He'd been hit by a basketball before, so the mixture of pain and humiliation the moment when its rough surface came in contact with his clean and well-hydrated face, was but a familiar feeling. Different this time was the blood that came trickling out of his nose, to the surprise and mild excitement of all – except maybe for the person who had inflicted the harm in the first place. There were murmurs, a few gasps, a muttered apology, and the obvious suggestion that he go and see the nurse.

“And after that, you come back here,” Mr. Hong the PE teacher made a point of saying, as he knew exactly where Kibum and his subject stood.

And Kibum left. Not to get checked up by the nurse, not to clean up in the shower – he just left.

He walked and walked away from the lunacy of it all, the hormones in his young blood raging like hordes of tiny dragons. They were all furious and ready to break free, and they were all confused by absolutely everything. The nauseating warm liquid kept coming out of his face and, forgetting himself for a moment, he his lips. The metallic taste of his blood made him spit. It was terrible, and it was delightful, too. But the dragons were still angry, maybe even angrier than a minute ago.

When the dizziness became too much to control, Kibum sat down on the grass and crossed his legs. His temples were pounding.

He remained still for a few minutes, his breath slowed down and deepened, and he could feel the smell of fuel – his defiant departure had brought him to the parking lot.

And when his mind became clearer, he knew – and dreaded – what was going to happen next. Kibum heard the raindrops – not here, no, for the day was sunny and dry, but somewhere faraway, yet so close. The humid smell rising from the wet asphalt, the clothes clinging to his body, the fabric heavy with water, and the new, odd feeling spreading under his skin, making his mouth dry and his pulse faster.

“Please, stop. Please, stop,” he repeated aloud. “Please, stop.”

But Kibum's mind stayed true to itself until the bitter end – it flipped his reason off and continued showing him the forbidden images, and his body quietly gave up by letting the images bring back the physical sensations, too. They were unwanted, but also not unpleasant, and he had learned by now that that kind of pleasure was the loneliest kind.

Kibum didn't want even more noise about the fact that he had never come back to the PE class, and only went to the shower when everybody else was gone. The nurse had sent him off with a headache pill, which he was now realizing he needed.

He was tying his laces and feeling less groundless wrath about nothing and everything at once, when someone spoke to him:

“You okay?”

Kibum looked up and put his hands on his hips assertively.

“I'm not made of paper, nerd.”

“Look, I'm sor–”

“Can I even get through a day without you ruining it for me?”

Jinki dug his hands into his pockets, his lips puckering as he thought over the answer.

“Well, I'm sorry for the ball, even though I didn't hit you on purpose,” he said with an earnest nod. “I'm kind of sorry about the Arisa thing, even though you weren't seeing her when I went out with her and it was nothing, I'm not that sorry for winning the debate because it was fair and square, so…” He shrugged. “Apart from the ball, maybe it's just you, ruining your own days. And I'm not sorry for that.”

His offhandedness was offensive. Was he not a hormonal youth? Couldn't he understand the wrath?

“Is that your apology?” Kibum asked, beginning to heat up.

Jinki looked at the ceiling, pretending to consider something.

“Yeah, it is,” he said simply.

His Adam's apple, with all that jumping up and down, was oddly distracting.

“Unless there's something else that we should discuss. That you may or may not have been avoiding for way too long now.”

Kibum stood up to stuff his uniform into his bag.

“Just leave me alone. Don't talk to me,” he warned through clenched teeth. And it was, indeed, a warning, for there was something in Jinki lately that just stirred those dragons up.

“Okay, wuss.”

Kibum might as well have shot arrows from his eyes.

“Are you calling me that because I'm not conventionally boyish?”

Jinki looked calm, but his jaw was clenched, too.

“No, I'm calling you that because you're a conventional coward.”

Kibum pressed his lips together firmly.

“Don't call me that.”

“You've been calling me names, so deal with it. Coward.”

Why was the room so hot suddenly?

Kibum's fingers tightened their grip around the belt of his bag.

“Wanna get punched?”

“I'm gonna crush you,” Jinki replied confidently.

“Is that a threat?”

“No, it's just what's gonna happen, because I'm stronger than you.”

In a normal setting, Kibum would have considered that for a moment, but now it only riled him up more. He was beginning to see red, and every second of self-constraint was a betrayal to the wrath and his self-esteem, too. He was not a fighter, no – but big things seemed to be at work now, and not understanding them was maddening.

The wrath wanted a sacrifice, and its persistent demand boomed over all the other voices.

It didn't help that Jinki was letting his own exasperation spill into his words.

“The more you try to sweep it under the rug, the more of a wuss it's gonna make you.”

Kibum's bag dropped to the floor with a thump. The air was positively devoid of oxygen now – it was all hostile electricity.

He closed the distance between them and Jinki squared up.

“I'll fight you, I swear,” Kibum hissed through his teeth.

Not a muscle moved on his classmate's soft-lined face.

“Bring it on?”

Sparks were beginning to fly, and there was no turning back now, but – Kibum just couldn't throw a punch at that face, not yet. Jinki was clearly underestimating how strong his opponent could be with the wrath by his side. He'd get his nose broken – that's how it would start and end.

“You don't want me to,” Kibum said, feeling like a great and furious god showing one last bit of mercy before going on a rampage.

He heard the rain drops again – surely, they were just inside his head? He needed to fight them away.

“You still did it,” Jinki answered, relentless. “And you can't just wish it away.”

His eyes were looking into him, seeing everything. Knowing everything. Opening locks that nobody had the keys for.

And something inside Kibum snapped. He had no time to process what was about to happen before it did, and a part of him had already begun panicking and b with regret when he swung his arm back to commit the first act of true violence in his life. He did take a good swing, and would have done the significant damage he'd both dreaded and longed for in some dark primitive corner of his mind, only the other boy had seen it coming. Kibum's arm was caught, blocking the hit, and the next second, he was flipped over and trapped in a painless, but humiliating choke hold from behind.

“How dare you! Let me go!” Kibum yelled, struggling for freedom.

Jinki swayed and staggered back a few steps, but kept his hold.

“So that you can try to hit me again?” His voice was strained with effort, too.

“Yes,” Kibum spat. His attempts to break free kept falling through, but he wasn't giving up so easily. He pretended to be racked by exaggerated coughs. “You're blocking my air.”

Jinki removed his arm from the other's neck and wrapped it around his chest instead. That didn't make it easier to escape.

“God, what's wrong with you?!” he cried in frustration after almost getting kicked on the leg.

Kibum could feel Jinki's unsteady breath on his neck. They were both getting tired.

But it wasn't only that – his head was beginning to swim for a different reason. He could feel everything. Muscles on muscles. The friction. The strain. The heat. The impossible closeness of another body pressed against his own.

You can't just wish it away.

“Kibum, listen,” Jinki panted, still holding the other tight.

“What?” Kibum growled, trying to elbow him in the ribs.

“I can't fight today. It's my mom's birthday and I can't show up with a bloody lip.”

That was generous of him to say, Kibum thought: even through the hormonal haze in his brain, he was now able to see that the physical balance here was not exactly in his favor. As much as he did want to slice his classmate's lip with his fist, he was more likely to be the injured party in that scenario.

He stopped struggling for a moment.

“Now, when you're calm, I'll let you go, okay?”

“Whatever,” Kibum muttered, anything but calm inside. His heart was still pounding in his ears.

Jinki's arms slipped from under his weakened grasp, and for a second, it felt that the floor had turned into water – the other boy actually helped Kibum keep his balance.

“You alright?”

Kibum pushed his helping hand away and turned around to get his bag. He didn't answer, and alright he wasn't.

Jinki rubbed the tip of his nose self-consciously, watching him.

“Um... My mom said hi. She asks about you sometimes.”

“Tell her I said hi too. And wish her a happy birthday for me,” Kibum said in a more civil, sincere tone, and the other boy nodded.

But his voice was completely different when he added, his eyes hard:

“I was out of shape today, but I'll beat you next time.”

“Sure,” Jinki sighed when the door slammed behind the other.

He wanted to say that he regretted his fleeting flash of anger, that he had picked the wrong strategy yet again – but what was Kibum if not a closed door to him? He'd always in the dark, looking for words that would make sense, and Kibum would always walk away with an impenetrable mask of disdain on his face. Time after time.

Why travel?

When every morning I wake

to the leaning tower of Pisa

casting a shadow

on everything that was certain before

Why travel?

When feverish dreams

take me places I wanna run from

show sights I am sick of

but can't look away from to save my life

How to know where to go?

When everything that I want

is far out of reach

and yet it's so close

that my breath grazes it when I wish it away

How can I leave?

Trapped in a choke hold

I rushed into head first

Even if I were free

and saw the path clearly

and had the directions

Who can say I won't still

look the other way?

Maybe travel's just not

for people like me.

“Alright, time to turn in your assignments.”

Kibum took a last glance over his poem, folded his sheet of white paper in half meticulously, then in half again, and stuffed it into his pocket. Then, he turned around to take the pile of his classmates' papers and hand it over to the teacher.

Mr. Kim gave them a text to read for the next class, and just as he finished his last sentence, the bell announced their freedom.

While Kibum got up and slipped the text book that he had brought in vain back into his bag, he had the unmistakable feeling of being observed. In the corner of his eye, the teacher was standing by his desk expectantly, while the other students were dragging their sleepy bodies out into the hall.

“Is there something you would like to submit, Kibum?” Mr. Kim asked in that calming, musical voice of his.

The boy bit his lip. Dammit. He should have been faster.

He coughed to give himself time to word his answer.

“I'm sorry, teacher, but I couldn't think of anything.”

It was only semi-untrue, after all.

The man tilted his head. Somehow his eyes were always smiling, and always looking right into one's heart. And if the eyes are truly the window of the soul, Mr. Kim's soul had to be what the Hubble telescope sees when it navigates the endless shining fields of the Universe.

Kibum's mind wandered off.

“Is travel such a hard topic to write about?”

The boy shrugged.

“Not if you have some experience, I guess.”

“You have travelled before though, right?”

“Field trips are not inspiring.”

“What's inspiring to you?”

“Things that can't be put into words.”

Mr. Kim smiled.

“And you did put something into words on that paper,” he reminded him softly.

Kibum pursed his lips, not knowing where to look.

One obvious side effect of his teacher's all-seeing gaze was that he couldn't hide from it when he needed to, and the shame accompanying that feeling was the immutable bonus.

“That… that doesn't really fit the assignment.”

“Yet you took the time of the lesson and used the paper I gave you to write it.”

Kibum gulped and bowed his head.

“Just give me an F.”

“I can't rate something I never received.”

“You can put in the absence mark.”

Mr. Kim gave a sigh. His eyes were kind, yes, but even his patience had limits.

“Kibum, I'd like to remind you that I'm the teacher here and I have some authority over my own actions.”

The ‘bonus’ feeling of shame no longer felt like a side-effect. It pretty much conquered everything else.

“I'm waiting.”

The man held out his hand and, as if he wasn't the one controlling his own body, Kibum felt his arm fold and his trembling fingers slip under his jacket to retrieve the problematic paper. In the middle of handing it to Mr. Kim he had the impulsive urge to crush it and stuff it into his mouth like a comedy spy, and was a little disappointed with himself for not doing it in the end.

The next urge, as he looked on while Mr. Kim unfolded his paper with care and deliberation, was to snatch it out of his gentle hands and run for it, run until he was out of the school, the district, town, country – in short, until he did have the material to write about.

The teacher read the thing forever. Kibum had grown all old in the time it took.

“It is a good poem,” Mr. Kim said at last with a nod. He folded the sheet back carefully.

“I don't think it's right stylistically,” Kibum mumbled, the hot flush of embarrassment rising to his cheeks.

“Did you want it to be stylistically right when you were writing it?”

“Um, no. I just wrote what I felt. Tried to.”

“You tried to put into words what can't be put into words.” Mr. Kim gave the boy his paper back, which the latter quickly hid in his jacket. “And you succeeded, which is something you can be proud of.”

He clicked his green pen and leaned over the class journal.

“I have to give you a B minus, Kibum. Do you understand why?”

He looked up briefly and saw distant galaxies in his teacher's eyes.

“Because it's inappropriate,” he murmured.

Mr. Kim smiled again.

“No. Because you were asked to write an essay on your most exciting traveling experience. No Freudian metaphors. Just lighthearted storytelling.”

The boy bowed his head even lower than before.

“Yes, teacher...”

He had already said goodbye and made for the door when Mr. Kim spoke again.

“It was a while ago for me, but I remember what it's like. All that anger and confusion.”

If his mother had said something like that, Kibum would have instinctively shrunk away and taken it as an intervention, a threat to his privacy, but having someone like Mr. Kim identify his demons by name felt much more like validation. He looked back and listened.

His teacher was stacking up papers to fit them into a folder.

“You want control over something, so you fight with yourself. But to win, you need to listen to your genuine feelings... And to be able to listen, you may need to stop fighting to begin with.”

“That is so complicated,” Kibum half-whispered, fighting with himself more than ever.

How he wished he could tell someone everything, to have someone share at least a part of the weight that he was trembling under, alone. But he couldn't just tell his teacher what he had done. Too much shame involved.

“Doesn't mean you shouldn't try,” Mr. Kim countered, patting the boy's shoulder as he passed him on the way into the hall.

Maybe he's right, Kibum mused, watching his teacher walk away in his well-fitted gray suit. But he doesn't know everything.

How could he stop fighting when it was the only thing that was keeping him sane? How could he give up the scarce control he still had over his being? Not only did he have the wrath, but the pride, too – he was not the type of guy to be okay living in chaos. Not some regular fool blindly following his emotions. That would never be him.

He splashed some cold water onto his face to help him feel refreshed, but nothing happened. Water drops trickled down his face and fell back into the sink, and he was still impossibly tense. His monsters had grown so big and hungry that he couldn't contain them anymore. That forest fire raging inside his chest couldn't be remedied by a spoonful of water – it had spread way too deep and too far.

The only thing Kibum could do now is to rush home, bury himself under his blanket and count the minutes it would take his mind to switch off and let him have some temporary peace before the madness continued.

But what were the monsters saying?

“It's not fair. Not fair!”

And that was all.

The main thing that his personal forest fire made him want to do was cry at the injustice of it.

He asked Ms. Park to appoint somebody else to tutor him on her subject.

The woman looked up from about five copybooks open in front of her. Somehow, she didn't look surprised, but it didn't seem that she understood, either.

“Didn't you ask for him yourself?”

Kibum exhaled.

“I did, but... It was before... I asked for him because he's good with the science stuff, but I don't think we suit each other well.”

To put it mildly.

Ms. Park said nothing at first. She scanned Kibum's tense frame up and down as if there was something strange about him, but she couldn't identify what.

“In your life, you will have to deal with people you don't get along with all the time, and there will be no room for picking and choosing. Either you do the work and achieve the result or you quit.”

“Yes, but won't it hurt the studies? If you don't have a good contact, it's distracting,” Kibum insisted, because he always did.

Ms. Park set her pen down and put both elbows on the desk, leaning forward.

“Interesting...” she said with just a faint hint of a smirk. “Because Jinki also dropped by and said that you would probably come and ask for a different tutor.”

Kibum's heart took a nauseating leap inside his chest.

“When?”

“About ten minutes ago, actually. He asked me not to take your request seriously, because you're just being lazy...”

Kibum opened his mouth to disagree, but Ms. Park continued in a louder voice:

“…And warned me that you will argue and come up with a hundred reasons, but it's just because you're stubborn.”

“That's exactly why we don't suit each other,” Kibum replied, already boiling with indignation that he could barely conceal.

But the teacher was done here.

“You two are big boys now and I'm sure you can work it out by yourselves.”

“But, Miss Pa-”

“I have work to do, Kim Kibum. If you have nothing important to tell me, go home and do some studying instead of arguing with your teacher. Maybe then you won't need a tutor.”

The young woman didn't look amused anymore – she was plainly annoyed with him.

Kibum had a lot of things to tell her and the rest of the world that kept putting walls between him and a possibility of inner peace. But it wasn't ‘important’, as Miss Park had said. It was just a matter of his spiritual life and death – nothing more, indeed.

His steps echoed off the walls as he walked down the empty hall of the second floor. Everybody else had gone home to munch on their lunches and play their video games, and the school was eerily quiet. The hot sunshine coming through the tall uncovered windows made him squint his puffy eyes as he passed them by. Like the school, he was vacant now – even demons took nap breaks sometimes. He could live with himself for the rest of that day.

Suddenly, he spotted a figure at the end of the hall. He strode toward them without slowing down, his throat getting dry again. Even before his bleary eyes focused on the familiar face, a pang of recognition had stricken.

It was Jinki. He was just standing there by the restroom door, hands in pockets, the unlikely pinnacle of all that was unjust and unfair. The constant source of frustration and humiliation. The mental terrorist. The joke.

Kibum's bag hit the floor with a thud as he flung it off his shoulder mid-walk. Then he ran, ran like he was taking part in a marathon that he would usually sit through while his classmates sweated making their rounds on the track. Teeth and fists clenched, he flew like a rocket, like a fierce warrior charging into the battle on foot, sword glistening in the bloody sunshine.

Jinki looked on with rounded eyes as the distance between them got shorter and shorter, and it was probably a sensible move on his part to set his own backpack down – although perhaps it would have been even wiser if he had removed himself out of the way completely. Because Kibum did not look like he had an intention of stopping, ever, or doing anything to avoid a collision.

He gulped, and only one thought crossed his mind as he awaited his fate: We'll have to do this, won't we.

Hi, everyone! Thank you so much for reading my story, I appreciate your comments and upvotes, you made my week! I went to see Kibum at KBS today, and it was wonderful. Let's give a lot of love and support to him ^^  I hope you enjoyed this chapter too. As always, I'll be happy to know your thoughts, and have a great Friday and weekend. x L