Chapter Text
It all started, as everything usually does in Sungwoon’s life, because he had made some bad choices in friends. Although, to be fair, Sungwoon didn’t have much choice in being friends with Jaehwan, given that they are together 4 days a week in different classes, and the rest of the time at home. The only explanation for this is that Sungwoon has the worst of luck in all known universes.
“I don’t know how volleyball works!” Sungwoon says again in case the first sixteen times he protested fell on deaf ears. “I don’t even know the rules.”
“There is a ball and a net, and whoever scores more wins.” Jaehwan explains – no sarcasm detected – casually and Sungwoon resists the urge to shove Jaehwan head first into the pile of soggy fries he is currently digging into.
“Don’t be a smartass,” Sungwoon snaps at him instead. “How do I withdraw?”
“You can’t.” Jaehwan answers breezily. “The match is in one week and they don’t allow withdrawals.”
“I can just not show up.” Sungwoon glares at him.
“Do that and die.” Jaehwan threatens. There is a smudge of ketchup on his cheek and Sungwoon is feeling too vindictive now to point that out. “I barely got Jisung hyung to sign up for the music department instead of theatre. Fuck double majoring. A lot of people are joining as their non-music dept. just because they think music department sucks at sports.”
“And they’d be right.” Sungwoon says, and gestures around himself. “Me. The prime example. I don’t do sports. None of us do sports. That’s why we are in National University of Arts, and not Sports.”
“We all know you are a weak nerd,” Gunhee pipes in and Sungwoon turns his glare towards him. Gunhee just laughs and throws a bundle of tissues at Jaehwan’s face. “Wipe your face, you fucking Neanderthal.”
“What about Minki? Didn’t he win a silver at last year’s tennis match?” Sungwoon suggests desperately. “Ask him to join instead. Or Dongho.”
“Minki is gunning for gold in tennis this year so he can’t do volleyball.” Jaehwan wipes roughly at his cheek and replies. “And Dongho said he doesn’t want to.”
Sungwoon blinks. “And you give up just like that? While you are here steamrolling me into hell?”
Jaehwan snorts. “Please. Do you think I can make Dongho do anything he doesn’t want to do? Plus, he is joining wrestling. You are the only one who hasn’t signed up for anything.”
“Because it is stupid.” Sungwoon scrunches his face and flops back into his chair, accidentally kicking Gunhee’s legs under the table. He doesn’t apologize because it is Gunhee’s own fault for having unrealistically long legs anyway.
Sungwoon just doesn’t understand why they, a University of Arts as it says so with large gold letters on the main gate, need to hold a sports week for Chuseok. It is not like the kids from any sports college are putting on special arts shows for their celebration. Yes, he understands community and competition spirit and all that, but let’s be real here, all it does is generate more rivalry between the majors.
So yes, he has his misgivings about Chuseok Sports Week. It is not like he holds any deep hatred for it. He just thinks it is unnecessary and doesn’t care about it in the way a lot of other people do. Who is winning when Taehyun is getting up at 5 AM to train for his soccer match when Sungwoon is sleeping sound and long in his warm bed anyway?
The most he did at the past two years’ Sports week was showing up to cheer for his major and eat hotdogs while booing at the other majors. But this year apparently is going to be different because Jaehwan is a dick.
“Look, you just need to stand there in formation.” Jaehwan takes pity on him and says in placation. “Me and Jisung hyung and Minhyun will surround you like it is a Bermuda Triangle for volleyball. No ball shall come your way.”
“I don’t think you understand what Bermuda Triangle is.” Sungwoon sighs. “Who are we playing against anyway?”
“The Double Ds.” Jaehwan at least has the decency to look sheepish.
“Motherfucker.” Sungwoon says, with feelings. “No. I am not doing it. Taehyun is going to laugh at me for at least two years.”
“And that is different from your daily life how?” Gunhee laughs, and Sungwoon kicks, intentionally this time, at his legs.
“He is not doing volleyball.” Jaehwan tries to reassure him.
“That’s even worse. He is gonna turn up in the audience with a 360 camera and like 3 drones to capture my flailing in every angle possible. I am not doing it, especially in front of the Double Ds.”
“Can we stop calling the dance dept. Double Ds?” Gunhee whines. “Because all I can think about is Ong Seongwoo with jiggling tits and that’s not what I want my brain to be spending energy on.”
“Literally no one else but you think about that,” Sungwoon comments. “Maybe your brain is the problem here.”
Gunhee makes a show of rolling his eyes, which unfortunately just looks like he is being possessed.
“Why did you sign up for volleyball anyway?” Sungwoon nudges at Gunhee and asks. “Does Jaehwan have any blackmail material on you?”
“I signed myself up.” Gunhee says, unjustifiably proud.
Sungwoon snorts. “You? You tried to run after a bus for 30 seconds and asked me to call an ambulance because you think you were having a heart failure.”
“I am a new person now.” Gunhee waves his hand with a flourish and says.
“That was last weekend.” Sungwoon reminds him, but Gunhee doesn’t budge.
“I’ll train for a couple of days and it’d be fine. I used to play amateur volleyball back in high school. You worry about yourself.”
“But I don’t want to.” Sungwoon whines rather loudly, drawing attention from other tables in the café.
“If you don’t, we don’t have enough players and that’d be an auto forfeit.” Jaehwan says. “To the Double Ds. We’ll be automatically giving them a gold medal. Do you want that kind of wound on your pride, Sungwoon? At least, if we go down, we’ll go down swinging, like men.”
Gunhee purses his lips and gives a mock applaud. Sungwoon snorts.
“Ok, Braveheart. Let’ s see how much of your pride will be wounded when we lose because I have the hands-eye coordination of a blind bat.”
“You’ll do fine.” Jaehwan leans in and pats Sungwoon on the shoulder. “You just stand there, look pretty and let us real sportsmen do the work. We’ll win this shit.”
Sungwoon really, highly doubts it.
When Sungwoon gets back to his apartment, Taehyun is at the fridge, gulping milk straight down from carton.
“The milk’s gonna spoil quickly.” Sungwoon complains and shoves him out of the way to grab his yogurt cup.
“Not if I can drink it quicker than it can spoil.” Taehyun shrugs and puts the carton back. “What are you looking for?”
“My yogurt cup. I bought it last night. Did you see it?” Sungwoon is definitely sure he puts it right next to the probably-expired tuna can of questionable origin. Jaehwan does not like yogurt so he couldn’t have taken it.
“Erm,” A voice comes from the living room and Sungwoon lifts his head out of the fridge to see Kang Daniel’s head poking from the back of the sofa. “Wouldn’t happen to be this one, right?”
He lifts his hand to show the half-demolished cup of Sungwoon’s very own yuzu yogurt cup.
“Why…” Sungwoon mutters as Kang Daniel smacks his lips guiltily. “Taehyun hyung said I can take anything from the fridge.”
Sungwoon turns to glare at Taehyun, who gives him the fakest smile. “I thought there was nothing worth eating in the fridge.”
“Thanks,” Kang Daniel mutters from the sofa. “I’ll buy you a new one tomorrow, Sungwoon hyung.”
Sungwoon wonders when they even got close enough for Kang Daniel to be calling him hyung. “Forget it,” he says and closes the fridge. If he slams the fridge door a little too roughly, it’s because nothing is going his way today.
“Yo. I heard you signed up for volleyball.” Taehyun crosses over to sit down next to Kang Daniel on the sofa and says. “What happened?”
“Jaehwan,” Sungwoon says in way of explanation and doesn’t expand further even at Taehyun’s questioning eyebrows.
“I didn’t know you play volleyball.” Kang Daniel gives him one of his trademark smiles and says. Sungwoon is temporarily blinded by his smile that he doesn't even have the time to think if he is being sincerely curious or being condescending. “Are you any good?”
“Oh, the best.” Taehyun smirks with a very familiar glint in his eyes and Sungwoon temporarily considers murder. “You wouldn’t even believe.”
“Nice,” Kang Daniel nods enthusiastically. “Guess I’ll be playing against you. Looking forward to it, hyung.”
“Me too, pal.” Taehyun launches into giggly fits and says.
Sungwoon switches to considering murder-suicide.
“We are gonna go a couple of rounds on COD. You wanna join?” Taehyun asks after he calms down from the thoughts of humiliating Sungwoon.
“No,” Sungwoon rolls his eyes.
“Stop sulking.” Taehyun says. “I’ll go buy you your yogurt cup now if you want it that badly.”
Kang Daniel puts down his console and straightens his back.
“Forget it, dude. I am not sulking.” Sungwoon grits. “Anyway, I have shit to do so keep the noise down.”
“Roger.” Taehyun salutes and Sungwoon resists the urge to roll his eyes again and stomps over into his bedroom, ignoring the battle noises that immediately flared up from the TV.
You’d think Sungwoon would know better than housing with a dance major, but he knew Taehyun since they were little. Hometown acquaintances and all that. When he run into Taehyun a couple of weeks before orientation, both of them with equally doomed chances at getting an on-campus dorm because they enrolled late, Sungwoon thought he got lucky. Little did he know that Taehyun would, over the years, accumulate more and more of his annoying Double Ds friends and make their off-campus place some sort of a hangout man-cave.
But it is not like Sungwoon can complain because when he or Jaehwan cannot book any practice room on campus for their vocal practices, they just come back here and Taehyun had gone through about approximately 50 earplugs to this date.
Sungwoon throws himself onto the bed, plugging in his earphones and decides to be self-indulgent for now on the ground of today being a complete suckhole. His still pending assignment on Folk Music can wait until he is in a better mood. (Actually, it cannot because it is due day after tomorrow and Sungwoon had gone as far as typing out the title and three summary points on what he wants to write, but whatever, he’ll pull an all-nighter tomorrow night)
He means to only take a short nap before getting up for shower, but he must have fallen asleep for longer because when he wakes up, his left side which he slept on is numb and his phone is dead. Sungwoon blinks for a couple of seconds before realizing that the consistent knocks at the door are what woke him up.
“Hmm…what?” He asks groggily to a dressed up Taehyun at the door.
“You are already asleep?” Taehyun raises an eyebrow.
“What time is it?” Sungwoon sighs. “What do you want?”
“Little past 11, Grandpa.” Taehyun snorts. “Niel is leaving so I’m gonna go grab supper with him. You wanna join?”
“No.” Sungwoon tries to blink the drowsiness out of his head. “I’m gonna take a shower. Can you grab me some cup ramen when you get back though?”
“Sure,” Taehyun zips up his hoodie and leaves with Kang Daniel who looks back at Sungwoon to wave at him. Sungwoon just blinks blankly at him.
He had been sleeping for a little over 3 hours so Sungwoon decides it is enough and jumps into the shower. Time to tackle his Genre Music course assignment and regret signing up for that course because he thought it’d be easier than the Music Production course.
He is halfway into trying to translate and paraphrase an English online article he found into his report when someone rings the door bell.
Sungwoon is going to keep his promise and throw Jaehwan over the balcony if he loses his keys again.
He is too occupied coming up with different ways to yell at Jaehwan in the face that it catches him off guard when he pulls the door open and sees Kang Daniel standing at the door instead.
“Hi?” Sungwoon mumbles. “Did you forget something?”
“Here,” Kang Daniel smiles and pushes a plastic bag into Sungwoon’s chest. “Got you your yogurt cup back.”
Sungwoon looks down into the bag to see a couple of ramen cups and two yogurt cups.
“Taehyun hyung said you wanted some ramen as well?”
“You could have just given it back to Taehyun.” Sungwoon says because he doesn’t know what to say. It is not like he has ever had a complete conversation with Kang Daniel outside of the customary greetings, or even be alone with him at all. Except for that one time when Sungwoon got pissed drunk at a school festival a couple of months ago and Kang Daniel, of all people, had to bring him home.
“He met up with Seongwoo hyung and the rest. I think they might be out late. I just dropped by on my way back to the dorms.” Kang Daniel replies. “Also, I got you a yuzu cup and a peach cup. Their peach yogurt tastes way better.”
“Thanks?” Sungwoon mumbles, a little awkward.
“Hey, you wanna practice together?” Kang Daniel asks, out of the blue. “For the volleyball match?”
“Erm. No?” Sungwoon replies a little too fast, and winces at himself at how harsh the refusal comes out. “I mean, we are supposed to be competition, no?”
“Yeah, you are right. Of course.” Kang Daniel looks strangely flustered ? Sungwoon is not sure if that is the right word for it but he looks like he is fumbling a little bit. “Anyway, gotta run. See you around, bro.”
“Yeah. Ok.” Sungwoon mutters after Kang Daniel’s turning back.
That was weird.
Kang Daniel was right though.
The peach yogurt tastes way better.