Chapter 1:Every Little Thing About Me, Hot Issue
{Hot Issue, 4Minute}

When Chanyeol’s dad comes home with the news that he’s being transferred again, Chanyeol hides the knives because he’s positive that his mom is really going to commit homicide this time.

“WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU WANT TO ACCEPT?” She thunders, and Chanyeol can almost see the walls of the house shaking.

“They offered me a 2% increase on my monthly salary, that’s 24% more in a year for Chanyeol’s college fund,” his dad explains, but it doesn’t placate her.

“Because they’re sending you to the middle of nowhere!” Mom yells back, and yep, Chanyeol is certainly on his own for dinner tonight but he can expect chocolate chip pancakes in the morning. He grabs some money from his dad’s wallet and walks out just when his mom starts talking about the effect this will have on their son.

Honestly Chanyeol stopped caring about the constant moves ages ago, but his mom still brings it up because she thinks it’s having a hidden adverse effect on his psyche. This will be his third school in four years, and maybe it is a little tiring but it’s also like an adventure that keeps him on his toes. He’s almost sorry to be going to college in ten months.

He texts his sister while he’s inhaling sushi at his favorite restaurant. ‘Don’t call home tonight or you’ll get mom in a bad mood.’

A few minutes later he gets her response.

‘Sorry kid :( do you want to come stay with me for a few days?’

Chanyeol gapes at his screen. ‘And miss pancakes? No thank you.’

Sure enough Chanyeol bounds downstairs the next morning to a mountain of breakfast food—his mom’s way of apologizing to him for having to witness her in a bad state. Chanyeol kisses her cheek as he grabs a plate.

“Want me to pick up some boxes on my way back from school?” He asks in a chipper tone.

She bursts into tears and flings her arms around his neck. “You’re such a lovely child,” she sobs, “So much better behaved than your sister was. Would you like a new playstation? No, how about that Wii U that just came out? Yes, I’ll get you that. And a kitten, and maybe even a lifetime supply of sushi.”

Chanyeol snaps out of his daydream when his mom pats his cheek. “Thank you, darling. That would be very helpful.”

Halfway through his fourth pancake he looks up hopefully. “You know that Wii U that just came out?” He asks, proud of himself for not choking while talking with his mouth full.

Mom smiles and ruffles his hair. “I’ll see what I can do.”

Three weeks later Chanyeol stands in the doorway of his new room, already planning where he will put up his 2NE1 posters. The Wii U sits in the middle of the room, waiting to be unpacked. Downstairs he can hear his mom telling the movers to be careful with her table, it’s a family heirloom and all that jazz. They’re not actually in the middle of nowhere like she’d feared, but it’s definitely not Seoul, where she grew up. Chanyeol knows his mom misses the big city terribly, but the new diamond ring on her finger and platinum credit card in her wallet have calmed her down for the time being. She’s not always a material woman, but sometimes she appreciates her husband giving her nice things. It’s one more thing Chanyeol files away for when he finally starts dating somebody.

His new school is far enough away where he has to take the bus, and it thrills him because he’s walked to school for most of his life. The bus will be one more adventure for him to have, and maybe he’ll get lost and wind up in front of an amazing sushi place and maybe it’ll turn out to be Park Bom’s favorite place to eat.

He continues in this fantasy as he walks into the principal’s office on the first day of school, bowing to the secretaries. They jump when he wishes them a good morning, probably not expecting his bright smile to go with his deep voice. Chanyeol gets that a lot.

They hand him his new schedule and call a boy down from his class to show him around. The boy they call down is almost as skinny as Chanyeol and when he smile he looks like a kitten. Chanyeol has always wanted a kitten.

“Hi there, I’m Jongdae,” Jongdae says, and Chanyeol tries to stop imagining that voice coming out of the mouth of a little black kitten. “Follow me, I’ll show you where our classroom is.”

“So, you just moved here?” Jongdae asks as they walk out of the office. Chanyeol nods and Jongdae looks torn between amused and horrified.

“Why? Most people can’t wait to get away from here,” He laughs, and Chanyeol laughs too.

“My mom wasn’t happy,” he admits, “But she got over it when my dad agreed to pay for her sister to come up and visit us once a month.”

“Good deal,” Jongdae nods.

“Is it really so bad here?” Chanyeol asks, and Jongdae shrugs.

“We’ve gone on class trips to Seoul every year since fifth grade,” he says wistfully. “This place isn’t bad, but it’s nothing compared to that city. It’s so boring here, and even the mall is no fun because everyone in this school works there on the weekends.”

Ah yes, Chanyeol heard that the shopping mall was supposed to be excellent. The city blew millions on it to bring in some tourists, and it worked because it’s ranked #3 in all of South Korea.

“Did they load you up on buses and send you off to the mall when it opened? Did they make you sign contracts in blood?”

After he asks, Chanyeol realizes he sounds a little too enthusiastic for the subject matter, but Jongdae actually laughs—so hard he can’t breathe for a few seconds.

“Yes, and then they beamed us up to a spaceship and stuck microchips in our brains,” he teases.

Chanyeol beams brightly, because not everyone appreciates his jokes. By this point they are right outside of their classroom and Jongdae leads the way in. There are only a few students in this early, and Jongdae tells Chanyeol he can just sit up front for the time being. They make small talk, asking each other about family and stuff, and Chanyeol has never been very good with small talk. He struggles to look interested until Jongdae mentions that his mother and father met in China when they were studying abroad and he can speak it fairly well.

“Really?” He gasps, sitting up right. “Have you ever been to China before?”

“Once when I was very young,” Jongdae says wistfully. “I want to go back.”

Chanyeol nods. “I have a cousin who was adopted from China when he was ten, he misses it a lot. He always tells me about what it was like and now I want to go there too.”

Jongdae grins widely. “Okay, whichever one of us goes first has to squeeze the other one in his suitcase and take him along.”

Chanyeol laughs. “I think I’ll just go in a dog crate. I’ll bark really loudly so no one will come near me.”

They’re still in hysterics when the teacher walks in. Immediately she asks for Chanyeol’s information and directs him to his seat, telling him that he’ll introduce himself once homeroom starts.

Chanyeol is disappointed when his morning is not filled with questioning stares and flirtatious smiles from around the room. This is the sixth time he’s been disappointed (since he started keeping track), clearly all those books and movies lied about new kids on their first day at new schools. Lunch time rolls around and Jongdae comes around to pull Chanyeol to the front of the room.

“Chanyeol, this is my best friend. Her name is Baekhyun.”

Chanyeol grins happily and nods. “Nice to meet you.”

Baekhyun gives him a small smile and goes back to daintily eating her lunch. Their school has a uniform (boring white shirts, blue vests and blue pants/skirts) but the girls have managed to sneak in some individuality, and Baekhyun is no exception. She is wearing a pink hair band with a large ruffle on it, impeccably done eyeliner, and she has a Hello Kitty choker necklace. Chanyeol almost whimpers when he sees the stickers on her lunch box.

“Kittens,” he mutters helplessly under his breath.

Baekhyun looks at him oddly but doesn’t comment.

Baekhyun stays relatively quiet during the lunch break, though every now and then Jongdae will try to nudge her into talking more. Chanyeol sifts through what he remembers of his morning sessions, and he doesn’t remember their teacher ever calling on her for an answer once, though she called on all the other students. Baekhyun also never raised her hand. Chanyeol shrugs it off and figures it must just be laryngitis. When he goes back to his seat after lunch, he continuously glances in Baekhyun’s direction. She keeps her head down and diligently takes notes, and never once looks at the teacher.

When school ends Baekhyun leaves with a whole bunch of girls (apparently they are called “a gaggle” when they are in groups of three or more but Chanyeol thinks it sounds weird) and Chanyeol asks Jongdae if she’s shy.

“Hell no,” he laughs. “You should see her outside of school, she’s a real social butterfly!”

“Why doesn’t she talk?” Chanyeol asks.

Jongdae’s smile dims a bit. “It’s not really my story to tell,” he says apologetically.

“I want to talk to her more,” Chanyeol decides. “She’s cool. We could be great friends.”

Jongdae laughs. “How can you tell?”

Chanyeol stares at him. “Anyone who has kitten stickers on their lunch box is a friend of mine.”

Chanyeol stays up all night trying out his new Wii U and sleeps through most of his classes the next day. At one point his teacher throws a piece of chalk at him.

“Chanyeol, bring that piece of chalk to the front of the room and solve this equation,” she demands coldly. Chanyeol gets up and trips over his chair, and the students cover their mouths to hide their giggles. He stares at the board for a few seconds, tapping the chalk against the side of his face. Then he confidently scrawls a big “0” on the board and smiles at his teacher. She scowls at him.

“Go sit back down,” she grumbles. Chanyeol catches Baekhyun’s eye on the way back and she gives him a thumbs up.

Baekhyun runs up behind Chanyeol and Jongdae as they walk out of school that afternoon. “Did you see the look on that woman's face?” She laughs, throwing her arms around Jongdae’s neck and nearly choking him. “It was priceless! I like you, Chanyeol. Anyone who can show her up is a friend of mine.”

Chanyeol grins and claps excitedly. Two new friends in two days, he’s on a roll!

Chanyeol falls asleep in class for the rest of the week, and every time his teacher wakes him up and tries to outsmart him with a question. Each time he keeps up with her.

“Air particles reflect blue light,” he mumbles into his desk on Friday afternoon. “Imhotep. Louis XIV. X equals negative B plus or minus the square root—”

A whack to the back of his head rudely snaps him out of it and he looks up to find Jongdae shaking his head. “Get a grip, the test is over.”

Chanyeol throws his arms dramatically around Jongdae’s waist and sobs into his shirt. “I’m so tired.”

“Stop playing video games every night,” Jongdae admonishes, pushing Chanyeol’s face away.

Baekhyun taps her fingernails on Chanyeol’s desk. “How do you think you did?”

“I passed,” Chanyeol says immediately.

Baekhyun snorts. “You got an A.” She sounds jealous. “I’ll be lucky to scrape a C minus.”

Chanyeol shoves Jongdae away and stands up, ignoring his new friend’s pained cry. “If you got a bad grade I can go over your test with you and help you understand the material.”

Chanyeol nearly slaps himself because he shouldn’t have sounded so hopeful and he should have said ‘grade you’re unhappy with’ rather than assume it was a bad grade, but Baekhyun doesn’t seem particularly offended.

“You would do that for me?” She gasps.

Jongdae stands up. “Are you sure you know what you’re getting into?” He asks. “Last time I tried to tutor her she nearly gouged my eyes out.”

Baekhyun doesn’t even look at Jongdae when she pushes him into the wall, still beaming at Chanyeol. “If you can help me to get a B on the quiz next Friday I will invite you out shopping with my friends and I will personally buy you lunch.”

Chanyeol sticks out his hand. “You’ve got a deal.”

When Chanyeol gets home he hugs his mom so hard he lifts her off the ground.

“Mommy,” he asks sweetly, “If I get an A on my quiz that I took today, can have a kitten?”

She pinches his cheeks and kisses his forehead. “No.”

Uh upcoming chapters might wind up rated for language, IDK if I can curb Baekhyun's sassy mouth.

Also this isn't gender-bender.