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Chapter 3

April 19, 33 AE

Mack only spared a glance at the gaudy neon lightstrip that decorated the height of the highrise before heading straight for the main doors. Everyone in Hollywood knew about the luxurious Everland Park, and while he never visited Elsie's unit before, he attended his fair share of parties within the same building. The place was nice, of course, and he could probably afford it with his actor salary, but he preferred a more modest lifestyle.

Just as long as he didn't have to live in the Barracks again.

The security at the lobby was surprisingly well-trained, and a guard even verified he was on the guest list after greeting him by name. While they apologized for their procedures, Mack was more than willing to wait. After all, these people were an important line of defense in the residents' safety, and that was worth much more than a few seconds of his time.

The two Class 1 metas at Elsie's door were less commendable, and they each gave Mack a mere nod in greeting before he rang the doorbell. But it's not like he could blame them. While Class 2 metas and above were forced to become guardians, at least people looked up to them and respected them. More often than not, Class 1 metas were hardly spared a second glance; most couldn't become guardians even if they wanted to.

It only took a few moments before Mack heard a gentle thud at the door, soon followed by the lock clicking open. Elsie and a cacophony of music were there to greet him, with the former's cheeks slightly tinted and her grin wide.

"Shh!" she exclaimed loudly, using one foot to prop the door so her hand would be free to put a finger to her lips; her other hand was clearly occupied with a bottle of beer, and she used it to gesture Mack inside.

And as soon as the door closed behind him, Mack's chest was filled with warmth.

The party was admittedly small, but what it lacked in participants it made up for in energy. Quentin was immediately recognizable with his trademark enthusiasm, but Mack had to do a double take at the sight of Amira cheerfully shaking a tambourine to the beat of the music with a gentle smile on her face.

Less familiar were the other two guests, but Mack would be a liar if he said he didn't recognize them.

During his teenage years, everyone at the Academy knew about the Song brothers. While the siblings were rarely seen together, they were both extremely talented in their respective boy bands and side projects, and it wasn't long before their popularity in South Korea stretched across the Pacific Ocean, a feat only partially attributed to their dual citizenship. Fans in multiple countries were obsessed by the brothers' naturally good looks, flawless charisma, and silky voices, and Mack couldn't blame them.

By the time Mack moved to acting, his celebrity acquaintances were also familiar with the brothers, but in a drastically different sense. And while the younger brother skyrocketed to international stardom, the elder's legacy was seen as nothing more than a tragic fall from fame.

But there was no sign of the rumors just then.

At least, not that Mack could see, but he couldn't help but be a little distracted. How could he not be at the astonishing sight of the younger brother, Jordan Song. Astonishing, in the way that he was dressed like a supermodel with his black shirt, its buttons half undone and long sleeves half rolled up, and how it was half-tucked into his slim, ripped dark grey jeans. Astonishing, in the way that he stood confidently on the couch with his gaudy neon blue socks dotted with golden cats and pizza slices, all while sweaty, disheveled, and completely entranced by his own passionate air guitar solo.

And then there was the elder brother, Minyoung Song; the only one ignoring the scene in favor of aggressively looking for another song to play.

But before Mack could question his disinterest, Jordan began to sing, and Mack's eyes widened.

In all honesty, Mack didn't know much about music, but he at least knew what he liked and disliked. And, just then, he knew he really liked what he was hearing. Because even though Jordan's voice was a lot rougher than the silky smooth Mack remembered from his classmates' playlists, the man exuded passion, and Mack could feel it from across the room.

The warmth in his chest began to grow.

Eventually and unfortunately, the song came to an end, and Mack immediately broke into applause.

"That was very impressive," he said truthfully.

Of course, it was also hilarious, but Mack didn't think his laughter would be accepted favorably.

Judging by Jordan's humiliated shock as he stumbled down from the couch, Mack must have made the right call, and he felt a pang of pity at the sight of the man's obvious pain that showed through his pink cheeks.

"Mackenzie Olomana," Mack greeted as he approached him, determined to not let Jordan linger in anxious silence. "Call me Mack."

"Song Mins--I mean, Jordan," Jordan stammered. And while he was several inches taller and was decently built, his mannerisms made him look significantly smaller. "Song. Jordan Song. I sing songs."

This time, Mack struggled to stifle his laughter. And when Jordan shook Mack's offered hand, Mack tightened his grip in what he hoped was a gesture of comfort.

"It's great to finally meet you," Mack said, again speaking the truth. "I'm a huge fan. Even more so after that stunning performance."

"Thanks," Jordan said, his voice significantly quieter than it had been a few moments ago. "I like you too."

Somehow, Jordan turned an even darker shade of pink, and Mack felt torn between delight and sympathy.

"I meant your work," Jordan firmly continued, running a hand through his sweaty black hair. "Like your movies. Not your workout. But that's nice, too. I mean, it must be good, I'm guessing."

Mack couldn't help it anymore; he laughed, loudly.

"Don't worry," Mack assured at the hint of worry on Jordan's face. "I got it, thanks. And I tend to make myself speechless, too."

Mack grinned at his joke; Jordan grimaced.

"I probably shouldn't, but I need another drink," Jordan said, rattling the empty can in his hand. "Can I get you something?"

"I'll take one of those," Mack said, nodding towards Jordan's hand. "It's obviously working wonders."

Again, Mack couldn't help but laugh, but he admittedly felt a little guilty at the sight of Jordan's stiff smile before the man hurried off into the kitchen. He hadn't meant to embarrass Jordan even more, and he vowed to make it up to him when he returned.

So as soon as Jordan returned, his face pinched as if he was constipated, Mack intercepted him just outside the kitchen, already in Damage Control Mode.

"So this is the magic juice!" Mack exclaimed as soon as Jordan handed him the can, his voice easily drowning out whatever song Minyoung and Quentin were yelling along to. "Gimme a couple of these and maybe I'll join you for a duet."

Unfortunately, Jordan's frown deepened--maybe he actually did have to go to the bathroom--and he forced out a half-hearted chuckle. Obviously, getting him to laugh at his own embarrassing antics wasn't the right call.

"Speaking of magic juice," Mack continued, this time with an air of exaggerated drama. "There was this one time when a bunch of us from my Academy class tried to do an intoxicated version of the Unity Games while all of our seniors did the real one, since we finally turned twenty-one that year. Except we needed a ton of alcohol to even get to that point, because, you know, meta-metabolism and all that. But since we were all broke trainees or third officers, a few people decided to make their own booze. And, well..." Mack shrugged, a mischievous grin subtly showing. "I'm told I did spectacularly. Although, I didn't win anything."

This time, Jordan's fake laughter wasn't as stiff, but he still looked like he was having digestive issues. Perhaps he didn't enjoy Mack's self-deprecating humor either. Or maybe every sip of his drink was just making his stomach worse.

"We couldn't be all wild at the Academy, you see, so we typically had to live out our missed teenage years along with our twenties," Mack explained. "Of course, there were some things we could still enjoy on the down-low." He raised his eyebrows and nodded at Jordan pointedly. "Your music, for example, was all the rage."

Jordan sputtered a bit on his drink, and for a brief moment, Mack panicked at thought that whatever was bothering the man's stomach was finally coming out.

Alas, something did come out, but it wasn't in the form that Mack was expecting.

"It was?!" Jordan exclaimed as he wiped his mouth with the inside of his wrist.

Judging by Jordan's genuine surprise and no sign of other digestive issues, Mack's Damage Control Mode had found its way forward.

"Of course!" Mack beamed. "I think that was... just before our last year at the Academy. We were trying to embrace our last few moments of pre-adulthood, and your music was the perfect way to do that."

"Well," Jordan shyly mumbled to the floor, using his free hand to rub the back of his reddening neck. "It was my group's music. I was the mak--the most junior one."

Mack raised an eyebrow. "The what?"

"The most junior one?" Jordan said, a little louder and with his eyes directly on Mack's.

"What'd you say before that though?" Mack grinned. "You were the 'Mack'?"

"No!" Jordan exclaimed, then let out a sigh to accompany Mack's childish giggles. "No, I said 'maknae'. It's what you call people who are your juniors."

"Mack, nay," Mack repeated, then cringed. "That was really bad, wasn't it?"

Based on Jordan's reserved smirk, it was.

"It was close enough," Jordan said. "Don't worry about it."

"But I am worried about it," Mack insisted. "I want to say it right. Say it again."

Jordan seemed surprised, but eventually he obliged.

"Mach, nay," Mack repeated slowly, watching Jordan's reaction carefully. "Mach-nay."

Immediately, Jordan's face lit up ever so slightly.

"That's it!" he exclaimed, smiling wide. "You did it!"

So of course, Mack repeated the word a few times for good measure.

"So would they actually call you that?" Mack asked when he was finally done. "Mak-nae?"

Jordan chuckled. "No, people usually call me Jordan. Except my groupmates; they usually used my Korean name, Minseok."

As expected, Mack repeated "Minseok" a dozen times before Jordan gently shoved his shoulder.

"Just call me Jordan already," Jordan insisted through his gentle laughter.

Mack obediently stopped, grinning as he watched Jordan take another sip of his drink--then lower his can to stare at it with a frown.

"Guess I need another drink," Jordan mumbled before looking up at Mack. "You want another one?"

Surprised, Mack weighed his own can. "I still have at least half of it. Huh, I didn't realize how far behind I was."

"That's what happens when you keep talking," Jordan pointed out, his voice stern but his expression playful.

Mack let out a laugh, short and loud, before leading the way back into the kitchen.

"Oh, I'll catch up!" he promised, turning back only to see Jordan happily joining him. "And then you can tell me some of your stories!"

A few drinks and many shots later, Mack and Jordan were sitting on the two-seater couch that previously served as Jordan's stage, each of them nursing a glass of some mystery potion Elsie concocted. While both of them had participated in a few musical numbers beforehand, they both insisted that they needed to rest their vocal chords before their next performance. Or that's what they claimed, but they still continued to swap stories, each of them needing to yell to be heard over the chaos surrounding them.

"So we were filming in this super rural village," Jordan started his latest story, eyes sparkling and cheeks glowing. "Like, super country, in the middle of absolutely nowhere. There was seriously only these small houses, farmland, and a bunch of trees. I couldn't even get reception! And we only had one day to film everything, so everyone's panicking the whole time, running back and forth, and, well, there's nothing I can do, right? I'd just get in the way if I tried to help, and then people would get even more mad at me, and it'd be a big deal."

"I got you," Mack agreed, nodding along with Jordan's story and smiling over how much he was enjoying hearing him talk.

"Oh, this was a drama, by the way, did I mention that?" Jordan interrupted himself, his eyebrows knitted with concern. "Sorry, I know I was just talking about a concert just a little while ago, and then I just jumped to this, didn't I?"

"I'm following," Mack assured, even though he did have some follow-up questions that he'd been holding onto for maybe half an hour. "You're filming a drama in a cornfield, right?"

"Not corn, rice," Jordan corrected, oddly offended at Mack's intentional misassumption. "Corn? Why would you even think corn? I don't think Korea even grows corn. Or maybe they do. What do you even need to grow corn anyway?"

"Your drama...?" Mack offered, trying his hardest not to laugh.

"Why would you need that to grow corn?" Jordan asked, confused. "Anyway, where was I? Right, all that crazy filming, surrounded by cornfields--I mean!"

Mack caught a glimpse of Jordan's glare before he burst into laughter.

"Rice fields!" Jordan snapped, then hurriedly placed his glass on the coffee table so he had both hands free to hit Mack with one of the couch's decorative pillows.

"Not my fault!" Mack insisted with a grin, holding his drink away from Jordan's attack.

"That was one hundred percent your fault," Jordan fumed, but he still withdrew the cushion and returned it to his lap. "Anyway, filming in the cor--rice fields. Basically, there's nothing around, not even water or toilets for public use; the film crew had to get that stuff ordered, like a thing for drinking water, and a trailer for the bathroom. And it's the middle of summer, too, so it's super hot, and everyone's doing all this running around, so of course they're drinking all this water, and using the bathroom, yeah?"

Mack nodded.

"So, it's maybe halfway through the day, we're already way behind schedule, and everyone's completely miserable," Jordan continued. "So of course, of course, we're in the middle of this one dramatic scene. And all of a sudden, this awful, disgusting smell just, I don't know, engulfs the whole area."

Mack's jaw dropped. "No."

"Yes!" Jordan said. "And there was no wind either, so the smell just stayed, and just kept getting stronger and stronger."

"Oh my god."

"I swear, I thought I was going to pass out since it smelled so bad," Jordan said. "No one did, but a lot of people did throw up. Or maybe one or two people threw up, and it just started a chain reaction. I wasn't really paying attention by that point."

"So what was it from?" Mack asked, leaning a little closer to hear over whatever song had just started up in the background.

Jordan mirrored his movement, pausing a bit for the suspense.

"The bathroom trailer got clogged," he finally said.

Mack's grin was so wide, it was starting to hurt his face. "No shit!"

"Oh, no," Jordan shook his head seriously. "There was plenty of it. That was the problem."

It took a moment for Jordan's words to sink in--huh, he couldn't be drunk already--before Mack burst into laughter.

"Well played!" Mack exclaimed, wiping a tear from the corner of his eye. "I definitely walked into that one."

"Some people did have to walk into it to clean it up!" Jordan added, unable to keep his straight face any longer.

Their conversation continued from there, even long after both of their glasses sat empty on the coffee table. While Mack wasn't sure how long they were talking, he knew that he learned a lot more about Jordan than he would've if he just skimmed news articles for the same amount of time.

Sure, there were some things the internet probably knew, the biggest one being how Jordan started his musical career with the Korean pop group named NeON, then moved on to a solo act that had moderate international success. He had just returned to the mainland from South Korea, actually, and while he enjoyed interacting with his fans from his younger days (who were apparently called "Nobles"), he still had some resentment regarding his family.

And that led to what the public wouldn't know: while everyone knew the Song family ran one of the most booming businesses in South Korea, and their success even continued in the US market, no one would ever realize that talking about the Song matriarch and her heiress daughter were taboo topics with Jordan. So as soon as Jordan showed his first sign of discomfort at the topic, Mack knew to not question it.

But on other aspects of his personal life, Jordan was more than willing to ramble on, and Mack was happy to listen. It was how he found out about Jordan's penchant for sweets, though his obsession was nowhere near as bad as his brother's, and his aversion to anything remotely spicy. He preferred nighttime over daylight since that was normally when he could play video games and watch anime without anyone around to judge him. And, if it wasn't for his miraculous growth spurt when he was fifteen, Jordan probably wouldn't be in the music scene at all, on account of being much too short for the industry.

Of course, each of these tidbits of information and more were surrounded by some other long-winded story that Jordan had. Thankfully, Mack didn't have any trouble picking out the important details, and he simply filed the rest of the knowledge in the back of his mind for future reference.

Unfortunately, the night couldn't last forever, and it was only a matter of time before Minyoung began passive aggressively cleaning up, prompting others to begrudgingly follow suit. ("Sorry he's such a killjoy," Jordan had whispered as they collected stray cans and bottles. "I'll teach you my nicknames for him next time. They really piss him off.") It went surprisingly quickly with the six of them, and while Elsie saw Amira and Quentin off, and Minyoung was grumbling to himself in the kitchen, Mack took his last opportunity to talk to Jordan for the night.

"I don't know about you, but I had a blast," Mack said, collapsing onto his side of the couch once more. "Wanna hang out again sometime? I'm pretty much free whenever."

Jordan raised an eyebrow in disbelief as he sat on the cushion beside Mack, turning and folding one of his legs in between them.

"Don't you start filming next month?" Jordan asked skeptically. "And what about, I don't know, your regular job?"

Right, those were things Mack still had to do.

Mack shrugged. "Eh, that's no big deal. Your schedule's probably worse, isn't it? You're releasing your new album soon."

Jordan's face, still slightly pink, pinched.

"Thanks for reminding me," he muttered bitterly, crossing his arms over his chest and turning a glare to the coffee table.

"You're welcome," Mack grinned, then patted down his pockets for his phone. "Well, we can work something out. I'll give you my number so you can just text me when you're free."

Mack had already unlocked his phone and pulled up his contacts list before he realized Jordan hadn't moved. He glanced up to see the other man frozen and eyes wide.

"You okay?" Mack asked, his mind rewinding through everything he just said. "We don't have to exchange numbers actually. I'm a bad texter anyway. You on social media?"

"No!" Jordan blurted out, but it took him a moment to continue. "I mean... yeah, we can exchange numbers. And whatever."

"You sure?" Mack just met the man; he didn't want to make him uncomfortable already.

"Yeah, definitely!" Jordan assured, a little more believably this time.

But Mack still wasn't convinced, and he made that clear with a pointed look in reply.

Jordan half-sighed, half groaned; Mack had to force himself to maintain his serious persona.

"I'm just..." Jordan began, then sighed again. "I just didn't think you'd want to talk to me again. You probably heard enough of my voice tonight to last you a lifetime."

"I don't think that," Mack immediately said. "Of course I want to talk to you again! You're fun to be with."

"Not all the time," Jordan mumbled, now focused on some of the loose threads on his frayed jeans.

"Some of the time is good enough," Mack said. "And lucky enough for you, I'm a joy to be with all the time."

That got a small chuckle out of Jordan, and he shook his head as he retrieved his own phone from his back pocket.

"Fine," Jordan gave in, tapping his screen a few times before handing his phone to Mack. "But you can't say I didn't warn you when you get tired of me."

Mack grinned as he gave Jordan his own phone. "Are you kidding? I would never get tired of your beautiful voice."

He stifled his laughter at the sound of Jordan's stiff grunt.

---

NOTES

They finally meet!

As always, thanks for reading and voting!

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