Sitting in his chair, Tao found himself having to use every bit of his willpower to not just collapse in his seat.

    “It’s too damn early for classes to exist,” he thought miserably, doing his best to somewhat listen to the professor as she droned on about something related to sustainability? Honestly Tao wasn’t sure, he just knew that the topic felt like it didn’t exactly belong in an English course.

    As a general rule, it could be safely said that Tao would not describe himself as a morning person. Night owl tendencies aside, he was pretty sure that even if he did get an appropriate amount of sleep, he still would find mornings an absolute abomination.

    Though, being honest, his dislike of mornings was mostly his own fault. His absolutely atrocious sleep schedule was directly caused by his poor decisions when it came to sleep and he didn’t really bother with coffee and other caffeinated drinks for the purpose that they ended up making him way too jittery.

    But even so! He still would rather not deal with mornings. But, alas, the world’s schedule was established by early birds and thus, he and every other night owl must endure. And suffer, just a bit.

    Only a week into college and he already wanted the semester to end.

    Deciding to ignore what was probably foreshadowing to how his attitude towards fall semester would be, he tried to refocus on the PowerPoint that his professor had going. Not the most riveting thing, PowerPoints by nature were some of the dullest things to ever exist, it was better than wandering in his mind and risking the potential of being called on and having to fumble for some sort of answer.

    And it was a good thing that he managed to focus his brain, because he almost missed having an assignment for an outline being dumped upon the heads of his and his classmates.

    “The outline is due next Monday, it doesn’t need to be perfect but it should meet all these requirements which I’ll post later tonight along with a sample from a previous student,” the professor glanced around the room, “questions about anything? Not just for the assignment, it can be about anything.”

    Evidently, everyone else also really wanted to leave if the dead silence was any sort of indication. Trying to avoid any eye contact by way of pretending to write in his planner, Tao just mentally tried to will time to move faster. There were things that Tao would rather avoid, and awkward silences were such a thing. But, thankfully, it seemed that Fate was being a bit more merciful this time around because his professor caught onto the fact that yes, everyone did want to leave so why drag out this torturous process.

    “Then have a good week, don’t forget the assignments,” she said, and Tao stood up as quickly as was possible without seemingly completely rude and promptly made his way out the door.

    Mentally going over the list of things he had to do, Tao really started to contemplate if it would just be easier to live on the lam than do everything that his professors wanted from him. But, alas, such was not an option and plus he was pretty sure Luhan would team up with his family to drag him back home.

    Hadn’t even met and he already knew that his friend would get along waaaay too well with his brother and oldest sister.

    A fond smile made its way onto his lips as he headed towards the building holding the “lounge” area, intent on getting something to silence his growling stomach and spend some time relaxing until the next few hours of class began. If there was, at the very least, one thing he thought that wasn’t too bad in coming to class early, it was that there was still a decent amount of food available with the building not being too crowded.

    So, one quick grab of some decent-but-totally-leaning-on-the-bad-cheap-side pizza, fries, a soda, and a seat and Tao was mindlessly scrolling through Instagram. Not much to it really, other just needing something rather mindless to do lest he go insane.

    ...Or rather that’s what he should be doing, but Tao was a student who cared too much so he actually ended up checking his online assignments.

    Aaaaand then he promptly let out a huge sigh, putting his phone down and rubbing his eyes.

    Of course, of COURSE he had other assignments to do! There was no escape from homework, no escape from work really.

    Really, for a bit, Tao just wanted to sit there at the table, hands over his eyes as if they could make the assignments disappear into the dark. This plan, but of course, was ruined, not because it was physically impossible, but because one Mr. Luhan decided to latch onto his arm.

    Whipping his head up, two things happened at the same time. One, Tao nearly punched the other in the nose which would’ve been actually terribly awful. But two, he did accidentally slam his head directly into Luhan’s, causing the both of them to flinch away and grab their skulls in pain.

    “Damn Tao, you got a dense skull,” Luhan said, giving a grin at the other who in turn shot the older student a rather withering look.

    “Is it me or you who has the dense skull?”

A casual laugh was the only response he got as the other sat down next to him.
    “So, I’m guessing you got a mountain of assignments to do?”

“Gee, what gave it away? Was it my shining disposition?”

“That bad?”

Popping a fry into his mouth, Tao looked down at the table with his dark eyes moving towards his phone, the assignments there taunting him, “Yeah…”

He felt a hand come over to pat him on the head, causing him to start and look at the other, Luhan’s eyes having adopted a sympathetic and more mature look, “Any way I can help?”

Looking into the other’s eyes, Tao just slowly shook his head, “No, but it’s okay. It’s not like I’ve never done a buncha assignments before.”

“That still doesn’t change the fact that it can still be overwhelming.”

“True, but it’s nothing I can’t deal with. Thank you though.”

Silence, Tao looking into Luhan’s (now) contemplative eyes, causing Tao’s own eyes to look away. Once again, he was reminded of how perceptive the other could be. He’d been told that he had a piercing gaze, but sometimes Tao was pretty sure his own gaze was nothing compared to Luhan’s. Eventually, the hand still on his head moved to ruffle the raven locks, causing Tao to look in annoyance at the now grinning brunette.

“After class, we’ll go down to the cafe? Junmyeon’s making a fresh batch of sweets today and I’m pretty sure you can get him to give you some.”

It wasn’t a fix to the stress that was starting to weigh on Tao, but it was a reprieve that had his own grin forming on his face as he nodded.

“Great! You’re gonna love his baking when it’s fresh. Listen closely young Tao, whenever…”

The time until his next class was filled with Luhan’s bright chatter, telling him about funny stories from the past. When he did need to go to class and finish off the day, Tao could say that it was definitely easier with the promise of spending some nice time with others.

-------------------------------------------------

    Well, it was like that, but by the time he and Luhan did get to the cafe, Tao was ready to just lie his head on a table and not move for a few hours. Or days.

    When they entered, Tao immediately made his way to a table, placing his stuff down and running a hand through his hair, thoughts swirling through his head at rapid speed. He thought that after 12 years of American public school, he’d have more of a system in trying to manage his schedule. Obviously, this was not the case.

    He might have good grades, but Tao was more of the “just push your way forward with nothing but sheer willpower and stubbornness. Sometimes, it was quite helpful. Other times, it was more of a hindrance with it being such a...blunt way to do things.

    Feeling a warm weight on his head, Tao started as he whipped his head up, meeting Junmyeon’s gaze that was filled with concern.

    “Rough day?”

    “...Something of that sort,” he didn’t really want to say yes, afterall the day objectively was fine. Nothing terrible really happened, he was still alive and his family was alright, he just got assignments dumped on him. Minor stuff, nothing that he thought was worth making his day be deemed as “bad”.