After the school hours some students remain behind for their clubs activities. The larger half of the school CUBE high on the third level is a classroom. School desk neatly flipped on top of each other and are pushed against the wall. Seats in four columns of six are stacked up beside the flipped desks only six tables remained untouched in the front row. An anxious yet patient vibrant red headed leader paced back and forth in the front of the classroom standing in front of the blackboard. Behind the teachers large, thick waste of space desk he thinks to himself about an upcoming competition. He halts looking at the desk placing both his palms on the large space and looks out into the empty view that remains still. He drags his gaze over to the open door on his right; through the door and the thin bars of the balcony he had the view of the school’s basketball hoops and their rustling trees. Basketballs fall through the hoop but it all remained silent in the classroom only with the company of faint echoes of a bouncing ball

“Where are they?” He asks continuing to look out the door. No sound travel through other than the echoes of the basketball patting the ground, the hallway remained silent. The leader sighs leaning closer to the teacher’s desks replacing his palms with his elbows resting on the hard wood holding his head in between his hands. He ruffles his hair then stands back up.

“If they don’t come in ten minutes, I’m calling off the meeting” he says stubbornly,
moving from behind the teacher’s dark wood block to head towards a student’s desk that is opposite position of the door and is more closer to the window that is currently letting in the warm sunlight. The seat that he sits down in holds his bag hanging off the back, draping one leg over the other. Waiting anxiously as he taps his heel on the ground. Sitting upright with his arms folded the sunlight hits softly on his cheeks making him relax for a bit.

He closed his eyes for a moment and opened them again. Seven minutes have passed by and he starts to grow anxious, having second thoughts on his comment

“It’s really important, can’t really cancel the meeting.” He stands up,

“But, they can’t expect me to wait for them all the time. They should know what time to be here and to get here on time.” He starts to walk around the room in thought, one hand rubbing his chin and the other placed on his hip. Giving up seconds after, he groans. “What is keeping them so busy?”

Not long after that comment did a male wearing a cap over his blonde hair trip through the door. Stumbling over his own feet he paused on the spot to prevent it happening any further. After finding his feet he saw his leader and bowed elegantly like a performer would do after a show, with one leg behind the other and one arm flowing across gracefully his body bending ninety degrees. It shocked the leader when the boy entered the room. When entering the impact he made when he hit his shoulder on the door produced a lot of sound, the door shook too so he wondered if he was alright.

“You’re late Ravi” The leader said crossing his arms, pushing aside the concern for now. Ravi stands upright and looks around the room. He spreads his arms wide as he examines the empty space

“Other than you, I’m the first one here” he says looking back at the leader with a satisfied smile on his comment. The leader lazily rolled his eyes and dropped his folded arms whining

“I don’t know what’s keeping them so long, I might know where Leo is but that’s all” He looks down at his desk then he questionably looked back up at Ravi

“Where were you? Why did you come late?” Ravi sighed, he didn’t bother answering but instead moved over to a desk in the middle of the single front row to sit on top of it. He dropped his bag on the ground making a loud thud. The leader raised an eyebrow at the noise, glancing back and forth from the bag to his friend. Ravi shrugs pulling a face the curious leader slowly makes his way to the light brown fabric bag and crouches down starting to it open only to reveal nothing but his school books.

“Yah! Don’t make it seem like there was something in there!” He complains standing up

“I didn’t make it seem like anything, Hakyeon Hyung!” He jokes amused by his leader curiosity

“Yah! In the clubroom we are meant to say our stage names! Call me N!” He says forming his hands into fists attempting to hit his friend, Ravi laughs at his leader failing at his attempts

“Alright, alright I will. But you better tell that to Sanghyuk, he seems to forget” N once again annoyed at Ravi pushes him only having an effect on himself as Ravi budged a little bit while N has bounced off Ravi from the force

“Call him Hyuk in the clubroom!” He commands pointing his finger at Ravi. Ravi shrugs at his Hyung picking up his bag from the floor to bring out a small snack to munch on. N sighs and turns around to head back to his seat letting comments fly out recklessly. Ravi smiles as he had successfully distracted his leader about his late attendance.

“Hello?” a light brown haired boy says poking his head through the door. He resembles a baby duckling

“Hyuk! Hey there” the leader welcomes gesturing with his arm from him to come in. N has seem to forgotten that he was late. The little duckling entered the room holding a plastic bag in his hand containing a box

“Sorry I was late Hyung” he said bowing, N sighs

“You know you don’t have to call me ‘Hyung’ in the clubroom, just call me N” he reassures placing one hand on the little ones shoulder. Ravi silently scoffs behind N seeing his kindness towards the younger friend and how completely different it was from what he got. Hyuk smiles brightly at his Hyung and stands back up. The leader returns the smile by doing so gently staring at his dongsaengs face then moves his eyes down to what was held in his hand

“What’s that?” he asks not taking his eyes off of it, Hyuk’s smile widen and he gladly holds up the plastic bag showing it to his leader and Ravi, who now is curious of what it is. The little one walks over to the desk beside Ravi and starts to unpack it. It was a white cardboard box

“I wanted to get something for all of us to eat, I was going to be here earlier but the line was unexpectedly long at the convenience store” he explained as he opened the box revealing eight small ice-cream cones, the ones that can stand being out of the refrigerator for a while, the soft cones with the hard chocolate toping. The two companion’s eyes grew large they haven’t had this snack in a long time

“They sell them at convenience stores?” N asked surprised

“Haven’t had these since I was a kid” Ravi said jumping off the desk moving closer to the box

“Really? I have these all the time with my older sister”

The two boys standing by push closer to the table to snatch a small cone from the box. Hyuk laughed at his friend’s eagerness watching them devour the cone in a couple of bites. Hyuk took one out to eat himself. He eats it slowly enjoying the taste while the others reach out to take another

“Be sure to leave some for the others” Hyuk says taking another small bite, the boys halt centimetres from a cone each. They both look at the remaining numbers and saw there was just about enough for the others

“We can still take one… N and I” Ravi says gluing his eyes on the innocent yet tempting cone, Hyuk giggles

“The others don’t have to know” Says N slightly amusing himself with greed

“Just wait a moment guys” Hyuk suggests munching near the end of his cone. The two don’t move from their reaching position instead they remain still. The atmosphere grew a bit intense

Hyuk stares at the two wondering how long they will stay like that

“No-one is going to take it” he assures, N not moving his head but his eyes averting them to the side to look at Ravi

“I know, but I’m not sure if Ravi will take it the moment I move” He says watching Ravi grow a sneaky smile

“Same goes for you, Hakyeon” he finishes. And with that N dropped his arm to whine about the customs of being in the room, he faces Ravi upright and argues

“Call me N! In the clubroom you have to call us by the stage names!” He threatens Ravi by faking a punch making him flinch. Ravi moved back holding up his hands as a symbol of surrender, Hyuk came in between them gladly increasing the space they had

“Alright that’s enough, you can still buy them at the convenience store” he says smiling at his Hyungs, the two shift out of the space the little one created and turned facing opposite directions. Hyuk pouts, they are ignoring each other, he thought

“Hello!” one yells from the door, everyone turns to face the speaker. The boy smiles happily to see his friends. One arm is stretched out waving in the sky while the other arm is slung around another fellow friend who seemed to hate the idea of being so close to him, expressed by his glare. The fellow companion is leaning forward because of his height the boy had to pull him down to be able to capture his neck.

“Ken! Leo!” Hyuk smiled brightly at the two newcomers, Ken smiled but stops as he realised what was in the younger’s hand

“Is that?” He asks, Hyuk nods

“Ooh! Is there more?” Needing no words, Hyuk moves to the side revealing the box and Ken lets go of Leo to grab one

“Want one?” Hyuk asks pointing to the box that Ken now covers. Leo doesn’t answer but is approached by Ken munching on one holding the cone close to his mouth. He holds one cone up his face blocking anything he sees. Leo looks to the right, the cone moves to the right. He looks to his left, the cone moves to the left. Ken didn’t stop until he grabbed it out of his hand. Leo glared at him but Ken brushes it off ignoring his stare and hops away to Ravi who had faced back in the opposite direction of his leaders gaze, Ken leans into his view staring curiously then waves at the boy now bothering him.

“Hyung” Leo begins, looking at his leader who had also turned the other direction N looks back at Leo dropping his folded arms

“What is it Leo?” he asks,

“Hyung, what is this meeting for?” He asks pulling the cone to his lips to nibble on, N a bit paranoid at once again no one calling him by his stage name thrashes his arms around while stomping his feet like a whining child

“Aw, not you too Leo” He whines, Leo a bit confused narrows his eyes looking at his fellow members trying to understand to what his leader was talking about

“Uh…” Leo said a bit unsure for words

“Leo, we have to call everyone by their stage name in this room” N explains, with this spoken Leo understood the small tantrum his leader brought out and quickly nodded “oh, okay” he said continuing to nod his head

“How many more times do I have to say it to you guys?” N says addressing to the other members “we might need to practice that more than…” he suddenly paused, all the members except Ravi exchanged curious looks, N started to slowly pace back and forth in thought again with his folded arms and one hand rubbing his chin

“No, we need to save that information until Hongbin arrives” N explained to himself still leaving a very confused crowd. Ravi, who ignored the confusion of the others frantically swung around pointed at his leader almost as if he had won something

“Hey you just said Hongbin! That’s his name! You said his name in the clubroom!” he shouted and cheered looking at the ceiling the air, N snapped out of his thoughts and dropped his arms turning to face Ravi

“Yah you idiot, that’s his chosen stage name” Ravi froze in the position of the air and slowly looked at his leader who had an amused expression on his face along with small muffled laughter from the others, damn it I can’t seem to catch him, he thought.

“Anyway, until Hongbin arrives why don’t we talk about what has happened to each of us this week” N suggested, he gestures for the others to sit at the tables and they each took their own seat. N stood in front of the room behind the teachers large desk and picked up a metre long ruler

“Who wants to go first?” he asked swinging the ruler back and forth at his fellow band mates

“Well…” Hyuk started off first holding up his hand, N points the ruler at him

“Hyuk, you go first” the youngest nodded and spoke taking down his hand

“Well, I got an ‘A’ in my history exam…” everyone applauded, Hyuk smiled and continued

“But there was a girl in my class that didn’t pass, the only one I think or maybe that boy failed along with her” everyone’s ears had perked up at that conjunction, Hyuk never spoke about a girl…

“A girl huh?” Ravi teased, the only one sitting next to him he leans closer raising his eyebrows up and down and doing the whole ‘wink, wink’ and ‘nudge, nudge’ action. Hyuk childishly pushed him away slightly flustered with embarrassment of bringing up a girl, man there will be no end of this now, he thought to himself.

“Is she pretty?” Ken asked, Hyuk looked at him “I never really thought of that…” he admitted

“Do you like her personality then?” Leo asked his head poking from behind Ravi, he is bent over his desk to see the little ‘love stuck’ duckling. Hyuk is taken aback for a moment, he really hasn’t thought about the girl and yet he subconsciously brought her up, maybe I like her? He thought, we’ve talked before… but that doesn’t mean anything doesn’t it? But there was that moment…

“I think!” he says quickly, stunning his friends from his small outburst, he noticed he had shocked them and quietly apologises then started again

“I think… She likes me instead” silence sliced through and everyone’s eyes grew large. At moments like these N would turn into his mother loving behaviour and smother his child, he’d do it to Ravi at times when he is trying to be a ‘big boy’ that seems too childish, or to Leo when he says something sweet about a girl. But this is big news, someone is crushing on their little baby duckling! This information did not stop N from dropping the ruler and with a large, proud smile and had creepily ran up with his arms wide to hold Hyuk tight in his arms

“Ah! My little one is growing up!” he cheered squeezing Hyuk tighter making him lose his breath

“Hyung… Can’t… Breathe” N hasn’t snapped out of his motherly zone but still retreated for the younger male to breathe, Hyuk gasped repetitively trying to inhale a lot of air. After calming down his ‘mother’ went up to him to make sure that he was okay

“What makes you think that she like you?” Ravi curiously asked with growing interest

“yesterday, when we got our results back…” he started, leaning over his desk to see the other members along with his leader leaning on the teacher’s desk, not forgetting to scan to each and every one at times

“You see, we sit next to each other in History” this earned a girly ‘Ooh’ from Ken already teasing him, Leo slapped him on the arm making Ken whine and call for his ‘mother’ to get Leo in trouble

“And after she had saw that I got a good mark, she wanted me to help her study” he stated, falling a bit into thought then Ravi interjected

“But, doesn’t that mean she likes your brain instead?” this comment earned a gasp and a slap from mother N. Hyuk scrunched up his face going more into thought

“No… I don’t think so” he looked at Ravi

“You see there were times, where she talked to me about things other than school, she wanted to know what I do after school, what my hobbies are… you could say, we are friends? I guess…” he looked around hoping there would be a response but all they did was nod their heads, he sighed

“When she asked me about being her tutor, she said that it would help us get to know each other a bit more… I remember she paused for a while and the moment she tried to ask me something… that guy put a Mentos in her coke” the last sentence caused his friends to choke bringing out laughter, they couldn’t help but laugh at the random incident. It even earned a little chuckle from Leo who had quickly composed himself before it got dangerous

“Yah guys! It’s not funny!” He spoke out to the members who are still laughing. N had to turn away from his kid to hide his amusement, Ken repetitively slapped his desk before tossing himself off the chair. Ravi openly laughed his head back and eyes shut having small bits of tears form in the corners of his eyes and Leo found himself chuckling again with the corners of his lips lifted up he puts his fist to his lips to prevent it from going any further.

The hallways echoed with laughter and the basketball sounds had been overpowered. Walking into the room you could see the group of five members laugh enjoying life, one on the ground trying to stop, another is laughing his heart out and the two others are really trying hard to keep it in but have failed.

“Hey guys, what’s so funny?” Hongbin asks, finally the last one has arrived

“Hongbin!” N cheered, the largest smile on the leaders face

“Hyuk was telling us a funny story” he chuckles as he looks at Hyuk who was waving his arms around denying the fact that it was a funny story

“Hyung! They are making fun of me because of a girl!” he whines, Hongbin stares surprised at his friend and chuckles

“Yeah a girl who failed at confession” Ravi added before breaking again into a harder laugh

“Confession?” Hongbin asks, he looks at Hyuk with an eyebrow perked up with an amused smile, Hyuk had become wide eyed at Ravi’s little comment

“Confession? Wonsik Hyung, do you think it’s a confession?” Hyuk asks, N hearing upon those improper addressing snaps out of his amused behaviour breaking out again

“Okay! It’s not Wonsik, Hyuk its Ravi in the clubroom!” he instructed, going on his little rampage of the respects in this room but Hyuk wasn’t listening to him. He instead focused on Ravi, his eyes glued on him

“Ravi?” he asks, but Ravi failed to hear him over his own laughter. Hongbin crouches down to Hyuks side placing a hand on his shoulder. Hyuk shook at the contact, the poor boy was stunned at this ‘confession’ maybe he could be love struck now from the idea

“If it makes you feel any better there have been many girls ogling their eyes at you” Hongbin didn’t aim to really comfort the boy but instead to . Hyuk bounces back in his seat stretching his arms out onto the table that rocked his seat almost tipping himself backwards, shocked

“Ooh~ Hyuk has all the girls!” Ken says all cheery

“Introduce me to some, okay?” he asks supportively jumping up on his feet with his thumb up

Poor Hyuk was all new to this information, he sat there stunned at the idea of someone wanting to be with him and let alone the load of girls watching his every move, the colour in his face started to drain out. His leader had ce again into the bothering mother and ran up to his youngest child to smother him again in a tightening hug

“My baby duckling is being stared by erted strangers, oh my poor baby!” swaying the poor kid in his arms Hongbin chuckles and decides to go back to reality

“So, N, what is the meeting for today? It was unexpected so it must be important” Ravi starts to settle down his laughter, slowly calming down. The leader looked up at Hongbin having Hyuks face squished in between his arm puffing out his cheeks, not sure if he is breathing, he doesn’t seem bothered by it.

“Oh, right” Leader N seemed to have lost his train of thought. But really when it came to the other members he would change anything to know if they were alright, even if it meant being a mother. He lets go of Hyuk and stepped back, the younger had breathed back in a sack of air and regained a bit of colour

“Well guys, I called you all in today for a special meeting, we—”

“We already know it’s a special meeting, just get on with it” interjected Ravi

“I was going to ‘get on with it’ thanks for that” N spat back, Ravi ignores him and shuffles down into his seat

“well, what I was going to say was there is a competition coming up” Everyone’s attention is captured their ears perk up with interest, Ken sat down in his seat and Leo had stopped fumbling with his hands, Hyuk seemed to have lost colour in his face again and Hongbin had moved closer to N. But Ravi, barely bugged, N continued

“This competition is internationally known and the club supervisor suggests we should try it out” he says

“But the question is… do we want to do it?” He asks, N would never do anything without his friends and he wouldn’t start now especially with something this big. All the members look at each other, glancing one by one as N patiently waited for an answer. Soon all eyes were on him

“We’ll do it” Ravi confirmed, N sighs in relief leaving off with a long slow smile to express his delight

“Well, we’ve got to get practicing now, who knows what competitors this competition will bring” N said clasping his hands together, all the members start to rise up from their seats and head to the empty space in the back of the classroom

“If we’re in it, it’s gonna be intense” Hongbin added light heartedly earning smiles and snickers from the other members

“It’s all up to practice, we know we’re good but we need to be great” Ken spoke up

“What’s the difference between a good musician and a great one?” N asked, everyone but Leo looked at each other shrugging in response from not knowing the answer. Only Leo continued to stared at his leader, he had known the meaningful answer bringing a smile to his face

“Not much” he answered, N nodded and smiled as he continued

“Like you said Ken, we’re good but not great. We all have some things we need to work on, more practice in vocals or more practice in dance. We may need to look after ourselves and not get hurt” N requested more than stated eyeing Ravi at that last part

“That was one time!” Ravi argued, everyone laughed

“We can do this alright?” Everyone nodded agreeing with their faithful leader. N looks at all s one more time before he puts his hand in front of him positioned in a peace sign facing down. Everyone smiles and puts their hands in the same style as Hongbin and Ravi have one finger placed over the other to altogether make a star

“We are, V-I- Double X fighting!” they cheered lifting and breaking their star in the air.

A/N

It's not really a special when i've made it long, but i hope it was fun to read? I'm hoping you guys are enjoying my writing. I agree the first three chapters are quite weird but i'm still practicing!