“This is all I found about Jackson Wang. There’s quite a lot.”

Mark sat at his desk at home which was filled with papers his dad had sent him, but in his hands was a packet his caretaker had given him when they briefly met. The two days after Mark had found out that Peniel was being blackmailed flew by as there was no swim practice since there was pool maintenance. The heaters in the pool unexpectedly broke and no one wanted to swim in cold water for hours, even if they would eventually get “used to it.”

It was slightly frustrating for the captain as he really wanted to swim, but it allowed him to relax and work on the stuff from his father and despite the fight they went through the week prior, both of them up their pride and did what they had to do.

The boy opened the packet and found several clippings of newspapers and printed articles. It seemed that Jackson was known to the public through other names, such as Kayee and Jia Er. It allowed him to cover up his past from the people in school that only knew him as Jackson.

Funny how similar we are.

Mark read the articles pertaining to Jackson’s father and how popular he was in fencing. His father’s background was quite extensive and it even talked about how much wealth he had not only from his fencing but inheritence. It lead to the public looking at him and his older brother, wondering what would become of them. His older brother was later forgotten and not talked about in articles and all eyes went onto Jackson. The boy was told to have moved around a lot to learn from the best fencers and it goes on about the fencer’s career.

When it talks about the success of Jackson’s fencing career, they use that name. Wang Jackson.

The boy flipped to the most recent articles and it talked about the disappearance of Kayee after his last competition in Hong Kong. It goes on these long conspiracies to what happened to the boy. They assume that he has either stopped fencing or practicing in secret to make a comeback later on to the public and surprise them.

And then there was the article that answered the most questions.

Wang Kayee kicked out of the Hong Kong national fencing team.

Mark read on the article and it talks about Jackson not showing up to practice and when he did the boy was told to have a bad attitude and refused to play nonetheless hold his weapon. The fencing coaches tried to work with the boy and tried to get him to cooperate, but it was all worthless as he would not fence. They had no other choice but to kick him out, but said he is more than welcome to come back once he decides that he wants to play again as he is an excellent fencer. The whereabouts of Wang Kayee were said to be unknown to the public still.

This article was dated three days before school started. This shows that he came here because he was kicked out. But why was someone who refused to fence attending a top level sports academy in the fencing team? This doesn’t make sense.

Mark tried to search for answers on why the fencer refused to play on the Hong Kong national fencing team, but there wasn’t anything that mentioned it. Instead, articles made speculations saying he had a “bad attitude,” “broke down from all the pressure of the sport” or simply “got tired of fencing.” In the swimmer’s eyes, they all didn’t make sense after knowing the bits and pieces about the Jackson who went to the same school as him.

Unless there’s more to it that I don’t know. Maybe if I knew what went on the fencing room at school.

The boy cleaned up all of the articles and put them back into the packet. He placed it in one of his cabinets and locked it with the rest of his other packets as he usually did background checks on the people around him, including his friends, just to make sure there was nothing too wrong with them.

One thing is for sure, the Wang family has a lot of money which means he’s probably one of the top 2 donors with… Namjoon? It’s always been Namjoon since freshman year, so I would suspect.

Mark sat down at his desk and began reviewing everything his father had sent him, preparing for the small trip to China that his father asked him to go to. According to Mr. Tuan, it was lucky for Mark that they postponed the event, allowing him to still be able to go. The flight was scheduled for the upcoming Thursday, giving Mark plenty of time to confront Jackson.

Jackson, on the other hand, was having a blast. It was finally the weekend and someone had finally asked him to hang out. Well two people, but this had never happened since he came to Seoul, so the boy was ecstatic, even if it meant he was third wheeling.

    “Hyung! I’m glad you decided you wanted to hang out with us,” smiled Yugyeom as he turned to Jackson, “I was telling Bambam that it must be lonely being the new student in a foreign country.”

    “I didn’t have many friends back home either, so it wasn’t too bad, but I’m glad you guys allowed me to intervene on your date,” Jackson replied.

    “You stood up for us! We’re friends now, okay? No one else would dare to do what you did,” Yugyeom said, bringing a smile to Jackson’s face as he heard that they were now friends.

This was purely Yugyeom’s idea, no malicious intent from Bambam nor Jinyoung at all. As the boy walked to Bambam’s dorm, he noticed Jackson’s room whose door was wide open, displaying the sight of the new student doing absolutely nothing. Yugyeom felt bad for the fencer and asked Bambam if they could take Jackson along and Bambam didn’t want to refuse, knowing that he hadn’t been treating his boyfriend the best lately.

    “So, tell us about yourself,” Bambam initiated in conversation as the three sat down for lunch at a closeby restaurant.

    “Well,” Jackson sighed, “There’s nothing really to know. I’m from Hong Kong and I fence. That’s about it.”

    “Ah, hyung. I’m sure there’s more than that! Why did you decide to come here?” Yugyeom whined as he was curious.

    “My dad thought I would be able to expand my fencing career and knowledge by coming here as JY is one of the best sports focused high schools in the world,” Jackson shrugged off, “How about you, Bambam? Why did you come here?”

    “I’ve always been gifted at playing soccer and I was going to do better things in Thailand, but I felt like I didn’t know enough. If I had joined the teams in Thailand, I would’ve been around people a lot older than me. My mom also owns a chain of Korean restaurants back home, so I looked into sports high schools in Korea, and JY peaked my interests the most, so here I am,” Bambam explained with a small smirk on his face.

    “Are you the best soccer player in JY? Are you captain of the team?” Jackson asked only for the two to smile.

    “That’s a funny story alright,” Yugyeom chuckled, “It’s unfair, but it’s how it is. Explain to him, babe.”

    “Not to be cocky, but yes, I am the best soccer player and Yugyeom here is a close number two. Both of us were in the runnings to be the next captain and everyone for sure thought it was going to me. At the time, Yugyeom and I were a year into our relationship and we didn’t know how homophobic the school was as we didn’t pay attention to people’s remarks and no one in the school really came out. We were tired of hiding it, so we came out and everyone looked at us differently. They stayed away from us and we started getting beat up. The bullies were tolerable, but when our last captain picked the following captain, he surprisingly picked Bang Yongguk instead of me or Yugyeom,” Bambam’s face fell to the floor.

    “I still remember what he told us. He said that he chose Bang Yongguk because he was afraid that the soccer team would get hate for having a gay captain. He was afraid the soccer team’s funding would get cut off as well from the top 2 donors’ power. It was a low point in our lives because we felt like everything came crashing down because of our love,” Yugyeom continued.

    “Do you remember? All the fights we had after all of that? Yelling that we shouldn’t have come out and questioning our love towards each other,” Bambam turned to his boyfriend and Yugyeom just nodded before both of them looked back at Jackson.

    “I’m so sorry that happened to you two. I can’t imagine how horrible it must have been,” Jackson sympathized, only for Yugyeom to rub his back.

    “We’re fine now, don’t worry. The soccer team still loves us and we still get beat up every now and then, but we get through because we love each other and being around the other makes us happy,” Yugyeom smiled at Jackson, trying to reassure him.

The three of them went silent and Yugyeom and Jackson k