Seunghyun had been right about getting scolded for his hickey. They had another performance slotted for Inkigayo, and his makeup artist had hemmed and hawed over him, tilting his head to the side and slathering concealer over his throat.
She chided, “Tell whatever girl you’ve taken up with to stay away from your neck next time. Keep the marks somewhere they won’t be visible.”
“It wasn’t a girl! It was Jiyong! And I tried to stop him.”
Jiyong giggled in the chair beside him. When their noona turned an impressive eyebrow his way, Jiyong’s laughter came to an abrupt stop. He sat up in his seat and looked straight forward, a child caught misbehaving.
She shook her head in amusement, dabbing at Seunghyun’s throat with setting powder. “I don’t even wanna know.”
She was still fussing over his mark when Jiyong relaxed back into his seat. “Speaking of girls, I think I saw the one from last time lingering out in the hall.”
“One from last time?”
Jiyong primped his hair in the mirror. “Yeah, the one with the legs.”
“Don’t most girls have legs?”
Jiyong turned to the side to check out his profile. “Do they? You tell me, you’re the expert.”
“Me?”
Jiyong shrugged. “Anyways, she’s out there if you want to talk to her.”
Seunghyun barely remembered what she looked like, hadn’t given her a passing thought since she’d left their waiting room, heels clicking as she walked. “I don’t want to talk to her.”
“Too shy?”
“Not interested,” Seunghyun corrected.
Jiyong caught his eye in the mirror. “What, already? You moved on quick.”
“There was nothing to move on from. She’s not my type.”
Jiyong snorted, focusing his attention back on his hair. “I think she’s exactly your type.”
Seunghyun was about to retort when the buzz of a cellphone interrupted him. Jiyong pulled his phone out to check his messages. “Soohyuk says Joowon and some of the other models they did the shoot with are getting together tonight. He asked if we wanna go.”
Seunghyun saw it so clearly in his mind, how another evening with Joowon would go. More smiles, more of Jiyong’s attention on someone other than him. More of him watching from the sidelines. “We can’t,” he blurted.
Jiyong paused, fingers poised over the keypad to accept Soohyuk’s invitation. “Why not?”
“We’re busy,” Seunghyun lied.
“We are?”
Seunghyun’s mind raced to come up with a suitable explanation, something he could say to get himself out of this. “Yeah, um, we have plans.”
“What plans? I don’t remember any plans.”
“That’s ‘cause it’s a surprise.”
“A surprise?”
“Yeah...” Seunghyun said, dragging the word out, trying to stall till he could come up with something. “For, um…for your birthday.” His mouth twisted, unsure where that had even come from. It wasn’t even August.
Jiyong gave him a weird look. “My birthday’s not for another few months.”
“Yeah, I know, but…” Seunghyun trailed off. God, why was he so dumb? He finally decided to do what any good liar did after muttering something absurd. He committed. “Well, you know how I’m really bad at remembering this kind of stuff? Yeah, so I figured we should probably go ahead and celebrate now while I was thinking about it. So you don’t yell at me for forgetting later.”
It looked like Jiyong was trying not to laugh. There were those eyes again, the ones that said Seunghyun was a puppy Jiyong thought he needed to take care of. “You want to celebrate my birthday now so you won’t get in trouble for it later?” he asked, just to be sure.
Wow, that sounded ridiculous. Seunghyun nodded.
Jiyong’s laugh streamed out through his nose. He grinned, shaking his head at how ridiculous Seunghyun was being. “Okay. I’ll tell Soohyuk we can’t make it.”
As Jiyong’s fingers tapped out his response, Seunghyun felt relief come over him like a soothing balm – no Joowon tonight. But then he thought of how he’d accomplished it and froze. . Now he had to come up with a surprise.
So here was the thing about Seunghyun: once he was in, he was all in. Once he made up his mind about something, that was it, no turning back. He had a reputation for being lazy, but when he really wanted something, he narrowed in on it with obsessive focus. Like when Hyunsuk told him to lose the weight if he wanted a shot at his dreams, Seunghyun had done it, setting up camp in the gym and nearly starving himself on a diet of water and red beans. And when Hyunsuk had given him a synth as a present, he went three whole days without sleep learning how to use it.
That was how Seunghyun was now with Jiyong. Now that he’d realized his feelings, it was all he could think about, all he could focus on. It had completely taken him over. So when he was trying to figure out what to do for Jiyong’s impromptu surprise, he quickly bypassed all the normal things he might do and tried to come up with something special.
Because this was an opportunity. He’d have Jiyong all to himself, no other guys, no Joowon. So he should make the most of it. It seemed so obvious to him