"Lee Taemin, if I see you paying more attention to your phone than your bloody English paper one last time, I will throw that thing and into the drain."

The threat is supposed to be intimidating, scary even, but Taemin finds himself snickering instead. He looks up to meet the fierce gaze of his best friend sans childhood friend, Jung Soojung, and decides that it is best to comply with her order to pocket his phone away. Taemin raises his both hands in surrender, but his smirk remains. "Okay. You win."

Soojung sighs, exasperate at how carefree her friend is at the moment. Isn't he worried at all about his failing grade for this subject? "I wished you'd be more serious about this tutoring lesson. Do you want another D on your result slip?" She knocks the pencil in her hand against his English textbook a few times to get her message across, only to have the young man sitting opposite her to snatch the pencil from her hand. "I am serious about this, Soojung. But when you have fifty questions to answer on tenses in an hour, you're bound to be distracted!"

"Hey!" Soojung growls, offended. She snatches the pencil back from Taemin in defiance. "I took a really long time in finding those questions for you. You could at least show some sign of gratitude, you know."

"Soojung, when have I not been grateful towards your help with this god-forsaken subject?" Taemin throws a smile in her direction, in which Soojung rolls her eyes in return. "And if you weren't so busy trying to shop for clothes online, you would realize that I have already finished answering these questions earlier." He finishes, nodding at the sheet of paper in front of him and noting the faint streak of pink which appears on her cheeks.

"I wasn't shopping for clothes online! I was just... er... looking?" Ignoring her friend’s -eating grin at her weak reply, Soojung slams her laptop shut and takes a hold of his paper, red pen already in hand to check the mock-test she’d written up.

Barely five minutes later, Soojung heaves a loud sigh again and eyes Taemin banefully, staring daggers at him until finally he glances up from his phone and raises a confused eyebrow.

With Soojung’s jaw set in a scowl and deadly silent, Taemin finds himself getting nervous—a lump forming in the middle of his throat. "What?"

Shifting his gaze from his friend and then towards the sheet of paper in his hands, Taemin didn’t need to be a genius to know that he has committed some very important errors to rules which Soojung has specifically taught him not to forget. "Uh oh."

Practically on the verge of giving up on her friend, Soojung drops the paper limply on the table and crosses her arms together—annoyed and frustrated that after all the hours she had sacrificed to tutor her best friend, it is apparent that he was just not picking up anything. She remains silent as Taemin scans the paper she’d dropped and quickly runs through the mistakes he had made. Not one or two, but basically, by the time Soojung reaches the tenth question, she has given up on even trying to check for any correct answers.

"How did you even pass your high school English test?"

"Umm, that's 'cause I didn't?"

"Then why on earth are you taking this subject now?" 

“It was compulsory if I wanted to take Literature!”

Soojung’s hand flies out and smacks Taemin squarely on his forehead. “Are you an idiot or what? If you can’t even pass English, how do you expect to pass freaking English Literature? You don’t even like Literature!”

“Well I… uh… I…” Taemin cheeks turn as red as a beetroot and suddenly Soojung pieces everything together. The reasons why Taemin had wanted to take up Literature suddenly becomes very clear and she cannot help but turn her scowl into her own -eating grin.

“Ohhh” is all Soojung says after an agonizing moment, the smirk practically taped on her lips. “Hmm, I actually do know someone who particularly loves poetry…”

Taemin feels the heat on his face as he retorts—a bit too loud as he earns a sharp stare from the librarian, “I did not take up this course because Jinri likes poetry!”

Soojung leans in and rests her chin on her hands, her elbows propped up on the table. The very picture of innocence as she flutters her lashes and says, “Since when did I mentioned Jinri into the picture?”

“Wh—“ Taemin mentally slaps himself for falling into Soojung’s trap. He should have known better than to blurt out Jinri’s name out of the blue, and now it is his turn to scowl.

“You know, if you like her, then why don’t you ask her out?” The red-head blinks her eyes a few times, the smirk remains on her lips. The look on her face tells Taemin how much she is enjoying seeing him squirm in his seat like this, so instead, he quickly divert