Chapter 2

Wu Fan looked around the campus with a childlike interest that he could not escape, even though he knew the circumstances under which he was attending college were not ideal- not even good, really.

He was exchanging someone else’s freedom for his own.

He had struggled with the idea for a whole week, debating whether he could do it or not, considering turning the offer down and going back to his old, pathetic life.  In the end, upon seeing the beautiful buildings and the cheerful students he realized there was no turning back anymore.

He was enchanted; he had always been dreaming of studying business management. When he decided, three years ago, to drop out and move to Korea he had felt almost dead.

And now he was alive.

He was about to brainwash a kid into becoming something he obviously hated, yet Wu Fan was feeling excited about studying again.

 “I must really be a heartless bastard.” He muttered as he took a deep breath and walked towards his first class of the day.

He had refused to see a picture of his target and didn’t even ask for any information, planning to really get to know the kid instead of reading his file or something.

All he had done to better prepare himself was to bleach his hair a faded blond that made him seem younger and less hostile. He wasn’t exactly happy about it, but he was planning on getting used to it soon.

He ruffled his newly blond hair as he thought about it.

“Hey!” He felt someone pat his shoulder and turned around to meet with a good-looking guy, wearing eyeliner and having perfectly groomed hair.

“Hm?” Kris raised an eyebrow.

“Are you going in?” The good-looking guy pointed at the door Wu Fan had been standing in front of for the past five minutes.

The Canadian apologized and hurried to leave, hoping to avoid talking to the guy again. Nevertheless, the stranger followed him in.

“You’re in my class? Oh, you must be new.” He exclaimed happily.

“I’m Buyn Baekhyun.” The eyeliner guy continued, raising a hand inches from Wu Fan’s chest which the new student had no choice but to shake.

“My name is Wu Fan. Nice to meet you.” Wu Fan said blankly, expecting the guy to be discouraged by his lack of attention and leave.

“Are you Chinese? Wow your Korean is flawless.” He gave him the thumbs up and dragged Wu Fan over to the left end of the class.

“Actually, I used to live in Canada. I was born in China though- Wait! Where are you taking me?! Yah, wha-…” The Canadian would have protested more, but the eyeliner guy happened to be taking him exactly where he was going.

“This is my seat.” Baekhyun said pointing at a seat right in front of Wu Fan’s designated place.

Nodding the foreigner moved past him and sat on his desk quietly.

Waiting for class to start he had to put up with Byun Baekhyun’s incessant talking about the campus and the classes and all sorts of stuff Kris had already read in the student’s guide yesterday.

“You don’t talk much, Wu Fan.” Baekhyun finally said after Wu Fan ignored his fifth question. The, now blond, half-Chinese, half-Canadian guy just shrugged.

“Unlike you, that is, Baekhyunnie.”  A loud ‘thud’ flooded Wu Fan’s hearing as something tall and heavy landed on the seat next to him. The ‘maze’, which Wu Fan had yet to identify, said in a deep voice.

Slowly, Kris turned his head right to inspect the person that had landed next to him.

To say that he was surprised would be kind of an understatement.

It was a tall guy alright, but despite his long legs and strong-looking body, the new guy lseemed particularly childish. He had brown, curly hair that jumped around his face and danced as he moved, as well as a pair of big eyes that were smiling cheekily on their own.

His clothes looked expensive and at the same time one size too big. He had a green sweatshirt and gray sweatpants worn over colorful sneakers. A big backpack used to be hanging loosely from his right shoulder until he carelessly dropped it on the desk in front of him.

Wu Fan stared, because what choice did he have anyway?

Someone had just thrown a bomb next to him, so naturally he had to look.

“A-ah, I’m beaten up.” Said the new guy, throwing his feet on top of his bag that was already on the desk. He put his hands behind his head and lied back with his eyes closed.

“Yeol-ah! Don’t sleep in here!” The eyeliner guy who liked to talk a lot, leaned over and smacked the other’s forehead forcefully, causing him to launch forward startled and create a ruckus.

The curly-haired guy’s backpack fell on the floor and Wu Fan’s own bag that was close by followed suit. At the same time the desk which the new guy was using as a bed trembled and would have landed on the desk right in front of him, making a desk domino, had Wu Fan not gotten hold of it in time.

The result of course looked quite ridiculous.

Beakhyun was hiding behind his chair, covering his guilty face, because he knew that he had partly caused this mess.

The new guy was frozen in a position of utter alarm, as he had reached out to catch his desk, in vain and was now too shocked to move from that position.

Meanwhile, Wu Fan had already settled the desk back to its place and was beginning to pick up his sack.

The two Koreans looked at each other and then back at the foreign student for a moment before bursting out in loud laughter.

Kris didn’t want to laugh, he was tempted, but he refused to acknowledge the ridiculousness of the situation. Besides, it was possible that his ‘target’ heir would come in the classroom any moment and he could not afford to make a bad first impression.

All in all, it was fortunate that among these laughing idiots the Canadian had enough self-restraint to keep himself serious.

“Ok, wow! That was amazing!” The curly-haired one, wiped his eyes that were tearing up because of the laughter and tried to pat Wu Fan in the back.

However, the blond was not interested in making friends with clumsy strangers at his first day. So he swiftly moved away, making the other’s hand miss its target and fall down on the desk.

The smiling, tall guy gave him a surprised but still amused glance and nudged his eyeliner friend.

“Do you think he’ll bite me if I try to pet him?” He asked pointing at Wu Fan and even though he tried to smirk, it ended up as a toothy smile anyway.

Beakhyun chuckled lightly before answering that the new ‘guard dog’ of the class was not even barking at him so he wouldn’t know.

“I am not a guard dog.” Wu Fan commented indignantly, crossing his arms in front of his chest.

“Omo!” The nameless guy put a hand in front of his mouth in mock distress. 

“This guy here cannot take a joke. And his face is so angry all the time. Just looking at him makes me depressed. Look- look Baekhyun-ah, doesn’t he have wrinkles from frowning so much?” The guy with the curly hair came closer to Wu Fan and almost glued the Canadian to the wall trying to pinch his cheek to see if the skin was soft or wrinkled.  

“Just leave him alone.” His friend sat back, more contained and smiled.

“But doesn’t he look really furious?” The nameless stranger insisted, poking Wu Fan in the arm.  

At this point Kris realized he was just being used as a toy and he was losing focus of his real ‘target’.  

He was there to turn the son of Sang Cha Rim’s President into a serious man, not to be played by a couple of spoilt kids.

Letting the angry expression skip his face and turning slightly to the left to avoid the annoying classmate of his, he began taking out his books.

“Oh, now I made him hate me!” Announced the curly-haired guy and pouted, not that Wu Fan was looking or anything…

“Of course he would. You released your powers of destruction at the desks and even though he saved the situation, you didn’t even say ‘thanks’. Now, you’re just making fun of him.” Baekhyun whispered, wishing for his words to go unnoticed by Kris. Yet, the blond Canadian took note of it and barely managed to not smile thankfully at the eyeliner guy and keep his cool.

The other guy just stood there, staring at Wu Fan pensively before jumping on his seat, a new idea shining in his face.

“I was a jerk just now, wasn’t I?” He said, quite accurately in the blond’s opinion. Yet Kris pretended to be reading his book and refused to confront the, once again, excited stranger.  

“You’re new right?” The stranger asked his deep voice ringing with happiness. The Canadian did not reply, so the guy, doing whatever he please once again, took his silence as confirmation.

“Well, above everything else, if you’re new in a class you need a cool nickname.” He explained his unorthodox idea.

“Since you seem to hate ‘guard dog’ and you’re just so fond of putting everything in order I’ll nickname you…” Without wanting to, Wu Fan had already looked up  at that point, waiting unexpectedly for the boy to finish his sentence.

“Team Leader!” The curly-haired guy grinned and clapped his hands in utter exhilaration.

“Team Leader? That sounds so boring.” Baekhyun rolled his eyes from in front of Kris.

It did sound boring, Wu Fan thought. Then again, he was feeling a little strange to have been nicknamed by someone for the first time in his life. So far, nobody had felt the need to give a serious and no-joke guy like him a nickname.

Maybe it was because his stoic looks left no room for cute and funny names, or maybe because he never had any real friends among his highschool classmates in Canada. Either way this nickname, this boring and strange nickname, made some sort of feeling stir inside him.

“Team Leader doesn’t sound boring. Just say you like it, Foreign Guy!” The guy next to him encouraged but even though Kris was not unhappy with having a nickname he felt he was getting too involved once again.

As a result he decided to use his 'hidden ace' and escape this conversation.

“Sorry, I don’t understand what ‘Team Leader’ means.” He lied and turned back to his book.

“Oh, I almost forgot, you’re not Korean.” Baekhyun scratched his head.  “Actually, Wu Fan is Chinese and he’s lived in Canada for some years.” He said to his friend.

“Well, I don’t know how to say ‘Team Leader’ in Chinese or English but it is like… this person who works in a place and he-he needs to take care of other people, but not like a babysitter,” At that moment Kris actually thought of the possibility this guy did need a babysitter instead of a Team Leader, but the other just continued trying to explain the nickname.

 “It’s more like a special job for smart people who are good at working with-” The nameless guy was making grand moves to go with his words when someone old and slightly annoyed, who looked alarmingly like a professor, cleared his throat right next to them, requesting silence.

Wu Fan was brought back to reality like that. Class was starting and he still hadn’t found the guy called Park Chanyeol. He looked worriedly around, scanning the room when he realized his mistake.

“I should have at least taken a photo.” He mumbled to himself, sneaking a look at the nameless guy next to him to see if he had heard.

Thankfully, the crazy guy had been so stricken by the professor’s remark that he had gone back to sleep.

The professor was already taking attendance and Wu Fan held his breath when he called ‘Park Chanyeol’.

However, no answer came and the Canadian sighed and frowned again. The boy must have skipped class that day, he told himself, feeling a little stressed out.

How was he going to be friends with the kid and influence him if he never came to class?

The lesson started soon and after a while Kris was so immersed, he almost forgot about his earlier failure to meet the ‘target’.

Two hours passed uneventfully and the professor was assigning essays when the curly-haired guy next to Wu Fan finally woke up. He rubbed his temples and yawned like a kid who had just had his afternoon nap. A crooked smile came upon his mouth as he spotted the blond foreigner putting his books in his bag orderly.

“Did you have fun, Team Leader?” He asked and observed him expectantly.

Kris started packing faster, trying to escape before the strange guy began talking again.

“I told you I don’t know what ‘Team Leader’ means. Now, can you please move?” The Canadian stood up and stared down at the guy whose long legs were blocking his way.

His curls flied across his face as the guy swiftly got up and at the same time put his backpack on his shoulder. He was fast if he wanted to, Kris noted -unexpectedly so, actually. 

The nameless kid bowed ceremoniously at him and said something that sounded like ‘as you wish, your Highness’.

“Let’s go, Yeol-ah. Bye, Wu Fan!” His eyeliner friend waved at Kris who was trying to go a different way.

Suddenly, the taller of the two crazy, Korean friends turned his attention back on Kris.

“Wu Fan?!” He questioned. “I thought Professor Kim called you Kris Wu when he took attendance.”  

Wu Fan narrowed his eyes at the younger guy. For the first time it crossed his mind that he wasn’t as stupid as he liked to appear. Under his childish behavior and clumsy moves, wasn’t there an observant guy who could easily control himself?

“And I thought you were sleeping throughout attendance.” Kris bit back.

“I was and I wasn't." The boy replied cryptically. "So what’s your real name?” He pressed the subject.

“Kris Wu, Wu Fan you can call me anyway you want.” The blonde blurted out before registering exactly what he was saying.

He opened his mouth to correct himself; to say that as long as it was this curly-haired guy he wouldn’t even answer anymore, no matter how he called him.

But the younger boy was already running towards his friend and he was smiling sheepishly, yet so brightly that the words were caught in Wu Fan’s throat.

“It was nice meeting you, Team Leader. Sorry if I bothered you too much. You’re just so nice to play with.” The still nameless guy called back and Kris wondered, for the first time, who this guy was exactly.

“By the way, my name is Park Chanyeol!” The curly-haired guy said it effortlessly, not the way Kris had struggled to say it a week ago. He had just put this piece of information out there carelessly, but to Wu Fan it was a revelation.

Up to that point, for the Canadian, the name ‘Park Chanyeol’ had been just a group of letters written on a paper that his new employer had given him. It was a black and white picture, up to that second.

But then this tall, childlike stranger with the bright smile and the curly brown hair had said it too and the name, Park Chanyeol, was no longer black and white. A million colors had popped out from inside it and now Wu Fan’s paper was coming to life.

That was his first impression of the President’s son, noisy and clumsy but bright and colorful.

That was Park Chanyeol and just like the first moment they met Kris felt like a bomb had been dropped next to him.

Or maybe inside of him. 

A/N: Quick update as promised. 

Guys THANK YOU so so so much for reading and subscribing. I was so happy to see some of you even remembered the story from the first time I've posted it... Q_Q

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