I

“Which part of the school rules that you can’t understand?”

Baekhyun moved his index finger in the air, successfully creating small fireballs that were moving around his finger tip, but then Luhan slapped his hand down and the fireballs were immediately distinguished. It was official: Luhan got no chill. Baekhyun looked at Luhan before he folded his arms, tapping his fingers against his sleeve. “We’re studying magic here and yet we can’t use magic? Tell me how logical is that.”

“For starters, that’s to prevent another building from being on fire,” Luhan replied curtly while glaring at him. Baekhyun had always thought that Luhan had the tendency to get worked up over simple things, and unfortunately, one of the ‘things’ was Baekhyun.

Baekhyun shrugged while putting his hands into the pockets of his jacket. It was cold in the dorm and that only meant that somebody was playing with the fire. It was ironic, but that was the truth. Why would people avoid using magic when they had it? They could have so much fun like playing snowballs without the snow, get roasted chicken without needing to use the grill or simply went the library by teleportation.

“Well, it ended well. No harm was done,” Baekhyun said. “Minus the building,” he quickly added as he saw Luhan squinting at him.

Luhan shook his head in distaste, his black hair bouncing as he was doing that. With a sharp glare, he said, “One of the students got injured.” He stopped walking and stared at Baekhyun. “Heard he’s one of the top students.”

“A top student?” Baekhyun asked rhetorically as he stopped walking as well. What was a top student doing at the outside past curfew? “That’s his fault for entering it; he chose his own fate.”

 

 

Kyungsoo hated feeling hot. But he had put himself on the line and now he’s paying the price. The price for being stupidly bold to put the curfew aside. He didn’t know he end up in his room, but he knew for sure that the school administration won’t let this slide quickly without any penalty.

“Oh, you woke up,” Chanyeol said while putting down a bowl of chicken soup on the nightstand. “Feeling better?”

“Feel like my skin’s burnt.”

Chanyeol chuckled while sitting at the edge of Kyungsoo’s bed, his long legs being straightened. “You were burnt. You really transferred the defence magic to the offending one.”

“Well,” Kyungsoo said slowly as he dipped the spoon into the soup, “I needed to do that or else the fire won’t be distinguished. Defence magic is cool but if I keep defending, the fire’s not gonna disappear by itself.”  

“You could’ve just ran and pretended like you didn’t know anything.”

“Chanyeol.”

Chanyeol raised both hands in the air while shaking his head, his brows furrowed in frustration. He knew this Kyungsoo very much; this was the Kyungsoo who had helped him during their time travelling trip. While the other students had already left him – Chanyeol still dreamt of the dinosaurs, seriously – Kyungsoo stayed and accompanied him.

It had been their practical test where they all needed to time travel and see how efficient their magic was. Chanyeol had always been one of the slowest ones when it came to understanding the nature of his magic, so it was only natural that when students kept succeeding and time travelled to the present time one by one, he was left with his wobbly legs. Terrified. Panicking. Embarrassed.

Chanyeol wasn’t sure how many hours Kyungsoo had stayed to assist him, but he was sure that it was late in the evening when they finally came back to the present. The both of them had gotten Ds. Miss Kang had told them that she was supposed to give Fs, but she gave them extra credits for efforts.

“Why were you even out past curfew?” Chanyeol asked out of the blue, and Kyungsoo’s shoulders were immediately tensed. “Not telling me?” he prompted when he saw how Kyungsoo refused to say anything.

“It’s…nothing,” Kyungsoo replied hesitantly while using his soup as an excuse to keep his lips sealed. The soup tasted great; Chanyeol’s cooking skill was definitely no joke, so this was like killing two birds with one stone. A great excuse, and a great soup. Just perfect.

 

 

Kyungsoo got letters from the school administration, and it was a lie if he said that he hadn’t expected these lovely letters to grace his room. The letters were delivered through a portal right at the ceiling just over Kyungsoo’s bed, and they had fallen onto his face with a soft bump while he was napping. Dusty, he thought the smell of the letters was.

Carefully, he unsealed one of the two envelopes and poked his fingers through the gap and pulled out a letter. This one said that he was allowed to take several days off from school to help his recovery – which was a very good thing since Kyungsoo wasn’t sure if he could stand having to narrate the story about his heroic moments to the other students.

The second one, as he had already guessed, was – oh, it was only a warning letter. Kyungsoo was suspicious of this so he observed the piece of paper and even casted several spells to see if there were some concealed words. He looked at its back, being sceptical since it was not in the school administration’s nature to be easy on rules violators. Truth be told, Kyungsoo had expected himself to be sent back to home for a month to reflect on his actions.  

He raised his head, alarmed, when he heard somebody knocking on his door. It was quite embarrassing but he was actually afraid that the person behind the door was somebody who was sent by the principal to clarify the ‘misunderstanding’ regarding the sent letters. Maybe he was supposed to have a month of reflection instead of a harmless warning letter that meant nothing.

When he opened the door, though, he found himself being shoved aside as a person rushed inside and slammed the door. Kyungsoo frowned when he saw that it was Byun Baekhyun, the real rules violator, and the sole reason why Kyungsoo had gotten burnt in the first place. Kyungsoo knew that he was supposed to freeze Baekhyun to death when they met each other’s eyes, at least. Or that’s what he pushed himself to think.

But what happened next was Kyungsoo getting a slight headache, which made him take an urgent trip to the kitchen and took the pills that Chanyeol had supplied him.

“Are you alright?”

Kyungsoo almost coughed upon hearing the question. Baekhyun should’ve thought that before he burnt the building or shoved Kyungsoo aside. “Why are you here?”

Baekhyun shrugged. “Because my body is here,” he answered casually before he sat on Kyungsoo’s chair by the study desk. “Aside from that rush for life, you seem mostly fine.”

“I’m close to what you call fine but I’m not in the mood for anything stupid now.”

“Is this how the secretly rebellious top student gets angry?”

That question brought confusion to Kyungsoo. “Rebellious? Is this because of the fire?”

A thin smile was formed on Baekhyun’s lips, his chin automatically raised. In his right hand, Kyungsoo noticed, was something shaped irregularly but unmistakably a hint of growing fire. The fire grew slowly, as if Baekhyun actually wanted to , like Baekhyun was urging him to do something about it.

But he didn’t take the bait, and just watched as Baekhyun pumped his fist, and the fire disappeared in an instant. There was something akin to amusement in Baekhyun’s eyes, and Kyungsoo really, really, was refraining himself from doing anything nonsensical. He didn’t want to ‘accidentally’ freeze Baekhyun’s head. Though, with Baekhyun’s exceptional ability to manipulate fire, Kyungsoo was pretty sure that the ice would’ve melted right away.

“It’s not my fault,” Baekhyun suddenly blurted, “that you’re injured; you’re not supposed to be involved at all.”

“And run like you did?” Kyungsoo asked spontaneously, and then he noticed the change of temperature in the room. That definitely didn’t have anything to do with the tension. For a moment, Kyungsoo was worried that his room would be Baekhyun’s next victim.

“Why were you even there?” Baekhyun asked to shift the attention from his not-so-subtle outburst.

“Because my body was there.”

“No plagiarism allowed.”

“Why is it so important to know that?” Kyungsoo snapped. “The more important thing is how you went around being reckless and brought harm to others. I don’t like seeing that.”

“That’s not the case now!” Baekhyun defended himself. “The thing is, you brought troubles to yourself. You had a choice yet you went to fight the fire and even used defence magic. How stupid a top student can be? It’s offence magic for Pumpkin’s sake and we know how offence magic absorbs our shield.” Baekhyun paused for a while. “You could’ve died.”

Kyungsoo’s heart skipped a beat and he immediately blamed it on the rise of temperature. Surely it had something to do with that. “You could’ve died, too,” he enunciated each word hesitantly. “I’m pretty sure that’s why you ran.”

Baekhyun looked at Kyungsoo in suspicion. How did Kyungsoo know that the fire was over Baekhyun’s control? How could Kyungsoo estimate the length of Baekhyun’s ability and even got it right?

“How did you know?”

“Because I know.”

It didn’t seem like Kyungsoo was gonna reveal anything soon.