Camera Shy 2/18
Title: Camera Shy 2/18
Pairing: Jongkey, side Onho
Length: 75k words total
Rating: PG15-NC17
Genre: romance, humor, friendship, smut. yeah.
Summary: Jonghyun's life consists of school, webcam chatting with his best friend, Minho, who he's never seen in person, and bothering his roommate, Jinki, about everything under the sun. When Minho sends Jonghyun a video of a dance cover, he doesn''t expect to get so indefinitely hooked to watching a boy in tight pants (who goes by the username Key) do girl group dances. What he expects even less, however, is to run into Key in person.
"Who are you?"
Jonghyun stopped in his tracks, confused at the odd greeting from his roommate. "Huh?"
"Oh, it's you Jonghyun." Jinki looked infinitely relieved, shoulders relieving of tension. "Sorry, I didn't recognize you."
His brow furrowed. It was always so difficult to tell if Jinki was kidding or not. "Why?"
"Well, you haven't left your room for two days and you took about seven hours to shower this morning," he began, seriousness in his tone turning sarcastic in heartbeat, "you look like a stranger to me by now."
He rolled his eyes and grabbed his mug of coffee, expertly prepared with his favorite hazelnut creamer because, despite his conviction that his dry ongoing jokes were hilarious, Jinki was a saint.
"You look tired," Jinki pointed out, glancing at him between filling out index cards and reading from his textbook.
"I stayed up late last night," he offered as the abridged reason.
"I saw the video you linked on your blog from last night," Jinki said with an accusing edge of humor in his tone. "Does that have anything to do with it?"
Jonghyun honestly didn't even remember linking a video on his blog the night before, and could only dread what his delirious self wrote.
"I didn't know you had a fetish for girl group dances." Jinki tapped at his lower lip, looking at Jonghyun as if he'd never seen him. "You'd think I would find these things out after knowing you for this many years."
"It's not a fetish. You've only known me for six years," he spouted out overly-defensively. "Wait, you checked my blog?"
Jinki nodded. "This morning when I got up, yeah."
"Did you see Minho's new video?" Jonghyun tried to keep his eagerness subdued; his goal was met only with help from his fatigue. Everything he said sounded dull and mildly uninterested.
The older nodded again, though didn't offer any explanation. He looked down at his textbook, brown hair flopping over his eyes.
"What'd you think of it?" he asked, staying casual.
"I think he's very wise for his age," Jinki offered, so impartial that it made Jonghyun's head hurt. He always had that sort of answer when Jonghyun asked, something noncommittal that reminded him over and over of their five-year age gap.
"You know he was talking about you, right?" he asked flatly, not bothering to be subtle anymore.
A streak of red appeared across Jinki's cheeks. "I don't know what you're-"
"Don't play dumb, you know he likes you." Jonghyun sipped his coffee, and, just his luck, he scalded his tongue on the too-hot beverage. He forced it down his throat, an equally unpleasant feeling, and let out a quiet whimper of pain.
"You okay?" Jinki noted his short struggle with it.
"Fine," he lied quickly. "Don't change the subject, either." Jonghyun wagged his finger at him.
"I don't know what you want me to say," Jinki mumbled, attention going back to his notecards. He scribbled something in English on top, and Jonghyun was almost one hundred percent sure it was misspelled. He was nervous, it seemed.
"He misses you." Jonghyun leaned his elbows on the table, giving Jinki his best puppy eyes. "Stuff like talking to you and playing stupid MMOs on the weekends. He talks about it all the time."
The older's shoulder's slumped. "Tell him I'm sorry, I just… don't have time for stuff like that anymore."
"Tell him yourself," Jonghyun said coolly. "If you have an extra minute of time, I'm sure he'd rather you say hi to him than watch a video he made."
"Don't guilt me, Jonghyun." Jinki looked too exhausted for that conversation, and Jonghyun felt remorse for pushing him into a topic like that so early in the morning. He wasn't like Minho, ever-ready for a deep philosophical chat.
"Sorry," he said sincerely.
"I miss talking to him, too, I mean…" Jinki sighed once more. "Studying takes up all my time. There's not much I can do about that. This isn't high school anymore; this is actually my future I'm dealing with."
Jonghyun was taken aback. "You do?"
Jinki's brows furrowed. "Do what?"
"Miss talking to him."
"Jonghyun…" He shook his head and went back to his notes.
Jonghyun was frantic to explain himself. "I don't mean to be weird about it. It's just that you two both seemed really happy when you were friends before." That much was honest. There was a time some year and a half before that Jinki and Minho got very close, and spoke to each other at least once a day. The two would bond by doing things that made Jonghyun shake his head (though it was fondly), like go on quests together on their choice video games, or send each other song recommendations once they found out they had similar music taste. If nothing more, Minho's romantic feelings for Jinki aside, it was a good friendship for both.
"I know," Jinki said, and Jonghyun hated how dismissive he sounded. He knew he wouldn't get any more into the conversation.
He drummed his fingers on the tabletop in frustration as Jinki focused entirely on his notes again. An absent look at the clock told him that he had a few hours until he had to go into class, and though he already felt emotionally exhausted from staying up to watch Key's videos, he had a feeling he would spend the next few hours doing the exact same thing.
"So I heard that you took a few hours longer than usual in the shower this morning."
Jonghyun groaned. "Why do you even care? Who said I was doing anything weird?"
"Your comment on your blog about the video this morning."
He dreaded his next question. "What'd it say?"
"And I quote…" Minho cleared his throat dramatically. "'A+ jerk off material.'"
"I'll delete it later," Jonghyun mumbled, more to himself than to Minho. "Who told you about my shower, anyway? Did you install hidden cameras?"
"Jinki-hyung texted me earlier."
"Did he?" Jonghyun asked into the mouthpiece, quite interested in this turn of events.
"Yeah, he told me you were watching Key's videos all night," Minho sounded way too pleased with himself, even through the phone.
"I never told him that!"
"Deductive reasoning, hyung."
"Don't try to pull that intellectual shit on me, Choi Minho, you're the one who poisoned me with him in the first place," he said bitterly, clutching his phone a bit more tightly.
"Don't say 'shit,' hyung, you're at school," Minho chided.
"This is college, Minho, I can say whatever the fuck I want." He was sure to raise his voice a few decibels to make his point. A few passerby looked at him, surprised and scolding alike, but had nothing to say to reprimand him.
Minho's rolling eyes were almost audible. "Aren't you supposed to be in class?"
"Aren't you?" he asked right back.
"I'm walking home."
Jonghyun huffed.
"Why aren't you in class?" Minho rephrased his question more directly.
"Professor called in sick. No class when the professor is sick," Jonghyun said, bittersweet towards the ordeal. On one hand, he was happy to be free of class. On the other, he was resentful that he had to get ready for school and drive there only to find that there would be no class. It was a waste of his time and his gasoline.
"And what are you doing now?"
"Sitting on a bench. People-watching." Jonghyun grinned, eyes scanning over the grounds just as he said.
"Anyone interesting?" Minho only sounded partly interested himself.
"Not particularly," he responded, slight disappointment in his tone.
"You said it was High School Visit Day, though."
"I know." Jonghyun sighed. "I was expecting some more excitement. These are mostly Jinki-hyung types. Studious ones. Carrying binders and stuff."
Minho snorted. "Do you not carry a binder?"
"Nope," he said, not quite proudly but something like it, "I put my papers in the cover of the textbooks."
Minho paused and then spoke in deadpan, "You are the least organized person I've ever met."
"It stays organized!" he insisted. "It's simple, put the math papers in the math book. Put the English papers in the English book. If that's not organization, then I don't know what is."
"Because god-forbid you have separate sections for notes, tests, graded papers, or homework assignments," Minho said sarcastically.
Jonghyun waved his hand dismissively. "I don't need them. My parents never really cared how I kept my stuff, so I have a system."
"Lucky," Minho said, nearly under his breath.
Jonghyun felt a pang of guilt at bringing up his own parents, when it was common knowledge between them how much Minho and his parents didn't get along.
The moment of silence between them was ended when Jonghyun let out a loud and mostly unintentional "Hey!"
"What?"
Jonghyun fumbled to sit straighter and squinted to see further into the distance. "I think that's…"
"What is it?"
"Hang on, I'll call you back in a minute." He stashed his phone in his pocket and all-but sprinted across the sidewalk to get a better view of the group of students he saw.
They were all crowding around some professor who was giving a quick outdoor speech. They didn't look like high school students at all to Jonghyun, considering they were all dressed in regular pedestrian clothes. Maybe they were exchange students, he figured, ignoring the fact that they all appeared distinctly Korean.
He could think of no way to get closer without seeming odd, so he stayed put on the sidewalk, still squinting to see them clearer. He could hear them from his place, the low buzz of whispers carrying through the air.
Jonghyun craned his neck to see if his suspicions were correct, and yes.
It was him.
Key.
Granted, he was wearing different clothes than Jonghyun was used to seeing him in after watching all of his videos. Loose jeans and a button-up shirt hid the figure Jonghyun knew he had below.
There was too much movement from around him, so Jonghyun only caught glimpses of his face. He couldn't be entirely sure, but it looked just like him. The same mouth, characteristic eyebrows, strong jaw.
It had to be him.
Once again, Jonghyun was stuck not knowing how to react. More than anything, he wanted to walk up to him and introduce himself, but he was rooted to his spot in pure disbelief. What great luck he had, to actually see this boy in person. Out of all the places he could be in the country, he was here. At Jonghyun's university. Listening to a professor speak.
The group continued down the path, and Jonghyun was so near calling out for them to wait that he had to slap a hand over his mouth to stop himself. His neck was still straining in every direction to get a clear look, but he couldn't see well enough with everyone shuffling around Key.
But it was him.
It was definitely him.
Jonghyun picked his phone out of his pocket and dialed Minho's number faster than he thought was possible.
"So who was it?" Minho answered, tone perfectly conversational.
"It was him. It was Key. From the video. He was here, listening to someone speaking. It was him!" Jonghyun felt energetic, entirely wound-up and animated. He felt like he was experiencing an adrenaline rush.
"What? No way."
"Seriously, it was! I saw him!"
"You're crazy," Minho said bluntly.
"I'm not crazy, Minho, I swear-"
"How far away were you?"
"Maybe like ten meters or something? I don't know."
"Did you get a good look at him?"
"Well… kind of?" He didn't appreciate how Minho was so keen on bursting his excited bubble.
"Okay, so what did he look like, specifically?"
Jonghyun's mouth fell open, at a loss with the question.
"And what does Key from the videos look like, specifically? Since I'm sure you can get a good look at his face in the middle of him dancing."
"I-" Jonghyun's shoulders sagged. He didn't have an answer. Minho had a point.
"No answer?"
"No," Jonghyun grumbled, feeling entirely deflated. Every trace of hopeful excitement was dashed by his grounded best friend.
"I think you just got too excited for a second, hyung."
"Maybe." He sighed. "No, you're probably right." He began to walk back to his bench, feet dragging behind him. That posture attracted him more stares than his loud cursing did before.
"Sorry to be a downer." Minho really did sound like he felt bad about it.
"It's fine." He didn't bother holding in another sigh. "I'm too hopeful sometimes anyway."
"I-sorry, hyung."
"It's all right," Jonghyun repeated, though at the back of his mind he was thinking that Minho should feel a little bit guilty about crushing his hopes so easily. "I'll talk to you later."
"Bye, hyung."
"Bye." Jonghyun took another look around his campus, emptier and emptier as the minutes passed and students went home after class, unwilling to admit even to himself that he was trying to find that group of visiting students again, and then headed home.
"Welcome to Frog Vlog number one-eighty-five." Minho waved at the camera. "Let's hope I'm right about the number, because I really don't want to check it. Let me just say that your eyes look gorgeous in the light from your computer screen, my beautiful Internets."
He cleared his throat. "This time, I want to talk about something that's, again, personal to me. And that’s competitiveness." His smile turned meek as he admitted it.
"If you know me, personally or not, one main thing you should know is that I am incredibly competitive. I blame the fact that my soccer coach father put me into the sport so young, so I learned how to compete from that, but hey, it's part of who I am now. It's not something that bothers me about myself, just something I wanted to talk about."
He smiled cordially. "Personally," he began, a shade of good humor in his tone, "I hate the feeling of losing. It doesn't matter what it is, a sport, a video game, even making a worse grade than a friend on a test at school. If I lose at something, it haunts me for the rest of the night and I can barely sleep. I guess it's the feeling of failure that I hate worse than anything. Most people I know don't really care if they win or lose. Well, they do care at the time. If we're playing a game and they lose a round, they'll react in some way for the first couple of minutes. But no one else I know will stay up all night and be haunted by one trivial loss.
"Maybe it's good that I can admit to my problem. That's the first stage in getting help, right? Except this isn't Alcoholics Anonymous, this is me being a sore loser." He chuckled at his own joke, smile lighting his face.
"For me, being competitive extends to a lot more than playing around with friends. Almost everything is a competition to me, so I apply that feeling to... well, almost everything." He pursed his lips in thought for a second, frowning.
"No, I don't like how that sounded. That sounds bad," Minho backtracked, shaking his head. "It's not that everything is a competition to me. It's just that I don't give up when I'm doing anything."
He nodded this time, looking satisfied. "That sounds better. It's more accurate, anyway. I hate, hate, the thought of giving up, no matter what it's in. If I want something, or if I have a goal set, then I am going to get it," he said with the utmost conviction. "I'm very motivated in that way. It's harder for me to find the will to give up than to continue pursuing my goal. I'm willing to work at what I do, if it's something I really want. Of course, if it's something I don't care about, I won't worry so much. I disappoint my parents a lot like that." He smiled sadly.
Minho managed to brighten again. "But then, you get into the concept of being overconfident in yourself. Competitiveness goes hand-in-hand with confidence if your abilities: on top of wanting to win, you have to know that you can win. It's a double-edged sword with me. You guys know that I have social anxiety-if you didn't, then yeah, I have a relatively minor case of social anxiety, but it still affects me in everyday life. So, for things like pursuing a person for friendship or something other than friendship," he tried to cover up, but really, anyone who knew him knew exactly who he was referencing with that point, "it gets to be difficult for me to... put myself out there, I guess. I know what I want and I know the steps I need to get to my goal, or to 'win,' if you will, but to actually give myself the push to start is another story. And god forbid something goes wrong the first time around. When that happens, it only makes me want it more. Beating a level of a video game or making friends with someone who might not even want to talk to me. It's all the same.
"It's a complicated, backwards sort of relationship with myself. I don't necessarily see it as a bad thing, or something I want to change about myself. Like I said, it's a double-edged sword. On one hand, the view that there's a winner and loser to almost everything motivates me in a way that I don't think anything else would. But on the other hand, it's probably not healthy for me to be in agony the entire night over losing a round of Mario Kart." He grinned, wide and amused; but at the same time, humility shone through the way his hand rubbed at the back of his neck.
"But, either way. That's it for this video. It wasn't completely relevant to everyone, I guess, but it is a part of me that I wanted to share with you guys. So, I'll see you all next time." His usual wink, and the video ended there.
____
a/n - jinki is kind of really cute to me I love him. and minho. hence why I love them together. they're the actual cutest c:
right okay I still don't have much to say OTL as the story continues I have more things I want to say. probably. it should be rambly and horrible by the end. you know how things go XP
OH updates are wednesday and saturday, if you were wondering c:
I hope you liked it either way c: c:
thank you for reading <3
kat
mikssi
[next]
Pairing: Jongkey, side Onho
Length: 75k words total
Rating: PG15-NC17
Genre: romance, humor, friendship, smut. yeah.
Summary: Jonghyun's life consists of school, webcam chatting with his best friend, Minho, who he's never seen in person, and bothering his roommate, Jinki, about everything under the sun. When Minho sends Jonghyun a video of a dance cover, he doesn''t expect to get so indefinitely hooked to watching a boy in tight pants (who goes by the username Key) do girl group dances. What he expects even less, however, is to run into Key in person.
"Who are you?"
Jonghyun stopped in his tracks, confused at the odd greeting from his roommate. "Huh?"
"Oh, it's you Jonghyun." Jinki looked infinitely relieved, shoulders relieving of tension. "Sorry, I didn't recognize you."
His brow furrowed. It was always so difficult to tell if Jinki was kidding or not. "Why?"
"Well, you haven't left your room for two days and you took about seven hours to shower this morning," he began, seriousness in his tone turning sarcastic in heartbeat, "you look like a stranger to me by now."
He rolled his eyes and grabbed his mug of coffee, expertly prepared with his favorite hazelnut creamer because, despite his conviction that his dry ongoing jokes were hilarious, Jinki was a saint.
"You look tired," Jinki pointed out, glancing at him between filling out index cards and reading from his textbook.
"I stayed up late last night," he offered as the abridged reason.
"I saw the video you linked on your blog from last night," Jinki said with an accusing edge of humor in his tone. "Does that have anything to do with it?"
Jonghyun honestly didn't even remember linking a video on his blog the night before, and could only dread what his delirious self wrote.
"I didn't know you had a fetish for girl group dances." Jinki tapped at his lower lip, looking at Jonghyun as if he'd never seen him. "You'd think I would find these things out after knowing you for this many years."
"It's not a fetish. You've only known me for six years," he spouted out overly-defensively. "Wait, you checked my blog?"
Jinki nodded. "This morning when I got up, yeah."
"Did you see Minho's new video?" Jonghyun tried to keep his eagerness subdued; his goal was met only with help from his fatigue. Everything he said sounded dull and mildly uninterested.
The older nodded again, though didn't offer any explanation. He looked down at his textbook, brown hair flopping over his eyes.
"What'd you think of it?" he asked, staying casual.
"I think he's very wise for his age," Jinki offered, so impartial that it made Jonghyun's head hurt. He always had that sort of answer when Jonghyun asked, something noncommittal that reminded him over and over of their five-year age gap.
"You know he was talking about you, right?" he asked flatly, not bothering to be subtle anymore.
A streak of red appeared across Jinki's cheeks. "I don't know what you're-"
"Don't play dumb, you know he likes you." Jonghyun sipped his coffee, and, just his luck, he scalded his tongue on the too-hot beverage. He forced it down his throat, an equally unpleasant feeling, and let out a quiet whimper of pain.
"You okay?" Jinki noted his short struggle with it.
"Fine," he lied quickly. "Don't change the subject, either." Jonghyun wagged his finger at him.
"I don't know what you want me to say," Jinki mumbled, attention going back to his notecards. He scribbled something in English on top, and Jonghyun was almost one hundred percent sure it was misspelled. He was nervous, it seemed.
"He misses you." Jonghyun leaned his elbows on the table, giving Jinki his best puppy eyes. "Stuff like talking to you and playing stupid MMOs on the weekends. He talks about it all the time."
The older's shoulder's slumped. "Tell him I'm sorry, I just… don't have time for stuff like that anymore."
"Tell him yourself," Jonghyun said coolly. "If you have an extra minute of time, I'm sure he'd rather you say hi to him than watch a video he made."
"Don't guilt me, Jonghyun." Jinki looked too exhausted for that conversation, and Jonghyun felt remorse for pushing him into a topic like that so early in the morning. He wasn't like Minho, ever-ready for a deep philosophical chat.
"Sorry," he said sincerely.
"I miss talking to him, too, I mean…" Jinki sighed once more. "Studying takes up all my time. There's not much I can do about that. This isn't high school anymore; this is actually my future I'm dealing with."
Jonghyun was taken aback. "You do?"
Jinki's brows furrowed. "Do what?"
"Miss talking to him."
"Jonghyun…" He shook his head and went back to his notes.
Jonghyun was frantic to explain himself. "I don't mean to be weird about it. It's just that you two both seemed really happy when you were friends before." That much was honest. There was a time some year and a half before that Jinki and Minho got very close, and spoke to each other at least once a day. The two would bond by doing things that made Jonghyun shake his head (though it was fondly), like go on quests together on their choice video games, or send each other song recommendations once they found out they had similar music taste. If nothing more, Minho's romantic feelings for Jinki aside, it was a good friendship for both.
"I know," Jinki said, and Jonghyun hated how dismissive he sounded. He knew he wouldn't get any more into the conversation.
He drummed his fingers on the tabletop in frustration as Jinki focused entirely on his notes again. An absent look at the clock told him that he had a few hours until he had to go into class, and though he already felt emotionally exhausted from staying up to watch Key's videos, he had a feeling he would spend the next few hours doing the exact same thing.
"So I heard that you took a few hours longer than usual in the shower this morning."
Jonghyun groaned. "Why do you even care? Who said I was doing anything weird?"
"Your comment on your blog about the video this morning."
He dreaded his next question. "What'd it say?"
"And I quote…" Minho cleared his throat dramatically. "'A+ jerk off material.'"
"I'll delete it later," Jonghyun mumbled, more to himself than to Minho. "Who told you about my shower, anyway? Did you install hidden cameras?"
"Jinki-hyung texted me earlier."
"Did he?" Jonghyun asked into the mouthpiece, quite interested in this turn of events.
"Yeah, he told me you were watching Key's videos all night," Minho sounded way too pleased with himself, even through the phone.
"I never told him that!"
"Deductive reasoning, hyung."
"Don't try to pull that intellectual shit on me, Choi Minho, you're the one who poisoned me with him in the first place," he said bitterly, clutching his phone a bit more tightly.
"Don't say 'shit,' hyung, you're at school," Minho chided.
"This is college, Minho, I can say whatever the fuck I want." He was sure to raise his voice a few decibels to make his point. A few passerby looked at him, surprised and scolding alike, but had nothing to say to reprimand him.
Minho's rolling eyes were almost audible. "Aren't you supposed to be in class?"
"Aren't you?" he asked right back.
"I'm walking home."
Jonghyun huffed.
"Why aren't you in class?" Minho rephrased his question more directly.
"Professor called in sick. No class when the professor is sick," Jonghyun said, bittersweet towards the ordeal. On one hand, he was happy to be free of class. On the other, he was resentful that he had to get ready for school and drive there only to find that there would be no class. It was a waste of his time and his gasoline.
"And what are you doing now?"
"Sitting on a bench. People-watching." Jonghyun grinned, eyes scanning over the grounds just as he said.
"Anyone interesting?" Minho only sounded partly interested himself.
"Not particularly," he responded, slight disappointment in his tone.
"You said it was High School Visit Day, though."
"I know." Jonghyun sighed. "I was expecting some more excitement. These are mostly Jinki-hyung types. Studious ones. Carrying binders and stuff."
Minho snorted. "Do you not carry a binder?"
"Nope," he said, not quite proudly but something like it, "I put my papers in the cover of the textbooks."
Minho paused and then spoke in deadpan, "You are the least organized person I've ever met."
"It stays organized!" he insisted. "It's simple, put the math papers in the math book. Put the English papers in the English book. If that's not organization, then I don't know what is."
"Because god-forbid you have separate sections for notes, tests, graded papers, or homework assignments," Minho said sarcastically.
Jonghyun waved his hand dismissively. "I don't need them. My parents never really cared how I kept my stuff, so I have a system."
"Lucky," Minho said, nearly under his breath.
Jonghyun felt a pang of guilt at bringing up his own parents, when it was common knowledge between them how much Minho and his parents didn't get along.
The moment of silence between them was ended when Jonghyun let out a loud and mostly unintentional "Hey!"
"What?"
Jonghyun fumbled to sit straighter and squinted to see further into the distance. "I think that's…"
"What is it?"
"Hang on, I'll call you back in a minute." He stashed his phone in his pocket and all-but sprinted across the sidewalk to get a better view of the group of students he saw.
They were all crowding around some professor who was giving a quick outdoor speech. They didn't look like high school students at all to Jonghyun, considering they were all dressed in regular pedestrian clothes. Maybe they were exchange students, he figured, ignoring the fact that they all appeared distinctly Korean.
He could think of no way to get closer without seeming odd, so he stayed put on the sidewalk, still squinting to see them clearer. He could hear them from his place, the low buzz of whispers carrying through the air.
Jonghyun craned his neck to see if his suspicions were correct, and yes.
It was him.
Key.
Granted, he was wearing different clothes than Jonghyun was used to seeing him in after watching all of his videos. Loose jeans and a button-up shirt hid the figure Jonghyun knew he had below.
There was too much movement from around him, so Jonghyun only caught glimpses of his face. He couldn't be entirely sure, but it looked just like him. The same mouth, characteristic eyebrows, strong jaw.
It had to be him.
Once again, Jonghyun was stuck not knowing how to react. More than anything, he wanted to walk up to him and introduce himself, but he was rooted to his spot in pure disbelief. What great luck he had, to actually see this boy in person. Out of all the places he could be in the country, he was here. At Jonghyun's university. Listening to a professor speak.
The group continued down the path, and Jonghyun was so near calling out for them to wait that he had to slap a hand over his mouth to stop himself. His neck was still straining in every direction to get a clear look, but he couldn't see well enough with everyone shuffling around Key.
But it was him.
It was definitely him.
Jonghyun picked his phone out of his pocket and dialed Minho's number faster than he thought was possible.
"So who was it?" Minho answered, tone perfectly conversational.
"It was him. It was Key. From the video. He was here, listening to someone speaking. It was him!" Jonghyun felt energetic, entirely wound-up and animated. He felt like he was experiencing an adrenaline rush.
"What? No way."
"Seriously, it was! I saw him!"
"You're crazy," Minho said bluntly.
"I'm not crazy, Minho, I swear-"
"How far away were you?"
"Maybe like ten meters or something? I don't know."
"Did you get a good look at him?"
"Well… kind of?" He didn't appreciate how Minho was so keen on bursting his excited bubble.
"Okay, so what did he look like, specifically?"
Jonghyun's mouth fell open, at a loss with the question.
"And what does Key from the videos look like, specifically? Since I'm sure you can get a good look at his face in the middle of him dancing."
"I-" Jonghyun's shoulders sagged. He didn't have an answer. Minho had a point.
"No answer?"
"No," Jonghyun grumbled, feeling entirely deflated. Every trace of hopeful excitement was dashed by his grounded best friend.
"I think you just got too excited for a second, hyung."
"Maybe." He sighed. "No, you're probably right." He began to walk back to his bench, feet dragging behind him. That posture attracted him more stares than his loud cursing did before.
"Sorry to be a downer." Minho really did sound like he felt bad about it.
"It's fine." He didn't bother holding in another sigh. "I'm too hopeful sometimes anyway."
"I-sorry, hyung."
"It's all right," Jonghyun repeated, though at the back of his mind he was thinking that Minho should feel a little bit guilty about crushing his hopes so easily. "I'll talk to you later."
"Bye, hyung."
"Bye." Jonghyun took another look around his campus, emptier and emptier as the minutes passed and students went home after class, unwilling to admit even to himself that he was trying to find that group of visiting students again, and then headed home.
"Welcome to Frog Vlog number one-eighty-five." Minho waved at the camera. "Let's hope I'm right about the number, because I really don't want to check it. Let me just say that your eyes look gorgeous in the light from your computer screen, my beautiful Internets."
He cleared his throat. "This time, I want to talk about something that's, again, personal to me. And that’s competitiveness." His smile turned meek as he admitted it.
"If you know me, personally or not, one main thing you should know is that I am incredibly competitive. I blame the fact that my soccer coach father put me into the sport so young, so I learned how to compete from that, but hey, it's part of who I am now. It's not something that bothers me about myself, just something I wanted to talk about."
He smiled cordially. "Personally," he began, a shade of good humor in his tone, "I hate the feeling of losing. It doesn't matter what it is, a sport, a video game, even making a worse grade than a friend on a test at school. If I lose at something, it haunts me for the rest of the night and I can barely sleep. I guess it's the feeling of failure that I hate worse than anything. Most people I know don't really care if they win or lose. Well, they do care at the time. If we're playing a game and they lose a round, they'll react in some way for the first couple of minutes. But no one else I know will stay up all night and be haunted by one trivial loss.
"Maybe it's good that I can admit to my problem. That's the first stage in getting help, right? Except this isn't Alcoholics Anonymous, this is me being a sore loser." He chuckled at his own joke, smile lighting his face.
"For me, being competitive extends to a lot more than playing around with friends. Almost everything is a competition to me, so I apply that feeling to... well, almost everything." He pursed his lips in thought for a second, frowning.
"No, I don't like how that sounded. That sounds bad," Minho backtracked, shaking his head. "It's not that everything is a competition to me. It's just that I don't give up when I'm doing anything."
He nodded this time, looking satisfied. "That sounds better. It's more accurate, anyway. I hate, hate, the thought of giving up, no matter what it's in. If I want something, or if I have a goal set, then I am going to get it," he said with the utmost conviction. "I'm very motivated in that way. It's harder for me to find the will to give up than to continue pursuing my goal. I'm willing to work at what I do, if it's something I really want. Of course, if it's something I don't care about, I won't worry so much. I disappoint my parents a lot like that." He smiled sadly.
Minho managed to brighten again. "But then, you get into the concept of being overconfident in yourself. Competitiveness goes hand-in-hand with confidence if your abilities: on top of wanting to win, you have to know that you can win. It's a double-edged sword with me. You guys know that I have social anxiety-if you didn't, then yeah, I have a relatively minor case of social anxiety, but it still affects me in everyday life. So, for things like pursuing a person for friendship or something other than friendship," he tried to cover up, but really, anyone who knew him knew exactly who he was referencing with that point, "it gets to be difficult for me to... put myself out there, I guess. I know what I want and I know the steps I need to get to my goal, or to 'win,' if you will, but to actually give myself the push to start is another story. And god forbid something goes wrong the first time around. When that happens, it only makes me want it more. Beating a level of a video game or making friends with someone who might not even want to talk to me. It's all the same.
"It's a complicated, backwards sort of relationship with myself. I don't necessarily see it as a bad thing, or something I want to change about myself. Like I said, it's a double-edged sword. On one hand, the view that there's a winner and loser to almost everything motivates me in a way that I don't think anything else would. But on the other hand, it's probably not healthy for me to be in agony the entire night over losing a round of Mario Kart." He grinned, wide and amused; but at the same time, humility shone through the way his hand rubbed at the back of his neck.
"But, either way. That's it for this video. It wasn't completely relevant to everyone, I guess, but it is a part of me that I wanted to share with you guys. So, I'll see you all next time." His usual wink, and the video ended there.
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a/n - jinki is kind of really cute to me I love him. and minho. hence why I love them together. they're the actual cutest c:
right okay I still don't have much to say OTL as the story continues I have more things I want to say. probably. it should be rambly and horrible by the end. you know how things go XP
OH updates are wednesday and saturday, if you were wondering c:
I hope you liked it either way c: c:
thank you for reading <3
kat
mikssi
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