Unhappy

Dae was not trying to ruin anything.
He would say.

But he had been questioning himself for days. Was he, like in an unconscious way, trying to sabotage his friends because they were happy and he was not ?
The fact was that he had all the reasons to be - finally - happy : Kitty and Minho weren’t mad with him anymore, Q started to wave him again , his contract with Yuri was closed and his father had a better job’s situation. So, was he the problem ? Was he the only one who was stopping his happiness ?

He didn’t hate Jin.
He hated him with all of his heart.

Everyone seemed to forget so quickly who Jin was, and what he had done before, that Dae thought that he was getting crazy.

But that day, or to be more specific, all of the years from elementary to middle school, were engraved on Dae’s skin like a tattoo.

If he closed his eyes , it would be like he was living those moments again.
It was terrifying.

It was terrifying because he was alone, more alone then now. He was put against the wall, Jin in front of him. They were about the same height - so they were super short - but for some reasons Jin looked like he was ten feet tall. Maybe it was all the “athletic boy “ energy. Or his Fendi jacket on rainy days while Dae was wearing a raincoat from a sponsor that his father had brought at home after a shit on a company.

There were only them in the room.
The room was chosen by a specific thought , because nobody would search for them there.

Jin was terribly annoying , but unluckily for Dae he wasn’t stupid at all. He pointed at him and Dae felt like a global criminal who was being sent to a tribunal.
Jin was a brutal judge : he knew where to hurt his victims.

They weren’t friends back in elementary and middle school, why would they suddenly become now ? Just because Jin was Q’s boyfriend ? Was that a reasonable reason to cancel everything ?

The fact was that now they were in the same friend group, they had gone on dinner dates and they had seated together in the bus. Apparently now Kitty and Minho loved him.

Dae could understand Kitty’s opinion, in fact she didn’t know Jin before this year.
But Minho.
Jin was a bully for both of them, even if he had harassed them in a different way.

Firstly, Jin had tried to bother Minho by making jokes about his father’s absence.
And it worked. It has to be said that Minho was already an asshole when he was a kid, but at least during the first jokes he had suffered. He had to had.

But then, someone pointed out that Minho was a pretty boy, he was smart and attractive.
And since then, nobody would even say a word about Minho’s family.
Dae didn’t understand why joking about Minho’s family was disrespectful while doing it on him was right. Not that his intention was to say bad stuff about his mate, but it wasn’t just fair.

Dae was not as smart as Minho, he was not funny and mostly he wasn’t good looking.
But he was a human too.
He had feelings too.
And maybe he had too many feelings to understand them .

Minho’s mother was there, she was a dumbass, but they had the opportunity to make things right. Dae and his mum had never fought. They loved each other with all of their soul.
And a fucking illness took his mother away from him . They would have never met again.

So people had no right to joke about him.

Yes, even Jin. Even if he had some issues with his father because of all the story of “being a great runner to deserve to live “. Maybe, if Jin was another person, if Dae still had his mother, if Jin had a heart and he was a human, maybe Dae would feel pity for him.
Maybe he would have shown empathy.

Because, news of the day : having some undone shit with your father didn’t allow you to joke about other people’s trauma !

So, the only one who was out of his place was Dae. What a strange thing.

He has always been out of his place : things haven’t changed so much from past to now.

Jin usually laughed at Dae for every small detail, like because his hair was too flat or because his uniform was not “ cool “ enough.
Just to make it clearer, all of their uniforms were the same, so there was nothing that would make Jin’s one different from his.

But this time Jin was not laughing.

De waited for any stupid jokes that Jin could say, but instead he was silent. He stayed silent. He was just looking at him, straight in his eyes. Dae was upset. He didn’t want to stay in the room a minute more. But then, Jin opened his snake-mouth in a nasty smirk.
-Do you know what day is tomorrow, Dai ? - he asked.
His voice was very annoying in English, but in Korean it reached a new level of annoyingness. He also misspelled his name just because he knew how much Dae hated it. Jin was perfidious. Like a snake.

Dae imagined being in a police station, Jin a big ugly and bad smelling officer. He didn’t want to answer, so he did not. Jin did not like when people didn’t do what he had ordered.

-So, don’t you know how to talk ? - his foot hurt Dae’s leg and he muttered, trying to stay silent while the pain was borning in his body.
-Yeah… I know.
-What do you know, little creep ?
-Both. - Being nasty with Jin was not a smart strategy , he was conscious about it. But Dae felt like a sword in his soul that was fighting to get out. He wanted to hurt Jin like he had hurt him. He did not want to obey, to blow his head down.

Dae wanted to have pride, for a time.
-Oh, you’re a funny guy, Dai. My mum asked me to go out with you. Because you are a poor guy without a mother. - Jin said, his eyes so small that Dae could not see them. His face would always look like he was happy. So he was really enjoying joking about him.
Ah, ah.

-But I don’t want to hang out with you. I don’t play with jerks like you.

Dae often thought really bad things about Jin, things that would obtain him a slap from his father, a negative note from his teacher. He wished Jin to fall, maybe to broke his fucking ankle, so he would stop talk about his great future athletic career. Dae would have been grateful if that happened.

Jin was getting close to him. Their noses were almost touching. Dae was scared. He was scared because everyone cared about Jin’s opinion because he was smart, rich and popular. So if Jin said that you were a jerk, you would definitely be a jerk, even if you really weren’t.

Dae was already left out in his classes.
Minho and the other few kids usually talked to him, and they were because they needed his homework. Everyone, but not Minho. He was a genius. He did not even need to study to understand something. Dae wished to be as smart as half, as a quarter of how much Minho was clever. His life would be much better for sure.

Thanks to their non distance Dae could smell Jin’s breath : it was horrible.
Jin spitted in front of him and his gob went on Dae’s jacket. Jin laughed like he was choking.
Dae hoped that it was true.
Dae hoped that, one day, Jin would forget about his existence. Like it was before that night.

“That night” was in March of last year.
Dae left his book in the class, so he came back to take it. While he was going, he listened to a noise. Dae stopped behind a column, hiding from something.
And it was at this moment that he saw them.

Jin was with an older student, someone from the third grade, maybe a boy from the basketball team. He was very tall.

They were hugging.

Like, really tight. Like they do in movies and in comics. Like he would have done with Kitty , if he had the chance. The boy’s mouth was muttering something in Jin's ear and he laughed softly. He was a different kind of guy.
A part of his head knew that they were doing something wrong, it barely sounded legal. His father would yell at them , no doubts.

Dae knew how people would call them . He wanted to stay hidden, so he became frozen like a statue. Dae closed his eyes because he thought that , if someone passed by them and saw also him, he might think that he was involved in theri thing. Dae already had enough problems to add one more.

After some minutes - but they seemed like hours in Dae’s mind - the guy moved and he kissed Jin on his cheek. If their sounds were good clues.

Dae thought that he was free to leave. But instead of running, he opened his eyes and they met Jin’s look.
He was like a deer in front of a pick-up.

The taller guy started to yell and this sound woke Dae from his trance. He got away the faster he could , his legs that were begging to stop. Dae didn’t consider that the problem was not only other people ‘s rumors, but also Jin’s reaction.

Now he was double scared.

Maybe the older guy would take revenge on him and the basketball players were not known to be gentle and kind. Dae remembered a fact that had happened a few months ago.

A guy, Dae was not sure about his name, maybe it was Jinyoung, moved to another school for “personal reasons “ . But everybody, even the teachers, knew that those “personal reasons “ had a surname and a name . And they were Kang Sehun, the captain of the basketball team.

Yeah, the same team that won their league and a prize for being “masters in fair play “.
The team brought a lot of pride to their school and revealing the drama would take all of it down. So everyone, even the seniors, were scared of those players and they were treated with a lot of respect.

Dae hidden in a blind spot, hoping to be unnoticeable. But, if having a death mother and a struggling financial situation were clues, Dae wasn’t a really lucky guy.
Jin’s face appeared in all of his skincaring treatment. The boy had a big acne problem, but suddenly it disappeared.

-Hi. - muttered Dae. Maybe moving the first step would be a great choice. Maybe it would make him seem less weak.
But, in fact, Jin did not like his decision.

-Have you also the courage to talk ? Stupid nosey-.

Dae would say that he wasn’t “noseying” , but he did not have the time : Jin threw a punch on his cheek and it really hurt. Like a lot. More than his father’s slaps.
He was in shock.

This was not the first time that Dae was hitting, but he never thought that Jin would go so far. He thought about the essay that Jin had written about bullying and his terrible consequences. And yes, technically this was not bullying because it wasn’t “an act repeated often “ but Dae had the sensation that it would be soon.

After “that night” Dae’s life was never the same. His bruise was seen as an accident and nobody really cared about it. Maybe this was one of the reasons why he was in that situation, crushed against a wall with Jin’s breath in his mouth.

Against a wall, Dae could not do anything besides listen to Jinìs words. He tried to not focus on them, but Jin was a good speaker. He was good at convincing people.

-You don’t have a draw for mother’s day… - Jin started to sing. He said that sentence like a rhyme and Dae asked himself if his entire life was just a nonsense rhyme.

Today’s morning he was ashamed in front of everyone because , instead of worrying about him, the teacher just assigned him some math’s exercises while the other kids were drawing their drawings for their mothers. To celebrate them, to show them all of their love .

Even Minho was making his drawing, because, as he had said, this would be a present for his step-mum . They really had a strong bond.

But, there was nothing left for Dae. Not even a tiny grain of pity.

Dae suffered a lot and he cried in silence.
He didn’t want his father to notice his tears because he would complain about them. About how Dae was an ungrateful and bad son, about how he should be more similar to Minho.

Jin was a good speaker, Dae really thought that. He was a good speaker in oral presentations and debates classes and also in bullying. Nothing would make him give up on joking on someone.

Like, one time Jin was searching for a nickname for him, obviously because his goal was making fun of him in new ways. After a while, Jin had said loudly that Dae was too useless even to have a nickname - he did not find anything “funny” that rhymed with Dae. And Dae thought that episode summed up well what kind of person Jin was: he would be sure to benefit from every situation. Because even if he didn’t find what he wanted , he succeeded in mocking Dae again. That should be a record.

Dae felt a thrill on his back while watching Q and Jin, hand in hand.

Sometimes he thought about “ that night “ , about how much it could have influenced his life and his view of his sexuality.

Dae was not gay. He believed.

He never explored it, and, honestly, he didn’t want to. At the moment , he wanted to be alone, at least on the romantic side. He had nothing to offer in a relationship.

Dae would not define himself as “ homophobic “. He didn’t hate Jin because he was gay, but because he was Jin.

And Q deserved someone better than Jin, someone that did not hide his fears and insecurities behind a strong face and a confident personality. Dae was more sure about that when Jin, seated in front of him at Q's favorite cafe, said to him that he needed to relax. Or that he would look older.

Ah,ah,ah,ah.

Dae could not say that he was nervous all the time because of Jin himself.

The worst thing, the one that Dae hated the most ?

He had to preserve all of his money to go out with Jin. Because he wanted to hang out with his friends, but in every meeting there would also be Jin ! And that was so frustrating.
Dae did not want to lose the bond that he had with his friends just because he could not tolerate Jin’s presence.

A tiny voice in his head would say that, if he didn’t join those meetings, their friends would lose their interest in him. He was not the one to be “ searched. “

A few minutes ago Kitty was talking about a place - OMG JIN ! What do you mean that you have never been to that restaurant ? It’s amazing ! - and Dae was already panicking.

A new date would mean a new waste of money, if he had the money to waste.
For this month he was already broke even if he was eating in the canteen to save up. He didn’t buy a new notebook because he didn’t have enough money.

How would he eat in a fancy restaurant - the kind of place with four names, waiters with white gloves and tre- sentence- long description for each plate - if he had just a bunch of pennies ?

But, luckily, the date was thought just for couples. Yuri and Juliana, Jin and Q, and, obviously, Kitty and Minho. Nobody thought of saying something to him, something like “oh, why don’t you take someone with you ?” or things like that.

Dae was that Yuri was embarrassed, he saw that she was looking in his direction.
But Juliana stopped her from any action, maybe she was happy that he would not be with them , for once. For some reason Juliana did not like him, and Dae could not blame her.

He should be grateful that he was not invited because that meant one less expense to pay.

But Dae was not grateful.

He felt ashamed.

And maybe this was the moral .

First his father, then Jin and in the end Kitty.

He would always be ashamed, even if he should not.

Maybe being unhappy was in his DNA.