for you: to you ✰ chanmin

26 𝘖𝘊𝘛𝘖𝘉𝘌𝘙 • 2008 ➊

part one

"Hey. Seung. Why does Chan keep staring at you?" Jisung slung an arm around Seungmin's shoulder, almost jogging the brunette mid-sentence as he tried to jot down senseless words in a roughed up notebook, keeping his head down.

Jisung was good at making observations, for a kid at least. He was always like a meerkat on high alert, despite giving off a relaxed energy. He was very quick at noticing certain things, especially if it were an eight-year-old boy, staring Seungmin down from the other end of the playground.

You couldn't miss the way Chan's eye twitched from Jisung bumping shoulders with Seungmin. Even from a distance it was in plain sight. He couldn't hide it. It was almost laughable.

And perhaps Jisung did laugh a little. Especially at the way Seungmin dubiously raised his head to look in Chan's direction, feeling both a mixture of hope and doubt fluttering around inside of his mind.

In all honesty, Chan was feeling the same. He could feel a bubbling sense of hope surging deep throughout his heart at the sight of Seungmin looking in his direction. There was hope that Seungmin would come over and say hi, but there was also doubt tugging relentlessly on his heart, telling him that it would never happen.

At least not if he made the first move.

He felt his chest puff out a little, pushing his posture up so he looked confident and strong, when in reality he felt insecure and weak.

Jisung and Seungmin had been watching this from the other end of the playground, and Jisung absentmindedly felt himself snicker. Seungmin even wanted to let a tiny laugh bubble up from his throat too, but he restrained himself because─after all─it was Chan.

As if he had his eyes locked on a target, and he was tracking his target down, Chan took large calculated strides towards Seungmin, all the while trying to piece together what he was going to say, in his panicked mind.

The sight was genuinely hilarious now, and Jisung was almost wetting himself with laughter at how Chan frowned mid-step when he hit an obstruction in his imaginary conversation with Seungmin.

He was trying to find the perfect way to say 'hi', as if a powerful introduction was ever going to be important to Seungmin, when suddenly a young girl's face popped up in front of him, throwing him off his track towards the brunette.

"Hello!" Sunhee exclaimed, bouncing happily on the balls of her feet. She held a packet of chocolate rice cakes out in front of her, and waved them about obnoxiously in Chan's face.

"Want one?" She beamed.

Oh god. He hadn't planned for this kind of obstruction.

And so, Seungmin and Jisung sat, at the other end of the playground, observing this situation from a distance. However, whilst Jisung was effectively rolling around in his own tears of joy from the hilarious happening, Seungmin couldn't help but let his jealousy swirl around in the pit of his stomach. Hissing and gurgling like a venomous snake about to bite.

"Dang." Felix piped up from beside the two, only having just arrived from a detention with a teacher and therefore being completely new to the situation at hand. "Are you hungry by any chance?" He asked Seungmin, whose stomach had obviously made some sort of growling noise out loud. But the brunette just shook his head.

"Ah. Well. I have some popcorn if you want it." The freckled boy shrugged, pulling a packet of popcorn out of his lunchbox and gesturing to it nonchalantly. "Don't bother asking if you need it. If you won't have it, the bin probably will."

Seungmin thanked him, but didn't really care all that much about eating. Especially not after he had just witnessed something so attention-grabbing that he could hardly look away.

During Felix's speech about popcorn─which lasted a very short amount of time─Seungmin could spot Chan trying to dodge his way around a rather persistent Sunhee; awkwardly refusing her rice cakes and trying to step around her as politely as possible.

Chan was getting stressed, and the brunette could tell. He just wanted to be able to talk to Seungmin alone so they could both figure out what had kept them separated for so many days.

Chan knew that something was up with the brunette. And that's because, whenever Seungmin was upset, he would always write about it in his notebook, which he could clearly see was happening a lot recently.

Plus, Chan kept wondering why his best friend had suddenly abandoned him; ditched him for some other friends. It felt unfair to be left without an explanation, but he also supposed that it was karma.

Torn up inside about all of this, he just wanted to talk. Not to an adult, not to Sunhee, not to anyone else but Seungmin.

Seungmin was who he desperately wanted to see right now, and he couldn't stand having to put up with the ear-splitting chatterbox directly in front of him.

God, he never realised how annoying Sunny was.

So, he used every last bit of dignity he had to completely back away from Sunhee's pressuring presence and─with every little bit of willpower he had left, trying not to make even more of a desperate fool of himself after all of this─sprinted straight for the place where Seungmin sat, arriving out of breath by his feet.

"Talk. Please." Chan heaved, resting his hands on his knees as he bent over to catch his breath.

Seungmin was... Startled, to say the least. But, Chan had actively gone out of his way to interrupt Seungmin and his new friends, and now the brunette didn't want to cause a scene.

So, he calmly, and gently, took Chan by the arm, and led them both to around the back of the gazebo, where Chan slumped against the wall, still out of breath, and Seungmin tried to help him calm his breathing.

The brunette, without a doubt, knew that Jisung and Felix would be trying to listen in, but he didn't care right now. He had Chan, and Chan was here to talk, so Seungmin was here to listen.

# •°彡

i, much to my own sadness, had to split this chapter into two parts, because it was way too long.

i apologise, but, part 2 will have to wait until next week.

i haven't left it on much of a cliffhanger, but i plan on part 2 being interesting, to say the least.

so. bear with me, and strap in for next wednesday when Seungmin does some... things.

hopefully you will enjoy it ;)

─jen