Nuisance.

Complete nuisance, the school president cursed aggressively inside his skull. The thoughts rattled angrily like pinballs, disturbing him even more than the nuisance themselves.

The tall, lean senior clutched his mechanic pencil tighter in his hand, not caring that his bony knuckles were becoming stark white. Wu Yifan was hunched over at one of the large wooden table in the corner of the library. Textbooks were cascaded all about him in selective piles. He was trying to study.

It was not working.

He wondered why.

No, he didn’t.

Kris knew why.

“Mind shutting your traps for five darn minutes?” hissed Kris, his words escaping in a hushed snarl. His glare was horrifically deathly, as his hands clutched the edge of the table, as if threatening to flip it over.

Both Baekhyun and Chanyeol froze. Their heads comically whipped towards the school president who was sitting by the opposite side of the table, looking considerably grim.

“No, actually. I just changed my mind,” Kris immediately retracted, straightening up to his perfect posture again. “I’d rather you two leave and never come back. Please.”

Baekhyun made a face and retorted, too loudly to be taken well by the other students in the library, “Don’t be a wet blanket hyung,” the sophomore stuck out his tongue at Kris, “Suho hyung told us to wait here, so we have every right to.”

Chanyeol nodded solemnly in agreement.

“You two also have every right to defy any inconsiderate commands ordered by Suho,” Kris remarked, pretending he did not see that offensive tongue. “Why not put that to good use?”

“You’re such a prude, hyung,” Baekhyun made a face. “You prude-sident–” before Baekhyun could finish his clever comment, a shadow loomed over the two duos and then they heard a distinct click.

“What are you doing?” Chanyeol looked up to find Tao smiling sheepishly down at them, then to Kris, then back to the pair.

Sehun stepped out from behind Tao, as if he had been comfortably living inside his fellow freshman’s shadow. He stretched, and pointed to the object in Tao’s possession, rolled his eyes as if this was completely obvious and Chanyeol was an idiot.

(It wasn’t far off from the truth.)

“That’s a camera,” said Chanyeol.

“Brilliant. Five points to Hufflepuff,” Kris remarked, trying to go back to studying.

“I’m a Hufflepuff?” frowned Chanyeol. “Why?”

“Because nobody wanted you, so I went to Dumbledore for a favour, and the Fat Friar was kind enough to take you in,” Kris gave a mocking smile. “Just be grateful.”

Tao snickered at Kris’ words, lifting the camera up to take a snapshot of the school president who was drowning in an ocean of textbooks. He didn’t seem to mind.

So, Tao did it again.

And again.

“Then what house are you in?” Chanyeol asked conversationally.

And again.

Without looking up from his papers, the older said offhandedly, “Obviously, I am a Ravenclaw. And right now, my inner Ravenclaw traits require absolute silence.”

“Sure you’re not a Slytherin?” Baekhyun snickered.

Kris scoffed, sparing the sophomore one superior look, “If I was, I’d be seeing you around the common room, wouldn’t I?”

“You know, for a school prude-sident, you bull a lot.” Baekhyun’s face turned sour. “I bet that is exactly how you climbed your way up the high school food chain! You bull–”

“Don’t cuss,” Kris cut him off, not looking up from his chemistry essay.

“Bullpooped,” the sophomore said for good measure. “Bull.”

Tao made a face and snapped a shot of the library’s high ceiling.

“Don’t cuss,” the boy repeated after the president disapprovingly.

“Why do you even listen to him?” Baekhyun whined loudly, as if Kris wasn’t there. “Our Suho hyung is so much more mature than this of a hyung over here.”

Tao looked at Baekhyun like he was the dumbest person he’d ever met.

“Suho hyung is a senior rep. And he’s a senior rep because our school president appointed him,” the freshman said smugly. “That school president happens to be my Kris hyung.”

Kris hid a smile at the maknae’s comment, skimming through another chapter on spine transplant… Incredibly fatal.

Chanyeol snorted, “That’s like the stupidest reason ever–”

A new voice cropped up from Kris’ right side as an empty chair scooted back. A familiar figure sank down with his own piles of textbooks.

“You would know wouldn’t you?” Luhan said pleasantly, giving Chanyeol an innocent look. “About stupidity?”

The school president smirked, side-eyeing his friend. Luhan smiled knowingly at him, before opening his own notebook.

Sehun glanced sullenly at the studying seniors, then at Tao, then to Baekhyun and Chanyeol. He sighed, shoving his hands in his pockets.

“Kai hyung’s waiting outside. Suho hyung isn’t coming,” he voiced out, staring at Baekhyun and Chanyeol. “Let’s just go. Maybe these hyungs will find a way to stop global warming if we leave them alone.”

“We already have the answer to that,” Luhan mumbled absently down at the text passages. “Hm…”

“Suho isn’t coming?” grumbled Baekhyun. “So we were wasting our time for nothing,” he got up, chair scraping noisily, as Chanyeol followed suit.

Tao looked torn between tagging along with his best friend and settling down in a peaceful environment. Sehun made the decision for him, as he strode off with the two duos, giving Tao a mere nod of farewell. The latter boy stared forlornly at the retreating backs, until Luhan called out to him.

“Huang Zitao, come and sit,” he said kindly, closing his notebook. “What pictures did you take today?”

Settling down immediately, Tao started to smile as he his camera and pointed out each photo he took and why he took them. Kris smiled down at his papers, finally feeling at peace, until–

“Who are those two? They’re in almost every picture,” one of Luhan’s comments got to him, and Kris stopped writing.

Those two? Those two, who?

“Oh, after photogs, I saw Zelo leaving with his girlfriend–”

Girlfriend? Kris frowned.

“–so I took pictures,” Tao narrated on, as Luhan’s eyes slowly widened in astonishment, as he scann