“Wrong answer.”

His slender fingers kept moving, drawing harsh red crosses all over the answer sheet right where Hongki’s incorrect guesses were scribbled. When he finished, he laid the pen on the table and glanced over to him, noiselessly chuckling at the utter look of disbelief on the other boy’s face.

Hongki snatched the paper from his hand and brought it closer to his eyes, carefully scrutinizing every red mark, blinking more than once to make sure he wasn’t just imagining the huge egg-shaped number neatly jotted down on the upper right corner.

“Yah!” he exclaimed, slamming his palms onto the wooden table. The sound reverberated throughout the closed doors and windows of the deserted library. If it was a few hours ago, he would have been kicked out, literally, out of the room, but sixth period already ended, and they were the only two students left occupying the spacious library at that time of the late afternoon.

Pushing himself up, he leaned over the small desk and shoved the paper back in front of Jonghun. “This! This is a correct answer!” he insisted, stabbing his index finger over an X-ed number. “Why did you cross it!?”

It didn’t end in that number. He pointed at every single number on the wrinkled sheet trying to get Jonghun to double check, or rather, mark them correct instead so they both wouldn’t have to stay behind at school every freaking day for his re-examination assessment anymore. It was such a waist of his gaming station’s load card, he always argued with his tutor, who on the other hand pays not a speck of attention to his concerns.

Ignoring Hongki’s persistent complains, Jonghun propped his elbows on the wooden surface and rested his chin over his intertwined fingers. “Lee Hongki-ssi. Aren’t I tutoring you? If I say it’s wrong, then isn’t it wrong?”

Sweet cinnamon and the strong smell of caramel breezed over his mouth and nose, and it was only then that Hongki realized how close his face had inadvertently gotten to Jonghun’s while he ranted. His eyes subconsciously trailed down to his smirking lips, before he got a loose grip on his rational mind and staggered back down to his seat, furiously blinking at Jonghun.

His smirk only grew wider as he studied the suddenly tongue-tied tangerine boy. “Isn’t that right?”

“Whatever!” Hongki snapped, stubbornly crossing his arms with a small push of his lower lip forward. Jonghun chuckled again, albeit only keeping it to himself. “Now tell me why my answers are wrong. I did perfectly everything you taught me! Could it be you’re teaching me the wrong formulas? What a cunning fellow.”

“If I did that, we’d stay here until summer break.” Deciding to overlook the childish accusations he hears from him every single day, Jonghun got his review notes from his bag, opened another bookmarked page and started highlighting the important points and formulas with his marker. “Actually, I did use a few tricks on those questions.” he admitted. Briefly glancing up, he sneered just to make sure he teased Hongki more. “Don’t think I’d make it easy for you just so you can fail the exam again. My grades are on the line too.”

Hongki, effectively annoyed, bared his canines hissing more accusations at him. “So you’re really cheating me! Do you want us to stay here until summer break, then? Tch. Annoying honor student.” He grabbed his own pen and notebook and started scribbling preschool-y shapes to distract himself while he muttered out his irritations against his younger lecturer.

“Maybe I want to.”

Hongki glanced up in surprise, his pen slipping out of his grasp along with his muddled thoughts. “W- what? Yah! Y- yah Choi Jonghun!” he kept yelling distractedly.

Now, the temperature regulator in the room may be functioning a little less efficiently just like what the floor supervisor had reminded him countless times, and his cheeks may just be frostbitten from the incoming season’s cold breeze blowing outside the closed windows as night approached. Still, Jonghun enjoyed the obvious deepening in the pink that tinted his plump cheeks.

Needless to say, he also enjoyed the fact that only he, the ‘one-hell-of-an-arrogant-and-self-proclaimed-all-knowing-honor-student’, as Hongki had nicknamed him, was capable of having that effect on him.

He watched his bewildered face, a teasing smile lurking at the corners of his lips. And then all of a sudden, he went into an unexpected bout of laughter which sent him crouching over hugging his stomach while Hongki still dazedly stared at him wondering what on earth had just gotten into his brainy head.

“You- you should have- seen-- Hahaha! Hongki, your face! Haha-- Hilarious!” Jonghun struggled in between his fits. He banged on the wood repeatedly, slapping at Hongki’s confused trance hard enough for his senses to roll back to his head.

“I really hate you, you know that!?” he yelled again, his feet sending deathly kicks to Jonghun’s shin under the desk. One painful heel successfully landed to the long bone in his leg, making him bend over and massage the injured part. Still he didn’t stop snickering, not even after he hit his head on the sharp edge as he bent down. “This assessment thing wouldn’t have been so bad if you weren’t my tutor!”

Discontented and still failing to make his hysterical laughing stop, Hongki got up and started sending deathly fists this time; all directed to Jonghun’s head in his irritation and in a secret hope that the act would cause his brain cells and egotistical cells to be somehow displaced.

Their childish acts stretched on for another few minutes before Jonghun finally got hold of his hysterics and Hongki’s boxing fists in his grip. “This wouldn’t have been so bad if you weren’t wandering off to dreamland half the hours I spend trying to get these functions into that thick nutshell of yours.”

Hongki tried to attack again but Jonghun’s grip was tight on his wrists. For a moment, he mused head-batting him instead but quickly decided against it not liking the idea of him losing his scanty brain cells as well. “I was not sleeping! I was attentively watching your blabbering mouth!”

And that was some statement Jonghun did not expect to hear at all. Taken aback, his grip loosened and Hongki took the chance to pull his hands away and seat back on his chair, contented at last and enjoying the rare opportunity to observe his dazed expression, though it didn’t last long before he felt the need to glance away as Jonghun self-consciously swiped his tongue across his chapped lips in the awkward seconds that followed.

“Shall we-.” He cleared his throat. “Let’s start. I’m warning you though. If you sleep again I’d have to give you a punishment.”

Hongki raised a brow, “And what would that be?”

“Go ahead and sleep. Then you’ll know.”

Lessons at the deserted library began at last, starting from the tricks Jonghun admittedly used to complicate his ten-item quiz, before heading to the twists-and-turns of getting the right solutions which Hongki seriously missed; triangles; trigonometric functions, and so on and so forth until evening finally set in on them. Visible through the fogged up windows to their side, the stars shone brightly up ahead, livening up the tranquil winter night sky.

“–Instead, you need to find the equivalent sin negative one…” Jonghun trailed off when a familiar soft snoring sound distracted his thoughts. Glancing over the table, there he was again, with his orange head gently bouncing up and down as he calmly drifted off to dreamland. The pen in his hand rolled out from his loose grip and tumbled down to the floor, making a brief tapping sound before it stilled against his foot. A short hum escaped his slightly parted lips, followed by a string of senseless words and profanities Jonghun assumed were certainly directed at him.

He chuckled, louder this time around. Resting his pen down on his notebook, he pushed them to the side and leaned his arms on the small table, one hand coming up to support his head on his palm. He studied the deeply sleeping boy in satisfaction, watching out with patience for more childishly adorable nonsenses to spill out of his unaware mouth.

“Didn’t I already warn you?” Jonghun mumbled. “Could it be you’re actually enjoying my punishments? You’re so sly, Hongki.”

Slowly and gently so as not to stir him up, he pushed himself off his seat and bent over the desk, inching closer until his face was merely a short strand of hair from Hongki’s. He took his time listening to his calm breathing, trying to decipher the mixture of scents coming from his parted lips.

Hongki’s eyelids fluttered the slightest bit, and then another string of mumbles went off his tongue. Somewhere between those tangled words, Jonghun heard his name softly slip out from his pursed lips in a whine. It tickled his ears and tugged at the corners of his lips.

He inched closer, and closer still, with his breath held and his heart high up in his throat, and in the gentlest manner, he captured his unsuspecting lips beneath his own. At that moment it was only the two of them in that spacious library, and the stacks of papers and the shelves of books were the only witnesses to this clever tutor’s secret.

That fleeting moment stretched on for seconds before Jonghun decided to give him back his personal space, however Hongki was already wide awake, frantically staring at him while he calmly sat back like nothing just happened.

“You--” Hongki broke off, feeling the need for a gulp and a deep breath of air. “You just kissed me, didn’t you?”

“I didn’t.” Jonghun answered matter-of-factly.

Hongki sharply stood up, his eyes glistening with what looked like anxious tears as he stared at Jonghun. “You did!”

“I didn’t. I just needed to--.” He got cut off by Hongki grabbing his things and dashing out of the room with a loud bang of the sliding door.

The cool breeze of the night drafted into the room through the opened door, laying a shiver in his skin as it reached him. Christmas was really already just around the corner. It felt like the wrong season to be dumped, though.

Sighing at his defeat, he picked his things up and placed them back inside his bag. He stood up, arranged the chairs, and started following Hongki’s steps out. While on his way, he thoroughly mulled over the chances of Hongki encountering a ghost in the corridors and running back to his side, and then him apologizing, and the two of them going home together. But he stopped thinking before he could start expecting to hear his footsteps.

Oh, well. He could just apologize the next day. Afterall, he has the whole six periods of class and his tutorial after to accomplish that, and four more tutorial days before Hongki’s retake examination. That time ought to be enough.

Except Hongki didn’t come to school the next day. And the day after that. And when he did show up in class the following day, he did his best to ignore Jonghun and keep himself perfectly hidden behind the huge student seated before him. He also ditched him and went along with his friends to the gaming center in the town while he impatiently waited at the library.

Unlucky for Hongki though, the Math professor just had to choose that time to go up and check on the progress of his review with the class’ best student. She found Jonghun next to the window, arms crossed and heel loudly tapping on the paneled floor, brows deeply knitted in irritation and eyes boring deathly glares through the misty glass.

“There’s probably just an emergency. There’s nothing to worry about, Ma’am.” he lied, “He’s doing perfectly fine. I’ll make sure he passes the retake exam.”

He forced a confident smile to assure her, and in turn she promised to make sure Hongki attends their last session no matter what happened. Which was why the day that followed, she herself dragged the thrashing Hongki into the library.

Click, came the creepy sound of the door locking. Smirking, Jonghun shoved the silver key into his pocket and walked passed a stiff Hongki to his chair. Per usual, he opened his notebook on the bookmarked page and held his ballpen, waiting for the other to take his seat.

“Tomorrow’s your exam day. I’ll forget that you ditched me for three days if you promise to at least get a score over seventy. That ought to save my reputation.”

Hongki didn’t answer. Instead he ran to the door and tried turning the knob over and over.

Jonghun watched him amusedly from his chair. “You know that’s not gonna work. Didn’t you ever learn the ‘Lock and Key Theory’?”

Defeated, Hongki kicked the door hard before he spun around and glared fiery daggers at his tutor’s smug face. Jonghun beckoned him over, but he simply scowled and started stomping off towards the rows of shelves on the other half of the room. Confused at his action, Jonghun stood and followed him.

Hongki didn’t even glance once at the neatly stacked books on the shelves he stormed through. He merely walked, aware that he was being followed, and kept his hands anxiously fumbling with the hem of his uniform.

“This isn’t really the perfect time for a stroll. Hongki, you’re wasting our time.” Jonghun stated after minutes of trailing a few steps behind Hongki who kept threading through every bookshelf like a lost child. He watched his fingers’ nervous habit from behind, trying to read through his tousled head.

As Hongki absentmindedly made one more U turn into another row, Jonghun noticed that they were already going through the section of older books and preserved journals at the rightmost corners of the library. He hasn’t even reached those rows before, and the strong smell of aging papers and dust irritated his eyes and nose. He wished Hongki would just stop walking already or make a turn back towards the newer sections instead. Though he was quick to take that wish back.

Making another turn, Hongki’s steps faltered when he realized that nothing but a white wall awaited him at the opposite end of the last row of shelves. He gulped nervously.

“Oops. Dead end.” Jonghun chuckled, finally catching up at his feet. His cool breath sent the fine hair on Hongki’s nape jumping up together with his heart. He quickly spun around and tried sneaking through him but failed as Jonghun’s arms attentively blocked his escape route. He took a hesitant step back while Jonghun took a confident one forward.

“Why did you kiss me?” Hongki asked at last, still striving to sound confident over his chaotic heartbeats.

“I didn’t.” Jonghun answered plainly.

“You did, you lying honor student!”

It took all of his might not to laugh as much as he wanted to. The lying honor student — he just earned himself another adorable nickname from his cute tangerine boy.

“I didn’t.” he insisted denying instead.

“You definitely kissed me why won’t you admit it!?”

“Then why are you blushing like that?” he taunted, noticing the steadily creeping crimson on Hongki’s furious face. For another person, it would have been difficult to distinguish an angry blush from a shy blush, but he had already seen lots of forms of Hongki’s blushing cheeks that he could tell the differences between them. The type of situation and the person involved were important hints to highlight, of course.

Suddenly embarrassed after that being pointed out, Hongki tried at another chance to escape but still failed as Jonghun successfully grabbed his arms and shoved him against a shelf, the equally aged wood creaking at the unexpected impact.

“Let go!” Hongki kept flailing out of his grip. “You lying-- arrogant-- conceited--”

“Stop struggling! The shelf might fall over!”

“--honor student!” he finished, still tossing and thrashing until Jonghun, in his panic that the shelf would really fall over, ran out of options and pulled him into his arms.

Hongki’s breath caught in his throat and then he stopped altogether, much to Jonghun’s relief.

“You’re really so sly and stubborn, Hongki.” he chuckled as he let go, hesitantly, of him. Hongki needed to briefly lean his hands on his arms as he dumbly tripped a little on his own foot, before he caught himself and stepped back.

“When someone is talking, you should listen carefully. Wasn’t that taught to you in kindergarten?” he reprimanded an obediently stationary Hongki who, rather than calmed down, looked a lot more stunned.

His lips pushed forward, “So then, when someone is asking, you should give them a proper response.” he muttered. Like some stubborn brat, his arms came folding over his chest as he demanded an answer, and a proper one at that, from Jonghun.

“Fine. I didn’t kiss you. I simply needed to whisper an obvious answer right on your lips. That’s different.” he explained.

Hongki raised a brow, puzzled and a little bit astonished at his twisted reasoning,  and asked, “What kind of an answer is it that you had to kiss me?”

Jonghun smirked. “It’s an answer to a question you are asking yourself that’s so obvious but you keep missing it despite how blaringly obvious it’s screaming in you that I, as your tutor of course, had to whisper it to you so you’d get it.”

Hongki’s brows then knitted in confusion. “You know, I never did understand any of the stuff you tried to teach me. Why don’t you try speaking a little less complicated for once?”

Jonghun almost rolled his eyes. A week ago, because of a meeting he had to attend to along with fellow class presidents from other sections, he had been a few minutes late for his lesson with Hongki. He had hurried up to the library worrying that Hongki might have left already but to his surprise, the boy had been diligently waiting in his seat. When he cracked the door open, he heard Hongki mumbling by himself, sometimes raising his voice as if he was arguing with someone, shaking his head and then scratching it furiously like he wanted to pull all his orange hair out of their roots. Jonghun had been worried that he might be loosing his mind and just when he had been about to burst in, Hongki had mumbled that question.

“Aren’t you secretly asking yourself if you’re actually falling for this honor student? The answer’s so plain obvious but you still don’t realize it.”

Hongki froze, and then another blush crept up his cheeks. Judging by the looks of it, Jonghun could tell that this was one of Hongki’s rarest types of blush, the one that only comes out when all of his self confidence gets totally crushed down to crumbles:  the I-just-wanna-shrink-here-and-now-so-the-ground-could-swallow-me-up blush that he was trying to hide right now. It tinted his cheeks three shades deeper than the usual, making it Jonghun’s most admired type.

“A-and t-the answer you gave me is?” Hongki stammered, trying to look at everything part from Jonghun’s self-satisfied grin. And just to prove how he got little Hongki completely at the palm of his hand, he a little bit further.

He took a step, startling Hongki who looked like he didn’t know if he should stay frozen or step back. “Y-.” Another step. “-E-.” And another. “-S.” And another. “You have already fallen for me. As simple as that. Do you get it now?”

Much to his surprise, Hongki made no movement even when he was already face to face with him. “Y-yes. I think I kinda do now.”

It was then that he made sense of the blends of scents in Hongki’s breath; those were probably the newest flavors of delicacies offered at the school canteen, mixing in with the slight minty hint of a cigarette. Such an adorable delinquent. He wondered if he’d have to personally punish him once he becomes student council president.

“Good. Though I do have my own question, which I’m guessing you might know the answer to.”

“Is there a question you can’t answer?” Hongki chuckled nervously, his fingers again busy with his clothes.

“Of course there is. I’m only human anyway.” As much as his eyes and nose irritates, he will not leave that row without getting a right answer from Hongki. He was the tutor afterall. “Try guessing, Hongki.”

Hongki swallowed, eyes nervously glancing over the waiting pair of lips before him. It seemed he wasn't slow to realize what Jonghun was getting at this time. Slowly, he leaned forward, timidly unlike his flashy hair color, and planted a small kiss on them.

“How about that?” he asked shyly.

“Wrong answer. Try again.” Jonghun urged him closer and let his lips move about their own pace with his, his hands sneaking around Hongki’s small waist and pulling him just a tad nearer.

“How about that?” Hongki asked again after he took his sweet time nibbling Jonghun’s lips.

“Hmn. Not quite. Try going deeper.”

“But… I still have an exam to study for, right?” Hongki mumbled endearingly that Jonghun almost forgot he still had pages of formulas and calculations he needed to squeeze into his cute little head. Reluctantly, he had to let him go and tug his hand back to their waiting small desk over at the other end of the room.

“Hey, you know what? Stay over at my house so we can study overnight.” he suddenly suggested, as expected from the bright honor student.

“What!?” Hongki’s eyes almost popped out of their sockets, while his hands went frantically waving in Jonghun’s face. “No! No! It might be a trouble for your parents!”

“My parents are currently on the road. It’s just gonna be the two of us, so there’s no trouble at all.” Jonghun smirked, rendering Hongki speechless, unable to refuse, and profusely blushing.

“We-we’re just gonna study, right?” he asked shyly, twirling the straps of his backpack around his fingers as they walked out of the library, Jonghun beside him.

“Mm? Why, do you have anything else in mind you want us to do tonight?”

“Nothing.” Hongki mumbled right away.

“I see… Have you heard? They say there are ghosts on this floor.” Suddenly alerted, Hongki glided closer to his side, and Jonghun smiled secretly.

---

A.N. (Added Feb. 28)

So what do you think? Did Hongki pass his retake exam or not? ;)

Thanks for reading! (o^^o)