hold me ♡ minsung

11. minho fights himself daily, and only jisung gets it

OCTOBER 13

    "How did I get here?" Minho wondered. A month had already gone by since college started and things were so different. Despite being with people almost constantly, he felt more alone than he did when it was just him and his cats in his room every evening after he took off his diner uniform.

         Recently, with fall now in full swing, the sun had been hiding behind world-darkening clouds. All the cloudy weather made for some very sleepy students ambling through hallways after dragging themselves out of bed. After more than a month, college had become a matter of routine. Everyone was yawning, nodding, dozing, all throughout this past week.

    As he sat down with his plate at lunch, Hyunjin sighed, raking a hand through his long hair. "I'm so ready to be done with classes for the week," he croaked. Nearly the whole table was agreeing with concurring hums and lazy nods.  "We should do something fun tonight, since it's Friday. We haven't hung out in days."

    "Yeah, I don't know about you guys, but I've had absolutely no time this week, 'cause that chemistry study guide was killer. I stayed up three extra hours last night to get it done." The other two chemistry students at the table groaned in pained agreement.

    "Well, what do you guys want to do tonight?" Chan asked.

   "I wanna watch a movie," Seungmin chimed, around a spoonful of soup.

   Chan shrugged. "Guess we might as well use the TV, finally." Because, after more than a month, they still hadn't watched anything on it. On the nights they spent together, they were usually goofing off and talking too much to consider turning on a movie, and the nights they didn't, usually, Chan was working, and Changbin was studying. But this week, everyone seemed to be tired enough to want to laze around the dorm and zone out while staring at a screen for a while.

    So after a few more hours of classes and studying and writing notes until his hand ached, Minho headed downstairs around dinner time, and Chan caught them all before they loaded their trays and told them he'd bring food for them all up to the room (the cafeteria was serving some questionable-looking soup, because apparently that was the only food to eat when the weather turned cold, and no one really wanted that), so the the eight of them shuffled off to 2Chan's room.

    Climbing the stairs behind Seungmin and Changbin, Minho wondered why he even came up there night after night. He knew the rest of the guys came to have fun with their friends, but... that's not really how it was for him. He had a bit of fun when he hung out with them sometimes, but more and more he just felt out of place.

    Thinking back to that first night, when he walked into 2Chan's room, and the rest of them filled it up, he remembered thinking that, for the first time in his life, he now had a friend group. A month later, he wondered, were these really his friends, or was he just there?

    Maybe he'd be better off just staying downstairs in his own room. He'd probably be subject to less uncomfortable experiences that way. Less of watching them be touchy and close. Then again, Chan, at least, would probably be concerned if he stopped hanging out with them. And Minho wasn't looking to be asked for reasons.

    Anyway, he shrugged off those complicated thoughts and took the easy way out, leaving them unanswered as he just took his usual spot at the desk.

     And that brought him here. 

   After about twenty minutes of Changbin, Seungmin, and Hyunjin arguing over which movie they wanted to watch, with a bit of input from Jisung and Felix here and there, Chan was already passed out. Chan had intended to hang out and stay awake long enough to watch the movie with them, but after a long week of classes, late night study sessions, and various shifts at his pizza-counter-job, he was exhausted and only minutes after he set two hot pizza boxes on the desk,  fell asleep draped over the side of what had become Hyunjin's second bed.