27. Mouse’s Past and Future

TWENTY-SEVEN

Mouse followsSeojun back to his dorm. They're staying in a different wing than Fairytale. Mouse thinks it's interesting that the decor is different. The walls in their wing of the dormitory building are black, but here it pitches to a ruddy red.

"They gave you the dragon flame special?" Mouse comments, jerking his thumb toward the walls.

Seojun laughs. "Yeah, it's a little intense, huh? I kinda like it, though. Sort of makes the place feel like home."

Mouse looks at the walls and reserves his comment. It makes him wonder what ‘home' must look like for 4QY.

It's natural to be curious. Although he definitely doesn't regret his decision at all, it would be abnormal if Mouse didn't wonder how the group he almost debuted with lives.

They go to one of the guys' rooms. Seojun doesn't even have to open the door. As soon as Insoo hears their footsteps outside, he swings it open.

"Hey, come in."

Mouse isn't sure if they were expecting him. Seojun's members look at Mouse with varying degrees of curiosity.

"Wanna drink?" Tal asks, holding up a bottle of beer in a green bottle and shaking it.

"Sure, give it here," Mouse says, leaning over to take it.

Mouse isn't as close with the other guys from 4QY. They have a passing familiarity with each other, but Seojun is the only one he's really kept in touch with, and even that's been sporadic.

Mouse isn't one to be awkward with other people, though. He takes the beer and finds an empty space to crash, throwing himself comfortably back on the bed where Tal and Juicy are sitting. Seojun goes to sit on the other bed, while Insoo flops out on the floor.

They must've showered quickly. Insoo's medium-length hair is still damp where it curls above his collar.

Tal helps Mouse to crack open his beer and passes it back, and Mouse takes a long, deep drink. The light bitterness of the beer is welcome as it dances across his palate. Mouse hadn't realized how thirsty he'd been before he drank it.

"You guys did well in the game," Seojun says, leaning back.

"So did you," Mouse says, reaching out to accept the cup of soju that Seojun passes in his direction. "I didn't see all your plays coming."

"Just enough of them, huh?"

"Mhm."

"The booby traps were a nice touch."

"Ugh," Juicy says, shuddering as he recalls the sensation of thick slime soaking into his shoes. "That was nasty."

"Charis' idea," Mouse smirks.

"You guys are lucky to have Charis on your team," Juicy says. "He's got that whole… mega eye-catching thing, you know?"

Juicy gestures vaguely in the air, a bunch of nonsense motions that can't possibly mean anything to him, but Mouse has seen Charis, so he gets it.

"Yep," he says, popping the final consonant. He lifts up the clear glass of soju he's been holding in one hand. "To crushing each other in the competition."

The others laugh and raise their glasses, and they all drink to that.

They toast together, shooting back the burning clear liquid in one shot. Mouse gasps when it's done, cradling his empty glass close. He sets it on the nightstand beside him. He doesn't know whose it is, but there's a pair of wire-framed glasses folded neatly on top of it, and goes back to nursing his beer.

Even the glasses give him pause, because they remind him of Charis.

Seojun holds out the bottle to ask if he wants a refill, and Mouse tilts his head and declines. "Better not."

Seojun takes the denial in stride. He nods and 4QY fills each other's glasses again.

"How're things at Rockstar?" Mouse asks, making himself comfortable as he leans back against the bed.

There are things they can talk about and things they can't. Any more talk about the game itself seems verboten, and they all shy away from it instinctually. Still, there's nothing wrong with shooting the shit.

"Things are good, really. We had the option to come onto this show, and so we took it. It seemed cool to get our music out to more people, you know?"

"Yeah," Mouse agrees, nodding as he takes another sip of his beer. He does know. "Same with us. We could've said no to this spot, but it seemed like fun."

"Not like Revolution," Insoo says, lowering his voice. "Have you noticed how mad they seem? I hear their company made them come here."

Mouse whistles under his breath. "Must suck to have management with such a tight hold on the leash."

"Doesn't it?" Insoo asks Mouse curiously. He sits up and leans forward. "Wouldn't you know?"

"Me?"

"Yeah. I mean, you perform what your management team tells you to, don't you? Isn't Company P kind of famous for that?"

Technically, Company P is famous for being a star-maker, but star-making comes with some limitations. Namely: you do what you're told and you get famous for it. Revolution's company is like that too, only they're worse at it.

"We have enough freedom. Nothing to be too unhappy about, anyway."

"But don't you ever just want to make your own music?" Seojun asks.

Mouse looks at him from beneath his lashes and smirks. "Trying to poach me?"

Seojun doesn't deny it. He smiles, and the slightly bashful look makes his boyishly handsome charm explode. "You can't blame a guy for trying."

"No, I guess not." Mouse rubs the lip of his beer bottle absently against his lip. "I can get mad if you keep trying, though. No means no, Seojunnie~ Don't piss me off."

Seojun holds up his hands in surrender. He does try, sometimes. But if Mouse tells him not to, he won't do it again.

"So what about First Love?" Mouse asks, taking another swig of his beer.

Tal gets quiet, and Seojun sneers.

"Fuck those guys," Seojun says. "They're lucky they weren't on our team."

Mouse doesn't have to wonder about what that means. He gets it. He's known Seojun for a long time, and honestly they're similar in that way. Seojun might not have thrown the game, but he could definitely have found a way to make First Love's lives a little bit more miserable. He's crafty when he needs to be, and as nice as he is, Seojun has a bit of a mean streak in him, too. Mouse has never minded it.

"What about you?" Juicy asks. "You're the ones who had to work with them."

Mouse kills the last of his beer. "They were weird. Anyway, it's over now. We got the prize, didn't we, so that's all that matters. Fuck those guys."

A group of discontented murmurs of agreement go up around the room. They grumble and drink. 4QY drinks a bit more than he does, but Mouse supposes that's only right. After all, they're soothing the sting of a losing fight.

Mouse likes hanging out with the guys. Sometimes he feels like he has to bundle it all up when he's with Fairytale. Don't get him wrong—he loves their team, and he wasn't bullshitting Seojun. He doesn't now and has never had any intention of leaving their group, his occasional, private gripes with their management aside.

Still, he feels like he has to be a good hyung for his team—even he does—in his own way. He's rougher around the edges than it seems to the others, and that's on purpose. Meaner and sharper, less caring and more selfish, and he tries to keep those parts to himself around his members so he doesn't hurt anyone.

It's still pretty new, the feeling of having people that he doesn't want to hurt.

Sometimes it feels nice to just be himself, though. He feels like he can be himself around Seojun and his members. His real self, shitty parts and all. Maybe because it doesn't matter so much—all of this is temporary, and shit-talking aside, one of them is going to go home sooner or later. He doesn't have to build a life with these guys. They don't have to be brothers.

Mouse has just the one beer but doesn't mind as the rest of them have more. They're still drinking together when Insoo lights up a cigarette.

"You better put that thing out," Mouse says, jabbing a finger in his direction. "If you fuck up my voice, I'm gonna kill you."

"I got it, I got it," Insoo says. "This thing is stuck."

He keeps the cigarette pinched between his lips as he fights with the window.

It's a luxury they don't have. Charis and Mouse had gotten one of the inside, windowless rooms.

"Swanky," Mouse pronounces of the room.

Insoo finally gets the window open and sticks his head out, exhaling a bellyful of smoke out the window. This is probably against at least ten regulations.

Try as he might to actually keep it out, some of the smell of cigarettes drifts into the room. So, too, does the cold. Mouse doesn't complain about it again. He feels boneless, the soju already going to work on his head and making his body feel heavy and limber.

Although he's talking with his friends, hanging out, and letting loose, he still comes to attention right away as soon as Charis comes through the door.

A familiar head of ash blond hair materializes in the open doorway, along with the sound of coughing.

Charis wasn't expecting the room to be this smoky. He waves his hand to try to clear the air—he can't understand how Mouse or any of the rest of them can stand it—and peers through the mildly hazy room and the thicket of bodies in search of the person he came here to find.

Mouse spots him first, a languid pile of limbs suddenly sitting to attention as Mouse lifts himself up from where he'd been leaning back on his elbows with his powerful core.

"Charis? What's up?"

"I don't feel well," Charis mumbles.

He'd made it all the way back to his dorm and had the chance to take a shower before he'd realized that the unsteady, churning feeling in his stomach wasn't just jealousy.

At first, he just thought that whatever he'd eaten at dinner hadn't agreed with him. Now he still thinks that might be the case, but it's getting worse and not better. He doesn't know why his first instinct was to come and find Mouse about it.

Mouse is instantly alert, tossing his empty bottle for Seojun to just barely catch. He's quick on his feet, closing the distance so he can press his hand to Charis' forehead, nestling it up underneath his long, willowy bangs.

"You feel a little warm. What do you feel like?"

Charis shakes his head, and Mouse's quick mind immediately falls on the others in the room, assuming they're the reason Charis doesn't want to talk about it.

"Wow," Juicy says, sotto voce. "I want that kind of treatment."

It's a little bit fascinating, and at least two of the members in the room are thinking the exact same thing—wow, what do you have to do to get that kind of service from the Mouse of Company P fame? The same Mouse who left their group in the dirt and didn't bat an eye at it.

Charis is oblivious, letting Mouse steer him gently out the door.

"Thanks for the drinks," Mouse calls over his shoulder. "I'm leaving now."

Seojun's feelings for Mouse are complicated. His eyes catch on the closed door for a second after Mouse slams it, then Juicy says something about the schedule for tomorrow, and he reluctantly peels his attention away.

He's got a thing for Mouse, sure. He's had a thing for Mouse since they were both kids, but Mouse sure doesn't have a thing for him.

Ah well, Seojun thinks wistfully. He takes another sip of his beer. You can't have everything.

He's jealous. He can admit that. He was trying to steal Mouse away; he can admit that, too. Seojun's always been a graceful loser, though—although he's a better winner. He's happy that Mouse has someone. He's happy if Mouse is happy, and Mouse does seem happy.

That's how they are, too, his relationship with Mouse. They're competitive with each other to the bitter end, but Seojun likes to think they're also genuinely happy to see each other succeed. 4QY is on the up and up, and it is genuinely wonderful to watch Mouse's star rise.

Oh well, he thinks again, and raises a brief, silent toast to the closed door.

Insoo catches his eye and looks at him curiously, but then just goes loudly on with what he was saying. He'd dug up a pack of hwatu cards from somewhere inside his bag, and he projects his voice as he gravely says, "The name of the game is seotda."