“What’s so funny?” Tao narrowed his eyes at him, and Luhan covered his mouth in an attempt to stop laughing. Lectures on this subject always made him grumpy, and Luhan giggling over nothing was really not improving his mood. He started to pack his stuff away irritably, and by the time he was heading out the door he'd got himself mostly under control.

Walking through the corridors of school Tao seemed to be getting lots of second glances, and he was beginning to get suspicious by the time they got to the canteen. He pushed open the door with Luhan right behind him. The canteen, as per usual is totally overcrowded at lunch, and they spent a few minutes trying to find their friendship group in the rabble. When they located them, they then naturally had to battle their way through the masses to get to them. When they were in reach of them, Luhan called out,

 “Jongin!” and he turned around, spotted Luhan, who pointed at Tao, causing Jongin to erupt with laughter, and grab Sehun’s shoulder and shake him. Sehun turned around, confused, and then started laughing too.

“Seriously, what is you guys' problem? Is my hair weird again?” He asked them, irritated and very self concious all of a sudden. Jongin laughed so hard he almost fell off his seat. Facing Luhan through the convulsions he asked,

“Does he really not know?”  His face was completely red now, and Tao scowled at him, “Luhan drew on your face!” he wheezed. “You look ridiculous!”

Tao gave Jongin and Luhan a dark look, then put his bag down on Sehun’s lap and headed to the toilets, grumbling.

When Tao reached the toilets, there was nobody in there which was lucky he supposed. He looked in the mirror, and then stood with his mouth hanging wide open in shock for a few minutes. Luhan. He was going to kill him.

There was a crudely drawn on his cheek drawn in biro, and he had scribbled over and between his eyebrows which made him look like he had a huge dense forest of a monobrow. Tao growled and then retrieved some toilet paper from the only cubicle in the room, wet it and started rubbing at the mess Luhan had made of his face. It didn’t really work very well, so he ended up spending an unnecessary twenty minutes accumulating mounds of soggy toilet paper, receiving odd looks from other guys.

Ok, that’s as good as it’s gonna get he thinks, resigned, before going back to the canteen. It was lucky he had a free period straight after lunch, or he would’ve had to go without food, since it took so long to clean it off.

Back in the canteen Sehun is still waiting for him, along with Kyunghee.

“Thanks for looking after my bag," he told Sehun with an apologetic grimace, “I honestly don’t trust the others not to hide it or do something to it,”

“Well they tried, but I stopped them” Tao beamed gratefully at him, before moving to occupy the seat next to him, watching as he returned his smile. He looked away from him to look at Kyungshee opposite him. She seemed to be eyeing his face, and it made Tao more self-concious than before. He raised his had to cover his cheek.

“…Do you want some concealer? I think our skin tone is quite similar.” She said, pity colouring her expression.

“Oh god, is it still really visible?” He asked her, aghast. She nodded sagely.

“Maybe you should give him lipstick too?” Sehun smiled widely with false innocence.

“Good idea. Hold on…”

“No,” he tried to sound firm, but with Kyunghee pulling out her pretty floral makeup bag and grinning evilly, he was sure he just sounded scared.

“Relax, Tao. Its makeup, not the dentist,” she said to Tao, then “restrain him” to Sehun, who immediately wraps his arms around him, pinning his arms to his sides tightly. Struggling was futile, Sehun was somehow stronger than him. Tao was surprised; just looking at him, he wouldn’t have expected him to be this strong. Tao didn't struggle, he was more than used to Kyunghee's 'teasing'. She didn't mean to be hurtful, she just had a little difficulty with boundaries sometimes.

At least they were pretty much the only people in the canteen at this point.

“Why is everyone picking on me today?” Tao started pretending to cry, “What did I ever do to you guys?”

After a few failed attempts of lipstick, which went everywhere, Kyunghee tried her lip gloss instead, which apparently suited him much better. Yippee, Tao thought. She then took photos of him for evidence, and sent a copy to Sehun, who used an app to give him long hair and huge eyes. Well, huger eyes. Sehun then had to dissuade Kyunghee from sending this image to everyone they know. By this point Tao was feeling pretty put out and he almost wanted to cry for real, but Sehun put his arm around Tao's shoulder and squeezed,

"Hey, don't be so upset, we'll delete the photos if it bothers you that much,"

"Please do." Tao mumbled. Sehun deleted all of them except one, which he said he wanted to keep because it looked nice. Tao whined, but eventually let it be. Kyunghee, however, wasn't allowed to keep any, but he was sure she managed to sneak a few under the radar anyway, otherwise she wouldn't have been so calm about it.

"Do you want to go clean that off now?" 

"Yes," Tao got up with Sehun to go clean his face for the second time that day, and only just made it to his class on time, barefaced.