeol: yo its ok 23:41 sungyeol: ive never seen woohyun in the bathroom before 23:41 sungyeol: they say u gotta have a new experience 23:41 sungyeol: every day to really live ur life to the fullest 23:41 sungyeol: and also 23:41 sungyeol: at least i know hes overcompensating now 23:42 sungyeol: lmao imma tell howon later 23:42 sungyeol: ill tell woohyun its ok if he short 23:42 sungyeol: sunggyu-hyungs short too 23:42 sungyeol: so they r a perfect match 23:42 sungyeol: a perfect fit 23:42 sungyeol: ;) 23:43 myungsoo: gross 23:43 myungsoo: can u not bring my brother into this 23:43 myungsoo: i rly dont need to think about my brother having sex 23:43 myungsoo: in my brain he doesnt have sex 23:43 myungsoo: like a monk 23:43 myungsoo: its weird 23:43 sungyeol: ur weird 23:43 myungsoo: so r u 23:43 sungyeol: touche

after their first date—

16:23 sungyeol: that was fun :) 16:23 sungyeol: i’d be down to do it again? 17:10 myungsoo: sorry i was asleep 17:10 myungsoo: but ok!!!!! of course 17:11 sungyeol: yay :) 17:12 myungsoo: :)

and finally, when they first met (the first time myungsoo had spoken to sungyeol for real on his own, the first time sungyeol had said something to him that involved neither of their brothers)—

15:09 kim myungsoo: hi i’m sungjong’s friend myungsoo 15:09 kim myungsoo: this is my number 15:10 lee sungyeol: hey it’s sungyeol 15:10 lee sungyeol: text me if you need anything, okay? 15:10 lee sungyeol: i’m always here to help 15:10 lee sungyeol: from a hyung to a dongsaeng 15:11 kim myungsoo: okay 15:11 kim myungsoo: thanks 15:11 kim myungsoo: i will hyung

the front door slams, and myungsoo nearly bolts upright. it’s sunggyu. he hadn’t expected sunggyu to be home so early, but now that he is, he can’t hide anymore. he doesn’t remember ever locking the door, and when the door slides open, he’s proven right. sunggyu pokes his head in, probably to make a jab at myungsoo again, then opens it fully once he sees myungsoo’s face. “holy shit, myungsoo, what happened?”

myungsoo turns so he can press his face into his pillow. maybe if he pretends he can’t see sunggyu, he won’t have to respond. this would be the ideal situation, where sunggyu pretends that he hadn’t seen anything, where myungsoo pretends he’d never even met lee sungyeol, where the world will continue spinning and spinning and everything will be fine when the sun rises again in the morning. but he hears the tell-tale footsteps of sunggyu moving closer, and his bed shifts when sunggyu sits down. he tries to suppress it, but he can’t help the way he relaxes when sunggyu’s hand smooths over his hair, soft and gentle. “do you want to talk about it?”

“sungyeol-hyung broke up with me,” myungsoo chokes out into the pillow, holding back a sob. there. he’s said it out loud. he hopes that sunggyu will take the hint and leave so he can feel sad and sorry for himself on his own, but instead, sunggyu shoves myungsoo over to the side of the bed so he can get in underneath the covers. myungsoo’s about to yell at sunggyu for squishing his camera when he notices that sunggyu’s already put his camera and his phone on the table. sunggyu hasn’t held him like this in a long time, not since they grew up and stopped having slunber parties in each others’ rooms. but now, with sunggyu’s arms around his shoulders, with his head tucked underneath sunggyu’s chin, with sunggyu’s smell, comforting and warm, wrapping around him, he feels safe.

“it’s okay, myungsoo,” sunggyu murmurs into myungsoo’s hair, and myungsoo realizes that he can’t hold the tears in anymore, not when sunggyu’s speaking to him like this, so reassuring and comforting. “just let it all out now, no one’s judging you. i’m here for you. just let it all out.”

so myungsoo does. for now, he clutches onto sunggyu like he’s drowning and sunggyu is his only lifeline. he’ll figure it out in the morning.

06:43 sungyeolie: get up u lazy asses 06:43 sungyeolie: its not my fault if ur all late 06:44 sungyeolie: ok fine be late idc 06:46 woohyunie: shut up 06:46 woohyunie: i’m awake 06:47 woohyunie: i woke up at 5 okay shut up you’re so annoying 06:48 sungyeolie: wow!!!!!! 06:48 sungyeolie: as expected of our oh-so diligent president!!!!!! 06:49 sungyeolie: should i record ur speech for u?????? 06:50 sungyeolie: so u can show sunggyu-hyung????? 06:50 sungyeolie: how good u r with ur mouth??? 06:51 sungyeolie: maybe hes gonna come down?????? 06:51 sungyeolie: from seoul juuuuuust to see u??????? 06:56 sungyeolie: ok ignore me ok fine 06:57 sungyeolie: im just trying to help 07:30 howonie: fuck 07:31 howonie: why the fuck didn’t either of u assholes call me srsly 07:31 howonie: god i hate u two so much

howon nearly considers just staying home. even if he runs to the train station, even if all the trains run on time, even if he manages to avoid the morning crush, he’ll still be at least fifteen minutes late to the opening assembly on the first day of class. but he’s a third year now, and he knows that as the president of the hip hop dance club, he might get penalized if he’s not there.

he groans even as he pulls his school dress shirt over the tank he’d worn to sleep and shucks off his shorts. he ties his navy blue tie on as he’s running out of the door, toeing on his shoes as he goes. he can just imagine the looks he’s going to get when he ends up walking into the auditorium late like some lame first year who doesn’t know his way around.

by some miraculous chain of events, the train he takes to school is on time, there aren’t too many people in his train car smushed up against him, and he manages to squeak his way into school just before the gates close. he’s only five minutes late now, and as he strolls almost leisurely through the hallways, he notices a lone figure wandering around. he can tell by the uniform that that’s not a teacher, that it’s a student. he’s about to pass by to get to the auditorium when the other student hears his footsteps and turns, and howon stops dead in his tracks.

“excuse me, sorry, i’m lost. my stupid brother goes here, but he left me so he could go canoodle with his boyfriend, and i don’t know where the auditorium is. could you please show me the way there?” the other student says, and howon stares at him, not really processing any of his words. his eyes are large and round, and his voice is melodious and lilting, and when howon steps closer to him, he can tell that the other student’s a first year by the tie around his neck (they’re color coded at his school: maroon for first years, dark green for second years, and navy blue for third years). he smells good. like flowers, but more than that, like an omega.

howon hates dramas. he thinks they’re dumb and unrealistic with barely the thinnest thread of reason and sanity linking them to real life, but in this moment, he has a sudden realization that maybe dramas aren’t really as terrible as he thinks they are. he takes the other boy’s wrist and leads him through the hallways, turning the corners, until they’re standing in front of a pair of double doors.

“thank you, sunbaenim,” the student says, bowing at the waist, and it’s then that howon realizes he’s a lot taller than howon himself is. he brushes a stray strand of hair behind his ear when he stands back up and moves to open the door, but howon moves on instinct and blocks him. the first year blinks down at howon. “sunbaenim?”

“what’s your name?” howon asks, and he extends a hand. the other student takes it, bowing again, but not as far down this time. the spark that passes through howon’s body is electric, and he wonders if he’s the only one who felt it. “i’m lee howon. i’m a third year.”

the student blinks at him again before he smiles, and howon notices that he has a mole on his nose. that’s cute. “i’m lee sungjong, a first year, as you probably noticed. thank you for showing me the way here again.”

he bows one last time before he opens the door to the auditorium and goes to the right, where all of the first years are seated. howon makes his way to the left and sits down with the rest of his class, and he feels like woohyun is giving him the stink eye from where he’s currently standing on stage and giving the opening speech. he doesn’t pay attention at all, instead thinking of a soft palm against his own and an even softer voice.

howon mentally sends up a prayer and a thanks that he hadn’t woken up with his alarms this morning, that he’d fallen asleep at five, that he’d spent nearly the entire night thinking up a new choreography for his club to use for this year’s chuseok festival, because if he hadn’t been late for school, there’s no way he would ever have met sungjong, no way he would ever have bumped into him in the hallways and helped him get to the auditorium. lee sungjong. sungjong. he won’t forget that name.

he’s distracted for the rest of the day. he’s been doodling all over his notebooks when his notes are usually the nicest of them all, organized and precise. he can practically feel sungyeol’s eyes burning into the back of his head all through korean and english and math, and when the bell finally rings for lunch, sungyeol prods him in the back with a violence that makes howon rear back and slap the beta’s hand away. “what do you want, stupid?”

“fucking spill, lee howon, what’s wrong with you?” sungyeol asks, getting up in howon’s face, and he can’t help the smile that spreads across his face at sungyeol’s annoyance. “see? see? what the hell’s wrong with you? you didn’t even respond when i said we should throw tomatoes at woohyun’s ugly head during the assembly!”

oh. they really should’ve done that. maybe next time woohyun has to do a speech they’ll do that. “nothing’s wrong,” howon starts, and he can practically see a vein on sungyeol’s forehead threaten to pop. “except i met the cutest fucking omega ever.” howon preens, then adds, just to piss sungyeol off, “cuter than myungsoo.”

sungyeol’s eyes narrow at him. “okay, first off, no one’s cuter than myungsoo. you’re just blind, myungsoo’s face is an actual work of art. and his personality, too, but his face? hello? also, what the fuck? you were late and you managed to meet a cute first year? who even does that?”

“i do, obviously. you wish you were as good as i am.” howon leans back in his chair, smug, and in the seat behind him, sungyeol leans back as well, crossing his arms over his chest. he takes out his phone and taps something out, and howon takes his phone out as well when he feels a slight buzz.

12:31 sungyeolie: yo nam get ur ass over here 12:31 sungyeolie: hoaegi has a fucking crush 12:32 sungyeolie: on a first year 12:32 sungyeolie: cradle robber

“alright, describe him. let’s see if he’s really as cute as you think he is,” sungyeol says as woohyun throws the door of their classroom open and bounds over to where they’re sitting. woohyun’s in another class, and howon would miss him more if he weren’t an insufferable prick some of the time, which means all of his waking moments.

“spill, lee, we only have twenty-eight minutes and you’re wasting them all,” woohyun says, sitting down into an unoccupied chair next to them. he steeples his fingers underneath his chin. “let’s hear who’s got your heart in his hands, you fucking cradle robber.”

howon stares at woohyun. “ew, don’t say that again, or i’ll tell sunggyu-hyung, who, by the way, was the original cradle robber, that you’re cheating on him with a first year omega.”

woohyun snorts. “sunggyu-hyung knows i only have eyes for him, you dumbass. besides, i’d never leave him for a stupid first year. my boyfriend is in university. seoul national university school of law, by the way, in case you guys haven’t heard.”

of course they’ve heard. when sunggyu had gotten his acceptance letters from universities two years back, woohyun had been the first one to tell everyone, even before sunggyu himself had a chance to let people know, that he’d gotten into his first choice program at his first choice school.

“we know. you totally don’t tell us every other second,” sungyeol says drily, before he turns his attention back on howon. “okay, shoot.”

howon lets the smile that had been threatening to break out onto his face the entire day finally show, and he catches woohyun’s and sungyeol’s expressions of disgust before he starts. “so i met him when he was lost this morning before the assembly because i was late and he couldn’t find the auditorium because he said his idiot brother left him alone to go canoodle with his boyfriend, whatever that means, and i walked him to the auditorium and he was super pretty and tall and nice and he smelled super good.” howon thinks back to that moment, closing his eyes to relive the memory. “oh, and he had a really cute mole.”

when howon finally opens his eyes again, he notices that both of the expressions on sungyeol’s and woohyun’s faces have changed. woohyun’s face has morphed into something akin to wild glee and he keeps looking at sungyeol and then at howon, while sungyeol’s is somewhere in between shock and barely-concealed annoyance. “what? i told you he’s cuter than myungsoo.”

“where,” sungyeol starts, his voice sounding strangled, “was his mole?”

what a weird question. sungyeol is weird. maybe he wants to ditch myungsoo for sungjong, but howon has the answer to that ready. “on his nose. it was really cute.”

woohyun lets out the loudest bark of laughter he’s ever heard, and he nearly falls off of the chair trying to hold his stomach. howon watches him cackle, wondering why he’s laughing so hard, before he looks back up at sungyeol’s face. sungyeol’s face is strangely placid now, smooth and uncreased, and howon doesn’t know why that unsettles him more than it should.

the lunch bell rings, and when woohyun leaves, he claps both sungyeol and howon on the backs. “good luck, guys. seriously, good luck.” as woohyun walks back to his own class, howon can just barely make out him saying to himself, “oh, this is so good, this is so fucking good,” and he wonders just what about this is good.

the rest of the day ends in a flurry of syllabi being handed out and a strange sensation prickling at the back of his neck. he feels like sungyeol’s glaring daggers into his back, but howon has no idea why. maybe he’s feeling threatened on myungsoo’s behalf. as he packs up his books to leave, he notices that sungyeol’s still in his seat. “not going home?” he asks, hands pausing on the straps of his backpack.

“i have to help myungsoo unpack some stuff for his photography club,” sungyeol mutters, his eyes fixed on his phone. “just go.”

howon doesn’t need to be told twice. he’s almost at the entrance of the school when he sees a familiar silhouette in front of him, and his heart very nearly leaps. he walks just a little bit faster so he can catch up, and he claps sungjong on the arm. “hey, sungjong,” howon says, grinning.

“hi, howon-sunbaenim,” sungjong says, inclining his head just slightly. his strides are long, and howon has to take faster steps than he usually does to keep up. “how was your day?”

“it was alright,” howon replies. he has time to kill today, and it’s just the first day of schoo, so he doesn’t really have anything to lose either way, but— “do you want me to walk you home? or to the train station? or something?”

“i’m fine, sunbaenim,” sungjong says, apology in his voice, and before howon can let himself be too crushed, he continues. “i usually take the train home with my brother, anyway.”

“ah, makes sense.” howon nods. “by the way, you can just call me hyung. no need for sunbaenim or anything like that, okay?”

“okay, hyung.” sungjong smiles, and howon wonders if he’s the first upperclassman to befriend this kid. they’re outside the gates now, and howon thinks that the reason they’d made it so quickly is because of sungjong’s long strides. “um, this is where i usually wait for my brother, but he’s a little bit late today, so—”

“it’s fine,” howon says, waving it off. if he finds out who sungjong’s brother is, maybe he can gain some brownie points with him if he and the brother already know each other. “what class is your brother in?”

“hm, i think he’s in 3-b? i don’t know for sure, though. sorry, hyung.”

3-b? that’s the class he and sungyeol are in, so he definitely knows who sungjong’s brother is. he’s about to ask when he spies sungyeol walking towards them, his hands intertwined with myungsoo’s. he almost waves to sungyeol to call him over to ask if he knows sungjong’s brother as well when sungjong follows his line of sight and he turns.

howon nearly opens his mouth to introduce the two before sungjong beats him to it. “hyung, you’re so late! i told you i wanted to get home early tonight to help umma out with dinner,” sungjong whines, smacking sungyeol on the arm. “you’re gonna have to walk aga and nari and kkong later then, okay?”

“okay, okay, i’m sorry,” sungyeol laughs, but his eyes aren’t smiling at all. his eyes fix on howon’s then, and he cocks his head in a false show of innocence. “oh? who’s this?”

howon sees myungsoo’s eyebrows knit together in confusion, and he thinks that he would be feeling the same way if all of the puzzle pieces weren’t slowly and steadily falling into place.

“oh, this is howon-hyung,” sungjong says, a smile back on his face. “he helped me when i was lost this morning. he’s very nice.”

“oh, really? howon-hyung?” sungyeol asks, that damned wide-eyed expression still on his face, and howon knows that he’s fixated onto the lack of honorific. “well, howon-hyung, it’s very nice to meet you. thanks so much for taking care of my baby brother. so good to see that there are still decent people in the world.”

“you too,” howon can only bow back numbly when sungyeol does, and when myungsoo opens his mouth to interject, sungyeol’s grabbing both myungsoo and sungjong by the arms and frog-marching them in the direction of the train station.

“bye, howon-hyung!” sungjong yells out, and howon waves at him until he can’t see them anymore. when they’re gone, he stands there for what feels like hours, and he feels a cold dread start to seep into his bones.

lee sungjong is the brother of lee sungyeol, the guy he’s known since elementary school, the guy he’s been best friends with ever since, the guy who’s on a speaking basis with howon’s own parents.

fuck.