Chapter 39

'Cause trust me, I'll be with you, star lost

"How is it you all don't have to see a chiropractor three times a week?" I asked, frowning at the heap all the members had folded themselves into on the couch.

"We probably should, to be honest," Felix said beside me, raising his voice so I could hear him over the running tap but not so loudly he would wake the dozing members. "Chan's joints are pretty much poprocks at this point, though, so I figure it's too late."

I snorted, passing him a plate. "Have you guys heard yourself during stretches? It's like I'm listening to a Nayeon hit solo song."

Felix laughed, sliding it into the dishwasher. He was back talking to me—he had never been the kind to give someone the cold shoulder, even for this—but sometimes it still felt hollow, like he was doing it more to keep up his charade of 'everything is perfect' with the members and himself than because he genuinely enjoyed my company. "I doubt they'll stay there the whole night. Some of us do have beds, after all."

I peered over at the mess the members were in. Seungmin, Minho and Jisung had gone to bed already, but the others were still huddled around Jeongin, and didn't seem to have any intention of leaving him.

"I almost feel bad for Jeongin," I said, holding out another plate.

Felix didn't take it. I looked up in surprise to see that his gaze was fixed wistfully on the members. It occurred to me, then, to wonder why Felix wasn't part of the Stray Kid pile in the living room; he was by far the most physically affectionate out of all of them. Group hugs were his happy place.

And then I realized his eyes were on one member in particular.

"Things are still awkward, huh?" I asked quietly in English.

Felix started, blinking out of his reverie, and realized I was still holding out a plate. "Yeah," he muttered, and quickly took it, leaning over the dishwasher so he didn't have to look me in the eye.

I swallowed tightly. "Felix, I—"

"I know." He smiled at me, and it looked nothing like him, thin-lipped and not reaching his eyes. "It's alright."

He didn't know—not this, not what Hyunjin had told me on the ride back to the car—but maybe it was better that he didn't. Either way, it wouldn't fix what had been broken between them; it wouldn't change anything. If Felix knew, it would only agonize him more. 

So I kept my mouth shut, fearful of ruining things even more than I already had.

At least this way Felix knew his feelings for Hyunjin were real, because fickle love is always easy, and this was anything but that.

"Thank you for helping me with the dishes, anyway," I told him.

Felix nodded. "I thought I'd give Changbin-hyung a break." Once again, his gaze fell on the members—I didn't think he even realized it. "Plus, it always feels good to me to clean up after a good meal."

"I agree with that," I said, handing him the last plate. "Minho did a good job on this."

Felix nodded. "How he keeps his hair from getting in all the food he cooks, I have no idea." He touched his own long hair regretfully.

I hummed in agreement, reaching to close the dishwasher. "Yeah, he must have some kind of—"

Hair tie.

"That little shit," I gasped, slamming the dishwasher closed.

Felix blinked. "Pardon?"

"No time—sorry—gotta go," I said, my feet already carrying me from the room, the memory I'd just remembered playing in my head: Minho, getting ready to cook the stew. Minho, tying his hair back.

Minho, tying his hair back with my special banana hair clips I'd brought specifically from America that had mysteriously disappeared a week ago, his lips curved into a smirk.

I found Minho's room in a fury and pushed the door open, fully prepared to wake him up and yell at him for stealing my hair clips until that insufferable smirk had been beaten off his face—

And stopped straight in my tracks. Because Minho was there—and he wasn't alone.

They lay together on the bed, Jisung propped up against the pillows with Minho curled up against him; Jisung's arm wrapped around him, Minho's head on his shoulders, more vulnerable than I'd ever seen him. They were both half-asleep, so wholly lost in each other I doubted that they'd notice me if I walked up to them and started dancing to Miroh.

I stood there, frozen as surely as a deer in headlights, trying to gather my wits back around me. I held my breath, quickly trying to slip out of the room—and utterly failing. My foot landed on a loose floorboard, letting out a sharp, creaking noise, startling in the quiet silence. Jisung's eyes snapped open, and his gaze met mine.

So many emotions crossed his face in that second I couldn't decipher them all, but the fear was plain as day, and I felt a wave of guilt crash over me so heavily I slipped out of the room before he could do anything, closing the door behind me and fleeing down the hall. Not the living room—the members were still there. I slipped into the garden, leaning gratefully into the clear air, feeling like a mouse with its tail between its legs.

I attempted to wrap my head around what I had seen—what I had walked in on. Then I decided against it. Maybe I was best that I put no more thought into it, because ... because of many, many reasons, the two main ones called Han Jisung and Lee Minho.

Jisung came to me less than five minutes later, noiselessly entering the garden and shutting the door behind him. I opened my mouth to apologize—I felt I should, for intruding on a moment that was so obviously personal—but he spoke first.

"It's not what it looks like."

The apologies on the tip of my tongue melted, and I blinked in surprise. "Huh?"

"We're not—" Jisung cut himself off, his arms curling around himself. "I don't know what you thought you saw, Yeji-noona, but it was nothing. I swear." He looked at me, serious in a way I'd never seen before.

The dorm's garden was big—the size of one of the member's rooms—but small enough that Jisung stood only four or so feet from me. Minho had managed to grow a ridiculous amount of things in the confined space: there were flowers in the corner, where the purple orchids were, and vegetables in the beds around us and lining the walls. The lights strung over our heads, the faint smell of Minho's perfume clinging to the air—he was everywhere. And I wondered if Jisung noticed it too.

Against my will, my mind flashed back to how I'd seen him, holding Minho as tenderly as he did. As soon as I'd seen them together, all the things I'd seen in the past three weeks came rushing back to me: the little touches, the stolen glances, the playful words that were maybe more than playful. Maybe I was jumping to conclusions; the members were always very comfortable with one another. I knew that. Half of them were sleeping in a pile right now. Jisung was telling me now, to my face, that there was nothing between them. And yet...

That moment had seemed so quietly peaceful, so intimate; I realized in a sudden burst that it had made me think of me and Claire.

"Jisung," I said gently, and he broke.

"Stop," he said, voice cracking, and turned away so I couldn't see his face. He faced me again after a second, running his hand through his hair roughly. "You can't—you can't tell anyone, Yeji. Please. Just forget what you saw."

"You don't have to hide," I said quietly, reaching out to touch his shoulder. Some of the tension seemed to leave Jisung's body at that comforting gesture, and I wondered how scared he must have felt when he saw me, how exposed. "It's okay, Jisung. You and Minho—"

"Don't." Jisung shrugged away from me, face distraught. He blew out a breath, attempting to calm himself; after a second his eyes met mine, thunderous in the darkened evening. "It isn't what you think. There is no me and Minho—there can't be. So I need you to forget what you saw. Do you understand?"

He couldn't expect me to believe him—everything I'd seen told me there was a Minho and Jisung. But I understood why Jisung wanted me to keep it a secret—why he only held Minho like that behind closed doors. I knew what would happen if it got out. I knew the hatred the world would give them; I'd faced it myself.

I knew what it would mean for Jisung's career, his reputation, his ambitions if this got out. It is our most fragile possessions, the ones we hold closest to our heart, that are the ones that can truly destroy us.

I thought of the lights behind Jisung's eyes, thought of what it would mean if people started spitting hateful things on him and dragging him down.

So I nodded, bearing my trust on my face like a battle helmet. "I understand."

Jisung's shoulders loosened. "Thank you."

He turned to go, but stopped and turned back to me. "Please ... please don't think of us any differently. And please, do not speak a word. I owe you my life for this. I can't—" he swallowed, voice softening. "'My heart is a hurricane, and he is the eye.'"

That STAY—the one who was Jisung biased. Those were her words. I looked at Jisung, unable to bear to see him like that: alone in the cold air, eyes ragged and weary, lines etching themselves deeply onto his brow. I moved forward, wrapping my arm around his shoulders, pulling him close. The night breeze was chilly, but I clung tight to Jisung, sharing the warmth. However much comfort I had, I would give, and I did.

I thought of that STAY; I wondered if she was anything like Claire. Jisung's words pulled on that part of myself—the part that was made of fierce words and freckles and greenish eyes, and Claire's voice filled my mind, something she'd said to me long ago when we were curled up together in the quiet of the night, both of us at ease by the other's steady presence.

I didn't know how much I could need someone until I needed you, she'd said against my hair, and in that moment I was so wholly in love with her the only thing I'd been able to say back was me too.

I wondered if Jisung felt the same—if he knew how much I related to him, and his secret. I opened my mouth to tell him, but he was already gone, had been for a while—slipping out of the garden and returning to a room that wasn't his own and a boy that was, at least behind closed doors, where they could wrap their arms around each other and pretend the world began and ended with where their bodies touched and their hearts beat in perfect synchrony.