It was obvious to me that Kai was a rich boy lost in a poor man’s world. I would have been blind to think otherwise. I saw, I heard, I knew. And because I knew, I never felt the need to address the issue. I might have felt offended if Kai had acted as if he were playing a game, mocking the pauper’s role in the world. But he carried on just the same as he must have in his life before this one, absentmindedly buying lobster or steak only to realize that neither of us had any idea of how to cook such food. I preferred his genuine ignorance to contrived enthusiasm for a different and harder way of life.

Surprisingly though, Kai found a job. A well-paying job at that. Perhaps most ironically of all, he’d completely disregarded the conventional wisdom that governed the job-hunting process and in the process, wound up finding a position before I did. He’d simply walked into a dance studio on a whim one afternoon and pleasantly demanded a job. A quick audition later, a vacancy for a newly created teaching position opened up and Kai was officially instated as a dance instructor with a full schedule. He didn’t even have to suffer a probation period. He told all this to me with just the tiniest hint of smugness in his smile. 

Meanwhile, I was frantically handing out my lackluster resume to every store that had listed a job opening. Night janitor, barista, assistant librarian, I applied for all of them. I was met with a variety of responses. Some managers scoffed at my inexperience and crossed their arms before I had even introduced myself. Others were gently condescending, lecturing me on the importance of staying in school and explaining how they couldn’t possibly hire me in good conscience knowing that I was still a high school student. Nevermind the fact that I was only looking for part-time work. I wanted to grab them by their lapels, and shake them silly. 'Wanted' being the key word. I did what I had to do. I thanked them for their time, shook their hand, and then continued my fruitless pursuit.

And thus, the stress of persisting unemployment combined with the worry of upcoming rent payments to make me very irritable. Kai knew I was in a bad mood and he was smart enough to keep his humming to a minimum at night. Still, we talked. And he continued to walk to school with me every morning, only to leave me at the door and disappear for most of the day. All I knew was that he wasn’t working. I was slightly worried about his attendance and the implications that so many absences would hold for the future. I was, however, far more preoccupied with the first rent payment that we would soon have to pay.

Even my classmates, distant as they were, picked up on my irascible temper. I could tell that much from the little things they did. As the scholarship student who was not particularly brilliant, I was usually responsible for tidying up the classroom every afternoon. It was, of course, an unofficial duty; in this day and age, not even the scions of multimillionaire corporations could get away with such blatant classism. Still, it was an arrangement that we had all implicitly agreed to work with. Me, because it was easier than protesting. And them, because that was just the way things were. However, the week before rent was due, the horrible week when I was especially pressed for work, a strange thing happened. Desks were straightened. Whiteboards were wiped, washed and dried. The floor was swept and the trash was emptied. A quiet flurry of efficient activity occurred at the end of each day as I hunched over my resume at my desk, fiercely crossing out this word or adding in that. It was almost as if an army of industrious little elves had surreptitiously gone to work. None of my classmates took credit and the extraordinary happenings of an entire week were treated as nothing out of the ordinary.

So even my classmates understood.

The only person who didn’t seem to get it was Byun Baekhyun.

Typical.

As I've previously mentioned, Baekhyun sat behind me in class, tapping his pens, squeaking his pencils, and rubbing his erasers with unnecessary force. To an extent, I had grown used to his little idiosyncrasies and could even predict his rhythms. I could tune him out for short periods of time. So it wasn’t the small noises he made that bothered me, even though they used to drive me crazy. It was that whenever there was a lull in the day – between periods, at lunch, right after the final bell – Baekhyun would pause by my desk on his way out the door. He might force a smile and ask me how my day was going. More often than not, however, he would look at me with genuine sadness in his eyes. He would shift his weight from foot to foot as his eyes meandered down to my uninteresting desk and traced the patterns of the woodgrain.

I didn't like waiting for him to pass by, because he would just stand at my desk, blocking my way out and rarely saying a word. I didn’t like the look in his eyes either. I knew that he had accurately assessed my current predicament. Not the part about living with Kai, but about my desperate need for money. It annoyed me more than it touched me that he was actually sad for me – that he was reading so deeply into my emotions in his own strange way. Although everyone else acknowledged that something wasn’t quite right in my life, at least they were polite enough to pretend otherwise.

Baekhyun clearly wanted to talk to me about my problems.

He just didn't know how.

So one day, he solved them instead.