The fair student found solace in not sharing certain classes with Sehun and Yifan. One was annoying, the other a top ranker, which would depress him to find out how stupid he was compared to him. A class for himself meant that he had no one to bother him, or compare himself to.

It was different with his friends; with Chanyeol they was no competition, for they stayed in the same ranking most of the time, but Kyungsoo came to understand that his giant elf of a friend merely held himself back, due to habit. Luhan, he was a blunt and often times rude company, but altogether understood the concept of time and place and so would only joke and talk when the time was appropriate.

He walked the corridors, trying hard not to bump shoulder with anybody on his way to his last class. He stuck to the wall, trying to make himself smaller; bag on his shoulder, books held in his arms, he hummed his way. However, upon turning the corner, all that he held, fell, for he bumped into somebody.

“Ah, damn it.” cussed Kyungsoo, seeing his books on the floor with some papers scattered about.

“Sorry,” Apologised the culprit “I wasn't looking where I was – oh,” the person stop, familiar with the individual whose equipment he just messed, “Kyungsoo.”

He looked up from the mess on the floor and his eyes widened upon tracing the fine shapes of the culprit's face, “Jongin...” a face he had grown so fond of; the face of an adonis: piercing eyes, shaped jaw, full lips and a virile nose.

“Are you alright?” Jongin knelt next to his peer, helping him gather the scattered papers.

“Yeah, yeah, I'm fine, don't worry.”

While the olive-skinned top ranker handed Kyungsoo the last paper and stood, he uttered “why do I have a hard time believing you whenever you say that?”

“Because you don't know me.” retorted Kyungsoo, standing with his books and papers clutched in his arms.

“Then let me get to know you.”

The response caused Kyungsoo to become rooted on the spot, unable to properly process any stimuli or cognitive stratagems; he forgot he was in a rush to his last class. Among the hundred entries of desires processing through his brain – from his favourite food, to his favourite drama - a memory was highlighted; the wrong, the bad and the ugly: Kyungsoo and his ual preferences, as per Kim Jongin's opinion. He desperately wanted to believe in the good heart of his peer, and in the fluttering of his stomach and heart, but cautiousness, fear and self-doubt were balancing the scales the wrong way.

“I don't think you want to...” replied a dispirited Kyungsoo, reminding himself of the words that echoed from the top ranker's enticing lips.

“I do.”

Kyungsoo chuckled bitterly, remembering Sehun's confrontation against Jongin as well as his gossiping put downs: always-do-the-right-thing, praise-me, look-at-me and everything-I-do-is-special.

“You don't want to associate with me.” The fair student insistent, shaking his head in disbelief.

Jongin, startled by the self-deprecating statement coming from what seemed an innocent mouth, queried, “How can you say that?”

“Because you did,” Kyungsoo answered bluntly, “I am wrong, remember? What I do is not right, and who I am is a sin.”

Jongin found no ground to stand when he himself remember uttering those very damning words, “Buh – but I – what I meant was - “ the top ranker befuddled upon his words with nervousness.

Kyungsoo groaned, put off by the top ranker's indecisiveness; he began to feel that the boy's words were just mere platitude “I told you before, I am not the person for your kindness, or your sentiment.”

The olive-skinned dancer's expression hardened, both by the convolution in words and the duality in the events “Then back then, when Chanyeol and Luhan told you they were leaving, when you were crying in my arms, what was that? More pain?”

Kyungsoo felt push against the corner, figuratively. The warmt