“Okay, class, it’s independent reading time. Take out your books,” Mrs. Choi announced after wiping the chalkboard clean. There were a few groans from the class, mainly from boys, but mainly from Donghae, who just kept looking at the playground outside. Out of all the days, today had to be the day where it just had to rain. He didn’t understand why they couldn’t go out; it was only a few drops of water, and it wasn’t even raining anymore, so where was the harm in that? He fell down a flight of stairs once and he remained to be perfectly fine.

With a big sigh, he watched a raindrop fall down slowly on the window glass. It was taking too long to disappear so he got bored and turned around. Everyone else had their books out in front of them, already way too immersed in their stories to care about soccer. Even Hyukjae beside him seemed to have a book.

“Why are you reading, you don’t even like to read,” Donghae pointed out bluntly.

“I’m not going to get in trouble for not doing something so easy today. Don’t be stupid, Hae,” Hyukjae retorted.

“I’m not stupid.”

“Shut up, you’re gonna get us in trouble,”

“But I’m not stupid—”

“Boys.” Mrs. Choi’s warning look immediately shut them up, Hyukjae’s head dipping back into his book. “Donghae, where’s your book?”

“I don’t have one,” he replied quietly, looking back up then down, then up, then down.

She gestured to the back of the room with her hand. “Go get one then.”

Silently, Donghae walked over to the small library in their classroom, picking a book at random and walked back over to his seat. He opened it to the first page, bewildered by the foreign words and letters and scribbles he encountered. He looked back to the front cover—it was in English—and almost groaned. Not wanting to get back up, he stayed in his seat and decided to try out the book, to get somewhat of an idea how Americans write and read. It could be fun.

He understood nothing.

None.

Nil.

Zilch.

He tried to read the first sentence, he really did, but his brain was overworking itself to the point where he swore he almost constipated. He grunted in displeasure and shifted in his seat. Why did they have an English section anyway? They were only seven!

America gets weirder and weirder, he thought, examining a picture of a mouse with a cookie, smiling. Here we kill mice but there they give them cookies.

He could make out the story, kind of, if he wanted to really badly, but independent reading time shouldn’t take so long so it was useless trying to decipher the message Americans were sending about giving mice cookies. Oddly enough, when Donghae looked at the wall clock, five minutes had passed since they started. There were thirty more left. And Donghae really, really didn’t want to read the book.

He took a quick sneak at Mrs. Choi, who was too much into her own book, reading glasses already on the bridge of her nose, brow furrowed. She wasn’t reading an American book, the lucky chicken. Hyukjae wouldn’t really care whether or not Donghae wasn’t able to enjoy reading time because, like Mrs. Choi said, it was independent reading time, and Hyukjae wouldn’t be able to help out Donghae if he wished, but he wouldn’t anyway, just to irk the boy. Sometimes Donghae wondered why Hyukjae could be such a poopy head.

Sighing, he was returning back to his book when his eyes spotted something peculiar at the other side of the room. A girl was reading, just like anyone else, but she had her finger in her nose. And she was picking it.

She was a pretty girl in the class, one of the cutesy-sweet ones, or that was what Donghae used to think, before he…intruded on her privacy. She was picking her nose, in class, in front of other kids, who, Donghae thought, didn’t even care or seem to notice that a cute girl was picking her nose. Right. In. Front. Of. Them.

He couldn’t find himself to look away. She was right there. But okay, maybe picking her nose in public is fine, he guessed, because anyone picked their nose, whether they were three or five or yes, even seven. Donghae still picked his nose but not in public. No, definitely not. But, he thought, she was human. Humans picked their noses.

And then they put their fingers in their mouth.

Donghae watched, horrified, blank, confused, raging with conflicted emotions, as the girl on her finger and took it out and stuck it back in her nose. His mouth dropped, eyes widened, practically bulging. This seriously could not be happening during reading time. This just could not.

He must be having a nightmare. A weird, abnormal, strange, weird nightmare. No popular girl just picked her nose and ate the booger. What kind of girl did? In public? Not one. This was not real. He just could not. He…god, he felt like he was going to barf yesterday’s dinner.

“Hyukjae,” he whispered, poking the other boy. “Hyukjae, Hyukjae, Hyukjae, Hyukjae!”

“Stop,” his friend hissed, moving away. “I don’t wanna get in trouble.”

Donghae shook his head vigorously. “There’s something weird going on, Hyuk. I can’t hold it in anymore. It’s too much.”

“You’re probably just having one of your issues again so I’ll just leave you alone,” Hyukjae muttered, eyes still on the book.

“No! This has nothing to do with me! There’s a disturbance in our presence. It’s…it’s something you haven’t seen ever, in your life. Ever. And this might be the first time.”

Hyukjae stared at his friend. “Do you need to see Jungsu hyung for help again?”

“No—no, Hyukjae. I’m serious. There’s a girl in our class…picking her nose,” he whispered as softly as he could but being loud enough for Hyukjae to hear.

The older boy frowned at how Donghae made it sound like such a big deal. He rolled his eyes. “Yeah, okay, Hae.”

Donghae put his hand up. “I swear on Nemo’s mommy’s grave. She really picked her nose and then she ate the booger. She ate it! She eats boogers,” he whispered, going hysterical over what was not even his problem. He always thought girls were more proper and clean than boys; they squealed and played with dolls and liked stickers (Donghae liked stickers too but the manly man ones, not flowers and Tweety birds and strawberries, although he liked those too but no one will ever know). So now what were they? Did they not take more showers than boys? Did they play in the mud instead of carpets and bouncy houses? Were they even girls? What was a girl? Was everything Donghae had been taught all a lie? Complicated stuff, man, complicated stuff.

“Just look at her and then you’ll see what I’m talking about. Just look,” he almost begged. He tugged on Hyukjae’s sleeve, and when Hyukjae wasn’t responding, he tugged harder. When he still didn’t respond, Donghae bit his shoulder.

Hyukjae muffled a shriek and gave his so-called friend a glare. “Can. You. Stop,” he strained between teeth. He always had some amount of patience when dealing with Donghae, or anyone, or just Donghae because it was always just Donghae. But he’d already gotten in trouble one too many times since the school year started. He didn’t do anything wrong: there was always an urge to stir up something when it was too boring. If he were to do something now, like say, disrupt the class—he was sure Mrs. Choi would bring out a belt if she had to. Hyukjae didn’t like belts. He didn’t like Donghae’s big brown puppy eyes either.

Donghae gave his friend the infamous puppy stare, gave it his all, even daring to jut out his lower lip, making Hyukjae cringe slightly. The older boy sighed and closed his eyes for a moment. “Okay, where is she.” He didn’t have enough time to finish his sentence because Donghae kept pointing repeatedly to the other side of the classroom, saying, “That one, that one, that one.”

His eyes soon found the girl. Unfortunately, however, she wasn’t picking her nose. She was reading her book, just as how everyone else was. Hyukjae gave the girl five seconds and shot Donghae a long sideway glance. “This is what you wanted me to see?”

Donghae could not contain the disbelief on his face. “I—she was just—she was seriously just eating that booger right now—but—” he stammered on every sentence, eventually stopping. “I saw her,” he murmured, more to himself than anyone, but Hyukjae gave him a pitiful look anyway. Now that Donghae was quiet, Hyukjae was finally able to read in peace and sighed happily while his crestfallen best friend went back to reading about the mouse and the cookie.

Suddenly America was looking like a nice place to live.

-

“I’m telling you, she had her finger up her nose and was picking it like she was digging for gold. Really!”

“But when I saw her she wasn’t, so that’s that.”

“Hyukjae, I’m really telling the truth! She picked her nose in class and put the finger in ! Then after class I saw her holding hands with one of her friends. Like, ew.”

If Donghae was going to spend the entire walk home insisting the girl picked her nose, Hyukjae may just had to walk himself over on the street and get hit by a bus. As soon as they were dismissed, Donghae’s mouth went on and on and on…for a nice five minutes. There were ten minutes left until they reached home, and judging by this, Hyukjae was positive he’d commit suicide the next time Donghae said “booger”.

“Girls are so weird. I’m never going to marry one when I turn old,” Donghae declared.

“So you’re just gonna grow old with Bada?” Hyukjae joked.

“No, I’ll grow old with you.”

“But what if I get married and have kids and Choco and there’s no space for you?” Hyukjae asked.

“Then you’ll get married to me,” Donghae replied casually.

Hyukjae made a face at his answer. “You like boys?”

Donghae shook his head, hands on his backpack straps.  “Just you.”

Instead of feeling disgusted or surprised like Hyukjae would have thought, he felt a little pleased, maybe even elated. A small smile threatened to break out on his face but he suppressed it (quite awesomely, he might add). He thought Donghae needed to stop hanging around Heechul hyung for too long, or maybe Hyukjae needed a new best friend. He cleared his throat and averted his eyes away from Donghae’s large brown ones, facing ahead. “You still got issues.”

“But she really did pick her nose, I swear! Everyone didn’t even notice and in math when I thought they would probably say something, they didn’t. Does that mean we could eat our boogers and pick our noses in class and no one would really care?” the younger one mused, looking up in deep thought.

Before Hyukjae could hurl himself into the street, a word from Donghae’s mouth triggered a thought in Hyukjae’s head. He widened his eyes and slapped his forehead.

“I forgot the math homework!” he exclaimed. “If I don’t do this one, Mrs. Choi is gonna whip me, oh God, oh God, oh God…”

“I’ll wait here,” Donghae said to no one in particular, as Hyukjae already begun to run off toward the school.

-

Hyukjae was already out of breath when he reached the second floor, pacing his heart and mind to keep up with his body. He staggered along the hallway, walking quickly over to his classroom and opened the door.

“Sorry, Mrs. Choi, I left my math book—”

He cut himself off in mid-sentence and hung there as he observed the finger in his teacher’s nose. She froze along with him, eyes in alarm. They both remained quiet, watching each other without one coherent thought in mind. Slowly, Hyukjae closed the door and left the school.

He walked back in silence, eyes on ground, hands firmly by his sides. Donghae was leaning against the fence, staring up at the gray sky, still muttering about eating boogers in public. When they both caught each other’s eyes and Hyukjae stood speechless, the same emotions Donghae had felt in class taking charge of Hyukjae’s facial expressions, an understanding look spread across Donghae’s face. He walked over and threw his arm around Hyukjae’s shoulders.

“Come, friend,” Donghae started, “let’s go plan our wedding together.”

Inspired by my own personal experience in the fifth grade when a popular girl on the other side of the room started to pick her nose and I had been the only one that had seen it. That time I had no friend to tell, so I ended up coming back to it five years later, writing it as a one shot for all of you who enjoy this…absurdity. 

And the American book Donghae was fussing about is If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. I've always loved that book.