“That’s all for now, Jongin. You’re dismissed.”

            With nothing but a low grunt and a quick nod, Jongin slung his messenger bag over his shoulder and nearly dashed out of the classroom. Now, usually he would be a lot politer, especially with a teacher. He’d be offering at least two bows to his teacher before flashing a bright smile and walking off with words like “have a good weekend, Sir,” and the like.

            Today, however, he just didn’t the energy to care.

            The entire had been a mess before it even started. The previous night, he had gotten a call from his parents saying they wouldn’t be back home for another week, despite the fact that they’d been on this “business trip” for three months at this point. He knew they worked hard—his father was a choreographer and his mother a vocal instructor, both world renowned—but really, how long did it take to teach some celebrity some dance steps and melodies? His night didn’t get any better from then on out, either. He got absolutely no sleep at night because his friends had come over unannounced and insisted on drinking ‘til 4 a.m., and he had to go along with it all because Chanyeol just had to get his sorry dumped just hours prior. Really, who dumped someone on a Sunday night? That was just inconsiderate, really. Jongin barely managed to get all his homework done too, cramming it all in the couple hours between when they left and when he had to start getting ready for school—though he was pretty damn sure he’d get an F on his Literature essay. On top of that, he did get an F on the Math quiz he forgot to review for. And to put the rotten cherry on top, he’d been spacing out and nearly falling asleep so often in Physics, his teacher actually asked him to stay behind after class and threatened to give him detention if he did it again.

            Today was bringing a whole new meaning to the phrase ‘Mondays .’

            “How the hell do you look worse than Chanyeol? He’s the one who literally got rejected with a single text less than 24 hours ago,” Sehun chirped, sliding onto the lunch table bench to sit next to Jongin, who had his forehead pressed against the cool surface in exasperation.

            “Wow, way to rub salt on the wound, Sehun,” Chanyeol deadpanned, and Jongin could hear a small slap and Sehun’s quiet ‘ow.’ “And it’s hyung. Chanyeol hyung.”

            “Yeah, yeah, whatever,” Sehun shrugged him off, and Jongin raised his head to look up at his unusually cheerful friend—sure, they called him the Happy Virus, but wasn’t this a bit much?

            “Actually though, hyung,” he started, and Chanyeol looked down at him in surprise that he wasn’t entirely dead. “How the hell are you so happy? Shouldn’t you still be moping or slipping vodka into your orange juice or whatever it is you do when you’re sad?”

            “Nah, I’m over that —she didn’t even like my curly hair when I showed her photos of it!” the older boy proclaimed proudly, and everyone at the table was scoffing at the words.

            “Chanyeol, no one liked your curly hair,” Luhan said with an eye roll as he took a seat next to the now-pouting boy. “Don’t give me that look—you looked like a poodle that had just been defibrillated.”

            “Whatever,” Chanyeol stuck his tongue out at the other quickly before continuing, “that’s not the point. Now that I’m done with her, I have the best plan ever!”

            The table went silent.

            “Oh come on!” The boy whined, and the sight was nothing but humorous—a 1.8-meter giant with a voice deeper than the Pacific Ocean nearly wailing and throwing a mini-tantrum like the overgrown child he really was. “No one wants to know my plan?”

            “…I feel like I’m gonna regret this, but…” Jongin slowly spoke up, ignoring the death glares Luhan and Sehun were sending him. “…what’s your plan this time, hyung?” A -eating grin spread onto Chanyeol’s face, and Jongin immediately regretted everything.

            “I’m gonna dudes!”

            Jongin had never wanted to stab himself with his chopsticks so bad.

            “I… you… what the… …?” Luhan barely managed to splutter out, and Chanyeol’s grin just widened.

            “Think about it, it’s perfect!” Chanyeol insisted, and Jongin vaguely wondered if friends had a return policy. “All these girls are way too uptight, none of them wanna have fun. They’re all about the drama or whatever bull, and that’s way too much to deal with. Gay guys are easy, right? Always DTF? Sure it’ll be pretty weird but so long as there’s a hole—”

            “—Alright! I’ve heard enough,” Jongin interrupted him, and none of them were sure whether to burst out into laughter or tears. Luhan looked on the verge of both.

            “Wow, that’s…” Sehun started, and Chanyeol perked up in excitement. “…both really ist and really homophobic at the same time, hyung what the .” The older boy groaned, slamming his head down onto the table.

            “You guys are awful,” he moaned, and Jongin just snorted.

            “When you say like that all the time, it’s no wonder no one wants to date you. You need to actually treat people with respect instead of just as people to around with, no matter how your blue balls are,” Sehun said in exasperation, and Jongin shook his head.

            “No, no, Sehunnie, you have to be more direct—his simple mind can’t comprehend moral dilemmas and consequences like that,” he chastised with a mock-scholarly tone, looking up at the youngest with a grin. “Put simply, no one stays with him because he thinks with his .” Chanyeol snapped his head up to glare at him.

            “Why can’t we just ? We made out at that one party and you were fine with it,” the tall man whined, and it took all of Jongin’s control to not slap the hell out of him in embarrassment. He didn’t have the chance to voice his annoyance, though, because seconds later, Luhan was snapping out of his daze with the most irritating smirk Jongin had ever seen.

            “No can do, ParkPark,” he started, and Jongin trusted absolutely nothing about him at that moment. “Our Jonginnie’s grown up—he’s past his days of quickies in the bathroom.” Chanyeol raised his eyebrows, obviously not understanding what Luhan meant, and Jongin was so tempted to just hightail it out of there because he had more than just suspicions about where the older boy was going with this. “He’s found himself a cr—”

            “Alright, alright, enough with that!!” Jongin practically screamed, clamping his hand over Luhan’s mouth in desperation, and he actually did scream this time when the older man bit his hand. “, hyung!” He leaned back to pounce on the older once more, and Sehun just rolled his eyes at the scene.

            “He’s got a crush on Owl VP,” the youngest said in the monotonous tone only he could manage, already bored and tired after trying to deal with his friend’s bull.

            “SatanSoo?!” Chanyeol practically shrieked, and Jongin never wanted the Earth to swallow him whole more than at this moment as he noticed people from other tables staring at the four of them.

            “Yo, dickbag, wanna be any louder?” he snarked half-heartedly as he pulled away from Luhan.

            “For real though… even I’m not dumb enough to try and approach the guy. Have you seen his chokehold? Dude’s terrifying,” Chanyeol continued, quieter this time, as he stared down at Jongin in a mix of awe, confusion, and concern. The younger boy, however, just stared down at his lunch tray and contemplated death by spork to the wrist.

            “I’m sure Jonginnie will be fine!” Luhan chirped cheerfully, but Jongin knew better than to have any hope in the oldest boy’s words.

            “He’s the strict, disciplined VP! He wouldn’t commit murder… at least not on school grounds!”

            Yup, there it was.

----

            Despite the people he hung out with, Jongin had to admit to himself that he really wasn’t the most comfortable with the whole… thing. He was a teenager, so he couldn’t say he hadn’t experimented a little and tried things out, and he wasn’t aual, so he couldn’t say he didn’t like it. His hormones pumping through his body like the blood in veins led to many solitary nights locked behind doors with only the light from a laptop and muffled pants and moans filling room. But when it came down to actually , well… things got a bit awkward there.

            Most of the school, for whatever reason, seemed to look at him as some sort of god. Sure, from an outsider’s view, it could be just attributed to sheltered private school kids not entirely sure what it means to be y, but Jongin knew better. His classmates were anything but innocent, knew that their ‘Mama and Papa’s’ credits cards went to more than just buying textbooks and lunch. But they lived in a world of etiquette and stringency. Appearances had to be held up, standards maintained and presented with no problems at all. Even so, Jongin had learned to see the people around him for what they truly were, one gesture at a time,

            At first, he had seen the fashion designers’ and artists’ kids waiting until after school to practice human form and figure—only because they wished oh-so-much to follow in their artistic parents’ footsteps, of course. Then, it had been others. The Chancellor’s son was always occupied Thursday and Friday night. ‘Off for a shoot’ seemed to be the go-to excuse for the child-actors and the like, regardless of whether it was for 10 days or 10 minutes. Among the sons and daughters of politicians, it wasn’t uncommon to see peaking eyes and wandering hands all while sharp tongues spoke of a family dinner party planned for two weeks from now. Talks of temporary coalitions filled the cliques of future business leaders, and once agreed upon, what else could be left to do but cement the alliance?

            Everything was covert, concealed from everything besides those who took the time to truly look. Each twitch of the eye, each subtle half-smile, each crook of a single finger held more meaning than thousands of words. The people in this world were masters of the most implicit kinds of indecent communication, their very beings screaming silent temptation.

            And then there was Jongin.

            Transferring into the school as a first year two and a half weeks into the school year, he’d already had a disadvantage. Without even considering the students who had known each other practically since birth because of one family connection or another, Jongin still found himself isolated as enough of the school year had passed for cliques to form and settle. There was no way he’d be getting through that very easily. Not to mention very few students around here had musicians for parents—seemed those kids went to school elsewhere—so to say he was out of his regular niche would be an understatement. In the end, he simply stayed away from most people besides the few friends he had somehow managed to make in the month he'd been there (i.e., Sehun, Luhan, and Chanyeol), being nothing more than an acquaintance and classmate to all of the other students.

            And hence, the image of ‘mysterious loner Kai’ was born.

            It really wasn’t his design, but somehow, him having no one to talk to, his slightly tanner skin, his hobby for spending his free time in the music rooms instead of studying, and his inability to wear his uniform properly gave rise to his image. An image of nonchalance, of delinquency, of , of violence, of practically everything unrelated to Jongin in real life.

            Even the little nickname—Kai—wasn’t his own creation. It had just appeared one day through murmurs here and there, and suddenly that’s what everyone besides his friends and family called him.  

            Well, everyone except him.

            “We still need one more dancer, Soo!” The exclamation could be heard throughout the whole hallway, and Jongin was immediately ducking his head as he saw who was coming—Do Kyungsoo and Byun Baekhyun.

            Baekhyun was well-known around the school, sure, though no one could ever really tell if it was out of actual likeability or infamy. Hell, Baekhyun probably wasn’t even too sure himself, but damn, did he take it in stride. His father was some sort of lawyer, though after he divorced Baekhyun’s mother, no one really cared about him in the school. Really, it was the boy’s mother that no one could shut up about. One of the leading makeup artists in the continent, currently even branching out into fashion design, Byun Baekhyun’s mother was someone who could kill without ever moving an inch out of her Embody Task Chair. ‘Never look at her eye-to-eye,’ people would say— ‘that’s how she reads your mind.’

            While her son wasn’t nearly as terrifying as his mother in Jongin’s eye, Byun Baekhyun still had the student body practically under his control for the most part. Co-President of the Music Department, President of the Drama Department, and Head of the Student Affairs Committee on the Student Council, the man handled any and all social events, from the planning to the execution. If a student wanted to be relevant in any way whatsoever, they up to Baekhyun enough until the boy showed a little mercy and invited one of his model friends to be that person’s date, or promoted that student’s ‘study session’ in the school’s morning announcements.

            No one, however, dared to approach the boy now, not when performance season was upon them.

            “We can’t have just three people!” the boy continued, and Jongin couldn’t resist glancing up to see him pacing back and forth, barely 10 feet away from him. “It’s too late to change the entire set without risking some sort of terrible logistical failure; and that’s assuming we can get Kevin sunbae to fit us into his schedule to re-choreograph everything—”

            “Baekhyun, shut up.” With a hand on his head, fingers digging into his temple exasperatedly, and eyes shut, Do Kyungsoo sharply interrupted his best friend, and Jongin gulped a little bit at the sight of the other.

            Kyungsoo was dressed as immaculately as always, it seemed—his uniform buttoned and ironed perfectly, his Student Council badge pinned onto the front of his jacket perfectly straight, his hair gelled and controlled with no sticky, greasy residue showing. Even his shoelaces were tied perfectly—loops settled nicely on the top of his foot, the tails not too long, not too short. Considering how the two were best friends, Baekhyun and Kyungsoo were like polar opposites. The former wasn’t messy, necessarily, but he was rambunctious, loud, and more than a bit obnoxious. Kyungsoo, on the other hand, was quiet, calculated, and cold enough to make everyone respect him despite his, well, non-threatening appearance. Everything about him presented elegance, attentiveness, and propriety, and if Jongin could look away for even a second.

            “I heard you already. I heard you last night when we found out we lost our fourth dancer. And while we walked to school. And before every class. And during lunch. And all the other times you’ve told me today,” the VP snapped, bringing the other to a halt and making him mutter out a small apology. “But you know as well as I do that we can’t do anything about it until school is over at the earliest. Once we’re done with Physics, we’ll come up with a plan of attack, even if that means talking to every student in this school to find one willing to help us. Okay?”

            “…okay,” Baekhyun muttered out, a little pout on his face, and Jongin could immediately heard the swooning of some of girls in the hallway, and he could tell why—the boy looked like a kicked puppy when he was upset. It was one of the many reasons people, especially older students, fawned over him so much, even if, most of the time, he was just a spoiled brat or a stingy . Even Kyungsoo couldn’t control himself, it seemed, patting the boy on the head in light comfort, and Jongin felt a twinge of envy strike in him, his gaze hardening as he mentally shoved Baekhyun aside.

            He hadn’t counted on the boy feeling his stare.

            He tensed immediately when Baekhyun’s head snapped up and over to him, their eyes meeting for a snap-second before Jongin looked away, slamming his locker door shut and turning on his heel, about to storm out of there to God knows where. Maybe he’d just go straight to class. Maybe he’d go find some dark corner under the East Wing staircase to curl himself up in a ball and wallow in his own embarrassment and self-pity for an hour. Maybe he’d just up and leave school, emailing the school from his dad’s email (he’d known the password for the past five years) to excuse himself with some unnamed sickness. Maybe he’d—

            “Oi, you there, stop for a sec!”

            —just curl up and die right here and now.

            Reluctantly, he turned to face Baekhyun, vaguely noting that the man’s eyeliner was slightly smudged around the edge in an attempt to distract himself from the fact that Kyungsoo was coming closer to them and oh my god he’s looking at me he’s actually—

            “You’re Kim Jongin, right?” Baekhyun continued, staring him down in a way that Jongin could only describe as unnerving. Words were running through his mind at the speed of light, his entire body freezing up in uncertainty and awkwardness as he struggled to figure what the was happening.

            “Kai,” he blurted out suddenly and immediately inwardly cursed himself. Murmurs were running through the hallway, and he could already hear the gossip. Kai was disrespectful to an upperclassman! Kai talked back to Baekhyun! Kai tried to correct him! 

            “Kai, then,” Baekhyun accepted quickly, clearly apathetic to the gossip circling about them already. “Look, your dad’s a dancer, right? Can you? Dance, I mean.”

            “I-I mean…” Jongin stammered out, still tense as he tried to slow his mind—and heart—down.

            "Look, we have the winter recital coming up and we need another dancer for the final set so if you can—"

            “Baekhyun!” Kyungsoo was suddenly there, hissing at the boy and pulling him back by a hand on his shoulder. “What are you doing! You can’t just go around and spring this on Jongin—”

            “M-my name’s Kai—” Of course, he was ignored.

            “But Soo, he’d be perfect! He’d be experienced, and he already knows the other dancers—”

            “—I’m sure Jongin-ssi has a lot going on, he can’t just commit like this all of a sudden—”

            “—it’s Kai—”

            “—I know, but we can work something out, can’t we? I mean—”

            “—I’ll do it!”

            It took Jongin a whole ten seconds to realize that those words had come from his own mouth, and when he did, all he wanted to do was slam his hands over his mouth, apologize, and run. He didn’t get the chance to, though, because even though the other two were just as surprised and caught-off-guard as he was, they were quicker on the recovery, if Baekhyun pulling him into a soul-crushing hug was something to go by.

            “Oh, really? Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you!” the boy was chanting his appreciation at this point, and Jongin could barely manage a hum in response as he tried to get his mind together. But once an idiot, always an idiot, as Luhan would say, and boy, was Jongin an idiot. Desperately trying to get his focus back, he looked down, only to lock eyes with Kyungsoo, and oh god he was smiling.

            “Thank you, Jongin-ssi.”

            A few words, and Jongin was straightening up, a flush making its way down his face and neck almost immediately. The other just looked so happy, so sincere, that the very sight of that was turning Jongin into a pile of goop within seconds. If this was what he felt from a single smile and a quick thanks, what would he see from the quiet VP if he stuck around for a little longer? It was then that he decided that, even though he may have had no idea what he’d gotten himself into now, maybe—just maybe— happy Kyungsoo would be worth it.

            Though it’d be nice if he’d stop calling him by his real name, both for his reputation’s and for his heart’s sake.

woooo the first chapter is finally done
dear god i dont know what im doing i dont write high school fics h e l p m e 
already i g2g finish the first chapter of my pokemon!xiuhan fic rn so i can update that soon so that's it for now bye y'all