SEVENTEEN - MANSAE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9M7k9ZV67c0

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After school, the girls who were gossiping about Mingyu during class this morning finally gathered their courage and approached him. As he shut his locker, he was welcomed with four pair of eyes staring at him as if he was some sort of prey they have been targeting.

“Can I help you with something?” Mingyu asked while zipping up his backpack and putting it on.

“Ooooh! Look at him trying to be all innocent and cute,” gushed one of the girls.

Mingyu raised his eyebrow, confused. What was this girl talking about? He was not trying to be anything but himself.

One of the girls with long brown hair and a sweet smile stepped up to him. She held out her hand, “Welcome to Pledis High. My name is Sooyoung, and this here is Jina, Hara and Kaitlyn.” The three other girls waved, but Mingyu paid no attention to them. He only looked at them for a millisecond and then gave Sooyoung a ‘so what?’ look.

Sooyoung dropped her hand in dismay at his lack of attempt of being courteous and sent a frenzied look to her friends for help but none of them knew what to say.

She tried not to let it show that her pride had been hurt and cocked her head with a overconfident look. “Well, we noticed that are you new to Pledis and wanted to warmly welcome you to our school,” said Sooyoung with a nervous laugh. The other girls quickly nodded their heads in agreement. Mingyu couldn’t quite believe that these girls had good intentions in their minds considering the promiscuous conversation they had this morning about all the boys they had been crushing on.

“If you need help with anything, just ask us and we’ll lend a helping hand,” winked Jina with a single bite of her lip. Mingyu couldn’t look at her for long, the more he stared at her, the more it felt like she was undressing him with her eyes.

*Uh? What the heck do I even say during this situation?* Mingyu didn’t want to be mean, but he wasn’t very good at rejecting people’s offers either. When he said he wanted good company, he hadn’t meant them. As far as he could tell, hanging out with this group of girls would only make his brain rot to pieces but that was too mean of him to say. If only Josh was here. Between the two of them, Joshua had a filter and knew when to be honest and when to lie while Mingyu… always spoke the truth.

Joshua had always told him that he was too blunt and cold for his own good, although Mingyu never really believed him. In Mingyu’s eyes, he was a sweetheart.

Before things could turn awkward, Mingyu spotted the guys he had saw from lunch. He looked at the girls in apology, “Sorry ladies, thank you for the offer. Maybe some other time.” He unintentionally sent a wink Kaitlyns way, earning a groan of jealousy from Jina, Hara and Sooyoung as he walked off.  The crowd of students was already disappearing out of the hallways and gone on home for the day, but the group of boys stayed rooted to their lockers. They laughed and chatted as if they had no homes to go to.

From behind him, Mingyu could hear the girls whispering to each other.

“Ew, oh my god, why is he going to those losers?!”

“Oh god, we chose the wrong one to swoon over.”

Ignoring their comments, Mingyu greeted the boys with a big smile.

The boys who were busily chatting, stopped and stared up at the sudden intrusion.

“Cool prank you pulled today. The name’s Mingyu. Kim Mingyu,” said Mingyu boldly.

The boys glanced at each other and then back at Mingyu. “What the hell? Why are you so formal?” asked one of the boys with black hair. Judging from his nametag, he went by the name of S. Coupe. Mingyu was stumped by the name, but decided not to poke fun of the owner of the name tag. It was probably some nickname of some sort anyways, because no parent should ever decide to give birth to a child and decide to name their kid S. Coupe.

“Hey, I think he’s the one that’s getting all the girls wet,” smirked a foreign looking boy with brown hair. His nametag said Vernon, but he didn’t look like a Vernon. He looked more like a Steve or Brad, the type of jerks you see on films. Except that he didn’t look like a jerk at all.

Another boy with blonde hair who was drinking water at the time, had heard what Vernon said and started spewing out his drink from his mouth.

“Yo! Watch it, Hoshi, you are getting water all over my blazer,” scowled S.Coupe, as he pushed himself off from the locker. He stuffed his hands in his pockets and scrutinized Mingyu with a dubious look. “You new?”

Mingyu nodded, his eyes shining with pure innocence as he did so.

“Junior year?”

“I think I am.”

The boys studied Mingyu carefully before looking back at one another. As if a secret understanding had passed between them, Vernon stood up from the ground and narrowed his eyes at the blue haired kid “You like fried chicken?”

Mingyu blinked his eyes at the peculiar question. “…Sure?” Mingyu hadn’t actually had fried chicken before. The people of Planet Diamond were vegetarians, not because they wanted to be, but because they had different resources than that of Earth so they had no choice but to eat veggies. Some of the professors had the chance to try goat before, but that’s as far as they got with meat. It wasn’t a bad thing, in fact eating vegetables without any chemicals and pollution helped Mingyu’s people age slower, too.

Hoshi popped right up and crossed his arms with a pout, “Hmm… And vanilla milkshake? You like vanilla milkshake?”

Right as he was about to answer, Mingyu’s stomach already growled in response for him.

The three boys looked at each other and then hooted with laughter. Mingyu laughed, too, although he didn’t know why because it seemed as though he was missing the joke.

They picked up their backpacks from the floor and started walking away.

Vernon glanced back at Mingyu to see him standing still. “What are you doing? Get your over here.”

“Where are we going?”

Hoshi rolled his eyes dramatically and dragged Mingyu by the neck, “To go eat, you fool. Aren’t you hungry?”

Mingyu perked up at the question as he was dragged out of the school by his school mates. He looked at the new company h