“Hyuck, it’s your turn to edit.” He heard Renjun say in greeting when he had entered the art room that they used as their meeting room. “Make sure there are no typos.”

“Yes sir,” He sighed out, making a show of dropping his bag on the floor while slumping into his seat. He hadn’t even noticed the rest of the team looking at him in concern. 

“Uh…are you okay, man?” He heard Jaemin ask and nearly laughed hysterically at the absurdity of the question. After all, his appearance was anything but okay. His hair was dishevelled, the bags under his eyes were as deep as ever and even his tanned skin had lost its glow. He truly felt like he had woke up and become an ugly villain in one of those terrible adaptations of fairy tales.

“Yeah, you don’t look so good…” Jeno commented, exchanging a glance with Jaemin who was beside him. 

“Maybe you should rest, hyung,” Chenle whispered, causing him to sigh before looking up at the rest of the news team.

“It’s okay, everyone,” He said wistfully, imagining that this was going to be his deathbed and that the laptop screen of the latest article would be on his tombstone. “I was very very busy last night doing some chemistry work and if I die now, I’ll happy because-“

“Hyuck-oppa, you didn’t even have chemistry this week,” Soeun interrupted his monologue and he glared at her for interrupting his moment. She simply raised an eyebrow in response and held his gaze. 

“Now that I think about it…” Jisung wondered out loud, tapping a finger on his chin in thought and looking up at the ceiling. “Didn’t you say that you dropped chemistry two weeks ago?” Jisung asked, looking at him in curiosity as everyone else gave him a disappointed look.

“Okay, fine, you got me,” He surrendered, pulling the laptop closer to him since he hadn’t brought his glasses. “I was up late thinking about random .”

“So you were thinking about a guy,” Chenle concluded, nodding his head to himself and Donghyuck swore that Jisung had smiled in adoration at the other. “Who is it this time? Mark Lee again?”

“Again? Hold up,” Jaemin exclaimed before he had a chance to deny the accusation. “Again?!”

“I have never stayed up late thinking about a guy-“

“You seemed to do it a lot when Yukhei-ge first came,” Chenle interrupted, smirking as triumphantly as Donghyuck when a conversation had gone his way. However, their current conversation was so far away from what it usually was. 

“Okay, so maybe I have but I have never-“

“You drooled over him at lunch a while ago,” Renjun deadpanned, causing him to flinch at the quite traumatic experience of finding drool on his chin when all he was doing was staring at the wall behind Mark Lee (not at how happy he seemed with his current popular friends, absolutely not). 

“Why were you up late, Hyuck?” Jeno asked him and he sighed, inwardly admitting defeat as the events of last night flooded his mind.

“I think I ed up,” He said instead of answering the question but he knew that his friends would understand that this was his answer. “Like…really bad…”

“What did you do now?” Renjun asked him, already exasperated since it was usually the other who would clean up the mess that he had made. 

“I think…in my second interview…I pushed Mark Lee too far and…” He took a deep breath, keeping his eyes trained on the ‘H’ key of the laptop in front. “And now he wants nothing to do with me.”

Contrary to his prediction of all of his friends giving him a condescending look combined with a simple ‘Yeah? What did you say this time? Was it about his hair?’, Donghyuck was met with four condescending looks, one of his friends trying to stifle their laughter and the last one laughing out openly like he was a maniac.

“Trust me, Hyuck,” Jaemin wheezed out, wiping a stray tear from his eye as he smiled widely at him. “He wants everything to do with you- ow!” Donghyuck watched in bewilderment as Jeno slapped the area that he had previously hit once more. 

“What he means is,” Jeno started, turning to look at him with a gentle smile. “Mark-hyung said that but he doesn’t mean it.”

“Quite the opposite actually!” Jaemin butted in before Jeno glared at him and forcibly dragged him out of the room and down the hall - heading to wherever they needed to be at that moment. 

“I think you should start editing, Hyuck,” Renjun said to him quietly before he was waving and exiting the art room with Soeun’s hands clasped tightly in his. As much as he wanted to look away, Donghyuck couldn’t help but feel lonely at the sight - especially when Jisung and Chenle had begun to take turns playing a game on the younger’s phone. Sighing to himself, Donghyuck tried his best to focus and edit the piece in front of him. 

Forced To Hide - A News Team Exclusive

“I don’t see what’s wrong with them. They’re just normal people, right?” ~ Kim Yerim

“Sorry but being openly gay is way better than being closeted.” ~ Wong Yukhei / Huang Xuxi

“Why…do you need to bash people for who they are?” ~ Mark Lee / Lee Minhyung

Over the course of the past few weeks, we couldn’t help but notice the immense backlash on Wong Yukhei (otherwise known as Huang Xuxi) after he had willingly admitted that he was gay. As members os the school community who sees this school as family, the news team came to a mutual agreement to investigate the case to reveal that being queer is okay. Due to this decision, we were able to interview three of the most influential people within our school: Kim Yerim, Wong Yukhei and Mark Lee (otherwise known as Lee Minhyung). It was refreshing to hear their words and opinions on this sensitive topic. 

“They’re not bad people,” Says Kim Yerim, one of the most loved students of the school by both peers and staff alike. “I’m friends with Yukhei and the only bad thing that’s going for him is that he’s so loud.” After a while of interviewing her, Na Jaemin (one of our interviewers) reports that ‘Kim Yerim was very calm about the whole situation, even resorting to questioning her own uality after the “coming out” of her friend’. “I can’t help but admire them, you know?” Yerim had said out of the blue during their interview. “They’re just…amazing for knowing this much about them at this age.”

Despite Kim Yerim’s claims, Wong Yukhei had denied that he wasn’t that amazing in an interview with Lee Jeno (another one of our interviewers). “It’s not a superpower, it’s just part of who I am,” Yukhei had stated. “And now that part of me is out in the open.” After a few more questions that had revolved around the same topic of Yukhei thinking that being gay was not superior, Lee Jeno states that his interview with Yukhei had ‘really widened his mindset in terms of how gay people act’. Sadly, there does seem to be a stereotype surrounding these people - Yukhei had even agreed when it was brought into the conversation - but it is important for all of us to know that there is no particular ‘personality’ when it comes to being gay. “Some like to act like that but others don’t, you