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GONG MINJI

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Part II

I don’t know how much trouble Mrs. Jung got into with the school board for the food fight that happened last week, but I was pretty sure that it was brutal considering her unusual grumpy mood all week long. Mrs. Jung was an older woman- probably around her late 40s- and she was usually pretty nice. She was a small, stately woman with slightly graying, dark brown hair. And honestly, the way she dressed often reminded me of “Professor McGonagall” from Harry Potter; only, she didn’t wear a huge hat atop her head. However, she did often wear the long, dark cloak-thing. Having known Mrs. Jung my entire high school life, it was bit strange to suddenly see her be so stiff and touchy when she was normally even-tempered.

Now she marched around campus singling out students that she caught breaking the school dress code like: not wearing their ID cards, or not wearing their uniform tie, or wearing the wrong socks with the wrong shoes (no seriously, it’s a rule that students must wear the same color socks to match their shoes) - and if she caught them violating the dress-code more than once, then she’d send them to the office to get a “detention slip”. Also, her demeanor was a bit unsettling, and it made students nervous to approach her. Although she didn’t go around yelling, it was like she was a ticking time bomb just waiting to go off and no one wanted to be around for when she finally blew. It was all in the way she smiled when she spoke carefully and calculatedly; it was like she was straining to hold back from saying what she really wanted to. She was clearly still worked up from last week.

But anyways, I could worry more about Mrs. Jung later. Right now I had someone else that I was more focused on- or should I say a nuisance that I was currently focused on.

Look at him, sitting there, messing with that dang phone of his, without a care in the world.

I crossed my arms and huffed, irritated, as I slouched further into my desk chair.

How was he even able to sleep at night? Did he seriously have no conscience, at all?  

I was currently in the office that both Kai and I shared, sitting in front of the computer; only, my eyes weren’t focused on the screen. Rather, my eyes were busy glaring at my so-called “co-president” who was busy tapping away at his cell phone; he was smiling and laughing at whatever he found entertaining on that dang thing.

We were supposed to be going over candidates for the committees, or at least, that’s what I told Kai we were going to be doing. Really, I had called him in to interrogate him and then bust him for all the horrible pranks he pulled last week. However, even though I already knew that he had submitted his own revised version of the candidates for committee leaders without informing me, I thought I should still give him the chance to tell me the truth. That’s why we were still pointlessly going over the candidates- that again, he already submitted! I thought that maybe if he saw me still working on something that he knew he already turned in, then maybe he would feel bad and tell me the truth.

But no! After all, this is Kai we’re talking about. I bet he’s never apologized to anybody his entire perfect freaking life.

Kai hadn’t bothered to say anything the whole time I worked. He had just casually walked into the office like he owned the place, sat down, put both his feet up on the desk, and then started playing on his cell phone like he was chilling at home instead of working with me in our office.

I literally had to mentally talk myself down to keep from reaching over and smacking the hell out of him.

I tried to get him to participate in choosing possible committee leaders, but with each attempt I made he just responded with a grunt, or a nod, or a “whatever”.

“I think I’ll nominate Jung Eunji for student arts committee,” I told Kai, as I clicked around on the computer screen. “What do you think?”

“Uh-huh,” he responded, uninterested. I frowned after hearing his response, before releasing an irritated sigh. Yep, it’s pretty much been like this for the past thirty minutes.

“Did you even hear what I just asked?”

“Uh-huh.”

I rolled my eyes, but the second I did, I smirked at having suddenly got an idea.

“Kris and I hooked up last night.” Of course this wasn’t true, but I wanted to see his reaction. 

“Uh-huh.”

My smile instantly fell. This a-hole! That’s what his parents should have named him.

I seriously couldn’t take being ignored any longer, so within a second, I was out of my seat, reaching across Kai and yanking his cell phone right from his hands; that definitely got his attention.

“What the f-” Kai started, but was cut off by me.

“Ah! So now you pay attention!”

It was quiet for a second as Kai gaped at me with bewildered eyes like he couldn’t believe what I just did; in fact, it was so quiet, that all could be heard in the room was the sound of the “second-hand” ticking in the clock that sat on the desk.

Kai finally clicked his tongue as he stared at me; his brows slanted and his jaw gripped tightly. I knew he was mad.

Oh well.  

“Give me my phone back,” he demanded, holding out the palm of his hand, but I just pretended like I didn’t hear him.

“Uh-huh,” I responded the same way he was acting towards me a minute ago, giving him a taste of his own medicine. 

 “Seriously?” Kai scoffed. “Seriously? So it’s like that?”

“Yes, it’s seriously just like that,” I said, quickly moving my arm away when Kai tried to reach for his phone. He groaned, and I grinned.

Yeah that’s right, boy, I thought, smugly. You ain't the only one with fast reflexes!

“Okay, this isn’t funny!” he growled with more base in his tone and I could tell he was really getting pissed off, but I didn’t care.

“I’m not laughing.”

“Okay, let me rephrase what I said earlier,” he said, releasing a low, peevish chuckle. I was smiling, at first, not feeling the least bit threatened by him, but the second he raised out of his chair, and came over to me, leaning in, I puckered my lips, feeling a different kind of tension stirring between us.

I stayed completely still, lips still puckered together, while watching him lean his head in close to mine until he was staring me directly in the eyes. I couldn’t fully decide whether to be amused by him or frightened, but one thing’s for sure: my heart beat was beating even faster than it did the first day the boys arrived on campus.

I was waiting for Kai to finish the rest of his sentence, but he didn’t; instead, he lingered, hovering over my chair, staring at me with an unreadable expression. I guess somewhere between him threatening me and him forcing his way into my personal space, he got distracted by something that was either on my face or in my eyes or whatever. Regardless, his eyes were completely glued to me.  

The moment was weird for me, to say the least; but it was also extremely... hot- which was even stranger. His face was close enough to mine that his breath was blowing on me, and with the top two buttons of his uniform shirt left ed- which he did on purpose, I’m sure of it- the view of his tan chest was now exposed to me.

I couldn’t help it, but my eyes zoomed in on the exposed, bare skin under his shirt, and I soon found myself following the rhythmic rising and lowering of his chest as he breathed in and out, deeply, from above me.

I don’t know why it was so hard look away, but it took all the strength I had to revert my attention back to his eyes. I ended up focusing on the little glistening light illuminating in the corner of his dark eyes, but I didn’t know what to make of that light. On top of that, he was now smirking at me, and I wasn’t sure if it was because he was excited or if he was thinking of some evil plan to get back his phone or both.

But after what felt like an hour of staring, he finally decided to continue with his earlier sentence. “Give me back my phone before I make you give it back to me.”

I raised both my brows at the latent threat. Ooh! So, I guess this supposed to be him threatening me, huh? He doesn’t scare me; I bet I could take him in a fight if I ever really had to…

I then glanced back down and checked out the muscles in his arms; I frowned, second guessing the probability of me actually being able to beat him up in a fight. Hm…

“I don’t know where it is.” I lied of course; it was actually behind me, wedged between my back and my chair.

“Bull,” Kai quipped, snidely. He then proceeded to reach around me, trying to grab for his phone, but I scooted my chair back (thank God for the wheeled chairs) and I skirted completely out of his grasp.      

With his eyes narrowed, Kai zeroed in on me just like a hawk eyes a mouse it’s about to attack; I knew he was going to come after me and the second he lurched forward, I shot out of my chair and ran like my life depended on it. Maybe my life did depend on it; he seemed really angry that I had taken his phone away and wouldn’t give it back.

Well that’s what he gets!

I ran around to one side of the desk while he was on the other side. From his side, he faked right, so I went left, but then I went right once he headed in the other direction. Now we were on opposite sides of the desk again, but I was on the side he was previously on, and he was on mine. Kai then tried reaching over the desk to grab for me, but I jumped back, so then he jumped over the desk, but I just darted across the room, and ended up on the other side of the desk again.

Now we were back to where we started.

I couldn't help but to suddenly start laughing at our predicament. I wondered if we looked as silly as I felt at the moment.

“Why are you laughing?!” Kai grunted, behind gritted teeth. I just laughed more.

“Kai, seriously?” I said, between laughs. “All of this for a phone?”  

Kai stopped for a moment, looking like he was finally thinking about what he was doing. He sighed, exaggeratedly, before plopping back down in his chair.

“Alright, alright,” he said, putting his hands up in defeat. “What is it? I know you wouldn’t do this unless you were trying to make a statement, so, what is the problem?”

Wow! He was actually paying attention to me for once! So this is what I have to do to get his attention?

“When were you going to tell me that you already turned in the candidates running for student council to the headmaster?”

Both of Kai’s eyebrows rose up high and he looked away from me. “Who told you? How did you find that out?”

“I went to ask Mrs. Jung for an extension on the assignment since we hadn’t finished choosing candidates yet, but according to her, we were already finished and you had already turned them in for the both of us,” I told him, my tone of voice, snarky. I wanted him to know he was in big trouble! And he did, because Kai’s face looked like a deer caught in the headlights- his eyes wide open, staring off into space with a stupid, blank face. “Plus, you just confirmed it to be true by not denying it.”

Kai still looked like a shocked little deer, but after a few moments, his eyes narrowed and the corner of his mouth turned up.

“You’re right,” he admitted, while smiling, which I found a little unsettling. What was he smiling for? He sat back in his chair and kicked back, comfortably. “I changed some of the choices you’d made for candidates and then turned them into the headmistress.”

It took me a second to catch it at first, but my eyes widened once I realized what he just told me. “You changed all the choices I made for candidates?”

“Some, not all,” he corrected. He then looked up to the ceiling like he was thinking something over. “Or at least, I don’t think I changed all of them. Then again, maybe I did. Who knows? You made so many bad choices.”

“Bad choices?!” I reiterated, scornfully. I’ll show him bad choices! Picking up something that was on the desk, I grabbed whatever was near me and without even looking at it, I chucked it straight at him.

“Hey! What up with the violence?” He whined, while picking up whatever I'd thrown. Kai now held up a little bottle of correction-fluid, that was unfortunately for him, but still fortunate to my own amusement, still open. The white-out liquid had spilled out onto his uniform.

Hah! I grinned, triumphant. Strike one, for Minji!

Kai glared at me, but I was too elated to be threatened by it; I crossed my arms across my chest.

“Karma,” I mocked him.

I know what I did was childish, in fact, everything I’d done within the past 15 minutes was pretty childish, and watching Kai’s anguished face as he wiped the remains of white-out off his uniform actually did make me feel a little bad. But then again, I remembered that I was now playing the game that he started in the first place, so going up against him meant playing on his own level- which just so happened to be that of a child’s.     

“Are you happy now?” Kai jeered, pointing at the white stain on his jacket.

“Very,” I shot back, making him “tsk” back at me. I shook my head. “I just can’t believe that you did something like that without consulting me. We’re supposed to work together. Did you forget? Or do you not care? Or is it because you were too busy planning things like food fights to remember to tell me?”

Kai’s eyes widened like a deer’s again. “How do you know about that? Who told you I planned the food fight?”

I shrugged, not wanting to blurt out Kris’ name but it didn’t matter because Kai had already guessed it.

“Kris,” he growled under his breath. “I’ll bet he told you about me turning in the candidates for committee leaders too, huh? I’m gonna kick his ! He better hope that I don’t find him-”

“You’re not actually blaming everything on Kris, are you?” I asked shocked. Kai stared at me, quirking up his left brow with a “duh” look on his face. Unbelievable! “Kai, it’s your fault! Everything is your fault, not Kris’. In fact, he took the fault for you and you’re still going to get mad at him when you’re the one who should be in trouble!”

“He swore to the brotherhood!” Kai mumbled under his breath and I rolled my eyes. What was it about this “brotherhood” thing they kept talking about? Oh, that stupid rule where they take each other’s punishments just for the sake of not getting one another into trouble.

“Kai I only have one question,” I told him, grabbing his attention once again. He shrugged, signaling with his hand for me to continue. “Why?”

“Huh?”

“Why?” I repeated. “Why would you go to such great lengths to pull all these stupid pranks? Like, for what reason? Or do you even have a reason? Are you bored? Do you just want payback? Do you hate the girls at this school? Or do you hate me? Just why?”

Kai sat thinking for a moment, or at least that’s what I assumed he was doing. He took a breath before saying:

“Well, didn’t Kris tell you why I did it, Minji-ah?” Kai’s voice strangely softer this time around.

I frowned, not sure what Kris had told me. Uhh... did he?

I looked up to the ceiling, trying to remember what Kris had said about Kai saying something that had really pissed him off which was the reason why he threw his food in his face. Did that have anything to do with it?

All the while I was thinking in my head, I didn’t realize that Kai was sneakily, leaning across the desk, snaking up on me, that is, until he was actually inviting himself into my personal bubble.

“What…are you… doing?” I wondered aloud, inching backward. He didn’t say anything as he moved closer and closer, ignoring the desk that separated us like it wasn’t even there. I was trying to move backwards, but in an instant, his hand reached out and grabbed a hold of my arm to keep me from moving back and yanked it forward. Now we were practically nose to nose.

I gulped.

He glanced down at my mouth, before looking back into my eyes.

“The reason I did all of this is because I like you,” he said, flashing his pearly whites at me. “I just wanted to get your attention, but you were hanging out with Kris, so I came up with a plan to get you to notice me.”

I just blinked, totally stunned.

Was I actually hearing what I thought I was? I wasn’t dreaming was I? Not that a confession from Kai would be a dream, more like a nightmare! 

Suddenly, the sound of Kai busting out in maniac laughter, ripped me away from my thoughts.

I glared at him, as I watched him laugh. He’s playing with me again.

“Kai, you need professional help!” I yelled, but he just continued on laughing. I rolled my eyes and made my way around the desk to pick my stuff off of the floor. I wasn’t going to waste anymore time with this guy. From now on, if I wanted things done, I wasn’t going to count on him for help.

Before I left out the door, I told him, “You know, there’s a perfectly good counselor on campus. Maybe you should schedule a few appointments with her so you can figure out whatever issues you have. This is really disturbing behavior, even for you. ”

“Awe, don’t be mad,” I heard him yell from behind me as I was walking out. “Look, I’m sorry. Really!”

He may have finally apologized, but it was followed by more of his laughter, so I knew it wasn’t sincere.

That’s alright, I thought to myself. I didn't need his apology; I already got more than I needed from him.

I smirked as I looked down at Kai’s cell phone, which was still in my hand, and hit the stop button on the recorder.

Yeah, that’s right. I had recorded everything he had said using his own phone. Now, I have proof!

He may be laughing now, but we’ll see who has the last laugh.

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Not much to say here... But I sure did have a good laugh while writing this chapter. I hope you did too^^