Chapter Text
“Welcome to the new semester. Grab a white raincoat. The next five months are going to be nothing but toxic fallout.”
Kyungsoo huffed quietly as he scrolled through the academy’s main invite-only Kakao chat, Hedgion Gossip. The driver was already pulling up to the gates, and the Maybach came to a soft stop by the main entrance. First came the faint squeal of tires, then the crunch of gravel under the wheels. The chauffeur stepped out in a business suit, walked around the car, and opened the door.
Kyungsoo got out slowly, adjusted the collar of his cream turtleneck, then tugged at the linen shirt carelessly thrown over his shoulders and slipped his hands into the pockets of his sand-colored trousers. He squared his shoulders with deliberate confidence, as if someone nearby had hissed, straighten your back.
A moment later, a Genesis growled low behind them. It had caught up to them on the highway and followed them the whole way here.
Kim Jongin stepped out of it.
His blazer fit like it had been made for him. His black shirt was undone by three buttons. His hair was ruffled, either from the wind or because he had gotten ready in a hurry.
No one opened the door for him, but as he got out, he tossed something to the security guard behind the wheel, slammed the door shut, and headed toward Do, flipping his car key from one hand to the other. He rarely let a driver take him anywhere unless he was drunk.
Or sleep-deprived.
Judging by the hour, today it was the second option.
“You had twenty minutes to get ready,” Kyungsoo said without even turning his head. He was scanning the parking lot, apparently checking whether certain people’s cars were already there.
Among the rows sat Kim Taehyung’s McLaren, Sehun’s Bentley, and Jennie Kim’s G-Wagon.
So stability still existed.
“And you had twenty years to learn how to greet people normally instead of with this passive-aggressive bullshit,” Jongin replied calmly, clapping Do on the shoulder.
Kyungsoo grimaced slightly and gave a low huff.
“I haven’t even started on the reason you’re late.”
Jongin glanced over his shoulder at Kyungsoo’s Maybach pulling away.
“I thought you’d come in your Panamera.” He turned back to him, his gaze sliding over Kyungsoo’s profile. “Mother rejected it?”
“I decided to spend the morning reading the chat. Didn’t want to get distracted behind the wheel,” Do shrugged. “Who knows, I might miss something important.”
“Like the sudden re-election of the academy president?”
“Don’t be dramatic,” Kyungsoo said, rolling his eyes without hiding his amusement.
They entered the building together.
Hedgion Academy was not exactly a university in the traditional sense. It was more like an elite training camp. Minimum lectures, maximum practice, and a diploma from people who were actually respected in the industry. There were no departments, only tracks in different fields. Some came here to genuinely study. Others had been shoved in by their parents.
The students were heirs from Mokpo to Seoul. That, probably, was the only hierarchy that truly mattered here. If your family business was rooted in the capital, you automatically dragged everyone else behind you.
There were no official grades, but there were perks of their own: new connections, first internships in subsidiary playgrounds, first deals between students whose choices affected their family businesses.
Arranged marriages.
And so it went for four years, until both the groundwork and the frontal lobe had some chance of forming.
Jongin and Kyungsoo were not kings of the hive here, but ignoring them would simply have been stupid. Third-generation chaebols whose offices stood in the center of Seoul were not an empty sound to anyone trying to drag their business out of the anonymous mass and turn it into something the market could not replace.
ECLAT HOTEL GROUP and EDEN DONSANG FOOD GROUP gave weight to students from the same tracks who came from smaller regions. Their fathers’ experience was something people measured themselves against, which meant their heirs inevitably drew attention too.
While everyone else swelled on the wave of Hallyu, K-pop, and tourism, those two could proudly say, “We stayed afloat back in ’98, when everyone else was chewing on dick and calling it dinner.”
For the record, Jongin’s father had once almost said exactly that to one of the Chinese investors.
The deal was approved.
Those were wild years for East Asia.
Jongin and Kyungsoo had not even existed as a plan back then, but they walked as though their birth itself had already been a contribution to the Korean economy.
A couple of students turned around and began whispering. The rector’s assistant looked down at the list, recognized them, nodded, and checked them off.
The hall buzzed with noise: who had fallen out with whom over the break, whose father had secured a new tranche for a project, who had been arrested, who was dating, and whose business was hovering over the edge of bankruptcy.
According to the chat, Haneul Air in Daegu had positioned itself as an eco-friendly airline. In the media, it was all green flags. In reality, the private flights popular with many businessmen had excellent logistics but still ran on kerosene. Eco-fuel was used on civilian flights only as an experimental feature.
Headlines: “Is Haneul Air Neglecting the Safety of Ordinary People?”
Shares had taken a nosedive, and Jo Midje, the CEO’s son and a third-year Hedgion student, had allegedly flown to Europe. This semester, only a faint ghost of him would remain within the academy walls.
Kyungsoo and Jongin walked through the rows at the center of the hall, carefully scanning the stage where the student council, the rector, the new course instructors, and Oh Sehun had gathered.
Heir to a media corporation.
In short: OH Media decided what the country thought about today, and what it was better off forgetting entirely.
Kyungsoo looked at Oh, then at Jongin.
Sehun was always dressed like he had an interview to attend: perfectly ironed collar, tie, blazer, and a tailored suit. Today, he had broken canon. Tie thrown into hell. Top two buttons undone. No idiotic fringe, just neat styling. Only one damp strand had escaped the structure.
“Someone’s in his rebel era today. No tie,” Kyungsoo noted, sitting in the center of the first row, in the right section. He lazily leaned back and crossed one leg over the other.
Jongin dropped into the seat next to him, throwing one arm over the back of Kyungsoo’s chair. He scrolled through his phone as if he could not care less about Sehun or this entire academic suffocation act.
“No uniform yet. He gets to walk his favorite Berluti and Hugo Boss.”
Sehun nodded to the rector, swiped a finger across his tablet, and the projector lit up. The academy logo appeared: a red-and-black H. He approached the podium, cleared his throat, and out of habit adjusted his collar where a tie should have been.
“Welcome to the new semester at Hedgion Academy,” Oh began, his gaze moving across the hall. “For those of you I haven’t met yet: I am Oh Sehun, president of the student council. We are glad to see new faces here. But we are even more glad to see those who have been with us for more than one year. Getting in here is not a privilege. It is a test of endurance, principles, and discipline.”
He continued in a voice that carried cold air with it.
“Sometimes he sounds exactly like a drama villain,” Jongin whispered, folding his arms over his chest.
“And in practice, he’s describing a transfer hub for heirs,” Kyungsoo huffed. “Korean Vincenzo. Stops a fight with one look, launches a report to the rector with one smirk.”
“You ask for a day off, but you ask without respect,” Jongin said, playing along in his best Godfather tone.
Sehun noticed their whispering, but gave no outward sign. He only narrowed his eyes for a second.
“You are not taught here to moralize the system,” he said louder, straightening his shoulders. “You are taught to accept its rules. Because from here on, the stakes only get higher.”
“Again, making everything about himself,” Jongin whispered.
“Rehearsal for the Ministry of Education,” Kyungsoo said, spreading his hands theatrically. “Look, we don’t just funnel money and buy accreditations. We also do things.”
“And remember,” Sehun smiled faintly, “there are no best people here. There are people whose minimum is someone else’s maximum, and vice versa. We are not equalized by money, but by ambition. The kind that keeps us from becoming the worst among the best.”
The applause was even and polite. Only a few first-years clapped as if he had saved their lives.
After that, Sehun continued reading the annual script: introduced the administration, the new instructors, the curators, and then gave the floor to Uhm Kijoon, the academy rector.
Jongin stretched, rolling his neck.
“Touching. He almost believed himself.”
“If he cried, I would wipe his tears with a credit card. Black platinum. Limited edition. Specially made for the tears of a president with an identity crisis.”
They exchanged a glance and quietly high-fived.
The noise in the hall died down again as the rector stepped forward with the kind of speech everyone usually used to finish sleeping off their morning.
****
Flashback. One year ago.
Sehun had only just taken over the presidency in the middle of the semester. Unplanned. Unexpected.
And the academy had already begun reshaping itself around him, because no matter how you looked at it, power fit him like a second skin.
Then the envelope arrived.
Black. Thick. Matte. Like a formal invitation to someone’s funeral. The word ROYAL was embossed in silver. The printing house had clearly gone insane over a limited run.
Kyungsoo held it with two fingers like a piece of evidence. His jaw was tense, as if he expected to find the fur of a dead rat inside and a letter saying, you’re next.
“Is this blackmail?” he asked without turning around.
Jongin sat on the windowsill with one leg bent, spinning the keys to his Porsche Turbo around one finger, irritating Kyungsoo on purpose.
“This is Hedgion, Do. Blackmail and business are best friends here.”
They learned the full list of “victims” only at the meeting.
Kim Jennie, queen of retail, ELARA RETAIL GROUP.
Kim Taehyung, HWA MOTORS, the auto industry.
Bae Joohyun, a legal dynasty. According to rumors, her uncle was a prison warden.
Kim Junmyeon, politics and GAON LOGISTICS.
And, of course, Jongin and himself.
They had been gathered like puppies in a pen: live together however you can.
The first meeting was on the top floor of the administrative wing. No cameras. Cleaning staff on a special schedule.
Sehun sat on the sofa at the back: straight spine, legs crossed, gray suit.
“Unfortunately for you, I know about all your shadow traffic, corruption schemes, and how many times they could have surfaced in the media,” he said calmly, as if he were reading a menu. He took out an A4 sheet. “Here are precedents that OH Media has suppressed.”
He passed it to Jennie.
She scanned it with her eyes.
Street races → rise in accidents → rise in demand for maintenance, insurance, lawyers.
GAON Logistics: counterfeit goods from China entering ELARA.
ECLAT and EDEN: cover for politicians’ corporate events, with documented presence of escort models, drugs, and other details that sounded like a sentence for anyone whose name appeared there.
Jennie passed it to Kyungsoo. Jongin moved closer on his own.
Do glanced down, saw Eclat, then Eden beside it, and almost hissed:
“Son of a bitch.”
Do lifted his gaze to Sehun. His signature stare, from under his brows.
“Is this blackmail?”
“It’s a fact,” Sehun cut him off. “And a guarantee that while we share a common interest, the club lives as a shadow fund disguised as an academic club.”
Jennie frowned.
“And we’re supposed to agree?”
Sehun smiled so falsely it was almost nauseating. In his own way.
“You already did.”
He turned the tablet around and showed them their parents’ signatures.
Representation by proxy.
“So we’re screwed,” Joohyun summarized. “Responsibility is on us until we fuck up. No ‘Dad, help me.’”
“Something like that,” Sehun nodded.
Jongin huffed.
“Fine, genius. What do you want from us?”
“Faces. Resources. And for you to stop pretending this has nothing to do with you. That way, OH Media has an interest in covering your leaks without unnecessary disputes with the people who failed to control them.”
Sehun slowly closed the tablet and tapped the cover.
“I’m not the author. I’m the translator. Details are with your parents.”
*****
Jongin and Kyungsoo went down the stairs in silence until the third landing.
“Have our ancestors lost their minds? Or does dementia start ticking toward fifty now?” Jongin was scrolling through the newsfeed, but he grumbled as if someone had put him under house arrest.
“It’s convenient for them. They like testing our responsibility… in perverted ways. You know that.” Kyungsoo caught up with him, falling into step on the stair. “The idea is fine until a crisis starts breathing down your neck.”
“And? They trust us with shadow finances? Like, ‘Kids, here’s your sandbox, but it’s made of cocaine, don’t screw it up’?” He looked back at him over his shoulder and added, “Even I wouldn’t trust myself with that, hyung.”
Kyungsoo laughed and clapped him on the shoulder.
“That’s exactly my point. The scary part isn’t that they dragged us in. The scary part is that criminal liability is apparently very motivating for focus. Our parents don’t pay the academy two hundred and forty million won a year so you can fuck your classmates.”
“Low,” Jongin nodded.
“Effective and… slightly cynical.”
“Low,” Jongin repeated.
And from that moment on, one thing was clear: responsibility belonged to each of them. The scale was unknown.
The worst part was that the entry and exit system did not look very different from either the mafia or a cult.
End flashback.
****
The traditional semester opening in the fourth-floor lounge looked less like a student gathering and more like a smoke break between board meetings.
The room was the size of a decent two-room apartment in Samseong: a minibar, two sofas, three armchairs, and a coffee table. A conference table stood slightly off to the side, as if reminding them they had not come here to drink tea. Everything was done in calm beige, brown, and black tones.
Sehun sat in the central armchair as though someone had placed him there for that exact purpose. He held a glass by the stem and turned it slightly. It was not alcohol. They were respectable students, after all.
Almost.
His left hand rested on the armrest, his gaze patient and expectant, like a professor who knew he was about to walk into a class full of problems.
Junmyeon sat in the corner by the conference table, flipping through some papers that were clearly not related to today’s agenda but to his father’s warehouse affairs.
Jennie stood at the minibar. White tweed, black dress, gold buttons. With one hand, she held a bottle of Perrier; with the other, she scrolled through the news. A glass clinked against the shelf. She did not even flinch. Very much, that wasn’t me, that was the glass.
Jongin lounged in the armchair opposite Sehun, phone in hand, one leg stretched out, the other bent. His expression hovered somewhere between nothing and the barest shadow of interest in why they were wasting their break on this.
Kyungsoo sat on the armrest of his chair. Legs crossed, hands clasped, chin lowered slightly. Every now and then, he glanced at the wall clock, which was the only thing in the room that did not lie.
Sehun leaned back. Exhaled.
“So. A problem. An independent journalist has appeared on the horizon. Her name is Park Sooyoung. She plays the long game. If she’s already started digging, someone has pointed her in the right direction.”
The silence thickened.
Everyone began calculating in their heads how much this would cost in PR teams, lawyers, and nerves.
Junmyeon nodded first.
“She took down an agricultural magnate with one article. Made him look like a moral monster because of a conflict with a nature reserve. Though that reserve wasn’t exactly a bird spa either.” He looked at Sehun. “What now? Gangnam’s golden youth as a breeding ground for moral decay?”
“And where exactly would she be wrong?” Joohyun asked lazily, not even looking up from her phone.
A faint smirk rolled through the room.
Jongin leaned back deeper and let out a long sigh.
“That’s the problem,” he said, rolling his eyes slightly. “She’d be right. Headlines like ‘yoga in the morning, coke in the evening’ are basically half the academy’s schedule.”
“Did you just relive your day through the headline?” Kyungsoo smirked, looking down at him.
“It was a full day,” Jongin shrugged calmly. “Without me, Gangnam would die of boredom.”
Sehun adjusted the strap of his watch and raised a skeptical brow.
“Funny, is it?” He set the glass down on the coffee table and looked at them from under his lashes. He waited for the theatrics to settle, then continued evenly. “She started with your birthday at Eclat. Who was there, why, how much it cost. And she’s probably looking for something demoralizing.”
Kyungsoo gave Jongin a brief look, because Jongin’s reaction was half the reference point for assessing the catastrophe level.
Jongin only twitched one shoulder: it was a birthday, nothing criminal.
Taehyung lifted his head, shedding his usual I don’t give a fuck expression.
“How much has she dug up already?”
He sat in the side armchair with an earpiece in, a laptop on his knees, wearing a black turtleneck and a Celine jacket. He looked more like a brand ambassador than a guy born into the auto industry.
“Enough to attract attention. Not enough to sound convincing rather than like gossip,” Oh replied calmly.
“And how do you know?” Jongin asked, lowering his chin slightly.
Sehun exhaled heavily. His gaze was already too tired for noon, as if he had worked a twelve-hour shift in a rice field.
“Those are details I can’t disclose because of an NDA. Broadly speaking, we were able to intercept it because she showed up somewhere she shouldn’t have. But that doesn’t mean she won’t look for other routes.”
The room tightened.
Kyungsoo scraped his nails lightly against the back of the chair.
An unpleasant feeling: Sehun knew more than he was saying, and when a media heir knew more than he was saying, it was like a trump card up an idiot’s sleeve.
Jennie set the bottle on top of the fridge.
“Okay. Let’s say she has information. She’s already started. The question is scale, and why we’re even discussing this.”
Everyone straightened a little, shifting into business mode.
“We’re discussing it,” Sehun began, “because it’s unclear where she’s headed. The important part isn’t that a leak happened. The important part is that she may be able to reach the core of the club. And knowing how all of you will immediately run to ‘your people,’ my job is to make sure you think about whether that’s a good idea.”
Joohyun’s and Taehyung’s sighs said more than words: tax audits, searches, questions for everyone at once. As if this were not a student club, but a cartel with a brothel and an armory.
“Maybe just talk to her?” Jongin suggested, folding his hands behind his head. “No blackmail, no threats. A normal adult conversation. That’s usually how deals are closed.” A pause. “Sometimes.”
The proposal drew a quiet laugh around the room. Everyone knew this was classic Jongin: cutting tension with a half-naive joke.
“You’re suggesting we fuck her and call it diplomacy?” Kyungsoo huffed, glancing sideways at him.
“If everything could be solved with sex and diplomacy, we wouldn’t be here,” Sehun cut in.
Taehyung gave a quiet huff. Jongin and Kyungsoo raised their brows in sync, like: wow, so that’s where we are today?
“I don’t know exactly where she’s going,” Sehun continued. “But there are enough scenarios.”
“Only assumptions?” Jennie asked.
“Worse. Media analysis.”
“So the party at Eclat isn’t the target. It’s the entry point,” Junmyeon said, leaning back and crossing his arms. “She can collect details through it.”
Sehun lowered his chin in confirmation.
“You control half of Seoul through shares in X, Kakao, CJ, Naver, JTBC,” Jongin said lazily. “An insane amount of influence. And now some independent journalist is a threat. Why not press down on her? Bury her in Korea, media-wise, and send her off to write about starving kids in Nigeria?”
Sehun looked at him as if a child had asked him to explain the principle of a nuclear reactor.
“Because an independent journalist isn’t an influencer with a UNICEF contract. Pressuring her would be doing her a favor. One hint, and she writes, ‘I’m being silenced from above.’ People love that. And controlled media do not like playing between the interests of the public and shareholders. Are you ready to answer for breaking that balance?”
Kyungsoo and Jongin exchanged a look.
The question did not close the topic. It only made one thing clear: either this was nothing, or it was a catalyst for something much bigger.
Neither option was good for them.
“When their parents signed this, they didn’t calculate that?” Taehyung asked.
“Apparently, they decided the risk was acceptable,” Sehun said, shifting his gaze to him. “For them, the club is insurance. And we’re human Fudou. So the task is simple: smile and pretend we’re an ordinary academy student organization. No playing heroes and no lawsuits against Sooyoung if you see her getting closer.”
“And that’s it?” Kyungsoo narrowed his eyes. “You tell us there’s a threat and think keeping up the facade is a solution?”
Sehun looked at him more sharply than usual.
“I warned you. So later, there won’t be questions about why OH Media missed something. Independent journalists with a voice…” Sehun paused and lowered his gaze, probably choosing his words. “People with money like them. State media do not. I explained why.”
“Haneul Air was also the work of someone like… this Sooyoung?” Joohyun asked.
Sehun nodded again.
“You could say that.”
Kyungsoo lifted his chin slightly.
Said nothing.
“So the party at the end of the month is canceled?” Jongin asked lazily, as if changing the subject. “That’s just a penalty clause issue, pure formality. What if the entire Hedgion needs to go underground?”
“It’s not canceled. It’s tradition. A regular ball.” Sehun shrugged as if convincing himself. “Worst case, we turn it into a charity format.”
“So you’re turning the only student joy we have into a boring foundation parade?” Jongin raised a brow.
“You’ll survive,” Sehun said, standing. “Sooner or later, this will become our work, not a tactic.”
“Or your chance to unlock the achievement ‘activist president,’” Jongin added, spinning his phone and getting up too.
“Isn’t an abrupt change of format the same kind of twitching?” Kyungsoo joined in, rising after Kim.
“It’s classic,” Sehun parried.
“It’s putting on a good face while the game is already going to hell,” Do tossed over his shoulder and walked out after Jongin.
An awkward silence hung in the lounge for about half a minute. Junmyeon frowned slightly, his eyes fixed on the closed door.
“He’s right,” he said quietly.
“Only partly,” Sehun replied, walking to the window. “We’re not creating noise. We’re reminding everyone what the club represents.”
“To build pretty case studies for yourselves?” Jennie asked, sitting down beside Joohyun.
“So later we can pretend we genuinely don’t understand how sponsorship turned into laundering,” Sehun smiled half-turned toward her. “It’s not our first day in this, Jen.”
****
Kyungsoo stood by the east wing, where the cameras “accidentally” did not work and even Professor Kim from the law track pretended he did not smell anything.
The academy had a smoking area, but Kyungsoo did not like it. Usually, after five minutes there, clothes smelled of cigarettes and sometimes weed.
He held a pod in his hand. Icy grape with cola, though it tasted more like chemical poison for the stomach. He checked the battery, clicked it, took a drag, and released a cloud toward the neatly planted rows of decorative cypress.
On his screen, besides the Hedgion Gossip chat, the club chat, RC com., was also sitting there, silent.
Which was surprising, because Taehyung loved dropping some “meme of the day.”
Kyungsoo noticed Jongin not with his eyes, but by the shadow on the paving stones and by the scent.
Heavy, niche Nasomatto. Like someone had spilled perfume in the men’s bathroom of an Itaewon nightclub.
“I asked you to save me a seat,” Kyungsoo said almost indifferently, not looking up from the screen.
Jongin leaned against the column beside him.
“I did. Sat there for a couple minutes. Now it smells like me. You’re the one who said my perfume was only good for marking territory.” Kim lazily rolled one shoulder as if brushing off an annoying fly. “I also asked Jennie to stand guard. She said if anyone sits down, she’ll spill cold brew on them.”
Kyungsoo exhaled noisily through his nose, but an uneven smile flickered across his face.
“A whole special operation.”
“Meditation, affirmations, and morning wood. Very centering,” Jongin replied with perfect composure, pulling out gum. He offered one piece. Kyungsoo waved him off. Jongin threw two tabs into his own mouth. “Listen, I still don’t understand what Sehun wants from us. Walk around, look over our shoulders, and smile?”
“If you haven’t noticed, that is our lifestyle.”
“Fine. But his ‘we have a problem, don’t panic’ sounds like even he doesn’t know what he wants from us.”
Kyungsoo took another drag, exhaled vapor through his nose, and lazily watched the cloud dissolve against the glass walls.
“He said he warned us, and that she’s too uncontrolled to choke out.” Do pressed his lips together, stopping the pod near his mouth. “Still… why start if there’s a part you can’t disclose because you swore a blood oath to an NDA?”
“You know Sehun takes orders from Daddy and the rector,” Jongin said quietly, leaning his shoulder against the column and stealing the pod from Kyungsoo’s hand. He took a drag and grimaced at the syrupy taste mixing with his gum. “His ‘sit still’ reads as ‘my father told me not to bring him any extra headaches.’”
Do slowly, almost reluctantly, tilted his head and gave a thoughtful nod.
But privately, he noted one detail: Sehun had referred to the NDA today, but not once to his father. Usually, he inserted that at least once to show he was not acting on his own.
Today…
It was as if he were trying out what it felt like to make decisions without looking back.
“The problem is, it’s not clear whether we should be doing anything at all,” Kyungsoo said, taking the pod back and bringing it to his mouth again. The drip tip held a mix of mint and grape liquid. He did not inhale, only clicked his teeth lightly against the edge and sighed. “Right now, it looks like he has everything under control. We move, we make it worse. We don’t move, and our parents ask: why the hell did you stay quiet?”
He exhaled evenly between them.
Jongin smiled, lowering his head slightly.
“Sounds hopeless.”
“Sounds like Tuesday.” Kyungsoo fell silent for a moment. His eyes were still on the screen, but his thoughts were somewhere else. “He should’ve run his little counterterrorist operation quietly and stopped giving us nerve damage.”
“He’s an energy vampire. Didn’t you know?” Jongin smirked. “Drains you dry, feeds on your resources…”
Kyungsoo glanced sideways.
“If you say ‘sexual energy,’ I’m pouring this liquid straight down your throat.”
Jongin gave a quiet snort.
Both of them fell silent for a second as a cleaning cart rolled by in the corridor and distracted them.
“Classic post-Dementor syndrome,” Jongin said, pressing his shoulder more firmly against the column and leaning closer. “Relax. I’m here specifically for your recovery. I’m immune.”
Kyungsoo huffed, shooting him a quick look.
“Counterspell?”
“Vitamin D, fresh air, not giving a fuck.”
Kyungsoo let out a short, nearly soundless laugh.
“Don’t tell me. The power of friendship too?”
Jongin did not answer right away. He blew a bubble with his gum.
Pop.
Then his lazy gaze moved over Kyungsoo’s face.
“Friendship?” he said, one corner of his mouth lifting. He shifted his hand along the column closer to Kyungsoo, close enough that his fingers could have brushed the collar of the turtleneck. “Between us, Soo, friendship is a side effect. Like inmates who start fucking their cellmates out of sheer lack of options. That’s why we discuss all this shit with each other and not anyone else.”
Kyungsoo shot him a sharp look, like a whip cracking.
He wanted to grimace and snap back, but the wording was too accurate, and admitting that right now was not on the agenda.
“Filter your metaphors sometimes, would you?” He clicked the pod off and slipped it into his pocket.
The smell of grape mixed again with Jongin’s heavy scent and the dampness of March.
Jongin closed his eyes for a second, as if realizing he had gone too far.
“Don’t you think we’re overcomplicating all of this?” he asked slowly. “Maybe we should just live. Study. Drink coffee. Run between lecture halls with older girls and occasionally actually hide behind charity. Generally speaking, that’s what’s required of us. Otherwise, they’ll demand ten times more.”
Kyungsoo straightened a little and shifted his body back. He turned his gaze on Jongin: the kind that read straight through people.
“You mean like when your father found out you were fucking anything that moved and sent you to seduce a Singaporean banker’s wife so he could squeeze funding through her for the Sentosa complex?”
Jongin tipped his head back against the column, squeezed his eyes shut, and exhaled sharply through his teeth.
“That was low.”
“That was factually accurate,” Kyungsoo corrected. “You have a chronic fear of responsibility for your own fuckups.” He turned fully toward him. “And if that journalist digs into our share of the corporate parties, I am not taking the fall for both of us. I’ll even add that you provide exclusive-rate services to Arab sheikhs.”
“Want a defamation lawsuit?” Jongin smirked.
“Only if you bring me care packages in prison.”
Jongin slowly turned his head and looked straight at him. Not with anger, but with poisonous tenderness on the edge of murder.
“Do, if you keep being this cute, I’m either going to kiss you or strangle you,” he said calmly, smiling slowly, lazily, dangerously, and just a little predatory.
Kyungsoo grimaced, but his gaze stayed fixed.
“Just don’t mix up the order, Othello.” He straightened and shivered slightly, either from the damp or from Kim’s words. “Come on. Academic enlightenment starts in five minutes, and your alpha pheromones are already overpowering Chanel Chance.”
Jongin lowered his head, gave a quiet laugh, and followed him with his usual arrogant ease.
And Kyungsoo caught himself thinking: he trusted OH Media, but he did not trust Sehun.
And if Sehun had added his own improvisation to this mess, all they could do was hope he understood what he was dragging all of them into.