Domestic

;nineteen

"Have you noticed?"

"Noticed what?"

"That Kihyun hyung seems... More anxious than usual?"

"Anxious?" Hoseok questions, tilting his head to the side as he waits for Hyungwon to continue.

"I don't know..." He tries, fumbling around with his hands while trying to find the right way to express his thoughts. "Kihyun hyung seems... More on edge?"

Hoseok pauses to think about Hyungwon's words, connecting the words to Kihyun's behaviour the past few weeks.

It was already mid May, and the band is now in the process of coming up with a few more new dance numbers for a repackaged album, and maybe that's why Kihyun seems so stressed?

"Maybe it's because of the repackage?"

Hyungwon hadn't thought about it, and he knows that their album is to come out within the next three weeks or so, which means a lot of preparation and basically not time for anything else, which is why Hyungwon doesn't understand how his Kihyun hyung still has time to worry about something else.

"It's not," the younger states, shaking his head. "I've never seen him like this..."

Even if Hoseok really didn't want to think too much about the possibility of Kihyun being upset, he knew that the sooner the situation gets addressed, the sooner the problem will be solved. And as one of the eldest, he decided to take this predicament into his own hands.

"Where's he now?" Hoseok asks, getting up and dusting off his jeans. Hyungwon does the same before scratching the back of his head, thinking.

"I think... I saw him walk to the laundry room," Hyungwon mumbles, and Hoseok doesn't even wait for clarification on if Kihyun really is there or not before he's thanking Hyungwon and dashing to the laundry room.

Even though Hyungwon has a sharp eye, Hoseok feels like he should still see Kihyun's behaviour for himself before he jumps to conclusions. Since Hyungwon's theory could've simply been formed because of a misinterpretation.

As he's a few steps away from the ajar door of the laundry room, Hoseok slows his steps down and takes deep breathes to make sure that he didn't make a sound, before creeping into the room.

Call it invasion of privacy (in a way), but Hoseok just wants to catch Kihyun in his natural habitat, without having to cover up what he was feeling.

Granted, the younger wasn't even facing Hoseok, but the blond male could still peer his head around, from a safe distance.

So he does that.

His ears listen to Kihyun as he folds the laundry, humming a monotonous tune. Which is already a red flag, because since when did Kihyun starts humming monotonously? Normally, his humming is cherry and bright, which makes this all the more confusing and abnormal.

While his ears are occupied, Hoseok's eyes watch Kihyun's nimble fingers as they repeat the same pattern of folding t-shirts, knowing that this was the first set of clothes. Kihyun likes to wash everything separately. T-shirts first, then pants, and finally socks, underwear, and hoodies in cold water.

As Kihyun picks up a yellow shirt, which happened to be the last shirt, and Jooheon's shirt, Hoseok notice his shoulders start to shake.

Alarmed, Hoseok stands behind Kihyun frozen, not knowing if he should interfere or not. He's technically not supposed to be here anyways, who knows if Kihyun will get mad or not if he says something now.

To be fair though, Hoseok doesn't know if Kihyun is crying, all he knows is that his shoulders are shaking, and that's usually something that happened before Kihyun starts to bawl. Hoseok's talking from experience.