“Today’s only Monday. It’s too early for this–”

From the fourth row of literature class, Minseok couldn’t help but snicker. This was absolute gold. He hid his face behind his copy of Lord of the Flies, as his ears listened to the sound of his friends getting scolded.

“This is the sixth time you’ve failed my test!” Mrs. Yoon squawked exasperatedly, slapping the folders of failed papers on her desk. Minseok stifled a snort as he slowly lowered his book, to find Baekhyun, Chanyeol and Jongin by the teacher’s desk with their heads bowed.

“Some friend you are,” a voice distracted him and Minseok blinked. His eyes landed on the two girls sitting in the desks a row before his.

“Sorry?” he asked.

Jimin rolled her eyes. “You seem to enjoy seeing your friends get in trouble.”

Minseok smiled. “Would you rather I side with them?”

“You? I can’t imagine that ever happening,” Choa commented, giving him a look over her shoulder. Minseok put down his copy of the novel, deciding to take that as a compliment.

“They kind of were asking for it,” he said after a pause, shrugging lightly.

Jimin gave him a flat look. “Wow. Junhee, please remind me why I thought he’d make a good friend?”

Beside him, Junhee looked up from her own copy of Lord of the Flies and blinked.

“Well… Minseok is very fair,” said Junhee honestly, looking torn between paying attention to what was going on in reality and escaping into the imaginary deserted island.

He repeated after her, “I’m very fair.”

Jimin rolled her eyes and spun back in her seat, grumbling something they couldn’t hear.

“He’s nice too,” put in Junhee.

“Shut up, Junhee,” grumbled Jimin without looking over her shoulder. Minseok chuckled.

“But would you rather have those three as your friends?” asked Junhee, sincerely concerned.

Jimin ignored her. Choa elbowed her friend.

“She has a point, you know,” mumbled Choa.

“Okay,” grunted Jimin, loud enough for Minseok and Junhee to hear, “point taken. Thank you–”

“If you could just–” Baekhyun’s voice rang out, almost like a whine from the front.

“Just what?” squawked Mrs. Yoon.

“You make it sound worse than it actually is,” grumbled Chanyeol, “we failed six times, you said, but that’s because you give us tests once every week.”

Minseok face-palmed.

“I don’t see how that’s a problem,” said Mrs. Yoon, looking as if she was going to explode. “Nobody else but you three failed, therefore, you three are the problem here, not my tests.”

In front of him, Minseok could hear Choa snicker into her hand, her shoulders shaking slightly as she tried to stifle her laughter. Jimin also had a hesitant smile on her face as she pretended to read her Lord of the Flies like the rest of the class.

“Kim Minseok, Choi Junhee, please make your way to the front of the class,” suddenly, Mrs. Yoon called. Minseok’s head snapped up, confused. “I need my top students here this instant.”

As if on autopilot, Minseok immediately got up, almost knocking his knee to the desk. He nudged Junhee as he squeezed past her chair. She seemed to be too absorbed by the book.

She looked up, staring after him.

Minseok turned as he made his way down the row of desks, where students were pretending to read. He gestured for Junhee to come with him. Slowly, she got up and followed him with a knit between her brows.

“Yes, ssaem?” the top male student asked politely as he stepped up to the desk, with the top female student right behind. He made sure to stand in the middle, acting as a barrier between Junhee and the trio. Junhee stepped up to the left of the teacher’s desk, on the opposite side of where Jongin was standing.

“There,” said Mrs. Yoon resignedly, shoving old test papers to both Junhee and Minseok. “You two, look through these and tell me what I should do.”

Trying to keep his face straight, he moved away from the three as though he didn’t know them. He ignored the puppy looks from Baekhyun and Chanyeol as he walked over to where Junhee was to share the papers with her.

“Um,” said Minseok, not quite sure what he was looking at. He only knew they were Chanyeol’s papers from the familiar scrawl.

“Here,” muttered Junhee, pointing to something on the paper she was holding. They were Baekhyun’s. She laid them out on the side of the desk and flipped another pile (Jongin’s) to the same page. She then looked up at Minseok expectantly, as if waiting for him to see what she was seeing.

“Uh,” he said.

“Basics, wobbly,” she told him, pointing to the easy questions which both of them got wrong. Minseok looked down at Chanyeol’s papers in his hands, seeing that he had done the same mistakes. “They got some hard questions right, but the easier ones…”

“Right,” he said, putting Chanyeol’s papers down to compare. “So, what do we do?”

Junhee shrugged.

“Well?” Mrs. Yoon prompted sharply.

“The, um,” Junhee began buying time, fumbling as though the three boys weren’t there, “They got the questions on the stories right, some anyway, which means they read and understood the contents. But, the technical questions… well…”

“We suggest putting them back with the first years,” said Minseok as an idea finally popped up. Everybody stared at him. He pretended not to notice as he watched Mrs. Yoon’s reaction.

“See, ssaem. Like Junhee said, they’re lacking the basics,” he continued gently, “we learnt the technical stuff—grammar and things—during freshman year, didn’t we Junhee?”

Junhee nodded.

“So, we could put them back with the younger class to… refresh their memories,” said Minseok, ignoring the glare he was receiving from Jongin, “I think it’ll come back to them faster.” Then he added just so only Mrs. Yoon could hear, “And, our class could, you know, not get hindered back.”

A pause.

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