Despite looking the part right before the game, Minjun is not good at basketball. Watching him grinning at the other players, Taehyeon could assume he is having the time of his life.
Minjun's teammates aren't hiding their irritation but nobody is actually saying anything to Minjun. He runs around, chasing the ball and sprinting from one hoop to the other. Whenever Minjun intercepts the ball he gets told off for travelling.
"What's travelling?" Taehyeon asks Bada.
"Moving?" is the suggestion. Bada is not helpful. Taehyeon isn't sure why he expected anything other than incomprehension from a friend who hasn't participated in a P.E. lesson since he was twelve years old.
Taehyeon pays enough attention to work out that travelling is mostly an issue when Minjun does some fancy bouncing trick with the ball before he starts bouncing the ball around other players. He begins to hope that the ball avoids Minjun for the rest of the game. Watching this is exhausting.
"That Jeonwon player should play netball instead," an Eoleunjeol student mutters to a friend. Taehyeon really needs Minjun to get switched out, if only to save some dignity.
On the other hand, Woobin is impressive. He jumps and shoots and dribbles and—
"Should I take the drooling as a good sign?" Bada asks whilst elbowing Taehyeon. The question is a good one depending on perspective. Taehyeon hastily wipes his face and tries to look like a man of deep thought.
"What are you talking about? I think there's a leak dripping right onto my face."
Bada says nothing more than that. He grins. He knows Taehyeon too well. There is no point in trying to defend himself.
Bada looks a fair bit less pleased with his knowledge of Taehyeon when the game ends and they're not going to leave school together.
"You can't go to the party. We already told Minjun that we're not going. Don't you want to come and play some games?"
Taehyeon shakes his head and hopes he is imagining the glares from people passing him by. Students from Eoleunjeol must be confused about why he was standing with them and the Jeonwon students must have been equally clueless. Maybe he can pretend to be a different Taehyeon if anyone asks.
"I still want to talk to Minjun. This is my chance." Taehyeon glances at the two mismatched Eoleunjeol students standing a step or so behind Bada. One scruffy kid who is 90% hair and one kid who looks like a stick man. This isn't the best omen for whatever Bada has planned. "I'll link up with you later. Or next time."
"You already have a lot to make up to me, remember?" Bada whispers loudly. He glances around and takes a step closer. "Why are you going to ditch me again?"
"Bada, it's Lee Minjun. It's a once in a lifetime opportunity!"
"Taehyeon, he literally invited you to lunch. I'm sure you'll talk again at some point. Is talking to a —" Bada drops his whisper to nothing more than the screeching of his vocal cords for a moment to say "—straight boy—" before returning to an ordinary whisper, "— really that important? It will be fine."
Taehyeon does understand where Bada is coming from. All the same, this is a chance that Taehyeon can't pass up.
Losers on the fringe of Jeonwon Metropolitan High School's social hive don't get invited to parties. Realising that much is common sense. A person with common sense would obviously go to their first and last party.
***
Taehyeon suspects that he lacks a lot of the common sense he claims to have. Why would he go to a party? He had been so excited that Minjun's friends (and Taeri the traitor) found him after the basketball match.
The girls were so nice. Taehyeon specifically remembers all three of them insisting that they wouldn't be at the party for too long and that they would make sure he isn't left alone and abandoned. If Taehyeon thinks about a big marker for success he would easily identify friendship with girls as one of those things. He had been tricked into thinking that the girls were nice. Well, Taeri didn't trick him because he will never forgive her, but the third years tricked him.
Nayoon linked arms with him and laughed all about Minjun waddling around the court (that is the word Nayoon used so Taehyeon supposes that must be what the basketball play area is called) like a toddler. Taehyeon isn't an idiot. He smiled along when Nayoon made her jokes but he never said anything that could blow back on him. He wasn't about to be caught saying anything unflattering that could be used against him.
Whether or not Taehyeon's words would be used against him, he has been abandoned. All the parties Taehyeon has seen on TV have been loud music, smoke, and bodies dancing too closely together, with not a single person wearing their school uniform. Underage drinking and risqué behaviour has been on every screen Taehyeon saw. Not one of those party depictions prepared Taehyeon for the party he has ended up attending.
There is music playing but only to the extent of ambient background noise. In fact Taehyeon can only distinguish some sort of tubular bells beneath the chatter of conversation. The house is lavish: long, cream couches, ivory walls decorated with the amber glow of diffused lights on the walls, white marbled floor, and two steps down to the flickering screen inlaid in a glass coffee table. The party attendees are effortlessly cool, each holding frosted glass tumblers in one hand and barely paying attention to their drinks as they converse across the charcuterie.
Taehyeon doesn't recall ever having such a deep conversation in his own life but seeing the focus on the faces of his peers makes interrupting a difficult thing. Right now he is the shy kid who isn't worth talking to. All he can do is stand beside a dark-wood shelf unit comprised of cubes decorated with bright little ornaments and sparsely stacked books here and there. For a while he has been tempted to entertain himself by playing with the ornaments. The rainbow of morph-like little people posed on the strange shelf unit are blank enough to have entire personalities projected onto them. Taehyeon wouldn't like to have the personality of childish loser to be projected onto him. He keeps his hands to himself to avoid being considered weird.
"Maybe everyone is so tame and mature because they don't want pictures of them being rowdy as teenagers to haunt them for the rest of their lives," the yellow humanoid on the nearest perch suggests to Taehyeon. That makes sense. Imagining inanimate objects speaking makes a bit less sense. Taehyeon decides he will just ignore that.
Weird little Taehyeon is alone. Not even the traitor Han Taeri is in sight. Taehyeon came to the party to talk to Minjun but that hasn't happened at all. Minjun's friends promised to keep him company but they haven't done that either.
Whilst looking around for anyone at all to save him, Taehyeon notices something much worse. People start clustering together, taking breaks from their deep serious conversations to pose for a camera. Taehyeon needs to avoid the camera at all costs. Weird little Taehyeon definitely will not be immortalised on a film camera or someone's camera roll. Between being the weirdo in the bathroom for an hour or the weirdo standing alone in all of the photos from this alleged party, Taehyeon knows what he prefers. He makes a run for it and finds the nearest bathroom.
The bathroom on the ground floor has a step down into the room and heat seeps up through the smooth terracotta tiles which lead him to the middle of the room. Taehyeon wriggles his socked toes and wonders how much he'd appreciate extravagant things like heated floors if he got to walk on them every day. Lee Dabin's parents must be very rich because even in this small room with soft amber light bulbs there is a cramped little bath and shower sitting beside the off-white sink. This bathroom seems relatively useless seeing as it isn't connected to a bedroom at all, but Taehyeon appreciates its existence because all the bottles of soap and shampoo and conditioner give him something to read until he even gets bored of that.
Relieved that nobody has come to use the bathroom, Taehyeon supposes he might as well do the thing he would inevitably do whilst alone in a bathroom at a party.
He takes a seat on the closed toilet lid, the first time he has sat down since he got here, and he pulls out his phone.
"Well, well, well," Bada says when he answers the phone, "look who has come crawling back. The party isn't a good time at all, is it?"
"I just miss you, that's all," Taehyeon lies. "You would have had so much fun if you came here. I don't want to be here, taking all the fun you could have had."
"Somehow, I don't believe you," Bada laughs. Taehyeon thinks he's right not to believe him. Even if he is hanging out with a bunch of shy nerds there is no way Bada isn't having more fun than Taehyeon is. "Do you not get on well with Lee Minjun? If you want, I can try to come and meet you on your way home. I think Siwoo and Pilgyu both need to get home soon anyway."
"Don't worry about it," Taehyeon says, not even bothering to try and disguise the obvious echo of his voice. He isn't going to pretend to be anywhere other than the bathroom. "Don't cut short your time with your friends for my sake. What are you guys doing anyway? Are you eating anything nice?"
Taehyeon doesn't mind listening to Bada talk about spending time with his friends. At least one of them is having fun. The shy nerds don't sound too bad right now. Taehyeon was wrong to want to avoid them. He hadn't bothered to listen to Bada until now but this doesn't entirely sound like the desperate ramblings of someone eager to lose their virginity before they lose their nerve.
Today was Bada's first time meeting his friends from Eoleunjeol Technical College in person and it sounds like it has been almost everything he wanted it to be. Despite how they look, those shy nerds are apparently nice and even funny. Taehyeon is happy for Bada but he realises that he wishes he could have been there to see something good happen to his best friend.
After today's blunder, Taehyeon should have spent the evening grovelling to Bada and trying to convince the shy nerds that he isn't mean to Bada on purpose. Taehyeon is obviously an idiot without any common sense so it only stands to reason that he would do something stupid like start a rumour about Bada. Right when Taehyeon is about to apologise, someone knocks at the bathroom door.
"Sorry to rush you but I really need to go. Are you going to be long?"
"Oh, no, sorry. Just a second," Taehyeon calls out. To Bada he says, "I'm being evicted from the bathroom so I've got to go. I'll text you later. Make sure you text me as soon as you get home, okay? Bye. Stop laughing at me, I'm hanging up right now."
Bada doesn't stop laughing but Taehyeon can at least stop hearing the sound when he ends the call.