Jongin shrinks deeper into his seat. He’s physically in class but his mind is wondering off somewhere else. He no longer listens to Mr. Shiota, their English teacher, as his voice has now blended into the background. All he can hear is the questions he asks himself in his mind, the ticking of the clock in the class which goes in rhythm with the tapping sounds it makes when his pen hits the table.

Kyungsoo is absent today.

He has a half mind to call the older during lunch time later, just to make sure he didn’t injure himself or something but he can’t be sure if the older will pick up in the first place. Kyungsoo gets irritated easily and often snap at innocent people (oh, poor souls) but it’s not like the older male hates him. That much he can tell from the way the older’s eyes sparkle every time Jongin doesn’t miss his super-hard-and-fast tosses.

Then why, though?

When Jongin finally arrived at the infirmary yesterday, Kyungsoo was no longer there. He asked the nurses in charge there only to find that the older male had left an hour ago with a cute, short-haired blonde. He couldn’t help but question why his chest tightened upon hearing the newly discovered information. It was getting dark when he left for home. He sped into the cold night air, letting his feelings out as he pedaled as hard as he could.

Maybe it’s his sister.

Jongin repeatedly tries to convince himself that maybe, the blonde is his sister or one of his relatives who just arrived in Japan to pay him a visit or something. Putting his face in his hands, Jongin decides to ask him directly later and hopes that everything will go well without him having the urge to suddenly jump off a cliff or tear his hair out.

Yeah, he should try.

“—Kim Jongin, are you listening?”

It’s when Mr. Shiota throws his chalk across the classroom and hits him point blank on the forehead that he snaps out, legs of his chair scraping against the tiles as he abruptly pulls back and stands up. When he looks around, his classmates are staring up at him while obviously trying so hard not to laugh at how silly the situation is.

Jongin facepalms.

“S-Sorry,” he murmurs, sitting back down with face so red it rivals the color of his Converses.

He remembers those times when he was still new to volleyball. Receiving the ball with his face instead of hands. He feels warmth crawls up to the tip of his ears, sure as hell that his face is turning purple in embarrassment. How’s getting embarrassed in front of your classmates equals the effect of getting a volleyball smacked right into your face?

For now, Jongin doesn’t let himself think about that.

Instead, he shrinks impossibly deeper into his seat and himself, deciding that maybe he’ll listen to Mr. Shiota’s lecture just this once. He thinks he could handle English and who knows, maybe one day it’ll turn into his favorite subject?

But nothing can replace volleyball, though.

---

“Are you sure he’s absent today?”

Baekhyun asks during lunch and Jongin flinches.

“Well, he’s obviously not in class,” he answers, doesn’t know why he suddenly feels unsure.

There’s a silence and Jongin stills in his spot until he feels Baekhyun’s palm on his shoulder.

“Either he has somewhere else to be or he just doesn’t want to see your face,”

Yeah, it must be—wait, what?

He might have an incredulous expression across his face because Baekhyun’s laughing his off. The older is clutching onto his stomach as his breath becomes erratic due to laughter. And Jongin can’t understand what kind of situation is this?! Just—what the ? He’s pretty sure he didn’t miss even a beat of Baekhyun’s breath when he was talking earlier and now he’s wondering if the older male’s losing it.

“Hyung? You look like you’re going to pass out from lack of oxygen, are you okay?”

“Oh, Jongin,” The older male—but definitely shorter than him—wipes his eyes with his sleeves.

Jongin can feel himself getting irritated. “What? What is it?”

Baekhyun takes a deep breath. He looks like he tries so hard to fight the urge to fall into yet another fit of laughter to Jongin. He pouts, like a child who just got his ice cream snatched away. Can this Hyung be serious just once? For god’s sake, Jongin can feel his patient meter is snapping when the older male still looks like he’s about to burst out—

“He’s here,” Baekhyun says, finally and effectively cutting his mental rants off.

“In the school, I mean. He’s coming. I saw his bik