[FIC] It's Complicated

Title: It's Complicated
Characters: Kibum, OC, SJ
Rating: PG
Chaptercount: 14/36
Summary: Soojin meets a guy who turns her world upside down but then there's a few dozen others as well.
A/N: This is one of my most beloved novels (not that I wrote THAT many, but still) and I think I will forever cherish the characters in this. This story also helped me shape my view on the different members and is the first of few stories in which I used first person.

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After that day life passed in a rather normal way. I say rather because..well, life with Heechul is never completely normal. I spent my time in school during weekdays, either playing basket with Kibum or hanging out with Heechul’s group in between classes. In weekends I would go out a lot. Friday evenings were for Kibum’s group, Saturdays were for playing ball with Heechul’s group and sometimes going out in the evenings. My Sundays were either spent visiting Youngwoon and Seoyeon or playing some The Last Call at home to rest from my few busy preceding days. All in all I enjoyed being able to get out of the house, more than I had expected. There was a certain liveliness about it that I enjoyed. Yet my happiness was still biggest when I discovered I still had my first place among snipers on the rankings. By far.

My time table was rearranged once again when Heechul decided he had given me enough time to play basket on my own. On one random day, when I arrived at the basketball court, I found him and the rest of the group, including the girls, casually throwing some balls in the net as a warm up. The moment I saw them, I stopped dead in my tracks, making Kibum look up as well. His eyes scanned the group on the court and when he realised who those people were, he let out a soft ‘Oh.’ Without even asking each other, we both turned around and started to walk away again, yet we were stopped by Minji, who had noticed us.

As she called out my name, the others saw us too and I was called by everyone to play along with them. My only reaction was to turn to Kibum, wanting to know if he was fine with playing in the group. The first day he declined, saying he would go home and telling me to stay and play with them, but the second day he stayed as well and played along. The same happened every day after. That was the start of the strange and unexpected friendship between Heechul and Kibum, two people who were as far apart as the earth and the sky, yet who seemed to connect on many different levels.

The day for my curiosity about Jongwoon and Heechul to be fulfilled came when the latter invited Kibum to play ball with the group on Saturday too. When Kibum declined, saying he was going out with other friends, Heechul told him to bring them along too. Kibum merely laughed at this, patting our arrogant friend on the shoulder and telling him that that might not be the best idea ever to have popped up in Heechul’s mind. As the younger walked away, smiling, Heechul gave me a questioning look, but I just shrugged, not knowing if it was in my right to answer his unasked question. That evening, when I went home together with the two brothers, I found my answer in the form of their big sister.

They had gone off to shower again and I had casually sat down on the couch next to Heeyoung, not really having done much myself, so not feeling the need to shower. She politely asked me some questions about how I was holding up and how school was going, when I had decided to just go ahead and ask. I didn’t want to go all about, making up excuses of why I wanted to know personal stuff about Heechul, so I went straight to the point.

“Unni, can I ask you something about Heechul?” I asked her in a moment of silence. She looked up at me and smiled amused.

“I believe you could better ask him himself if there is something you want to know about him.” she replied, yet she seemed not to reluctant, so I felt safe to go on.

“I have this friend who used to be Heechul’s friends in high school..” I started the explanation. “..and he told me he had a fight with Heechul during those years. Therefore they aren’t friends anymore these days. Now I wanted to ask Heechul about this himself, but maybe it was something complex and asking him about it might hurt him, so I thought I’d ask you first, unni..” Heeyoung smiled at me.

“You really care about him, don’t you? About the both of them..” she then murmured. I only nodded without hesitation, because it was simply true. I DID care about Heechul. Heeyoung sighed softly. “I wish those two will find someone like you later to care for them just as much. They need it.” There was a short silence before she looked up at me. “This friend.. Is his name Jongwoon?”

“Yes, unni.. Do you know him?” I replied, surprised that she knew the name.

“I do, yes.” She smiled as she said that. I felt a rather nostalgic feel coming from her, so I decided not to ask more and just wait until she started spilling the story herself. “How has he been doing? Still fine? Still as weird as ever?” I chuckled and nodded.

“He dresses up like a nerd because he feels like it, all of his material has a turtle on it somewhere., he can’t keep a rhythm even for the life of it, he doesn’t feel embarrassed to just go ahead and make a fool out of himself, his laughter is just mind-blowing and it’s even worse when he and Jungsoo are together, but all in all, he’s nice.” I thought back to some of his silly actions and grinned like a retard remembering the first time he swayed me around over the dance floor. I had never let him do that again after. Heeyoung was meanwhile eyeing me with curiosity.

“Do you like him?” she asked.

“Oh yes!” I started. “He’s like..” But then I saw her eyebrows rising in amusement and I realised what she had meant. “Ohh.. No! No, no, no.. I don’t like him as in like like him! I just like him!” I quickly corrected myself, trying to convince her that I really didn’t mean it in the way she had in mind. She chuckled at my fast stuttering.

“I understand.” she then said, before taking a more comfortable position on the couch. “Heechul’s fight with Jongwoon is nothing he’ll be hurt over if you ask him about it, but he won’t tell you anything either, so I’ll do that for him.. They were good friends back in the day. In fact, they were something like best friends. Jungsoo, Jongwoon, Hangeng and Heechul. They came over by our house often, nearly every day..” She sighed a little as she recalled the events. “Then one day they stopped coming. I asked Heechul why, but he said it didn’t matter. I found out the next day when I bumped into Jongwoon and his new girlfriend. It bothered me more than it should have and I realised that my younger brother had known even before I did that I had a slight thing for Jongwoon.” She smiled. “Silly Heechul scolded his friend like a monster. He has probably forgotten the incident for years already, though, but poor Jongwoon had a very hard time because of it. I called him a week later, when I found out what Heechul had done and told him my brother had overreacted, that he certainly shouldn’t feel guilty or anything. It took me three hours of conversation to convince him, and in the end he still kept saying sorry to me. I think he broke up again with his girlfriend about two weeks later. I never saw him anymore, though.”

There was a long silence after her words in which she was obviously thinking back to those days and I was trying to take in all the given information. We just sat there, staring at the ground, and I finally understood. It was indeed very much like Heechul to scold a friend for hurting his sister, the only real family he had left, but it was quite unfair as Jongwoon couldn’t really help falling in love with someone else. It wasn’t until Hangeng walked in and asked a surprised ‘Who died?’ that we broke the silence with our soft laughter.

The conversation made me think about the whole event a lot in the following weeks and I couldn’t help but wonder if Heeyoung still liked Jongwoon and if Jongwoon still felt guilty. But most of all, I was curious to know if Heechul remembered. I took my chance to ask him when he was bringing me home after one of our Saturday evening’s out. He had again drunk a little too much and was slightly tipsy, but I figured that maybe he talked more at such moments. So when he stopped in front of my house, I didn’t get out immediately.
“Heechul..” I asked and he turned to look at me, obviously surprised. I couldn’t blame him for that as I never really stayed in the car longer than needed. I mostly got out first and said goodbye then.

“Mhm?”

“Why did you scold your friend so much back in high school when he got a girlfriend?”

“You know about that huh?” he said, sighing a bit as he let go of the steering wheel. “Who told you?”

“Heeyoung unni.” I mumbled and then the rest just came blurting out. “She said it was because you thought she had a thing for him and then he got a girlfriend I just don’t see how it was Jongwoon’s fault to fall in love with someone. He couldn’t know your sister liked him, right?” When I finished talking, Heechul’s eyes had darkened and he leaned against the back of his seat.

“Of course he knew. I told him that I suspected my sister had a thing for him and yet he still ran off with that.. that.. slut!” he spat, and it was the first time I heard him really insult someone else. “Every other month she had a new ‘boyfriend’ and he just saw ‘the good side of her.’ What good side? She had no good side.” After raging like that, his shoulders slumped, however and he sighed as he remembered. “It hurt to think of the look in my noona’s eyes when she would see them..”

My heart hurt seeing him like that and I almost automatically took off my seatbelt to move as close to him as was physically possible in a car and put my arms around him. He didn’t even resist, but leaned closer to me as well, wrapping his arms around my middle and resting his head on my shoulder. I could feel his calm breathing against the skin of my neck, but somehow it didn’t bother me at that moment.

“Maybe I was too harsh.” he muttered. “Well, I know I was. There is no maybe.. But even if I did find the courage to go and apologise, I wouldn’t know where to find Jongwoon these days.” I frowned upon hearing those words, but decided I would just hold on to him for a little longer before breaking the silence.

“Chullie..” I finally said after a while. “Jongwoon still attends the same school you do. He’s Kibum’s friend, the reason why Kibum doesn’t play ball with us on Saturdays. He’s never been away, you just stopped noticing him.” My words were met with silence and I realised that it must be quite a shock for Heechul to hear those words. Yet when he still didn’t answer after five minutes, I got a little worried. “Chullie..?” I asked, trying to take some distance to look at him. It was then that I noticed that the only thing keeping him from crushing me under his full weight was his seat belt and he was soundly asleep. Just great.

At first, I considered calling Hangeng and telling him to come get his brother, but for some unknown reason, I dropped that idea and set to poking Heechul’s cheek until he woke up. When he muttered something and started to move a little, I chuckled.

“Come on, sleeping beauty, let’s get you into bed.” I said, helping him sit up straight again. He blinked a few times, before he slowly looked around to see where he was. I sighed and got out, walking to his side of the vehicle to open his door and help him out. I basically dragged him all the way to my house, but it wasn’t until I opened the door that he noticed his surroundings.

“This is not my house.” he mumbled.

“Well hello genius.” I replied sarcastically, pulling him inside with me. “You’re very right about that. This is my house. Now I’ll let you sleep in our guest room, but if you as much as make a sound, the garden is also a nice place to throw you in.”

“You’re the best, Snipe.” he mumbled sleepily as he staggered up the stairs with me. I showed him his room, after which I quickly gave Hangeng a call to tell him Heechul was sleeping over at my place because the idiot had fallen asleep. After reassuring him about five times that yes, it was really alright and no, he didn’t have to come pick up his brother, I finally was able to go to bed myself. First, I checked on Heechul once more to find him already asleep again on top of the blankets. I sighed and pulled them out from underneath him to tuck him in, after which I set for my own dear bed to get some much-needed sleep.