Cheap Tricks

I. Games

Himchan glanced up at the clock which was omniously ticking away the minutes he had left to finish answering his midterm Maths exam paper. Thirty four minutes still to go, a chair scraped back somewhere behind to his right and Himchan knew it could only be Yongguk who was done already. He tried to concentrate on the trigonometry problem instead of letting his thoughts wander to how he was planning to spend the night at his boyfriend's place. But Himchan was one of the worse specimens of sixteen year olds and he barely managed to scribble some odd proofs for the questions in the trigonometry section before his Maths teacher was snatching away the answer sheet from him.

Even though he was half-sure that he was going to flunk the test, Himchan could not bring himself to feel bad enough about it. Well, there was no need to trouble himself with such things until he was absolutely sure that he had failed, right? Maybe some miraculous of good luck would befall him and he would ace the test. Himchan wasn't really trying to be positive. He just couldn't take stuff like exams seriously - like most other things in his life.

What he definitely did not fail to take absolutely seriously was Yongguk's promise to take him out on a date tonight since their exams were getting over. Yongguk assumed that Himchan, like him, had been stressed and overworked and a break would do him good. Himchan was too enthusiastic and eager to spend time with his new boyfriend to correct his assumptions.

Himchan had known Yongguk nearly all his life. That was not the same as saying that Yongguk had known Himchan all his life, too. Because Yongguk was one of the overachieving, hard-working yet popular and socially superior people who never really noticed anyone beyond their closed circle of similar people they called 'friends'. Himchan, on the other hand, lived on the fringes of the high school society - never really belonging anywhere and never really standing out, he was happy spending all his life attached at hip to one friend. His best friend, Ahn Jaehyo.

Jaehyo trudged out of the classroom seconds after Himchan. He had managed to scribble some more lines in his paper than Himchan owing to the advantage of being seated at the last seat in the class. But that didn't really matter because as soon as he spotted Himchan, he walked up to him and sighed, "I am so failing this one."

Himchan grinned widely at that. "Good! That means I have company to study for the make-up test," he said and clapped a hand on Jaehyo's back.

Jaehyo made a face. "I don't need to study for a make-up test. I won't be failing it if I had attempted the whole paper. I barely got to answer half of it. Couldn't Yongguk have woken me up sooner of he knew I was asleep?"

"You fell asleep in the middle of a paper? Again? Dude, you shouldn't stay up watching before exams, you know," Himchan teased as they move towards the shoe rack together. It was the last midterm paper and flunking it or not, the duo definitely found it sacrilegious to attend anymore classes that day.

"The deadline for finishing the code is tomorrow. More like midnight today. I can't fool around." Trust tech geek Jaehyo to find the midterms equal to fooling around. However, Himchan couldn't care less for Jaehyo's deadlines. Not when Jaehyo had something more interesting than his usual nerdy stuff to offer for once.

"Yongguk woke you up?" he asked, partly elated that his boyfriend was showing an interest in his only friend in the world and partly jealous of the same fact for no earthly reason except that he was headily in love with Yongguk.

"Thirty four minutes before the test was about to end!" Jaehyo complained after he peaked around the corner to check that they had a clear way towards the exit and would not get caught sneaking out. "Apparently, he takes the rules very seriously - we aren't supposed to talk to each other while still answering our question papers."

Himchan couldn't help laughing a little at that. Yongguk was exactly like that. He probably worked extra fast to finish his paper so that he could wake up Jaehyo as early as he possibly could. Himchan made a mental note to ask Yongguk about it later.

The best friends made it out into the street without any trouble. Jaehyo refused to go to the arcade, still having his code to work on. So Himchan headed there by himself after having lunch at Jaehyo's house. He had already used up his pocket money for the month and had to depend on his lunch money to have fun in the arcade.

However, he stopped short in front of the arcade, his fingers