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rrxnjun · 1 year

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when nobody's watching ;; hrj

pairing. huang renjun x fem! reader genre. high school au/university au, cheerleader! reader | coming of age, platonic, angst, fluff warnings. alcohol and weed mention, swearing wc. 11k (10.932) a/n. no plot, just identity crisis.

playlist. idontwannabeyouanymore - billie eilish ; patterns - sarah close ; lonely - the maine ; rare - waterparks ; always forever - cults ; snow globe - waterparks ; hope ur ok - olivia rodrigo

where renjun can't seem to figure out who he is when nobody's watching and where you carefully examine and amire each version of himself he creates along the way.

When you’re 14, you watch Mean Girls for the first time. In the dark of your bedroom, with your childhood best friend Jung Sungchan huddling all your blankets to his side, your laptop illuminates the midnight with the gorgeous face of Regina George as both of you awe and giggle at the silly script. When you’re 14, watching Mean Girls for the first time, you are very aware of the fact that after summer ends and you turn 15, you’re going to high school– and the image of having to live through the fate that met Cady, you shiver with horror. That night, you are determined to live through high school with a smile on your face. Too blinded by the dramatized image of the high school experience, you decide that you have to be one of the nice girls everyone likes, because if you’re not, you can’t imagine having to ruin someone’s life just for popularity. You don’t really strive for popularity, don’t get me wrong, it’s just that you’re simply too terrified of high school before it even starts.

When the time finally comes and you turn up to the building with a tall, lanky Sungchan by your side, you realize too soon that life is, sadly, not like Mean Girls, and while you’d love to wear pink on Wednesdays and walk around in designer clothing, your small high school in the tiny, microscopic town you’ve grown up in, is too old-fashioned to have their roles divided this way. Sure, the hierarchy is there, and the cafeteria sure does have assigned seats for all the different friend groups and extracurriculars, but it’s not as serious as the story you watched all those months ago with both terror and excitement, making you quickly realise that you don’t have to try hard to fit in with the populars, because it’s truly not that big of a deal.

And so, in the spirit of the new realization, you join the cheerleading squad. I know, it sounds ironic. All this fuss about the fact that Mean Girls wasn’t actually as realistic as you thought it was, all for you to end up with the popular girls anyway. In your defense, it wasn’t that serious. You weren’t even that good at cheer. Jung Sungchan just made you join so you could be at all his soccer matches so he could boast about his abilities the moment the match is over. Curse the boy and his athleticism.

Standing in the heat of the sun, droplets of sweat appearing on your forehead as you tug down on the short cheer skirt, you huff as the cheer captain– Ryujin, as you learned only a few minutes prior– walks around and yells at you with what you presume is supposed to be support and excitement.

“Y/N! Why are you just standing there?” she asks you, her voice genuinely concerned, but also laced with a bit of annoyance. This is the third time you’ve messed up on today’s practice, and while you don’t really mind that much, you think your teammates are close to breaking down.

“Uh…”

“You’re supposed to be all the way over here!” she reminds you, pointing to the spot next to her on the freshly mowed grass, making you smile at her with tight lips and jog over there, nodding. Of course you were supposed to be there. You knew that…

“What’s going on, Y/N? You did great yesterday,” she sighs, making you roll your eyes. Yes, you did well yesterday– that’s because the formation was still fresh in your brain and the choreography wasn’t as complex. Also, yesterday was much more casual, since it was the first practice of the year. It was spent getting to know each other and sharing snacks in the locker room. On top of that, it’s only been 24 hours and your brain adapts slowly. There’s no way you’d remember the formations you learnt yesterday, when the sun is glazing your high, slicked ponytail, making you think you’re going to overheat and fall to the ground any second.

“I just… kind of forgot the formation?” you smile innocently, making the older girl look at you with wide eyes and an ironic smile, the despair clearly written on her face.

“Don’t even try to tell me-”

“But I’ve got it now!” you say, showing her thumbs up, trying hard to calm the cheer captain down. You don’t really know what she’s like– from what you’ve seen, she’s nice, yet a little scary when she gets frustrated– but you can only imagine how she’s going to kick you out if you don’t manage to get your shit together and remember all the choreography you were taught yesterday. It’s just cheerleading, for god’s sake! You always liked gymnastics…

“Okay,” she huffs, shaking her head as she faces the front of the soccer field you’re currently training on, making you do the same as you notice the flood of your school’s soccer players get out of the gym, one of them being your dear friend Jung Sungchan, carrying the ball. “From the top! 5, 6, 7, 8!”

Your body moves almost on auto-pilot. Now, I’m saying almost– you don’t really remember the formation that well and you have to keep glancing to the girls around you to match their movements, but you seem to be in the right places at the right times, so Ryujin doesn’t really notice, which saves your ass, if you’re being totally honest. Curious of the sight in front of you, your eyes scan over the crowd of boys laughing to themselves as they kick the ball around, ready for their soccer practice.

You recognise some of the upperclassmen. Yuta is the team captain, and if your high school was like Mean Girls, he’d for sure be the Aaron Samuels of them all. He passes the ball almost gracefully to his best friend Mark Lee (you only know his name because one of the girls from the cheer is into him. He seems a little goofy, but you guess Jisu doesn’t really care), who passes it to another boy, whose name is either Jaemin or Jeno. You don’t really know which one is which, because they always go everywhere together, and when you asked Sungchan for their names the last time you saw them in the halls, he just told you it was ‘Jaemin and Jeno’, and so did everyone else you’ve ever inquired about the two. Nobody ever really specified which is which.

Making a swift turn with confidence– because this is the only part of the choreography that you actually remember– your eyes are met with Ryunjin that is now opposite of you, wearing a focused smile that only reaches her eyes when you look at her. You suppose it’s a form of encouragement, a silent praise that you didn’t fuck it up yet, and it makes you strangely comfortable. Turning back to the soccer players– because the formation requires so– your eyes continue to watch the small crowd on the other side of the field.

“Chenle, pass to me!” you hear someone yell out, making you giggle as the boy holds up a middle finger to his opponent that was trying to trick him with a childish stunt, passing to his teammate. Stepping from one foot to the other, continuing to half-focus on the task you’ve been doing, you watch the boy that’s now in charge of the ball, your eyes almost falling out of your sockets.

The boy now running around the field with the ball is fairly short compared to the rest of the team, his jet black hair flowing in the wind as he charges through the field. You don’t think you’ve ever seen him before, because you’re fairly certain you’d remember the perfect curve of his nose and the focused pout on his lips if the encounter between you two did happen, the white of his ankles captivating you in a manner you’ve never experienced in your all 15 years of life.

Yells and curses are thrown across the soccer field, the boy not really knowing what to do as he looks around in confusion. He looks like he’s just as good at the game as you would be… except with your eyes closed; so you don’t really know what he’s doing in the team. But hey, you can’t judge. Maybe he just really likes soccer and wants to learn. Everyone starts somewhere. Focused on the soccer practice, another sharp voice pierces through your ears– the owner of it being your cheer captain, Ryujin– making you halt in your movements and hide behind one of the girls in terror.

“Y/N I swear to fucking god if you mess up this formation one last time, I’m going to shave off your eyebrows in your sleep!”

There goes your daydreaming. Strange– you thought you had this part of the choreography down, you were 100% certain you were doing the right steps and that the timing was sharply correct. You must have been distracted…

“I’m sorry-”

“The practice is over for today, I genuinely don’t have the energy to deal with this anymore,” Ryujin huffs out, making the rest of the cheerleading squad take their duffel bags off the grass, scattering back inside of the school building.

“I promise to get it down before the match, Ryunjin,” you peep as you catch up to her, trying hard to regain your position as a reliable cheerleader. You were told your smile was quite captivating, something a good cheerleader should never lack, so you suppose you can’t really let that quality go to waste so soon.

“You better, or else I’m kicking you out,” she glares at you, and you can’t really tell if she’s joking or not.

Squinting at the sophomore, you hum. “Are you serious?”

“100%.”

Nodding, you clear your throat. Taking a glimpse behind your shoulder, looking at the boy that made you so distracted in your routine, you take notice of his lost expression and the aimless posture of his hands by his side. He’s almost a little too far behind the whole team, and while you don’t really know how soccer works, you really think he’s not playing the game right, but you don’t pay more attention to it as you look back at your captain with a warm smile.

“I’ll do better.”

This is your first encounter with the boy named Huang Renjun. You learn his name through your best friend Sungchan, and while you were teased for hours about the intentions of knowing it– because Sungchan is one gossiping fellow who lives for drama– you don’t back down and fulfill your plan of learning something about the boy. After stalking the soccer player on instagram for a bit, you learn that he doesn’t quite live on social media (and good for him, honestly), making you curse as the only pictures of him you find on your feed are the ones his mum posted on his birthday. He’s a baby on those and he didn’t even like the post, not paying attention to it from what you presume was pure embarrassment.

The soccer match is in two weeks, and while you’re not exactly living the plot of Mean Girls, you sit at the cheerleader table for the time being. You suppose getting closer to the rest of the girls can only serve you– you’re a 15 year old with a dream of having the wildest high school years, after all– and it’s also good to hear all the gossip about the soccer team. You finally learn which one is Jeno and which one is Jaemin, and you also learn that Huang Renjun is a freshmen like you–, and while you learn that everyone thinks that he’s insanely pretty (which makes you frown, because you selfishly wanted to be the only one), he’s also insanely quiet.

You tried to bug Sungchan into befriending him. It didn’t work– he already befriended the talkative Zhong Chenle, telling you that Renjun is too quiet to strike up a conversation. You just think he chose Chenle for his big house and the fact that he has his own basketball court he gets invited to four days a week, but you won’t say that aloud for the fear of sounding jealous of the fact that you can never tag along.

The weeks before the match finally pass and you’re at your first high school soccer game. Dressed in a skirt that just barely covers your asscheeks (you complained to Ryujin about it. She told you to deal with it– you’re exceptionally tall for your age), you twirl around with pompoms in your hands, cheering for the team you know by their names now. You quite like the feeling of having the whole school looking at you when you perform your routine in the half-time break, the formation now permanently glued inside of your brain, muscle memory trained hard now as you were watched by the stern eyes of your cheer captain the remaining cheer practices. Squealing and cheering for the team, you get so into the whole process that you feel like the main character of a movie (so glad it’s not Mean Girls), ready to watch the game when the routine is done and you can take a break on one of the bleachers.

Your eyes involuntarily follow Huang Renjun across the field. He does look a little out of place, you must admit. You wouldn’t really call him the sporty type either– his body not as chiseled and firm as his teammates, although you’d say that’s partly because he’s still growing and in puberty– but there’s something about him that makes you magnetically pulled to his presence, not being able to take your eyes off him.

So when the ball is finally in his charge and he runs around with it, looking like a lost puppy when you play fetch with it on its afternoon walk, your eyes light up, you almost even let out a happy squeal when he charges forward, the last few seconds of the match passing by as the crowd yells out a countdown. The whole thing is so intense you think you could pee yourself, if you’re being honest, and as you stand up to get ready to cheer for Huang Renjun’s goal– the one that could make your team win– the excitement dies down when the boy kicks the ball forward with no real intention, the opposing team instantly taking charge and striding towards your school’s goalie.

You may be a little obsessed with Huang Renjun, yes. But even you can admit that he messed up the match pretty badly, earning your team the first loss of the season, making the following matches end just as badly with the bitter essence of a bad start.

You’re just 15 when you first notice Huang Renjun trying to desperately fit in to a cafeteria table, the only thing that reminds you of your favorite teenage movie that you watched with Sungchan in the middle of the night. You’re just 15 when you see the first version of the boy, not knowing that the next four years spent watching him silently will be just as eventful and interesting, keeping you on your toes the whole time.

Sungchan would say you were just 15 when you first got a crush on Huang Renjun.

You’d disagree. Not because it’s not true,

just because you won’t give him the satisfaction of being right.

At 15 years old, Huang Renjun leaves the soccer team after two lost matches (which were, admittedly… both kind of his fault). Cheerleading isn’t as exciting anymore when he’s not there, but at least you get to watch Sungchan… am I right?

You’re already a sophomore when you finally share a class with Huang Renjun. You’d think this fact would help you get closer to him and learn something about the boy, but the opposite is true as your object of interest doesn’t really interact with anyone outside his circle, keeping to himself. Truth be told, you’d do anything to fit into his circle– but with the company he chose for himself in the sophomore year of high school is nothing close to what you represent, the science kids so far away from the cheerleading status you still hold.

While you’re still stuck in your Mean Girls arc, Huang Renjun switched to the Harry Potter universe, it seems. Or maybe it’s just your sudden obsession with the books that’s making you feel this way… Nonetheless, Renjun now reminds you of the Ravenclaw boys in Potions class, except this is reality and you’re only sitting in Chemistry, watching over his every move as he moves through the room and focuses on the experiments.

Sungchan nudges you with his elbow, scowling. “Stop ogling Renjun and fucking do something, I think this is going to blow up any second!”

Hissing at him, afraid his mean comment could be heard by unwanted ears, you grit your teeth at your best friend and roll your eyes. “Shut up.”

“No, I mean it, though, I think this is going to blow up-”

“I’m a cheerleader, Sungchan, I don’t know Chemistry, for fuck’s sake,” you sigh, fully commiting to the social norms you were put in. The soccer player only glares at you more after your comment, deciding to take the boiling mixture and spilling the contents of it into the sink with one swift motion of his hand, hopefully not burning the drain in the process and getting you in trouble. You never know with Chemistry. One wrong step and the whole school is on fire. On one hand, you’d love that, but on the other hand, you’d love to experience your first kiss before dying, so you really, desperately hope nothing goes wrong this time.

“Great, now we gotta start over,” you shake your head in disbelief, already taking another cauldron into your hand and putting exact measurements into the flask.

“As if the last mixture was salvageable,” Sungchan mutters, making you kick him into his shin for being annoying.

“Maybe you can befriend Huang Renjun and he can help us with the experiment,” you suggest innocently, watching your best friend melodramatically scream at your premise. This is not the first time you tried to make your friend to get to know Renjun, but it’s also not the first time he’s declining. You don’t know what’s so hard about being Renjun’s friend, you suppose he has a lot of them– from the looks of the group now standing around his small frame– Sungchan could easily sway the quiet boy with his charm and get him to your side.

“How many times do I have to tell you that I am not befriending Huang Renjun? You can do that yourself, if that’s really all you desire,” he huffs, shaking his head in disbelief.

“But-”

“No buts, for fuck’s sake,” he cuts you off, already knowing the contents of your rambling, “sometimes you gotta do the first step, if you want to cuff a man!”

“I’m old-fashioned, I’ll let you know.”

“That’s just… simply not true,” Sungchan grins, making you sigh.

“I mean, yeah,” you agree, feeling heat rising to your cheeks as you speak the next words, “I’m just shy.”

“Y/N,” Sungchan sighs as he looks you dead into your eyes, seriousness dripping off his tongue, “you’re like… the least shy person I know.”

Offended at his comment, because in this exact moment, you feel nothing but shyness when the topic of your conversation is Huang Renjun– your classmate you’ve never even talked to in the first place, but somehow grown interested in the first moment you’ve seen his face for the first time– you shake your head in disagreement. “You know that’s not true!”

“You made friends with my teammates even faster than I did! Don’t try telling me you’re shy when you were playing Call of Duty with Mark in his dorm room the first week you met him,” he rambles, making you grin at the comment. You knew he was jealous of you being friends with his older teammate– it didn’t matter that the boy was more awkward than anyone you’ve ever encountered (while also simultaneously being the most social human being on the campus, somehow. You’d say he’s so socially awkward and so social that it’s awkward at the same time.). At least you have revenge for not being invited to Zhong Chenle’s basketball court (yes, you’re still salty about that. You were decent at basketball. Well… more decent than Sungchan, at least.).

“That’s not the same, though,” you roll your eyes, making your best friend suggest something that is already known between the two of you, but never truly solidified in words.

“Because you like Renjun?”

“He seems interesting-”

“Because you have a crush on Renjun?”

“I do not!” you scream out, making the rest of the classroom look at you, resulting in you hiding behind your giant friend in shame. You only hope the rest of the conversation wasn’t heard by the whole classroom. You’d pack your things and move away to Nebraska if it was.

“I suppose the two of you are done with the experiment?” the professor inquires, making all blood leave your face as you vigorously shake your head in disapproval, apologetic smiles sent her way as you promise you’re almost done and that you’ll be quiet from now on. Truth be told, you don’t even know if you’re almost done. You don’t know how the experiment is supposed to go. You can only hope the period ends before you have to show the results.

Reading over the manual again, with Sungchan standing behind you and looking onto the white sheet of paper over your shoulder, you try hard to succeed in your assignment.

“I think I’ve got it,” he mumbles under his breath, gathering the things needed and finally getting to work, motioning for you to get closer and help him.

“You’re actually smart for a soccer player, you know,” you grin at him, the annoyed look on his face being the result of your successful teasing. Sometimes it’s fun to poke around with social norms and stereotypes– mostly because they’re kind of true.

“Just watch over the caldron and make sure it doesn’t bubble. If it does, turn the heating down, okay?” he urges you, earning himself a focused nod.

Now, the task at hand is easy. You just watch the caldron– it’s not difficult at all. But as we already established, you’re an individual that gets distracted really easily– especially when Huang Renjun is present in the same room as you, breathing the same air and looking insanely gorgeous even when he’s boredly looking at his own tools, seemingly done with the experiment with his head rested on his plopped-up hand, dissociated and uninterested. The group of boys around him– Shotaro, Jisung, Doyoung and Shohei, the proclaimed class geniuses at Science– look excited and immersed in the conversation, giggling at jokes and playfully smacking each other’s shoulders in fits of laughter when someone says something exceptionally funny. You imagine it’s Science jokes you wouldn’t get. You do fit the stereotype of a cheerleader, in a way– you’re not stupid, but you’re also not that smart in Chemistry, so you couldn’t indulge in their jokes even if you really wanted to.

Renjun looks uninterested and left-out. You feel the sudden urge to take him into your small circle, to ask him about his day and about his interests. He seems so different to the boy he was last year– while he did hang out with the soccer boys a few times after quitting the team, you didn’t really see him around. You suppose that the first impression you make on people is usually how you stay fixated in the minds of the general public, and while he used to be a soccer player for a while (two months, to be exact), he then lost the status, resulting in him being just… simply invisible for the rest of the year.

You were glad to see him with a new group of friends when you arrived in Chemistry class for the first time in your Sophomore year. While you didn’t really know how he ended up with them and what they do for fun after class, Renjun was now a part of the Science kids (this is your Mean Girls arc showing through. He does sit at the Science table in the cafeteria, though, so no one can really blame you for stereotyping.).

In this exact moment, though, he seems to be collectively excluded out of the collective. It’s frustrating– for this is the second time you’ve seen it happen to the boy– but you suppose there’s nothing you can really do or say to make it change.

“Fuck’s sake, Y/N! I told you to look after the caldron!”

“Oh shit!” you yelp out as you see the mixture boiling, the liquid inside turning black with steam, making the whole experiment fail for the second time.

Sighing, the boy only shakes his head at your distracted figure, taking the flask into his hand and once again, dropping the contents of it into the sink. Looking around the classroom, desperately trying to find something to anchor to so you can fix the situation, the bell rings and you’re left with the relief of knowing that the class is over and nobody can tell that you failed the assignment miserably.

“You’re lucky the bell rang, because this failure is completely your fault and I wouldn’t waste any time burning your skin off if we were called to show the results to the class,” Sungchan mutters, gathering his things.

“You’re not scary. I saw you shit your pants when you were eight.”

“Fuck off,” he rolls his eyes, leaving you behind to pack your things and silently ogling Huang Renjun on the other side of the classroom. The small circle of his supposed-to-be friends is now standing with the teacher, excitedly nodding as you hear them talk about a competition in Chemistry that is taking place next week. Interested in anything that includes Huang Renjun, you eavesdrop until you realize the boy was left out of the event– the four names scribbled down onto an application paper by their leader Doyoung left on the teacher’s desk, Renjun’s name nowhere to be seen.

You don’t think he did anything wrong to get left out. Looking at the neatly done experiment, you’re fairly certain he deserves to be on the list of applicants.

Looking at the group, you just think he didn’t fit in with them.

Huang Renjun leaves the classroom alone, his backpack thrown over his shoulder. After the year ends and he no longer takes Chemistry classes, you never see him with the Science kids again.

“I can’t believe you dragged me to the play just because you didn’t want to go alone,” you whisper to your best friend, staring forward at the stage. It’s almost over now, you can tell because you read the book it’s following– you were always a big Oscar Wilde fan– and you can’t help but giggle at the state of Sungchan. The poor boy isn’t used to having friends outside of the soccer player circle, and while he’s sociable, the image of showing up to the play completely alone, just because his friend Guanheng asked him to, is truly terrifying in his eyes.

“I can’t believe you only agreed when I said Renjun’s in the play,” he responds to you with a snarkier comment, making you roll your eyes at him.

“Shh,” you put your finger against your lips, subtly telling him to shut up, “I’m watching the play.”

“Sure…” he mutters, making you smile in satisfaction, for you managed to silence him and keep Huang Renjun out of the conversation.

You’re 17 now. You don’t know much more about Renjun than you did when you were 15, and you no longer share a class with him anymore, so you doubt you’ll ever really get to know him. You rarely see him, since you have no mutual friends or mutual interests, and so your silly crush started to subtly fade into the background. You must admit that you don’t look away when he passes you in halls with the group of drama kids he hangs out with now– you’re a weak, weak woman, after all– but the silent obsession with him is not your main personal trait anymore, and you can tell that both you and Sungchan are more than happy about the fact.

When the play ends and the whole cast scatters onto the stage to bow– you recognise Guanheng, Dejun, Kun, Sicheng and the director, Ten– all smiling brightly beside Renjun in the very corner, who only gives the crowd a shy grin as he bows down with the rest. Truth be told, you never expected him to get into the drama club. He always seemed quiet and reserved, but you suppose this is him experimenting with what he likes, finding the outgoing side in him and getting into more social circles.

After the lights turn back on and the school theater empties itself out, you find yourself waiting outside with Sungchan. The boy scratches the back of his neck in nerves, stressed from the sudden interaction with the drama kids. Your best friend is quite popular within the school, so you’re not really surprised that he and the charming Guanheng hit it off right away after meeting in Physics class. The sudden blush on his cheeks whenever you mention his new friend makes you strangely suspicious, though, but you won’t get deeper into it.

“Sungchan! Y/N!” you hear cheers from behind you, making you turn around and greet the cast of the play you just watched. Guanheng offers you a welcoming hug that you gladly accept, the rest of the friend group just as friendly to you as their connecting link is. Somewhere in the back of the group, you see Sicheng– the charming senior– trailing behind with Renjun. Too shy to look at him– because you still have the hint of the silly freshman on the inside– you avert your gaze off him and focus on the rest.

“We’re actually going to McDonald’s to celebrate the premiere, are you going with us?” Kun asks, a warm smile playing with his features.

“I- I mean-” you see Sungchan stuttering, shaking your head in disbelief at the hesitance he shows when he gets too much attention. Jumping in to save the boy, you quickly agree.

“We’re down!” you nod, seeing the man gratefully smile at you as you follow the drama club through the center of the town, towards the closest McDonald’s.

Throughout the whole journey, you’re painfully aware of Huang Renjun’s presence. You two haven’t even said hi to each other, and while you didn’t expect for that to happen, you still feel a little awkward to be invading his space. He’s in the back of the group with Sicheng, the two of them perhaps the closest of the whole club, and you wonder if it’s your fault for making him so distant himself from his friends right now. Did you invade his circle? Did you make him feel uncomfortable? You’ll leave, if that’s what he wants…

Arriving at the McDonald’s, you all order yourself your fast food of choice, the conversation flowing surprisingly easily after Sungchan gets accommodated to the new section of friends around him. Sliding into a big red booth in the corner of the room, you’re pressed between your best friend and Dejun, who can’t stop talking about the new Avatar movie. You almost agree to go see it with him in the cinema, from how desperate and excited he sounds, but then you’re reminded by the fact that you haven’t even seen the first part and you actually kind of hate sci-fi…

The whole time, your eyes don’t leave Renjun. Old habits die hard, you suppose, but you’re happy to see him genuinely laugh. You don’t think you’ve ever seen that on him before, and the sight of his eyes crinkled up into moon crescents and glittery stars in his dark orbsmakes your heart swell with fondness for the man. Still, though, you can’t help but notice the exclusion from the group– maybe he just doesn’t do well with crowds– as he sits in the corner of the booth with Dong Sicheng, while the rest are indulged in a shared conversation.

You don’t dare to try to include him in your conversation. Frankly, you think he isn’t interested, and it’s also not your place to organize a setting you were just tagging along to, only being invited because of Sungchan.

In the back of your mind, you think this is it. You think that Renjun’s battle of fitting in is finally over and that he found his place. He looked so familiar with the boys, so eager in the conversation with Sicheng– you’re happy he finally found his place in the world. It’s an unexpected one, to say the least, but you’re just satisfied with watching him be happy from afar.

You pay your goodbyes to the rest of the group after your meals are finished and the clock strikes 10. You’ve never been this close to Renjun before, and you don’t think you’ll ever grow closer. It’s fine with you, though. You’re always watching him– even when nobody else is, interested in knowing about his well being and the trajectory of his life. It’s strange, but it’s natural for you.

When you’re 17, you think Renjun finally found his place in the world– you think he’s finally satisfied with his table at the cafeteria, with the social status he has, with the group of friends around him; although still a little distant with most of them except for one. When you’re 17, you didn’t know you couldn’t be more wrong.

When junior year ends, Dong Sicheng graduates.

Renjun never hangs out with the drama club again.

When you finally turn 18– the birthday party with baby pink party hats and champagne all over the carpet of your teenage room– it seems like everything takes a sharp C turn. You’re a senior now, and while you got admitted to your dream university after many hours of stress and days spent filling out the applications with your best friend Sungchan late in the library, you don’t think you’re ready to leave your home yet.

It’s kind of weird that you realize the fact at a goodbye party thrown by your classmate Donghyuck. You’ve never really talked to the man before– you just shared multiple classes with him and he offered you weed outside of the gates to the building once– but there’s something about the aroma of the liquor he serves in his kitchen that makes you reminiscence about all the years you’ve spent in the cheer team or sitting at your little desk in the classroom, listening to only some of the lectures, because you didn’t really mind the rest. You also get back in your memory to the spacious cafeteria– the soccer team and the cheer team have joined their tables together after some months, and while it wasn’t like the Mean Girls, you still felt lucky to have such a big supporting system.

Your cheer captain– Ryujin– graduated one year before you, the role of the most responsible one falling onto your classmate Jiwoo not long after, since they were always friends and you all wanted to lead the team in the fierceful manner Ryujin always has. You swear you saw the ex-captain somewhere in the house a few minutes ago, though, carrying a bottle of vodka under her shoulder as she twirled her slim body around one of the guys that graduated two years ago, the one you always saw Donghyuck hanging around with in the backs of the school halls, wearing leather jackets and snickering with smug grins.

Twirling the liquid in the red solo cup around, standing alone in the corner of the living room (Sungchan left you stranded a few minutes ago, when he spotted Chenle and Guanheng in the crowd), your brain takes you back to all the memories you’ve made in the last 4 years.

You remember celebrating one of the only wins your school’s soccer team got in your freshman year with Sungchan, the tall boy carrying you on his back as he ran around the field in the lights of the reflectors. You remember blowing up the Chemistry lab with him once or twice, and you also remember the whole classroom giggling at you when you had to clean it up, accompanied by the horrified screams of your professor. The memory of the winter formal in your junior year is the most vivid in your brain– you went with your cheer friends, while Sungchan finally scored himself his first date. Her name was Lily and while you found the girl to be quite nice, the memory in your brain is so bright mainly because your dear best friend was so drunk out of nervosity of being with a girl that he puked in the school yard, leaving you to laugh your ass off until tears were streaming down your face.

Your whole four years were consistent. With the same group of people, in the same school halls and bedrooms of your friends when you had sleepovers as a cheer team building. You always had fun when new freshmen joined the team, making sure they know which Sophomore and Junior boys to be wary of, and while you’re excited for university, you don’t think you’ll get to replicate this carefree and silly presence of high school ever again.

“You okay?” you hear a voice call for you, making you snap your head up and see one of your classmates, Seunghan, staring at you with glittery eyes and a warm smile. You always perceived the boy to be quite the shy individual, but you think alcohol always helps everyone to get out of their shell.

“Yeah,” you nod, quick to make his worries fade away, “just lost in thought.”

“I get that. It’s surreal that we’re graduating, isn’t it?” he grins, shaking his head in disbelief. You didn’t expect anyone to get your feelings, but here you are– you guess you’re never as alone in your views as you think you are.

“It’s crazy…” you mumble, finishing up the cup and looking around, catching the boy staring at you constantly. Not really seeing your friend Sungchan anywhere, you decide the second best thing to do to pass time is to catch up with the boy right next to you, and so you lean closer to him and ask him if he wants to get out for some fresh air.

After seeing him nodding eagerly at your suggestion, you find yourself trailing out of Donghyuck’s house, straight to the backyard, while passing some of his friends on your way– their irises were twice as wide as a normal person’s would be and you swear you sensed the sweet, disgusting smell of weed resonating through the walls, so you were glad to get out before the essence got so deep inside of your nose and make you want to puke.

As a cheerleader, you were a regular at those parties. You’ve seen enough of Yangyang, Donghyuck, Eunsok… and Renjun getting so high and mixing the drugs with alcohol that it left them out of it for hours, and you don’t really need that for yourself right now.

“Finally,” you gasp when you reach the backyard, leaning on the wall of the house. Seunghan follows you with a cup in his hand that you’re not sure when and where he’s gotten on your way out, sipping on the alcohol as his eyes never leave your frame.

“What are your plans after graduation?” he asks, genuinely curious.

“University,” you say, letting your eyes travel through the backyard, finding multiple people sharing cigarettes and pipes in the bushes, giggling to themselves. “You?”

“Same,” he nods, “I got into the town’s uni, so I’m just gonna stay here, though.”

Humming, you take a short glimpse at him. Truth be told, you don’t know much about Hong Seunghan. All you know about him is that he’s super nice and he always greeted you when you passed each other in the halls, despite not having many shared classes or social circles. Your friend Yeri once told you that he’s got a crush on you when you got an anonymous Valentine’s day card in your locker during junior year, but you dismissed the thought quickly as you realized you’ve never really had a coherent conversation with him. Looking into his starstruck eyes right now, though, you can’t say that you wouldn’t believe it now…

“I’m moving across the state, actually,” you grin, desperate to hide your despair behind a smile. Sungchan got into a university only an hour away from yours, which is the only thing that’s keeping you going right now– while you will be so far away from home, at least you won’t be completely lonely. If you ever feel like it’s too much, you can just catch a train and meet your childhood best friend in the next town. It’s easy. Or at least, that’s what you keep telling yourself.

“Why so far away?”

“I don’t know,” you mumble, taking your eyes off him again, looking through the crowd in the yard and finding a familiar figure, sitting lonely at the edge of the empty swimming pool, his legs dangling inside as he leans back, supporting his weight with his arms and looks towards the sky, “they had the best History courses, I guess…”

The conversation you’re having with Seunghan is only a background task now, a side quest in your game, as you focus on what you’ve been doing in the back of your head for the last 4 years. You monotonously reply to his questions and hum at all the right places in the dialogue to seem interested, but your eyes are focused solely on the man sitting at the swimming pool, looking more lonely than ever before. You’d make yourself feel silly for paying more attention to a man you’ve never spoken to than to the blushy classmate standing to your left right now, quietly obsessing your whole teenage years with a stranger, but for all you know, this could be the last time you’re seeing him in your life, so you let your inner little crushing-on-Huang-Renjun self have it, at least one last time.

When you turn 18, so does Huang Renjun. He finds enjoyment in all the possibilities now open to him with the new status of an adult, his Fridays spent drinking away with his new group of friends. He wears leather jackets and ripped jeans, and while you find it quite attractive, you don’t think it’s what suits him the most. Hell, even the soccer jersey looked more fit on him– and he played for the team for a total of two matches. His hair is bleached blonde and you once saw him with red, puffy eyes and a little fucked-out smile accompanied by his sketchy friends in the park, so you can only imagine what he’s been doing his whole senior year. You’re surprised he even managed to graduate.

When you turn 18, it’s when you worry most about him. He doesn’t seem himself, and quite frankly, he never has, but this is the most unpredictable and unexplainable version of himself that he managed to craft.

You don’t think you’ve ever seen him genuinely laugh. And yes, you don’t know the boy, but still, you kind of miss the earlier versions of him, because at least those weren’t as self-destructive and damaging to his health.

You wonder why he’s not inside with his friends. You wonder why he’s so alone in the backyard, why he’s sitting at the empty swimming pool with a bottle of liquor next to him, why he’s not laughing at stupid jokes and dancing to bad EDM music in Lee Donghyuck’s house like the rest of his circle is. You wonder what made him hang out with the crowd for the last year, what made him let his grades slip and why he never seemed to stay with one friend group for long.

You guess it’s hard to be his friend.

Or maybe, he just finds it hard to be other people’s friend.

Changing himself up just to fit with the others, carefully crafting and molding his personality to have at least someone match his current energy– you wonder if it wouldn’t just be easier for him to be himself and let someone discover the true him for once. Because this surely isn’t him. And the soccer player, running aimlessly around the field wasn’t him. The kid that was good at science was never a good fit for the nerdy crowd either, because it wasn’t him. The drama kid that was decent at acting, but never really talked with anyone from the club other than Dong Sicheng (because even after all this time, you think that was his only real friend), wasn’t the real Huang Renjun either. And now, after the four years of admiring the mystery he is and examining him each passing day, you can for sure say that the version of himself that smokes and drinks in dark alleyways isn’t the real him at all.

After reminiscing on your four years of high school with a smile on your face, you wonder if Huang Renjun could do the same. If he smiles about the many twists and turns, or if he thinks of his high school years as a waste of his youth, a time he can only be reminded of with a bittersweet feeling, never fitting in despite trying so hard over and over again.

The boy at the swimming pool chews on the inside of his cheek, scoffing as he points his eyes towards the ground. There’s an urge inside of you to walk over to him and be a shoulder for him to cry on, be someone to finally offer him some comfort, to let him talk while you listen.

But you don’t do any of that.

You keep standing there, watching him, as Hong Seunghan talks your ears off about everything and nothing, making your confused heart simmer with despair at the broken look on Renjun’s face when he looks around for the last time before he takes the bottle standing next to him into his hand and smashes it into the pool with full force, the piercing sound of the glass shattering making your ears hurt as you jump up in surprise.

The boy stands up from his place as he storms off, your eyes meeting only for a mere second before he’s out.

“Are you okay?” Seunghan asks again, for the second time this evening already, while you look at him with a tight smile and nod your head at the question.

“Yeah. Just… got distracted.”

When you’re 18, you believe this is the last time you’ll ever see him. When you’re 18, all you do is wish him well.

Walking out of your trashy university accommodation, locking the door behind you– although you think it does nothing for the safety of your living space, considering the door is paper thin and anyone determined enough could get inside in two minutes, if they wanted to– you put the keys into your coat pocket and jog down the stairs, because you fear the old elevator ever since you heard your neighbor getting stuck inside of it one day when the power went out. Checking the time on your phone screen, you walk your way to university.

You always wanted to live somewhere far away. It’s not really about cutting people off or about starting new– Sungchan visits you every other week when he’s bored, after all– you just think you like the comfort the big city brings you. The architecture of the town is beautiful and your university’s History course is the best one in the country. You almost feel a little proud of getting in, moving out of the small hell hole your hometown was, and being competent enough to live on your own at 19, cooking yourself bad pasta for dinner every evening and posting instagram stories of the sunset with the song stickers from your playlist every other week. It’s a little surreal to live the life your younger self always dreamt of, for it doesn’t feel as strange and so brand new like you expected it to. You can’t say you don’t enjoy it, though.

Walking inside of the university building, still not used to the white modern walls and tall glass windows in the lounge area, you check the time and realize you still have at least 25 minutes until your lecture starts. Coming from a small town, you never really learned how to time your departure from home. You always arrive either very late or very early– it’s hard to calculate how long the walk is, when everything is within a 10 minute reach back home.

Deciding to spend some time in the lounge area before the class starts, because you don’t really feel like spending time in the lonely classroom and you also suspect someone’s having a class in there still, you walk towards the crowded place, adjusting the bag strap that’s sneakily slipping off your shoulder.

The view in front of you catches you off guard, the amount of students doing things to your little, anxious self (in moments like these, you wish you had Sungchan with you here. Despite being quite social in high school, it’s hard to make friends when he’s not around to be your isle of comfort; but you guess it’s time for you to be a big person and find friends on your own now), and as your eyes scan the place for an empty space to sit, your mouth drops agape in shock and surprise.

There is a boy with mousy blonde hair sitting at one of the bean bags, down in the university halls. He's surrounded by people, all typing away on their laptops, occasionally glancing up to their friends and talking in hushed smiles and cheery giggles. The boy is alone– scrolling away on his phone, earphones in his ears as the slight movement of his leg matches the beat– though, he doesn't seem lonely.

There are plenty of people around him, all with their kindred spirits, yet, the boy makes no effort in trying to fit into a circle; he doesn't try to match anyone's energy or to desperately make someone like him. In a way, the sight makes you sigh with relief.

Huang Renjun has finally stopped trying, and while this sentence usually doesn't have a nice ring to it, this time, you don't think there's anything more positive about the fact that he simply just has no energy to change himself to fit the vision of himself that is kept by others.

Taking a few deep breaths in and out, you contemplate on your next step. Is this really how you get to know your high school crush, after so many years of thinking of him? Is university really the time for your first real meeting? It makes you feel kind of silly, the tingling sensation in your fingertips making it hard for you to stay grounded as you shake your head to clear your thoughts, deciding.

Wiping your hands onto the fabric of your jeans, taking another deep breath in and out, you walk up to the boy with a hesitant smile and drop your body to the bean bag next to him, accidentally bumping into his outstretched legs. The action makes your cheeks heaten as your whole body feels hot with uncertainty, but you don't back away as he looks up to you with an uninterested look, merely just wanting to know what bumped into him and made him lose his focus and switch his attention to the world around him instead of his phone.

Clearing your throat, you force yourself to quirk up the corners of your lips into the most welcoming smile, greeting the boy you know so well, but also don't know at all.

“Hi,” you utter, seeing the boy glance at you with pure interest now, eyebrows furrowed as the gears in his brain work by themselves, trying to sort your face. When his thoughts are met with recognition, his irises widen as he works out a subtle smile, the one that reaches his eyes and makes them light up with a glittery sparkle, soft voice echoing to your ears.

“Y/N, right?”

“Yeah,” you nod, putting on an awkward smile, “from high school.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” he nods, staring at you, as if to wait if you have anything else you want to say.

The encounter must feel strange to him. You've never really talked, and when you did, it was only when it was necessary. You were just a side character in his life– the one you pass in a game in a very unimportant side quest and never meet again, forgetting about it in an instant– however, to you, Huang Renjun, although he was never the center of your universe, was always there, somewhere in the back of your mind, as you looked after his every move and paid attention to every shift in his existence. To you, he was like the musician you fall in love with when you're a kid, and even though you don't listen to them anymore, you still have their account followed on instagram, keeping track of their every move, making sure they're safe and still loved by many.

Staring at you still, your throat gets dry as you have no words to say. Somehow, you always had so many things on your mind that you wanted to share with Huang Renjun, in each and every passage of his life. But now that you finally had the courage to walk up to him and talk, the words were stolen from the tip or your tongue and it's useless to try to search for them in your brain.

Maybe it's the boy recognising your hesitance, maybe it's his brain reminding him of all the times he's walked up to a new group and tried so hard to fit in with them, maybe he knows the lost look in your eyes all too well from how many times he's seen it in himself when he tried to make new friends; maybe it's the fact that he knows how stressful it is to walk up to someone and try to be their friend– nonetheless, for a reason to you unknown, he does something no one's ever done for him when he was in the position you are in right now, because, truth be told, this is the first time he's been in the position of being walked up to and interrogated with a premise of new friendship. And it's all thanks to you– so he takes the lead and warmly smiles at you, striking up a conversation.

“What's up? I didn't expect to see you here,” he says, taking his earphones out and putting them away to his pocket, turning slightly towards your figure and paying full attention to you.

Playing with your fingers in your lap, you turn your gaze away from him and master up a response. “I didn't expect to see you here either, actually,” you say.

“Yeah, well,” he shrugs, “I guess I just wanted to start over somewhere far away. It felt… a little claustrophobic back home.”

The two of you share a look full of understatement, because in his eyes, as his classmate from high school, you must have noticed at least some of the glimpses of his numerous friend groups over the time. And while none of them really worked out for him, since none of them ever really felt as if they were right for him, now, in the university halls, although a little alone and a little too ordinary, he seems like himself for the first time.

“I get that,” you nod, not wanting to dwell on the topic for too long in fear of hitting a painful spot in him or exposing that you’ve been watching him the whole time, “what do you study?”

“Art,” he says with an excited smile, the one that makes his eyes crinkle up a little and his expression is full of undenied joy and excitement, the one you’ve seen on him for the last time in junior year, talking away with Sicheng in a red McDonald’s booth– hinting that after so many years of changing himself up and trying to fit in with the rest, he's doing what he really wants and desires, with no expectations and harsh looks of others.

“That's so amazing,” you hum in amazement, offering him a genuine smile.

“It's very exciting,” he nods, glad he no longer feels like he’s been made from a broken mold, glad he no longer feels aimless and unarmed with everything he encounters, just like he did in high school in the sports teams and drama clubs, hating each passing second he’s spent doing something he despised, wasting away his life. “What about you?”

“Oh, I study History,” you reply, scratching the back of your neck, “doesn't sound as exciting as Art, to be honest, but I've wanted to study it for the longest time, so…”

“No, that's great,” he assures you, “although you don’t seem like a History kind of person,” he says, although he doesn’t know you that well– he can’t quite put a finger on when you two have met, and if you’ve ever even talked. Looking at you right now, though, he must have registered you, at least, because you seem too familiar in the foreign place and he finds himself silently holding on to the feeling of recognising at least something in the wide unknown.

Squinting, you curse the cheerleader stereotype for the first time in your life. “Is that supposed to be a diss?” you grin.

“God, no,” he shakes his head in disapproval, quickly leading you out of the misjudgement. “I just didn’t expect you to study History. I don’t know you that well, but you’re like, the furthest away from my image of a History major… but I guess my expectations can be wrong,” he defends himself, palms raised in defeat.

Humming, you still squint at him in uncertainty. “Well, I guess I get that. You seem like an Art major, though, to be honest.”

“Do I?” he asks, a tone completely different to yours– he looks grateful for the comment, his eyes shining with appreciation and maybe just a hint of pride.

To be honest, it's not really about the way he dresses that makes him seem like he’d study Art– his black high-top converse, beige pants and an oversized brown flannel could be worn by anyone– but his aura, the energy he gives off at first glance, is something that gives it away. This is the first time someone's ever affirmed Huang Renjun's identity, the real one, on top of that– the one he spent his whole life carefully crafting and creating, picking away the bad parts as he tried and failed to fit all the other categories he didn't like– and it feels truly euphoric to him, like he fulfilled his life-long goal and finally found his purpose. "Well, thank you," he says, and you can tell he means it.

You want to tell him how glad you are that he let go of trying to please everyone. You want to tell him how it's great that he finally found himself, how amazing it is that he finally let go of the desire to be liked for something he wasn't, just to be popular or have someone by his side. You want to tell him how you appreciated his existence all those years, how you watched over his every good and bad step, how proud you are of him for the journey he's taken and how amazing it is that he finally reached the final destination.

That would be weird, though– he doesn't even know that you’ve selfishly watched him all those years, tumbling and turning in the background of the mess his life had always been. So, instead, you mumble out a sweet: “You're welcome.”

By the way he looks at you, you almost think he understands your intentions. You almost believe he can read your mind and find the pictures of himself in your memories, each and every single one carefully preserved with his essence, although it was different each time and never really stayed the same.

But he can't. He can’t read your mind and he can’t tell that you know all about him, so instead, he thinks this is the universe rewarding him for being so patient, rewarding him for always trying, and that’s why he feels that he can’t let this opportunity get away from him.

“Do you want to hang out later? I have a class in 10 minutes, but I'd love to walk around and explore it here a little in the afternoon, if you're down,” he suggests, taking you off guard.

The new version of Huang Renjun that's in front of you is confident– something he always lacked, for it was never really him that he was showing to the world– and the new Huang Renjun is charming and magnetizing. You can't say you never felt like this about him before, because of course you did– you wouldn't have known so much about him and his various phases of life if you weren't interested in the boy, but the way you feel about him now feels more real– maybe because it's finally the authentic version of himself that he always was so afraid of showing to others. Electrified by his eyes, you bring yourself to nod.

“Of course I'm down,” you agree, smiling.

“Great,” he laughs airly, the sound making your smile widen even more, “I'll get your number, then?”

“Oh, sure,” you say, taking his phone out of his outstretched hand, typing the number into his contacts list. Walking up to him all those minutes ago, this wasn’t how you expected the encounter to go. You expected to say hi to him, to maybe hear him tell his major to you before he turns his back to you and walks away, never talking to you again. Instead, you get an invite, a premise of something new, a meeting that excites you and makes you feel all giddy inside, just like the first time you’ve laid your eyes on the boy in high school and decided to secretly hold your heart out to him, if he ever wanted to take it. It makes you feel like you should’ve done this long ago, like you should’ve walked up to him during high school, when you noticed him struggling, but perhaps, this is how it was always supposed to go, how you two were supposed to end up in each other’s lives and how you were always made to finally know Huang Renjun for real.

“Good,” he nods, locking eyes with you, “I have to go now, because the class is on the fifth floor and the elevator is broken, and I also don't really know my way around the building yet, but I'll definitely text you later,” he giggles.

Laughing, you shake your head in disbelief. “Of course. Good luck on not getting lost,” you say as you wave at him, his figure already standing up tall in front of you, his eyes glazing over your features for one last time.

“Thanks, I'll need it,” he tells you, “I'll see you later, then.”

“Later!” you nod, the smile never leaving your lips as you watch him leave and take a shy look at you over his shoulder for one last time before he takes the stairs up, eyes quickly drifting away when your gazes meet.

If anyone was watching you for the last few minutes, they'd think you were old friends. They'd think you were just catching up, accidentally bumping into each other and talking about the struggles of university life, bitching about the accommodation and how the professors seem uninterested in the topic of their courses. The reality is different, though, and although you and Renjun were just acquaintances meeting in a big town, miles away from the home, you can already sense that you and him were meant to have a storyline in each other's lives eventually.

This was Renjun's first time to be walked up to with a welcoming smile. It was also your first time to reach out and offer your friendship to someone. You changed your roles, in a way.

And while Renjun continues to find himself more and more each day, the true and real identity deep inside of him, he finally has someone by his side assuring him that it's enough and that he never has to change a thing about himself to be liked. No more masks and no more acting.

For the first time in his life, Huang Renjun knows who he is, even when nobody’s watching.

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