Exception || Changlix

3.4

[Jisung P.O.V.]

"Whatever. I don't need you guys to see this. I don't need you." Seungmin hides his face and rushes out of the locker room, shielding his eyes. I manage to catch the slightest glimpse of tears as he leaves.

"Great, another fucking faggot at this school." Hyunjin scoffs. Minho jabs a knee right into his stomach to shut him up.

I roll my eyes at Hyunjin's annoying comment, but see the chance to exit smoothly. There's something that I need to do right now.

I quietly slip past the three while Minho's busy with Hyunjin and Felix is seemingly contemplating life. As I leave the locker room, I try to avoid the soccer team. Thankfully, the escape was a success.

Alright, who's ready to watch I, the great Han Jisung, make some bad decisions? I know I'm not!

I jog quickly out of sight and find myself at a park. My feet carry me to a deep green metal bench. I slowly approach from the back, pulling a baguette from out of my bag. My movements hurt but it'll hopefully be worth it.

I've always seen anime characters feed birds, so I thought I might try it today. I got a little side tracked, though, if you can even call it that.

I try to take the plastic wrapping off of the bread loaf as quietly as possible, but wasn't too lucky.

The loud noise of plastic causes him to look back at the noise and to me. "Did you follow me?" Seungmin asks through his tears.

"Yeah," I say awkwardly. "It's kind of lucky that you went here instead of a back alleyway or something. How could I feed the birdies in a place like that?" I hold up the baguette for him to see, but Seungmin just turns away from me and goes back to wiping his tears.

"Go away."

"Hey, I always use this bench. I come here and play bird feeder every Wednesday after school." I explain. Yeah, that was a lie. Then again, drastic times call for drastic measures.

I walk over and take a seat next to Seungmin, breaking the stick of bread. I give a small piece to him and watch as he looks up to me with watery eyes.

"Take it." I offer. "You can either eat it or feed it. I'll let you decide on that one, though."

Hesitantly, Seungmin takes the piece of bread, breaks off an even tinier bit and tosses it on the sidewalk in front of us.

"What are you doing, Jisung?" Seungmin asks me.

"I'm not sure. I'm kinda just going with whatever comes to mind first." I say with a shrug.

"By any chance did leaving ever come to your mind?" he says with a somewhat annoyed frown.

"It was probably in there somewhere."

"So what are you doing here?"

"Feeding the birdies, obviously." Seungmin gives me an upset look. I continue more seriously this time, "Why did you do that? Why did you attack and out Minho?"

Seungmin stares down at the grass. "I don't know, really."

"This has something to do with Felix, I assume?"

"I- yeah."

I let out a sigh. "You said you created this mess because you were having trouble with your feelings, correct?"

"Yes," Seungmin nods. His tears start to slowly kick up again. "I don't know what I was thinking. That doing that would suddenly make me straight? God, I just wish I could take everything back."

"Shh..." I try to calm the boy down. "Seungmin. Look at me." He lifts his head and faces me with tear-filled eyes. "I'm going to need you to answer me as best as you can. There's no reason for you to lie to me, alright?"

"Alright," Seungmin nods.

I then proceed to ask my questions. "Are you straight?"

"N-no."

"What would you say your sexuality is?"

"I'm honestly not sure anymore."

"Okay, do you like guys?"

"I-I," Seungmin stutters. "I don't know. I guess I do? I like... him."

"And why's that?"

"I don't know," Seungmin wipes at his face with his palm. "We've always been together and he's always been my best friend, but recently it just feels different."

Seungmin continues, "That's when I acted out and did such a horrible thing. Hell released and then I saw that picture of Changbin and Felix together..." He cuts himself off with his own hiccups.

"It's okay," I say, rubbing his back. "Keep going."

"Well, when I saw it, I got jealous. It sparked some kind of anger in me and I hurt you... Jisung I'm so sorry." Seungmin hugs me apologetically while sobbing into my shoulder.

"I don't think I can forgive you just yet, but please finish. Is there anything else?" I say.

"Oh, uh, yeah." Seungmin begins, pulling away. "After that, he walked in and you saw what happened. Pretty much, though, something in my head clicked and I finally came to terms with my feelings. I just wish it didn't take all of this for me to do so."

I take in every piece of information carefully. "Promise me that from now on, you will not use violence or irrationally act to confront your issues. This is something very serious, Seungmin. If anything, this was probably one of the better outcomes. You got lucky, but it's unlikely that life will allow such a thing again."

Seungmin nods his head slowly. "I promise."

I let a small sigh escape followed by a dark silence as I pick off a piece of bread and throw it onto the sidewalk with Seungmin's. Seungmin does the same and two birds, one with a red chest and another blue, fly down and peck from the crumbs. I look over and see the boy's eyes light up, both with sparkles and tears.

"Be careful, Seungmin." I say, patting his shoulder. "Don't let your heart run without your head. Your heart will become irrational and your head confused."

"Thanks, Jisung. Even more, though, I'm sorry."

I look at Seungmin for a second or two. "Get used to those words. You'll be using them a lot for a long while now."