#ksjitae

for hoetaek, sadness and loneliness go hand in hand. they’re an old couple, tethered together with strings of memories hoetaek would rather forget. whenever one crawls it’s way into hoetaek’s heart, the other’s not far behind. sometimes, if they’re lucky, loneliness visits first, and they can seek out a friend’s company before sadness’s familiar ache settles too harshly in their chest. it’s loneliness that brings hoetaek to the greenhouses today, in search of one of their closest friends. 

in hindsight, hoetaek should’ve messaged jisoo first to find out if he was free. hoetaek was sure jisoo didn’t have class at this time, and he hadn’t been hanging out under the bleachers, or in his room, so hoetaek had assumed they’d be able to find him here. but then again they’re bad enough at keeping track of their own schedule, their friends’ are a lost cause. jisoo’s not here, in fact the greenhouses are seemingly empty, nothing but plants to keep them company, though hoetaek figure’s that’ll have to do for now. 

they wander through the rows of plants, looking through them and trying to remember which ones are jisoo’s so they can at least report back on their status, and a quiet five minutes pass before hoetaek realises they’re not alone. there’s a boy here, tucked away towards the back. a high schooler, but not like most of the high schoolers hoetaek generally ignores, they know this one. they don’t know his name, but back before keisung had decided to add a high school, hoetaek had seen this kid hanging around, enough times for his face to stick somewhere in hoetaek’s memory. 

they’re not entirely sure what it is that makes them decide to talk to this kid, but hoetaek puts it down to the fact that they’re starting to crave company the way they crave cigarettes. so they approach him, keeping enough distance to (hopefully) not potentially frighten the boy, but coming up close enough for him to hear them when they speak softly. “what do you think the plants talk about?” hoetaek asks, brushing their fingers over the petals of the sunflower next to them. “they whisper to each other, don’t you think? through the wind. I bet they love telling stories.”

“and that’s the last of it.” seungcheol couldn’t help but sigh out at the stack of papers he’d just finished checking for his history classes in keisung. not many students took history seriously, and he’s pretty sure even the students’ in bigger universities were the same. hell, he’d met so many of them while he was in college so it’s not even surprising that students in keisung were the same. he was ready to go home, have dinner with habaek, maybe watch a few shows, before finally knocking out. he wasn’t that young anymore after all.

but then jitae had told him he was coming home for the night and so he waited in his office, a cup of coffee in his hands. finding jitae had been the very reason why he’d been given direction in his life after he lost his brother and girlfriend in that gang fight. jitae had given him the will to live again. seungcheol was going to do everything for jitae (and minsu and lux) if it meant he was going to be happy. besides, habaek missed jitae a lot too. his office door opening had him looking up before smiling as he saw who it was. “hey. ready to go?”

ryu jitae, though, was a completely different story. he was oddly shy and good-natured, two things that taejoon would never have expected for the second-in-command of the outsiders to be. it greatly confused him, to be honest -- weren’t leaders and their second-in-commands supposed to be more... assertive? he, of all people, knew of the importance of that, considering that he was close friends with the two leaders of his own clique. taejoon had personally never talked to jitae, only having seen him around the school compound a few times before, but he was undoubtedly curious about the boy.

and so it was a twisted fate of some sort that brought taejoon to the back of the school at a more quiet time -- he’d opted for some silence instead of his usual dose of boisterousness today -- and right in the presence of the aforementioned kid. raising an eyebrow at jitae, taejoon gave him a half-smile. more a smirk, really. “well. if it isn’t the infamous ryu jitae.” there was literally no one else around but him and the other. this was a good time to pick apart the other boy, figure out exactly what was going on with him. “what’s up?”