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Jaemin felt a sudden sharp pain on the side of his head. He lazily opened his eyes and was met by a black canvas of cloth. He looked up and saw his teacher staring angrily at him.

“We only have a few rules in this class”

        “One of them is simply to stay awake”

                “But how come it’s so hard for you to do something as simple as that?” Mr. Kim did not sound thrilled. Jaemin knew that what he did was wrong. But he had never fallen asleep in class before, this was his first time.

After falling asleep the night before, he only slept for three hours before he woke up again and couldn’t go back to sleep. He stayed on his bed, scrolling on his phone for a while in the hopes that he would get tired and fall asleep again. It happened after two hours, but he woke up again at five and couldn’t get back to sleep after that. The boy was not used to the different sleeping schedule he experienced the night before, this caused him to feel exhausted and tired as ever. He had no idea why he had slept so bad.

“This is not acceptable, and you will, therefore, have to help cleaning the school for the rest of the week”

                “This will give you plenty of time to think about your mistake”

Jaemin sighed and rubbed his eyes out of sleep. He gave his teacher a faint nod and corrected his posture before Mr. Kim walked away from Jaemin’s seat and back to the chalkboard.

He looked around, getting eye contact with a good number of people from class. This was the first time had ever gotten so much attention. He didn’t like it.  The stares were piercing into his skin, the sounds of soft whispers were apparent in his ears.

As if you guys have never done something like this before.

He cursed at them in his head. It wasn’t because he disliked the people from his class, he just never got past the beginning stages of acquaintance with any of them. He couldn’t call any of them “friend”.  

“Everyone be quiet”

                “Let’s continue class”

The sound of Mr. Kim’s sentences made Jaemin mentally thank him. The class continued after the whispers died down and the stares were now focusing on the teacher instead.

One more sigh was let out of Jaemin’s mouth before he turned his attention to Mr. Kim and started copying the notes on the board behind him.

--

Classes had ended but Jaemin was not going home for the next few hours. He wanted time to run, he just wanted to get this over with. Nobody would notice if he didn’t even try cleaning. As long as it looked clean, it should be fine.

The faster I finish, the earlier I’ll be able to leave.

He walked over to the janitor’s closet and opened the door. The closet was dark and smelled humid. Sticking his hand out, he reached for the walls of the closet and started searching for the light switch. His hand felt something plastic. He pressed the object which moved further into the wall and a split second after that the lights started flickering. The flickering neutralized, and he could see every item inside the closet. It was small and square, three out of four walls were hidden by shelves stacked with cleaning supplies, rags, towels, rubbing alcohol, brown soap, buckets and so on. Everything needed to keep the school clean and intact. He even noticed a somewhat large toolbox on the bottom shelf to his right.

He took a small step inside and grabbed a bucket, a few rags and some soap he could use to mix up with water. He stayed in the closet for a few more seconds, mentally preparing himself for the next few hours. He had nothing against cleaning, but he hated the sharp smell of cleaning agents, and his hands would always get dry after using the substances as they would never have gloves at home he could use.

Oh yeah, gloves.

He looked around for some rubber gloves, and found them placed to his left at head-height. He grabbed a pair and threw them into his bucket.

“I’m just gonna squeeze in here for a sec” a male voice notified Jaemin. He could feel the presence of the other body next to him in the small area.

          “Do you know where the rags are?” the voice asked.

Jaemin turned around and faced the male. His eyes got wide as he recognized the person immediately.

“You- “ he stuttered, his voice barely noticeable.

“Me?” the boy sounded confused. He then turned around and looked at Jaemin, copying the surprised expression. They looked at each other, both in shock of the sudden encounter. Jaemin didn’t say a word but pointed at an object behind the boy. The boy blinked, his look following Jaemin’s hand over to the rags Jaemin were pointing at.

       “Thank you” the boy’s voice sounded hoarse.

Jaemin couldn’t stop looking at the boy.

I'm going to try.

“What did you do to get cleaning duty?” Jaemin asked, breathing between every word.

The boy turned around. He was almost as tall as Jaemin was, only lacking by a few centimeters. He cleared his throat and looked down.

“Nothing”

Is he lying to me?

“What about you? What did you do?” it was the boy’s turn to ask now. Jaemin kept his eyes on the boy as he was starting to slowly look up.

“I slept in class” Jaemin admitted. A sudden boost of confidence hit him, he wanted to continue his sentence but didn’t know what to say. The boy, now looking at Jaemin, started to chuckle.

Eyes.

“My teacher thought I did something I didn’t do” the boy lost his smile, he seemed annoyed now.

                “It’s not that big of a deal, but I’m still bothered by it”

Jaemin nodded, understanding his irritation.

“Here, take these” Jaemin handed the boy his cleaning supplies, before he turned around and started collecting similar items.

                “Let’s help each other out”

                                                “We’ll finish faster this way”

The boy nodded and followed Jaemin out of the closet.

                                                                    “Let’s go”

I've decided to feed yall with pics for every chapter, thank me later
-A