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It had been exactly twenty-two minutes since Donghyuck left the apartment and he was already wishing he could be with Jiseol instead. The transition from living together for nearly three months to having to spend three days apart right after making their relationship official was giving him severe whiplash. He could easily sneak off, but it wouldn't be fair to his best friends.
The annual boys' trip was a long standing nine-year-old tradition that he could not ruin. When they were in school, the trip would just consist of sleepovers at each other's houses with the days spent on video games and getting food poisoning from expired junk food. Now that they were college students and had some remaining loan money to spend, they'd take it up a notch; freshman year, they went to the beach, slept on sleeping beds on the sand and woke up to Jeno being drifted away by ocean waves. Last year, they camped out in front of a gaming store for three days to be the first ones to enjoy the summer sale. This year, they went in a classier direction and booked a camping spot at the Han river.
There was one year when they were in their last year of high school where Renjun's parents brought the boys to China as their trip. It was an amazing core memory for each of them and they promised they'd save up for a trip of the same standard in their last year of college which would also be their 10th annual trip. Donghyuck truly didn't know how he got so lucky—having such a solid group of friends and now Jiseol as his girlfriend, he couldn't stop counting his blessings.
After the boys finished setting up camp, they took a picture of their hands with the river in the background, their matching friendship rings glistening underneath the summer sun. The sunlight also reflected off the silver chain around Donghyuck's neck which blinded Jaemin momentarily, to which he scrunched up his nose in distaste.
"Why are you still wearing that thing?"
Donghyuck tensed. His hand flew to his J pendant, relieved to find it hidden in his shirt. He wasn't sure if this was the right time to break the news. Hell, he wasn't sure if he wanted to break the news just yet. As he had told Jiseol, he wanted to keep their relationship a secret for a while, at least until things between them were completely stable. There was also a suppressed fear he was afraid to say out loud: the fear that speaking on something good too soon would quickly turn it sour.
"I, uh...I forgot to take it off," Donghyuck said. It wasn't a total lie; he simply wasn't referring to the necklace he was actually wearing.
"Do you need me to take it off for you?" Jeno asked genuinely.
Before Donghyuck could respond, Jeno fiddled with the chain to look for the clasp. In doing so, the J pendant fell out of his shirt. Though Donghyuck screamed in defense and leapt over the mini BBQ grill once he could react, he was too late to cover the pendant as he earned a strange look from Renjun who saw it.
"Wait, this is a different necklace," he pointed out.
"Oh yeah! I-I forgot about that too. I got a new one to replace the one that Chaeryeong gave me," Donghyuck faked a laugh, gripping the pendant in his hand.
