Title: The King of Membership Training

Characters: Baekhyun and Naeun (Apink)

Poster by Korpride

[A/N:]

Beautiful people! I wanted to pop a tiny note here because I really hope you give this story a chance. Please please please~!

Baekeun is what I call them :D (Baekhyun+Naeun)

And thank you to woobabylove for the great poster!

Terminology Index (Brief list of Romanized Korean words in the story):

*Byunbi – This was actually a real nickname that Baekhyun’s friends and classmates used to call Baekhyun during Baekhyun’s school days, as revealed by someone who knows/knew him. In Korean, the word means diarrhea, and it was Baekhyun’s nickname just because of his surname, Byun.

*Sunbae – a Korean word used by underclassmen to refer to upperclassmen.

*Hoobae – a Korean word used by upperclassmen to refer to underclassmen.

*Soju – a Korean alcoholic drink.

MT. It stands for Membership Training. The nature of MT’s in South Korea consists of a group of people taking a trip to a vacation spot to partake in group bonding and fun. Groups as small as 20 to those as large as 200 get away to MT houses in the countryside, that specifically operate for the purpose of catering MT’s. Common activities at an MT include awkward and funny icebreakers, barbeque parties, camp fires, singing and dancing, and of course, drinking. It is also in the nature of Korean MT’s for attending members who have seniority in the group to bully, boss, and belittle the less experienced members. This practice is not at all meant to be seen in a foul and unethical way; it is merely a practiced tradition that rookie/new members of social groups be subject to some harshness from their seniors in order for them to completely and comfortably adapt to the group. MT’s and the activities performed at them are always passed down from previous members to current members, maintaining a very traditional aspect. But all in all, MT’s are ways that Korean people find a way to get away from everyday routines and enjoy living life together.

The Wooju all boys’ high school has never been very seriously considered an all boys’ school. If parents wanted to send their son to a conservative boys’ school where boys would have minimal distractions from the opposite , they should not send their son to the Wooju all boys’ high school. The critical flaw that prevents this high school from truly being classified as an all boys’ school is that it stands right next to – in fact a distance of only one recreation field away from - the Wooju all girls’ high school. Boys and girls who attended the respective Wooju schools interacted with each other as if they attended one common school. In addition to this close proximity between the boys’ and girls’ schools, the Wooju students, both boys and girls, were also notoriously known for their infamous, seasonal MT’s.

School had been out for almost two months. Summer was at the brink of ending, and the senior students of the Wooju all boys’ high school and the Wooju all girls’ high school were itching to spend the time of their lives at their very last summer MT of high school. The Summer MT was the only MT trip that consisted solely of seniors and juniors. The freshman were left out of the circle until Fall, allowing the older students to form a much tighter bond, preparing them to target the new freshman as a combined force during the school year.  The Wooju Summer MT consisted of a 3-day weekend trip to reserved MT houses where seniors reined superiority, while juniors suffered from the seniors’ wraths.

Byun Baekhyun screamed the lyrics to Jo Yongpil’s “Let’s Go on a Vacation” at the top of his lungs, his left arm and shoulder sticking out through the rolled down window of the backseat, his hair flying wildly as the fast wind pummeled him in the face.

“Yah Byunbi!! Shut the hell up!!” shouted a tall, lanky, white-skinned boy, Sungyeol, who sat in the middle seat, clutching a radish plush and littering the back of the car with corn chip crumbs.

Next to the tall boy, a fair-skinned boy with deep dark circles, round eyes, and brownish hair, Chulyong, chimed out a series of incomprehensible words, waving both of his hands out of the right window, ignoring the other two occupants of the back. The driver of the small vehicle, a guy named Jungsoo with bright orange hair neatly swept across his forehead, simply paid attention to the road in front of him, a grin plastered on his lips, his prominent left dimple showing. Pumping the car’s stereo louder and louder every passing minute in the passenger’s seat, was a bony boy with jagged facial features, small lines for eyes, and hair dyed bleach blonde, Hyukjae.

These were Byun Baekhyun’s group of buddies. The exact same group, plus one friend who was currently in charge of bringing the juniors separately, had been forced to dress as girls, chug gallons of alcohol, and dance around the fire as if they were literally a bunch of clowns, their very first year as Wooju high school students. And now, Baekhyun was minutes away from his most epic Wooju MT ever, as a senior. Being in high school was great. Being a senior in high school was the greatest.

Baekhyun stopped singing to crack a smile through the rearview mirror at Jungsoo. “Yah, MT Master, Are you prepared to break loose all hell for the awesome showdown this weekend!?” He shouted. The other boys joined Baekhyun with whoops of excitement.

“Oh, I swear, I am going down in history as the most epic MT Master, ever!!” Jungsoo bellowed, and the four boys hollered in unison, chanting, “Park Jungsoo! Park Jungsoo! Park Jungsoo!”

The MT Masters were two students, a boy and a girl, in charge of organizing and running all Wooju MT’s of the year. At each Summer MT, the leaving seniors selected one male and one female junior to become next year’s MT Masters. The selected junior MT Masters then collaborated with the senior MT masters for the rest of the year, until next summer, when those juniors became seniors, gaining the authority to select another pair of junior MT Masters. Generally, becoming MT master meant a lot of extra work outside of school , but it also meant gaining school-wide popularity, in both the boys’ and the girls’ schools. Baekhyun’s very own friend Park Jungsoo had been selected as male MT Master at last year’s Summer MT, along with Jungsoo’s girlfriend, Kang Sora, as the female MT Master. Jungsoo and Sora were an incredible team, and had already established names for themselves as junior MT Masters last year. Needless to say, expectations for the MT Master couple were extremely high.

“I’m not asking for much, Jungsoo,” Hyukjae said, “All I’m asking is that Sora brings with her the prettiest and most gullible junior girls! I know all we did last year was chase around the senior noonas, but now that we’re seniors, we get first dibs on all the smokin’ juniors!!” Sungyeol and Chulyong, added screams of approval.

Baekhyun had also chased around his fair share of senior noonas, both his freshman and junior years. But it had been more for show than anything else. He had done it because all the guys did it. In reality, Baekhyun was more jealous of Jungsoo’s relationship with Sora. Jungsoo and Sora had been dating since middle school, with zero breakups and zero problems, and they were still head over heels for each other, acting absolutely like two peas in a pod, every minute they were together. Baekhyun just hadn’t been able to find a girl like Sora for him. Not that he was too concerned about it in the first place, especially this year. The perk of being a senior was that he could do whatever he wanted. And at this summer MT, girls would be the last thing on his mind. He was shooting for a goal that his friends knew all too well: The King of MT.

The King of MT was as simple a title as it sounded: out of all the male Wooju seniors, the guy who put himself out as the wildest, craziest, risk-taking partier during the MT was crowned the King of MT. The King of MT was a prize that earned unfathomable popularity, a prize sought after by every class clown. Baekhyun knew that he and his friends, with the exception of the MT Master Jungsoo, were high candidates. But that King title was his; he could feel it in his hands. He had never taken his eyes off of the glorious prize in all his high school years, and he was going to win it, no matter what the consequences.

Baekhyun watched with his chin propped on an elbow, leaning forward on the railing of the porch. The last of his group of friends, a smiley dork named Hwang Kwanghee, was walking into the MT site the brand new batch of fresh junior boys, ready for cooking and seasoning. And behind the junior boys, led by the female MT Master and Jungsoo’s girlfriend Sora, were the junior girls.

Hyukjae, Sungyeol, and Chulyong were busy chatting away about every other junior girl they could see from the porch, rating each from a scale of 1 to 10. While Hyukjae and Chulyong took an exceedingly long time arguing about whether one particular girl was a 7 or 8, Sungyeol had some sort of a fit, as he cried out, “Yah, Daebak! That girl right there is a full-out 10!”

“Where?” Hyukjae and Chulyong stopped arguing immediately and snapped their heads to where Sungyeol was pointing. Baekhyun followed their gazes. When his eyes landed on the girl of topic, he felt as if he stopped breathing.

Both Hyukjae and Chulyong were jabbering away in words that were inaudible to Baekhyun. His complete focus was solely aimed at the girl that Sungyeol had pointed out, and every other being surrounding her seemed to appear blurred. Her lengthy brown hair, falling in waves around her, was glowing. She was smiling in the most slight, almost mechanic sort of way, the kind of smile a plastic Barbie doll always wore, but it was so much more brilliant on her. Her skin was glowing too, a thin sheet of soft white, making her appear like a porcelain doll. As she began to head into the females’ house, Baekhyun found himself craning his neck to not let her out of his sight. When she finally disappeared, he gulped in a large breath, making him wonder if he really hadn’t breathed that whole time.

“Damn…” Chulyong muttered, his mouth hanging open.

“I called dibs!” Sungyeol chimed.

“Hey, whoever gets to her first gets dibs! Free for all, right Baekhyun?” said Hyukjae, nudging Baekhyun’s arm. Baekhyun couldn’t find the breath to respond. He just stood there and continued to stare at the spot where the girl had disappeared into the females’ dorm.

“Yah, don’t burn the pork!” Nagged Hyukjae, standing over a kid Baekhyun and his friends had pulled out from the juniors to do the cooking. The poor kid, a baby-faced junior named Yoo Changhyun, cowered under Hyukjae’s blaring voice, quickly flipping the stripes of pork on the grill with his tong.

Baekhyun sat in a chair next to Sungyeol, Chulyong, and Kwanghee, his eyes staring into thin air while his friends went on and on about the pranks they had in store for the rest of the juniors that night. He couldn’t stop thinking about the girl he’d seen before. He kept blinking uncontrollably, as if he had some dust in his eyes he just couldn’t get out. The girl had just been so, undeniably, perfect. The most beautifully crafted human being Baekhyun had ever laid eyes on. So perfect, that it was hard to believe something so perfect could exist.

He felt ridiculous, being so helpless to think of anything else other than that girl. She was probably just a random junior girl who’d just caught the sunlight a little too brilliantly from a distance, he decided. Baekhyun shook himself and got up, leaving his friends to head into the males’ house, to find some water to clear his head.

He had just uncapped a plastic water bottle and touched it to his lips when Sora popped up in front of him. “Baekhyun-ah, could you do me a favor and help unload some food from my trunk?” she said, wiping a layer of sweat from her forehead. No doubt she and Jungsoo had been busy running around all day.

“Sure,” Baekhyun answered. He followed Sora out to her car, swigging some water as he walked. They approached a girl bent over inside the car’s trunk, trying to pull out a box that was way too heavy for her.

“Naeun-ah, I got some help!” Sora called. The girl gave up and raised herself out of the trunk. When Baekhyun saw her face, without thinking, he spit out all the water he’d just filled his mouth with, right into Sora’s back.

“Aaaachkkk!” Sora yelped, jumping away from Baekhyun and turning to him in bewilderment.

Water dripping from his chin messily, Baekhyun stood frozen in place, his wide eyes glued to the girl standing next to the trunk, the same girl he’d seen from the railing before, the girl Sungyeol had coined a 10.

She was looking back at him with a curious expression, as if Baekhyun was some kind of maniac. “Byun Baekhyun, what are you doing!?” Sora cried, snapping Baekhyun out of his trance. He tore his eyes away from the beautiful girl, and finally realized what he’d done.

“Oh ! I’m so sorry Sora-yah!” Baekhyun apologized, wiping his chin, “I… I have no idea what got into me…”

“Oh, nevermind, don’t worry about it,” Sora said with a wave of her hand, though she clearly looked irritated, “I’m gonna go change. You, help Naeun move all the food to the back of the building.” With that, she stormed away, grunting a last frustrated snort.

From all that Sora had just said to him, the only word he’d caught clearly was Naeun. It was the girl’s name, the girl still standing next to the trunk, watching Sora disappear into the girls’ house with worry drawn on her brow.

He couldn’t help but stare at her senselessly, the rest of his surroundings blurred. It hadn’t just been the sunlight like he’d tried to convince himself before, because her skin and hair were glowing again, even as he stood only a few feet away from her. He blinked dazedly, lost in his own thoughts, when she turned her attention back to him.

She didn’t seem human. She was life-like, but that was it. Everything about her seemed crafted, too beautiful and too perfect to be natural. Baekhyun was even convincing himself that she was in fact just a life-sized doll of some sort, an unreal object, when she spoke. “Excuse me sunbae, can you help with this box? I can’t get it out of here.”

She spoke. She moved as she spoke. She had a voice that was indistinguishably human. Baekhyun couldn’t believe the incoherent thoughts popping into his brain. He was losing it.

“Ss..sure!!” He exclaimed, much too loudly, because the girl jumped as he said so.

By the time Baekhyun finished moving all the food boxes from Sora’s trunk, he’d managed to tell himself not to space out. She’s just a girl, he kept telling himself.

“Thank you so much Baekhyun Sunbae!” Naeun said, clapping for Baekhyun. She was smiling at him. Baekhyun had been mistaken by his earlier comparison of her smile to that of a Barbie-doll; her smile was clearly much more authentic, drawn upon her perfect face by a master artist. There were no imperfections about it; it was a smile only fit for the most delicate and the most finely-made.

And she knew his name. His name! He could literally feel his ego puff up inside his chest. He was going to fly, he just needed to take off running…

“Yah Byunbi!!!” someone called, interrupting Baekhyun’s thoughts. He saw Naeun chuckling, and realized that the voice had called him by his ridiculous nickname.

“Yah, don’t laugh!” Baekhyun burst out without thinking, and Naeun put a hand to immediately, though her eyes still smiled, in the most graceful, unrealistic way.

“Get your over here! We’re picking out dresses!” Baekhyun recognized the loud, obnoxious voice belonging to Kwanghee. As much as he wanted to stand and stare at the beauty of this girl forever, he had to snap out of it. He had an MT to attend to.   

“Uhh… Naeun, right?” Baekhyun said, his voice quivering slightly before he cleared it forcefully. Naeun nodded. “I’ll see you at dinner?” he asked.

Again, Naeun gave a slow, glowing nod, and Baekhyun’s heart did a flip inside his chest. As he turned and trotted toward the males’ house, his mind began to work furiously. This morning, his sole goal had been to become the King of Membership Training, at his senior Summer Wooju MT. But now that he had laid eyes on this girl, this amazing girl that was just too good to be true, he had to get to her. Baekhyun could feel his skin tingle with excitement. Naeun was like some locked room whose password he had to figure out, and he was boiling with determination to do it. Just because he now had two goals for the weekend, it didn’t mean he couldn’t give it his all for both. With clenched teeth, Baekhyun told himself, that he was going to get that King crown, and make this girl his.

So.... I don't wanna be TOO obvious or anything... but does the story remind any of you of a particular song you know..?? (nudge nudge)

And also, this story is written with a Korean setting, language use, and lifestyle in mind, so if you have any questions, please feel free to ask. Love to hear from you, even if it's not a comment, hehe.

Lastly, because inspiration always comes from reality: