June 14, Monday, 8:10 am: 3-B CLASSROOM

"Haneul, since you're the new student, I put you in charge of the 3-B festival booth," your teacher says.

"What?" you ask, surprised. "But but but I'm a new student and I've never done this before!"

"That's precisely why I chose you," the teacher says, folding his hands together. "New students are always so full of fresh ideas and that makes things more exciting!"

=_=

He continues, "I'll give you the rest of the homeroom period to choose a concept and plan your booth. I'm gonna go off and eat breakfast. Bye, class." He waves as he walks out the door.

Stupid teacher sjdhdkskamd...

You stand up and walk to the teacher's desk in front of the board. Looking around the room, you see Donghae in the seat next to yours, fiddling around with his pen. Youngwoon is drawing on his desk, and Jongwoon is playing with his pet tortoise. What the hell is that doing here in the first place?? You see Kyuhyun near the back resting his face in his hand, leaning back with that sneer on his face but you notice his eyes watching you attentively. Also, you are surprised to see Kibum in class sitting at the farthest corner of the classroom. His eyes show no emotion as they stare back at you. You look away and swallow the lump in your throat. 

Why does he make me so nervous now? 

"So... what now, guys?" you ask your classmates as you plant both hands on the table expectantly. "How do we win this?"

"Haneul, I just wanna say that we shouldn't put so much effort into this," Youngwoon begins. "We've never won the festival so don't expect too much from us."

"I'd have to agree," Jongwoon nods, still playing with his turtle. "Let's just do something normal so that we won't be stressed too much."

You feel a bit disheartened. 

"Aww, where's your fighting spirit, guys?" you say. "This is our last year of high school! We should give this our all!" 

"I agree with Haneul," Donghae says, setting down his pen. "We should go nuts on this year's summer festival. It's our last, after all."

"Yes, exactly!" you agree. "Thank you, Donghae! Guys, let's throw around some ideas now."

"Class 3-A usually does some sort of expo where they sell goods that they've made or invented," someone says. 

"We can't make anything," someone else whines. "We're not geniuses like them."

"Class 3-C usually puts on entertaining shows for people to pay to watch," another classmate says.

"We shouldn't copy other classes' concepts," you hear somebody else say. 

"We shouldn't be thinking about other classes!"

"But what do we base our concept on?"

"We have to create our own original idea!"

The class starts to get noisy and you can no longer hear yourself think. 

"Uh, guys?" you say.

Nobody hears you. They start throwing paper balls at each other and arguing about their suggestions. 

"GUYS!!" you shout. 

Still, no one notices you. Their voices are too loud for them to hesr you. 

Suddenly someone shouts, "AISH SHUT THE F$#@ UP EVERYONE!!!!!!" 

Everyone is silent.

Kyuhyun is standing up. He clears his throat anxiously and sits back down. "So noisy," he says in a gruff voice. 

You shoot Kyuhyun a discreet thank you look. 

He lifts his eyebrows at you in reply. 

"Ideas," you say. "One by one. No noisy arguing."

Donghae raises his hand smiling, "Arcade."

Another classmate raises his hand, "Sweet shop."

"Those games that you have in a fair where you throw water balloons at someone's head and you get a prize if you hit him."

"Uh..." you say, writing on the board. "That's a long one..."

"Bingo game!"

"Lucky numbers!"

Jongwoon stands up and points at you with conviction as he says, "Host club!"

"Oooooohhhhhh," the class echoes. 

"What's a host club?" you ask, clueless. 

"It's like a maid cafe but it's boys who host instead of cute girls."

"Oh, that's interesting," you say, rubbing your chin. 

"Why didn't I think of that?" someone says.

 "No way!" Kyuhyun says. "I'm not serving anyone like a manwhore!" 

"What's a manwhore?" Jongwoon whispers.

"I think it's what you call waiters in Western countries," Donghae whispers back.

Do they seriously not know what it means? =_= My friends are idiots.

The bell rings. 

"Okay, uh, guys, do some more research and brainstorming and let's talk about this again next time," you say as you quickly walk back to your seat just as the first subject teacher enters the classroom. 

 You think about the idea of a host club. It might be fun and lots of girls chasing after your friends will definitely visit and hopefully make your class win best booth. 

You are excited but a bit nervous about what part YOU will play in this "host club" business.

After School: SHRINE

The stone fox statue by the steps of the shrine has always been peculiar to you. You are examining it once again today while Kyuhyun tries to convince you not to push through with the host club idea.

"Come on, Haneul, pleeeease," he begs. "It's such a degrading thing to do." 

"Kyuhyun," you respond, touching the nose of the fox statue. "It's not like we're gonna have to do aegyo and follow whatever it is our guests will command. We'll just be serving them food and drinks like a cafe, except you know, we're all supposedly handsome guys." 

He makes a face at you. "Haneul, don't you know anything about host clubs?" 

"Someone defined it earlier," you say. "It's like a maid cafe but it's all boys instead." 

"Have you ever been to a maid cafe?" 

"Yes."

"What-- really? Why?" o_O

"Oh, I went with Sungmin and the others," you shrug. "We even dragged Kibum along. The girls didn't really do much except just bringing us our food... Although there was this one girl who wiped my face with a tissue... It was sorta weird."

"Do you know what that is, Haneul?" 

"What?"

"It's called 'flirting'," Kyuhyun states. "Maid cafes, host clubs, they're all about flirting with the customers so that you have a nice time and all. Only desperate and vain people go to places like that." 

"Well, we're the guys anyway, so what could possibly be dangerous about us making a bunch of girls happy for a while?"

Kyuhyun puts his hands on his waist and lets out a sigh. "You're really insistent on this." 

You nod with a big grin. "And besides, I can't think of any other ideas for our festival. Anyway, we're still gonna vote on the ideas so if any other idea wins, then we go for that one instead." 

"Just promise me that if we do the host club, I won't have to do anything like this." 

"HAHAHAHAHHAHAHHA," you guffaw. "Holy crap, your image looks so different when you do that. Do it again." 

"MEH," Kyuhyun replies, smacking you lightly on the head. "Just keep your promise, arasso???" 

"Fine fine, okay. Aish." 

"Swear on it," he says, stretching out hand with his pinky up. 

You take it with your pinky and touch thumbs. 

Evening: DORM LOBBY

You have just entered the dorm lobby when you see Hyukjae sitting in a corner beside one of the potted shrubs. He is rocking himself back and forth with his mouth hanging open. 

"Hyukjae?" you approach him. "You okay?" 

He stops rocking and slowly looks up at you. 

"Help," he squeaks. 

"Help?" 

"Help."

"With what?" 

"Festi...bul..."

"Festibul? Ahhh, festival. Why? What's up with the festival?"

"Our teacher made me the leader of our class for the booth..." he says and he turns to you with eyes full of desperation and borderline insanity. "I don't know how to be a leader." 

"Why did your teacher make you the leader in the first place?"

"Because... well, every year, I don't really do anything to help out with the booth," he scratches his head. "Now that I'm the leader, I don't know what to do and my classmates won't help me because they want to get revenge, I guess, for all those times that I never helped them out."

"Damn," you whistle. "Knowing that makes it harder for me to help you too. I understand where they're coming from." 

"Please help me, Haneul," he wails. "I'd just not do it at all but the teacher told me that he'd flunk my exams if I don't participate properly in the festival. I won't be able to graduate."

"But you got yourself into this, Hyukjae. You gotta make an effort to fix it yourself." o: I feel sorry for you now though.

"Yeah, I get it that it's my fault and that I need to do something," he explains wistfully. "But I don't know where to start. No one wanted to think up ideas with me. Not even Jungsu hyung!" 

"Hm, I dunno..." you hesitate.

"Haneul, if you help me out I will be your slave for a month," Hyukjae says. "Or, um, okay, that might be difficult to do. But I'll owe you a favor-- as long as it doesn't involve money or killing anyone." 

You take a moment to think. 

Help Hyukjae.

Don't help Hyukjae.