Tao can hear his alarm clock ringing, but he’s nowhere near waking up and turning it off. Not today. He waits until it turns off on its own, and then he goes back to sleep, smiling happily into his pillow. But then his phone starts ringing.

He groans. It’s a pack rule to always pick up your phone (even if you’re under the shower or in the middle of a date, which Tao finds excruciating). So he turns onto the other side, finds his phone tangled somewhere on his bed, and puts it into his ear.

“What,” he grouses.

“Exams today,” Kris’s voice says on the other side. “Are you up?”

“Yes, I’m up,” Tao says, putting his head back onto the pillow. He lets his hand slide down, leaving the phone on his ear. “I’m up.”

“I don’t think you are,” Kris says. “What time is it?”

“Half past I don’t give a ,” Tao says with a grin.

“Hey, smartass, you can’t be late for exams,” Kris barks. “Get up.” And then Tao hears a new voice in the phone, Luhan’s. “Give it to me,” the boy says. There’s some rustling and then, suddenly, “Who let the dogs out?” blasts right into Tao’s ear, in volume high enough to make a normal person go deaf. Tao yells, jumps up on his bed, and promptly trips, hitting the floor and almost splitting his head open on the desk. His head is aching and his ear is screaming, and he can swear he’s gone half deaf.

He yells, loud and long, and Luhan laughs on the other side of the phone.

*

Tao enters the school’s grounds with his face morphed into an expression of pure misery. He’s looking at his feet, not forward, and he can hear people laughing and talking around him. All the seniors are headed for the front door, some of them happy, some of them still trying to study on their way there, and some just as miserable as Tao.

He looks up when he’s about to walk up the stairs, and he stops short.

You’re standing in front of him, the whole pack, Heejin and Minjoon included, with a huge banner spread in front of you that says ‘Fighting’ and the second he sees you, you start clapping, hollering and howling, and generally causing Tao the biggest embarrassment of the century. He yelps, turns sharp left, and, with the intent of avoiding them altogether, heads up the stairs.

But of course, someone has to grab him and pull him right down, force him to stands in the middle of the group, and start singing around him.

Tao isn’t sure if he’s happy or mortified, but you do give him cake (that he doesn’t get to eat because he needs to go to school) and all of you kick him on the for good luck. It’s loud, messy and dumb, and he’s on the verge of crying by the time you all send him up.

The only thing that cheers him up a little is the fact that Minjoon looks as mortified of this whole thing as he feels. Heejin, on the other side, is blissed-out and as happy as ever. After a few seconds Jihoo joins them, asking what the hell just happened, and Tao nearly vomits because of all the mixed emotions. And it’s only the beginning, because exams.

“Your friends are mental,” Minjoon tells him. Tao throws an arm over Minjoon’s shoulder, patting him on the head.

“I know,” he says, smiling.