“I don’t understand this, Joon,” Mir says, looking up guiltily from his math text book. The two sat at one of the few round tables set around the vacant school library. Nearly everything looks second hand and run down, just like the rest of the school, and the books are about fifty years old; no help whatsoever when trying to do homework. But it’s the only quiet place to work during lunch break, because no one ever came into the library. Not even a librarian.

Joon patiently leaned over and peered down at the notebook that Mir was trying to solve the set of mathematical questions that was assigned, it wasn’t much of a surprise to see that nearly every one of them were incorrect. Mir was very dear to him, but Joon couldn’t deny that his best friend was, for lack of a better word, slow. He wasn’t stupid, it was just the fact that he’d grown up attending one of the worst school districts around. Sometimes it could get very frustrating trying to teach him, but Joon refused to give up on his friend.

“Okay, look. Remember that trick word I taught you?” Joon said, picking up his pencil and writing a little math word he’d leaned years ago; ‘SohCahToa’. It still annoyed him that they were learning something that was seventh grade material.

“Yeah, but I don’t remember what it means or what I’m supposed to do with these numbers and the x value,” Mir replied, glancing down at the obtuse triangle that he was working on. He felt bad because Joon has already explained how to solve these problems twice now, but he still couldn’t get the hang of it. Even so, he didn’t want to give up and let Joon’s tutoring sessions go to waste, especially since he was the first person that had ever taken the time to help him.

Not wanting him to get frustrated and lose interest in this, Joon paused for a moment and pulled his wallet out of his back pocket, taking out two singles.

“Here, why don’t you go to the cafeteria and get us something to drink and I’ll check over these for you, okay?” He said, handing over the money. Mir sent him a thankful smile as he took the bills, standing up and silently leaving the library. The walls were partially empty, with a few students hanging around lockers and skipping class, but safe from anyone who would try to bully him. All that seemed to have stopped now that Joon was always with him. He was tough and had a cold look in his eyes that told people not to mess with him or Mir.

Chuckling softly, Mir rounded the corner to the cafeteria with a smile on his face as he thought about what drinks to get from the vending machine. There were energy drinks that he knew Joon loved, but he always got so energetic and hyper, dancing around and singing while his true character came out; fun and loving, but that was not for anyone at school to see. Just thinking about him doing his overly ual dances in the school’s hallways made Mir laugh aloud. But caught up in his thoughts, Mir paid no attention to where he was walking and suddenly was knocked to the floor by a strong force.

“Well, well, well, look who it is, boys! Where’s you bodyguard, runt? I ain’t seen you without him, you been using him as protection,” A gruff voice said. Chills ran down Mir’s spine as he looked up to see Choi Minhwan, the leader of a gang of delinquent thugs, and the main cause of his bullying.

Keeping his mouth shut, Mir stay