accepted

There was no change in Ahri's hostile attitude towards Luhan the next morning. What was he expecting? Her to come running into his arms? It was hard to suppress giddiness when she'd shown the slightest bit of concern for him, but it was slashed to pieces once the little boy beam appeared on his face.

He woke up feeling slightly less dizzy and more reacquainted with the ground. Although he knew big purple splash of colour on his face was slightly distracting and would evoke unavoidable questions. 

His parents had freaked out (mostly his mother, since his father clapped him on the back chuckling, quote, "Be a man, son!", unquote), and Ahri's parents had left to attend an important meeting. He eyed the bruise in the spotless mirror. Would makeup help? Not that he had any. Maybe Ahri has some...

Luhan leaned in closer to the mirror and felt two hands taser him in his sides. A high pitched yelp escaped his lips and he whirled around to see Ahri chuckling slightly.

"Yah! Why'd you d-do th-that?" His fierce voice dwindling into a meek one once the normal death stare decorated Ahri's face. 

"Stop examining yourself, or we're going to be late. James and I won't be waiting for you."

Luhan flipped his wrist up and his eyes bulged at the time. No time for make up or anything, he would have to deal with it, like a man!

***

As expected, the attention of any student passing by that happened to catch a glance of Luhan's injury either cringed or gave him a sympathetic look. Most of them assumed he was another poor soul, picked on by Taemin's group, though they never had the courage to ask. However he was.

As Luhan was shoving his books into his locker, an arm swung around his neck, followed by loud greetings of "Chingu-yah!" 

He grinned at the sight of the friendy students who'd shown him around the day before. Suprisingly, he could put names to every one of the faces.

"How's your face?" Minho asked, too shy to meet his eyes. 

Luhan laughed, patting him on the back. "I'm fine, Minho." 

Minho smiled gratefully and lifted his chin at Taemin. Taemin rolled his eyes and smiled at Luhan. "Today, you're hanging out with us, yeah?"

Luhan nodded, his excitement simmering. "Good, because we'll be showing you the ropes how to not get beat up here." Taemin instructed.

Everyone nodded eagerly. "Yeah, like who and who not to hang out with." Key filled in.

Luhan cocked his head to the side. "What if they're nice? And I want to hang out with them?"

Taemin's gaze grew stern. "You won't want to."

Only Taemin was in all of his classes and the rest of the gang were in some of his classes. Ahri, was also in all of his classes. But she never paid any attention to him. She sat a seat in front of him, but never turned around for questions. She obviously didn't need to, she was a genius. He always used the image of her threatening him with a slap to stifle his urge of tapping her shoulder and seeing that beautiful face. It didn't help that she smelled wonderful.

When a class ended or begun, Ahri either set out her things or packed up quietly and efficiently, leaving before anyone else. Or it might've been that everyone was waiting for her to go first. As they were obligated to wait. That was another thing. She was talked about as if she was a legendary Greek Goddess. The students sitting around him, always had hot gossip on her. But it was materialistic talk about how 'she cut her hair yesterday because I saw her in the hair salon' or 'she's so rich she has five garages of cars, all to herself'. He normally tuned out those gossips, but he was alarmed when someone whispered 'I heard she's living with some boy who goes to our school'. He no doubt freaked out internally. Even A