Joonmyun eyes dance back and forth, filling in the tiny circles that correspond with the numbered letters. 15-C…17-A… He’d done the essay first, that was the hardest, and he had to actually think for that one. He’s just about done when the door squeeks open and Joonmyun freezes, eyes straying to the right as his heart begins to beat hard inside his ears.

At the door stands a brunette boy. His eyes are on Joonmyun’s desk before he looks up to the class president mumbling a soft ‘sorry’ and bowing low. He exits before Joonmyun can speak up and Joonmyun can only look after him. Joonmyun quickly fills in the last of his answers, before crumbling the cheat sheet in his fist and shoving it into his pocket.

He hurries out of the dark classroom into the barely lit hallway and heads towards the teacher’s office.

“I’ve finished my test,” Joonmyun tells the teacher. The teacher takes it wordlessly or maybe he says something, Joonmyun doesn’t know because he’s rushing to find the kid that caught him.

Joonmyun runs towards Gidae’s front entrance. He has to be there, he needs to be there, and just as Joonmyun gets ready to head down the stairs he sees him.

“Hey,” he calls out to the boy. “Hey,” he repeats himself when the boy doesn’t stop. Joonmyun nearly flies down the stairs, as he reaches out for the boy, grabbing him by the arm and stopping him.

“What did you see,” he asks, ugly frown on his lips as he looks at the boy with anger. He’s angry that he’d been seen, that his perfect reputation was on the line all because of one kid named…. Jang Issing. Joonmyun repeats the name in his head, it was a strange name, a foreign one possibly which annoyed him anymore for no real reason.

“Nothing,” the boy tells him, voice soft as he answers the question.

“That’s right,” Joonmyun agrees. “You saw nothing, you will tell no one what you saw.”

The kid looks up at him with amusement. “Okay,” he answers.

“I’m not usually like that,” Joonmyun states hesitantly, letting go of the boy as his eyes fall to the ground in shame, “It’s just that this test, if I do badly I’ll lose my place and I can’t lose my place. My brother, my mother, they’ll be upset. I–My brother knows someone at SNU and they’re going to look over my things to make sure I can apply next year and get in. Bad grades will look bad this far in my academic career. I’ve done really well so far, anything else will stand out badly.”

“Okay,” the foreign boy says, and he excuses himself, leaving Joonmyun behind as he does so. Joonmyun looks after him, eyes still shining with anger at the boy’s obvious apathy towards his situation. If, Joonmyun decides, if word gets out of what that kid saw, Joonmyun will make sure he’s not the only one going down.

He wa