*

KIM JONGIN

*

Part II

Blaaah, blah blah blah, blaah blah blah, blah blah…

“Yes mother,” I answered monotonously. I was more focused on my computer screen at the moment, so I wasn’t even paying the least bit of attention to anything my mother was saying.

And make sure that you blah, blah, blah, blah, blah…

“Of course, mother.” I clicked around the screen, trying to check out some more student profile but stopped once I came across a picture of a girl who looked pretty hot.

Im Yoona, huh? I pondered the name, staring at the chick in the photo. She’s smokin’! She seems like a suitable choice for Secretary.

*Click*  

Also Jongin, don’t blah, blah, blah, and don’t forget to blah, blah, blahhh…

“I understand, mother.” Lee Taemin! How could I forget about him? He is perfect for Treasurer. I clicked on his name as well, which removed the old choice for the position.  

And please don’t forget to clean up blah blah blahhhhh…

“I will, mother.” I wonder if this girl is just as hot in person as she is in her profile pic? I wondered, now staring at a photo of a long brown-haired girl named “Song Victoria”.  

Blah, blah, bla-Jongin are you listening to a word I’m saying?!

I quickly picked up my cell phone and turned off the speaker phone. Holding the phone to my ear, I answered, “Yes mother, I’ve been listening to you the entire time. I’m glad that Auntie Jo is doing better and I’ll make sure not to cause too much trouble on Friday and I also promise to have someone clean up the mess, afterwards.”

“Good.” She sounded pleased from the other end of the line. My parents knew about what I planned for Friday. Although my father thought throwing a food fight the day the superintendent was coming was “risky”, my mother disagreed, believing this was just the kind of fuel she needed for her case for when she’d go up against Mrs. Jung. She couldn’t have been happier when I told her how the prank was going to single Mrs. Jung out and make her look like a “bad headmistress”.

“Your father and I are proud of you, dear,” she told me, and I rolled my eyes at how ridiculous the compliment sounded considering the reasoning behind it. I then heard her add, “Right, honey?” and I assumed she was talking to my father.   

In response, I heard a man’s muffled grunt in the background. Oh yeah, I thought sarcastically. He sounded real proud.

“Okay, well honey, we need to get back to the hospital,” my mother told me. “So I’ll check up on you on Saturday to update you what’s going on here, all right?”

“Sure,” I answered, not really caring. Honestly, although I didn’t wish the worst for her, I wasn’t all that concerned about my Aunt Jo’s health. My mother’s sister, my Aunt Jo, was just as evil as my mother was; the only difference was that she didn’t hide it behind a “sweet and innocent” exterior like my mother did.

I remember once when I was around nine or ten, I’d stayed over at her house to hang out with my cousins. That same night, when it started pouring down rain, she’d made my cousins and I sleep outside like dogs! Luckily, their house had a huge, shaded patio, so we could sleep under it to avoid getting wet.

Then, of course, the only reason why she even put us outside was because she found out that I threw a rock through her window. But that’s only because my cousin had told me that their house windows were “bullet proof” and as the curious boy I was, I decided to test it out. When the rock broke through the window, we all screamed and ran. I wasn’t so good at lying back then, plus, my Aunt Jo scared the out of me back then, so when she’d cornered me, she made me fess up and that’s when she threw us outside for the night.

Just for that, I went ahead and broke another of her windows. She and I have never gotten along since then.

But anyways, I bid my mother farewell and went ahead with what I was previously doing on the computer, which was revising the choices Minji and I had made last week for student council. I honestly didn’t agree with half her choices, but I knew that if I told her this, we’d probably fight about it for the rest of the school year. Minji sure was stubborn with her opinions and beliefs.

I wasn’t going to make too many changes, you know, just switching around the choices for secretary, treasurer, public relations, historian, and all the committee chair-people we’d picked out together. But it’s still not that big a difference, right?

The nominees had to be submitted by Monday morning because that following Friday was the day that elections started. All the seniors would be voting for their favorite candidates and once all the votes were cast in, the office would count them, then reveal the results sometime within the last week of the month.

I just had to make sure the choices were rearranged more for my benefit. After all, I was going to be the only one heading the academy as president very soon. I still hadn't yet decided how I was going to push Minji out of her position. My parents had told me to find good evidence to use against her that would make her look bad, but I'd been through Minji's records; this girl was squeaky clean! No absences, no history of bad behavior, no breaking of the student conduct rules, I mean, nothing. This girl was the “poster child” for the “perfect student”.

I'll bet she's never had a boyfriend before; she couldn't have, or else he would've taught her a thing or two about getting into trouble by now.

That's all right, she could learn from me, I thought, smirking to myself before it fell into a frown again. Of course, I just had to figure out how I was going to get her into some trouble first.

I know Minji and I are both supposed to show the superintendent around the senior corridors tomorrow, but I wasn't going to be able to do that; not with all that I had to do for the prank tomorrow. Minji was just going to have to show him around for the both of us tomorrow, which means I was going to have to hide from her some more up until the prank.

I didn't want the prank to be linked to me, so Kyuhyun had volunteered to be the one to start it off. In the academy, there's this group of really popular girls that call themselves “Girls Desperation” or something like that, I can't remember their name- well, they're who we're targeting first because if they got it in on the food fight, then all the other girls most definitely would join the “fight” as well. These particular group of girls always sit in the very center of the “dining lounge” (that's the name on the building but it's really just a cafeteria) so when the signal goes off, they will receive the first blow, and from then on, I'm hoping the food fight will just grow on its own.

By then, Minji and the superintendent should be just making their way to the cafeteria- she'll probably be telling him about how well the seniors guys and girls are getting along with one another- and that's when they'll walk into the cafeteria only to see, what? An epic food fight showdown!

Releasing a satisfied sigh, I leaned back in my leather desk chair and placed my hands behind my head. I had a lot of work to keep up with as both president and a student, so all this brainstorming and planning on top of it really made me miss out on sleep.

Making myself more comfortable in the chair, I closed my eyes, images of what the prank was going to be like playing in my head.

I smirked. Oh let the games begin!

** *

When I'd arrived to English the next morning, I'd walked in just as the “late” bell went off. Mrs. Johnson looked up from her place at her podium, her face scrunched in a scowl like she was going to reprimand whoever walked into her classroom late, but when she noticed it was me, her scowl instantly disappeared.

The corners of her lips turned up as she nodded at me and I replied back with a bow and a knowing smile. Ms. Johnson would usually fry anybody that dared to walk into her classroom late, but not me. I don't know what my father did, but I'm guessing he must have really did a number on her if she was still smiling about it two weeks later.

“Good morning, Ms. Johnson,” I greeted, as I walked passed her.

“Take your seat, Jongin,” she replied. I smirked. So she wanted to play “tough”, huh? That's cool.

I went ahead and walked over to my desk in the far back of the room, but when I saw my two friends turned around chatting to both Minji and Dara, I inwardly rolled my eyes.

These two girls had my friends so sprung it wasn't even funny anymore.

As I got to my desk, Minji's head suddenly shot up, her attention moving away from Kris, to me and she stared at me blankly for a second before grimacing. I ignored her, sitting down in my desk when Chanyeol turned to me.

“Hey man,” he greeted in his usually cheery tone. “How do you always come late and never get in trouble with Ms.Johnson?”

“Remember, he had his dad talk to her,” Kris answered from behind me. I nodded, still looking at my phone, but out the corner of my eye, I was actually focused on Minji who was still glaring at me from behind Kris. If it hadn't been for Kris sitting between us, she probably would've succeeded in zapping my head clean off my neck because of the level of intensity behind her glare.

“If you keep glaring at me like that, you're going to burn a hole through my face,” I told her, but kept my focus on my phone.

When I looked up at her, we locked eyes, and she slightly twitched before blinking repeatedly- which I found really cute. It wasn't until I noticed the sudden change in the color of her cheeks that I realized that she was embarrassed, and the longer I stared, the more they began to tint a rosey shade.

I couldn't help but grin. This was the first time I'd seen her blush! And the fact that it was because of me made me feel some strange sense of satisfaction.

Kris frowned at me before his head snapped around and he glanced at Minji, then he turned to look back at me.

“What?” he asked, clueless.

Minji just cleared before saying, “I'm assuming that you will be ready when Mrs. Jung and the superintendent arrives to our floor so that we can show him around?”
I nodded and lied, “Of course.”

Kris shifted uncomfortably in his chair and I knew it was because he was anxious since he knew about the prank while Minji was virtually clueless to what was going to happen.

“Okay, here,” Minji's hand extended towards me, across Kris, and I saw that she was trying to give me a paper which looked like a map of the school, but parts of it were all highlighted and there were markings all over it. Kris' hand reached out to grab it from Minji, but I snatched the piece of paper away before Kris could even touch it.

I stared at the paper. “What the heck is this?”

“I marked and highlighted all the places we can show the superintendent when he arrives,” she explained. “There numbered in order so that we can stick to a specific schedule and also so that we don't leave anything important out. I was thinking we'd spend about five minutes at each building so that we could finish in just enough time before lunch.”

Wow, she really took this whole thing seriously, I thought as I stared at the highlighted map. Truth be told, Minji deserved to be president; even I couldn't ignore that fact, but I also had an image to uphold- The perfect “Kim” Image. I come from a family of great leaders that expected a lot out of the future generations (me included). Quite frankly, I couldn't let anything stand in the way of my pride as president, not even Minji; so, I just nodded and pretended like I was going along with everything she was saying even though I knew that I had a plan that was going to destroy her whole day.

Hopefully she'd never find out the truth...

** *

WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU?!?!?!

Yikes! 

I closed the text message I'd received from Minji before putting it on “silent” so that I wouldn't be distracted by it anymore.

“Sorry Minji-ah,” I said to myself. “But I've got some important business to attend to.”

I glanced around the crowded cafeteria looking for Kyuhyun or Heechul or anybody that was supposed to start the food fight. Right now, a handful of my senior classmates were outside keeping our school staff distracted in order to keep them away from the cafeteria. This would spare us some time to have an actual food fight before the staff found out and came trying to stop it.

The rest of the senior guys filled up the tables that surrounded the center tables- the place that the girls were filling up- as they waited for the signal to start. The girls were just oblivious; most of them gathered at the center tables to talk and eat, while a few other girls scattered themselves around here and there.

It looked like everything was going according to plan, it's just Kyuhyun, I couldn't find anywhere. He was supposed to “casually” walk by Girls Generations' table (Remember that group of popular girls I was talking about earlier? Apparently their name is "Generation" not "Desperation"- my bad) and then chuck his food across their table, aiming for the trashcan, but he'd miss it purposefully. His food would splash all over the girls, but instead of apologizing, he was going to laugh and taunt them which would most likely “light the fuse” and thus, the food fight would commence.

But where the hell was he?

“Dude, what the hell is your problem?” a rather familiar deep voice from behind me asked, sternly. Turning around, I came to face a glaring Kris.

Oh great, I thought, exhausted. What now?

“My problem is that I can't find Kyuhyun anywhere,” I answered, looking past him, still searching for the face I had yet to see since lunch started. “Have you seen him? He's supposed to start the whole thing off.”

“Your seriously still going through with this?” Kris stared at me disbelievingly, before shaking his head. “Whatever, that's not what I was referring to anyways. I was talking about you barging in on my private time with Minji yesterday.”

I smirked. Private time?

I tried choking back the laugh threatening to burst from within me, and instead, opted for taunting Kris. “Awe, did I disturb precious private time for you and Minji?” I'd strained my voice to a high-pitch, patronizing him. Kris looked irked as he stood there, glaring at me like he wanted to slap me.

“Yes, you did actually.”

“Please, your private time with her couldn't have been that precious. If anything, based off what I'd witnessed, you were boring the heck out of her. You should be thanking me for intruding in on your stupid little study date. I practically saved it!”

Kris' mouth had formed into this nasty looking snarl almost taking me aback for a moment because this was pretty much the most expressive I'd ever seen Kris; I didn't even know he was capable of making all of these facial expressions.

“Dude, why are you being like this all of a sudden?” Kris suddenly asked, but what he asked me next was what threw me for a loop. “You're the one who said that I should hook up with her in the first place, so why are you acting like you hate the idea of us together now? Do you like her or something?”

I didn't answer right away. In fact, I didn't answer at all, as I just stood there staring blankly at Kris wondering if I had heard him correctly or if it was all just my imagination gone haywire. But I couldn't fool myself; I knew I heard loud and clear what Kris had just said. And now that he caught me off guard; his words were swirling around in my head.

Did I like her? I inwardly asked myself. Why would he even ask that? Did it seem that way? Did I make it seem that way? Did I? No! I couldn't have, right? No I didn't- I mean, I don't!

Kris mumbled something to me, but I was so deep in my thoughts, I could barely make out what he'd said.

“What did you say?”

“I said you do like her, don't you?”

I stared at Kris who was looking expectantly at me like he already knew the answer.

Pfft... this guy thinks he knows me so well, I thought, proudly. I'll show him.

“Not as much as she likes me.”

“What?” he looked like he couldn't believe the words that were coming from my mouth.

I huffed a sigh. “Face it Kris. She thinks your attractive and all, but your boring her! She's just too polite to say it or too clueless to know it. But if you keep this up, your girl will soon become my girl.”

With that, I didn't even wait to see Kris' reaction as I turned around to search for Kyuhyun's face anywhere in the cafeteria. Seriously if he didn't show up within the next five minutes, I was going to fry his !

“Where the heck is Kyuhyun?” I groaned out loud, staring at the entrance door of the cafeteria, hoping to see him walk in any moment. The feeling of someone tapping onto my right shoulder from behind me made me avert my attention from the door. Thinking it may have been Kyuhyun, I quickly spun around to see who it was when- SPLAT!

“OHHHH!” I suddenly heard the cafeteria fill up with the sounds of “oohs” and “ahs” from surrounding students.

“Kris, what the hell was that?” I heard someone say.

“Yeah, what'd you do that for?” another questioned, shocked. I knew who the voices belonged to, but I wasn't too concerned with either person since I was more focused on the person who just shoved a plate of food into my face.

Dumfounded. That's the only word to describe how I felt at the moment as I clamped my eyes shut in order to keep any of the contents from the plate sloshing around my face from going into them.

It took a minute for my brain to fully register what had just happened to me, but as I felt my “friend” rub the contents of his food from his plate into my face some more, I had a pretty good idea what was happening.

Well this most definitely wasn’t a part of my plan...

With eyes still shut tight, I suddenly felt the weight of the plate disappear and I figured Kris must have removed it from my face; the cool air hitting my now exposed, food-covered skin.

Just breathe, Jongin, I calmly thought to myself, trying to talk myself down from doing something I'd regret. But it was too late to calm down; by now, my breathing was too heavy; annoyance and adrenaline was now running through my veins. I balled my hands up into tight fists; my attempt to stay cool wasn't working.

I was going to kick Kris' .

Upon my eyes opening for the first time since the plate was removed from my face, I now faced my slightly taller “friend” eyeing me with a victorious smirk on his face.

This ! He was really proud of himself, wasn't he?

Kris sat his plate back down on the table without removing his glare from mine, before turning back to me fully.

“You're the one who said you wanted a food fight,” he said, his deep voice barely above a whisper, the smirk he held a second ago now removed from his lips as his face reverted back to indifference. “Now you have it.”

I smiled, and bit my lip trying to bite back a bitter chuckle. I then used my hands to wipe some of the greasy spaghetti off of my face before wringing them out to get the remains off.

 “You know what I have to do now, right?” I asked him, the tone of my voice admonishing. Kris should know that he’s in deep now.  

I hadn't even realized that the entire cafeteria was completely silent as every student now had their eyes on the two of us, anxiously waiting to see what would unfold within the next few moments. At the moment, I was glad that I'd already thought a step ahead, having arranged for some of the senior guys to keep the school's staff distracted or else my plan could've been ruined right now.

Kris shrugged. “This was your idea to begin with. You do whatever you feel you have to do.”

I smirked. Will do, Kris.

I turned around to grab a tray of food off the table behind me, not caring who it belonged to, that was until the owner let out a faint “hey, that's mine!” but he shut up once I shot a glare at him. Spinning back around, I found Kris' back to me already hurriedly pushing past some students to get away, but I wasn't letting him escape that easily. I took the bowl of naengmyun noodles in one hand and the cup of soda in the other.

“Hey Kris!” I yelled, but he didn't stop, still trying to escape. “Think fast!”

One second, the stolen lunch was in my hands and the next, both were hurled across the cafeteria, headed straight for the back of Kris' head...but he was too tall. The soda, instead, collided into the back of his neck, causing him to fall in the center of the cafeteria. Unfortunately, since I'd thrown the bowl of noodles with my left hand, the weaker compared to my dominant right-hand, the bowl didn't steer in the right direction like I hoped it would and instead, headed for a table where a group of girls sat, splashing them with the cold noodles.

A whale of screams erupted from their table and I had to chuckle at the sight of them scattering out from the table as if it was a bomb I'd just thrown instead of a measly bowl of noodles.

As if they all heard me laughing, at the same exact time, each girl jerked around and eyed me with a glare vicious enough to make any boy cry and beg for his mother. That's when I realized who I'd really just messed with and almost instantly felt a lump form at the base of my throat.

Girls Generation. It figures I would be the one to cream the most popular group of girls on campus, when I'd originally designed this whole prank so that I wouldn't be the one that had to. Eighteen pairs of double eye-lidded girls were now glaring at me looking ready to eat me alive.

!

The girl I'd hit grabbed suddenly whipped around to grab some food off her tray; it didn't take me a second longer to figure out what she was about to do.

“Hey !” I heard the girl scream. “Since you like throwing food so much, why don't try some yourself?”

With that, a bowl of noodles rocket-launched across the room, and I ducked just in time to avoid being hit, only for the bowl of food to splatter all over someone else.

“What the hell?” I heard another girl's voice roar from the other side of the cafeteria. A big girl, and when I say “big” I mean a really big girl, stood up, now drenched in Kimchi Jjigae. The red paste was dripping all down her uniform, making stains that were probably going to take some kind of “miracle soap” just to get out.

“Hey he made me do it!” the brunette girl from Girl Generation's table said, pointing directly at me. Now, the big girls' raging eyes landed on me, along with the eyes of the rest of the cafeteria. She looked like she wanted to rip me limb from limb; and because of how big she was, she looked capable of being able to do it as well.

Following the previous girl's actions I saw the big girl pick up a plate of someone's food, before turning back towards my direction. The second her eyes landed on me, she bared her teeth and yelled, “GET HIM!” And before I knew it, the plate was being launched straight at me.

And this is my cue to escape...

I didn't even pay attention to where I was going, I just kept my head ducked down as I skirted my way across the cafeteria, the eyes of the students following me every which way- and it was a good thing I did start leaving when I did, because that's when I heard someone yell “FOOD FIGHT!”

And that's all it took. After that, all hell broke loose!

The cafeteria instantly became a war zone of food flinging, hurling, catapulting, firing, shooting, and blasting all over the place! But I didn't stop to get in on the action; I had to get out of the cafeteria quick before I got caught!

Searching for the exit door, I kept my body hunched over as I avoided the fighting students, and dodged food like I was in the movie “The Matrix”. I think I literally saw the heavens “call” to me once I spotted the “exit” sign to the cafeteria door and quickly scampered my way over to it. However, I soon found myself losing my balance once I stepped into a pile of something extremely slippery. My body landed on the floor with a “thump”, and I looked down to see what I'd landed in.

I frowned in disgust, not sure what it was. It looked like some brown ...

Shaking my head, figuring I probably didn't even want to know what the hell it was, I got back up and continued to scuttle to the door, keeping my head down low. Once I finally made it to the exit, I thanked the Lord and proceeded outside, sighing in relief at the breath of fresh air.

Compared to the chaos in the cafeteria, the new feeling of serenity was strange as I glanced around campus at the rest of the students outside; they were totally unaware of the big food fight going on inside the cafeteria at the moment. Some students were still headed for the cafeteria right now, but I wasn't going to say anything to them; I just walked away casually like I hadn't witnessed anything going on inside.

I was wondering how far Minji had gotten with the superintendent in their little tour because if I'd timed everything right, they should've been headed for the cafeteria right about now. And like radar, the red-headed girl suddenly showed up in my view. Minji was walking next to a tall, stately balled dude who I assumed was the superintendent, while alongside Mrs. Jung. By the looks of it, the three were headed towards the “dining lounge” and I couldn't stop myself from grinning at this.

I ran over to a bench near a tree and watched the three as they continued towards the cafeteria; I really wanted to see their reactions after they witnessed what was going on inside. Once they were almost to the door, a group of students suddenly came fleeing outside, covered in food, running pass them, but they stopped once Mrs. Jung called them back.

I was too far away too hear what they were saying, but I was pretty sure Mrs. Jung was asking them why they were covered in food. From the look on her face, it looked like the students told her about the food fight, because she marched away from them and headed straight for the cafeteria, followed by the superintendent and Minji.

Straightening out my uniform, I smirked triumphantly, before walking away thinking about the surprise that awaited the three of them once they opened those cafeteria doors.  

*** 

I think this may be the silliest chapter I've ever written!