Jongin doesn’t get it.

The tanned boy strides down the hallways, air of charisma surrounding him as usual while his schoolmates clear a path for him to walk. Wufan is beside him doing that thing again – where he knits his eyebrows together purposely just to seem angry because his definition of cool equates to somehow looking pissed off all the time. Jongin’s body is upright and his arms are coordinated, swinging at exact intervals by his side as he walks down the aisle with his clique.

His gaze is straight ahead, but he really can’t help letting it wander away. He’s not supposed to look at the nerds – Chanyeol has run through this a whole lot of times with that what not to do when you are popular article he found somewhere on the internet. It’s not that he wants to – well, okay, he wants to, but it’s not his fault. He’s just curious, actually, because the geeks seem to be really, really happy.

There’s Jongdae, who’s quiet but grins permanently, Minseok who’s always bubbly and talks very slowly, Yixing who’s really weird but always cheerful, and that one kid named Kyungsoo – he really never fails to amaze Jongin.

Kyungsoo is jumping about as usual, and making those strange faces that Jongin wonders what it’d be like to imitate – eyes wide open, mouth agape, spluttering high-pitched noises. They’re the outcasts who always gather at the corner of the classroom, do the weirdest things (Jongin claims it doesn’t look fun, nope, not at all) and gets picked on by his friends. He doesn’t understand why they’re still so happy when the entire school is mocking them.

Chanyeol rudely brushes past Kyungsoo and the boy with thick-rimmed spectacles and a large, heavy bag stumbles to the ground. Jongin watches as Jongdae helps him up, and Kyungsoo, in a span of a few minutes, is back to running about and making those really, really weird faces and doing strange things that confuses Jongin even more.

He really doesn’t get it.