Hongjoong is flagging. I’ve been tracking it without meaning to, the way I always track things when it comes to him, a natural gravitational pull I’ve never been able to resist. He started strong, matching the others noise and boisterousness,his laugh the loudest on the rooftop, his energy the biggest. But somewhere around the thirty minute mark it changed.
His face is flushing. It doesn’t seem like the normal flush of alcohol that turns your cheeks pink and makes you look warm and loose. It’s deeper, an uneven red that’s creeping up from his collar, spreading across his neck and up to his ears. His skin looks hot, like there’s too much blood sitting just beneath the surface, and his eyes, usually so sharp and alert, have gone half-lidded and glassy. He’s still smiling, but the smile has a lag to it now, arriving a beat too late when someone says something funny, like the signal is taking longer to reach him.
He’s sitting against the ledge where he was before, but his posture has changed. He was leaning back casually earlier, limbs loose and radiating easy confidence. Now he’s slumped, his shoulders rounded, his head tipped back against the concrete with his throat exposed. His breathing is off too. I can see it in the rise and fall of his chest under that red shirt, a little too fast, a little too shallow, like he’s running a low fever and his body is trying to compensate.
I don’t hover. I make a point of not hovering, because if there’s one thing I’ve learned from growing up with five alpha siblings, it’s that alphas don’t like being fussed over. They get prickly about it, defensive, especially in front of other alphas. And Hongjoong, for all his easy-going nature, has his pride. If I walk over there and start asking him if he’s okay in front of the guys, he’ll brush it off and probably drink more just to prove a point.
So instead I throw myself into the drinking game that Dokyeom and Pilkyu have set up, some convoluted thing involving rock-paper-scissors and forfeits. I sit cross-legged in the circle with the others and play along, loud and competitive, talking shit and shoving at Jaeho when he tries to cheat. And every time it’s my turn to drink, I bring the cup to my lips andtilt it back and swallow nothing, because I switched my soju for water from the bottle in my bag twenty minutes ago.
But I’m watching Hongjoong.
He doesn’t join the game. Pilkyu calls out to him, waves him over, and Hongjoong just lifts his cup in a lazy salute and shakes his head. “I’m good here,” he says, his voice is thicker than it should be, the words slightly blurred at the edges. Pilkyu shrugs and turns back to the game, accepting it easily, because Hongjoong sometimes gets like this when he drinks, quiet and contemplative instead of loud. They’ve seen it before.
But I’ve seen it before too, and this doesn’t look like contemplative.
The red on his neck has spread to his chest. I can see it where the collar of his shirt dips, a mottled flush that doesn’t match the even warmth of someone who’s just had too much to drink. His hand, the one holding his cup, has a fine tremor in it that he’s trying to hide by keeping it pressed against his thigh.
I lose the next round of the game on purpose and take my forfeit, which is to do ten push-ups. I drop down and knock them out, and when I get back up I casually reposition myself so I’m sitting closer to where Hongjoong is slumped against the ledge, still within the circle but angled so I can see him in my peripheral vision without turning my head.
His eyes are almost closed now. His cup is sitting on the ground beside him, abandoned, and both of his hands are pressed flat against the concrete like he’s trying to ground himself. His chest is rising and falling too quickly, and as I watch, he swallows hard, his throat working visibly, and a bead of sweat rolls down his temple even though the evening air has cooled considerably since the sun went down.
Something is wrong with him, and it’s not the soju.
The full dark settles in quickly, the city lights below us sharpening as the last traces of orange bleed out of the horizon.Dokyeom has moved on from wrestling to attempting some kind of interpretive dance to the tinny music still blasting from Jaeho’s speaker, and Pilkyu is filming it on his phone while Seungwon provides commentary in a mock-serious announcer voice. Wonjoon is on his back staring at the sky, having eaten two of the mystery bananas and declared them “spiritually significant.” Jaeho is trying to balance an empty soju bottle on his forehead.
I’m laughing at something Pilkyu says when I catch the movement in the corner of my eye.
Hongjoong is on his feet. He’s moving toward the rooftop door, and the way he’s moving makes my stomach drop, because he’s gripping the metal railing beside the stairwell entrance with both hands, his knuckles bone-white even in the dim light, and his whole body is listing to one side like the ground is tilting under him. He doesn’t look back at any of us. He just pulls the door open and disappears into the dark stairwell, and the door swings shut behind him with a dull clang that nobody else seems to notice over the music and the noise.
My heart kicks hard against my ribs. I sit there for maybe five seconds, staring at the closed door, and then I push myself to my feet and stretch my arms over my head in what I hope looks like a casual gesture.
“I need the bathroom,” I announce to no one in particular, already walking toward the door. “Be right back.”
Dokyeom waves vaguely in my direction without pausing his dance. Nobody questions it. Nobody even really looks up, which is exactly what I was counting on.
The stairwell is pitch black once the door closes behind me, the overhead lights long since shut off for the night, and I have to feel my way down the first few steps with my hand on the railing before my eyes adjust enough to make out the shapes of the walls and the concrete stairs descending below me. My footsteps echo,bouncing off the walls and coming back to me doubled, and the sound of the music and laughter from the rooftop fades with every flight I descend until it’s just me and the sound of my own sneakers on concrete.
I don’t know exactly where Hongjoong went, but I have a feeling. When you spend four years with someone, you learn their patterns, the places they gravitate toward when they’re not performing for an audience.
The third-floor hallway is dark and silent; the empty school takes on the air of after hours, a mere building once the day’s activity has ceased.
I head straight for our homeroom instinctively. The classroom door is ajar. I push it open and step inside, and the first thing I see is Hongjoong on the floor between two rows of desks, slumped against the side of a chair with his legs stretched out in front of him and his head tipped back. His face is red, deeply and unevenly flushed, and his skin is shining with sweat. His chest is rising and falling rapidly, his mouth slightly open, and his eyes are squeezed shut like he’s trying to hold something back through sheer force of will.
He looks bad. He looks really bad.
I cross the room and drop down beside him, folding my legs under me and keeping my voice light, easy, the same tone I’d use if I found him napping somewhere he shouldn’t be.
“Damn,” I say, nudging his knee with mine. “I didn’t think you were that much of a lightweight.”
Hongjoong’s eyes crack open. They’re glassy and unfocused, the sharp brown of his irises swallowed up by dilated pupils, and it takes him a second to find my face even though I’m right next to him. When he does, his mouth twitches.
“It’s not the alcohol,” he says, his voice sounds rough, thin like he’s been clenching his jaw for a long time. “I only had half a bottle.”
I frown. Half a bottle of soju is nothing for Hongjoong. I’ve watched him put away twice that and still be steady on his feet, still be cracking jokes and arm-wrestling Dokyeom and winning.
I look at him more carefully. At the sweat beading along his hairline and rolling down the side of his neck. At the way his hands are fisted against the floor, the tendons in his forearms standing out in sharp relief. At the tremor running through his shoulders. At the deep, mottled flush that’s spread from his face all the way down past his collar, disappearing under that red shirt.
And then I take a real breath in through my nose, a full one, and my lungs seize.
