Chapter 8: Count Me In

The Orchard Dorm
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It was a nice Saturday morning while Nari had slept on top of her piano again. She suddenly hears someone knocking and it causes her to abruptly get up and answer it. However, when she opened the door no one was there except a tiny letter someone must've dropped off. She brings it back inside and reads it as her next challenge. 

 

'Dear Jeong Nari right? Looks like your second challenge is to play a soccer match against me. It's fairly simple, I'll explain the rest of the rules when you meet me tomrrow at the soccer field and absolutely no cheating. Good Luck Cutie~

From yours truly, Luhan'

 

"A soccer match?" Nari muttered to herself feeling an uneasy feeling in her stomach settling in. 

 

A second later Jeanie teleports into her room with a manila folder in her hand.  "One file of Xi Luhan hot and fresh to read for you Ms. Jeong."

 

Nari looked inside feeling a bit guilty that she was reading everything about Luhan so she skimmed onto the part about his life involving soccer. As she skimmed through it Ms. Liu poofs up a power point presentation about Luhan as weird as this may have seemed. "The name is Xi Luhan, he is a second year at Sawatomi High and is fairly better known as one of the play boy/flower boys at this school. He has a bit of a reputation with the ladies but that's not entirely what he's known for. At the beginning of this year, he was appointed the new captain of the school's soccer team."

 

"Well that explains why he wanted to do a soccer match but how good is he?"

 

"Well I'll tell ya he's never missed a goal in his life. Every game he has always lead his team to victory. Last year they had the district championship and Luhan was claimed as the youngest athelete to have scored the most goals in a single quarter."

 

Nari just stopped reading and pursed her lips with worry. "That's it I'm going to lose." Ms. Liu just shook her head and made the power point slide disappear before joining Nari on the couch.

 

"Oh come on. Where's the bright side? Here I have an idea that'll help." Jeanie opens her palm and from thin air a pair of soccer cleats appeared.

 

"What are those?" Nari curiously asks out loud as her eyes scanned the odd shoes.

 

"These are handy helper cleats. These babies will instantly make your feet seem like they went through ten years of soccer training and well it won't be up to par with Luhan's skills but you can at least have a fighting chance."

 

"Whoa Jeanie isn't that cheating? That goes against everything Luhan asked not to do in the letter" Jeanie tried her best to lay the facts down as much as Nari wanted to play fair.

 

"Look it's the only way that you'll win."

 

"But Luhan specifically said no cheating. I have to play fair."

 

"Nari come on you know he's going to beat you to a pulp; no offense. You also need Luhan to be in this group so these may be your only way to win." 

 

"You know there are other options that could get me to win." She gets up and changes into a shirt and some gym shorts before heading out.

 

"Wait where are you going?"

 

"To the soccer field." she said like it was obvious. 

 

"Why?" Jeanie asked again a bit afraid of her answer.

 

"To practice. Since the challenge is tomorrow I'm going to start training really hard. 'll see you later Jeanie!"

 

She rushes out the door as Jeanie sighs but she didn't mind Nari rejecting her idea. In fact it made her smile at how Nari was a fair person. "Geez she's so reckless sometimes. But it's a good thing she didn't choose my way."

 

 

Chen and Luhan were walking down the hallway while Luhan was trying to ignore Chen's constant whining about his challenge with Nari tomorrow. "Chen I don't see why you're so worked up over this. This isn't even your challenge."

 

"Because it's not fair. You challenged her to something you know you're going to win at."

 

"Ah ah ah but she said it was our decision to chose what we would do as the bet. Besides why are you defending her? She's the one who got you into this whole boy band mess." Luhan stated while Chen didn't want to tell them the actual reason was that he actually liked being in the band.

 

"Ok first, it's because she's my friend." Luhan was a bit surprised and asked, "Since when did you guys become so chummy?"

 

He ignores his question and continues. "Two she defended me from getting my served on a platter by Woobin and his two stooges."

 

"You were bound to get what you deserved from Woobin anyways." The soccer prodigy just scoffs as they both walked over to the bleachers where Junmyeon was sitting working on his laptop as usual. 

 

"Even if you say I should go easy on her she'll still lose." 

 

"Well at least think about why you don't want to join the band." He stops from drinking his soda to list off his reasons and it was fairly simple, "It's stupid and I don't want to dance and sing to some stupid cute song that'll make the girls faint." he stops to think, "Although, that wouldn't be so bad. I get twice as many girls outside of this school."

 

"The poor kid. I bet she's wallowing in tears for tomorrow" Chen worriedly added in while Junmyeon disagreed.

 

"Um might want to guess again. She's over there by one of the soccer fields."

 

"What?" Luhan and Chen exclaimed at the same time before looking over where Junmyeon had pointed and just like he said they spoted Nari practicing with a soccer ball. Chen started to rub his eyes vigorously wondering if it was an illusion but it definitely wasn't. Luhan seemed to have a mixed look full of amusement and a bit of displeasure. 

 

"Stubborn and cute." Luhan chuckled as he painfully watched Nari trying to get the ball to move forward. "But she still needs a lot of work." 

 

"At least she's trying." Chen defended but that didn't help when she fell flat on her face.

 

Luhan scoffs and couldn't bear to watch. "Trying yeah but she's awful even for trying that's for sure. But you know what fine." he starts walking down the bleachers puzzling the other two. 

 

"Where're you going?" Junmyeon asked Luhan. 

 

"I'm going to be a good samaritan and give her some proper pointers for our little match."

 

"Luhan please don't do anything stupid." Chen warned but Luhan waved his hand dismissively and jogs by a couple girls who fainted at his smile.

 

Meanwhile, Junmyeon and Chen shook their heads in disgust.  "You know I can't understand why girls fall for him." the troll wondered out loud while Junmyeon thought the exact same thing.

 

They watched him as he jogged over and stopped her from kicking the ball in the wrong direction. He had put on his signature, heart fluttering smile that was for sure to make any girls heart swoon but to the two friends they thought it was too much.  "He's too flirty." They both commented while Luhan sweetly smiled towards Nari like the charming prince he was.

 

 

"So I just put in your grades from your recent English test that you all took last week. Also I'll be emailing it to your parents since it's your first test."

 

As the teacher passes back the tests, Chanyeol seemed more fidgety than others around him. Finally, he gets his paper back and the score showed he got an 80 out of a 100. It was a passing grade but one point down and it could've been a C plus. It was even terrifying to think about getting below a B. What was worse was having to hear about it from them. 

 

Suddenly he feels his phone vibrating inside his desk and secretly takes a little peek at the missed call and seeing the caller id made him shake and nervously tap his foot. Guess he won't enjoy lunch period today. 

 

When the bell for lunch rung Chanyeol could feel a bottomless pit forming in his stomach. He seemed to be in a rush and quick

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noelle0719
Thanks to Leefatyn for spending probably hours making this!!

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Sharo001
708 streak #1
Chapter 30: Welcome back, hope you’ve been well. I absolutely loved this chapter. It’s good to see Jongin and Yixing finally working together, it was a long time coming. Dongwoo’s statement summed up everything perfectly, but it’s not going to matter how much work they do.😏

It’s also good to see everyone getting along with Nari, with the exception of Baek. Hopefully, he will come around soon and kill it with his vocals in the process. Looking forward to what you have in store for us, this update was such a treat.
Fireflies123 #2
Chapter 30: Thank you for the update. I love this fic so much the wait is always worth a new chapter. I love the development of the story in this chapter. I’m so happy Jongin and Yixing made amends and I can’t wait to see how the other exos accomplish their parts. Baekhyun still seems so hostile towards Nari but hopefully he can change his attitude towards her as they work together for their debut.