Chapter 3 – Purely coincidental

As it turned out, Soojung was Baekhyun’s female counterpart. They were both employed as theatre coordinators, except that Baekhyun preferred a more hands-on approach to coaching the students to Soojung’s more reserved method of observing, assessing, and rearranging, as she’d put it.

Chanyeol watched with wide, curious eyes as they bickered on stage. He’d come in early, as requested, to work on the new music for the play, only to be met by an exasperated-looking Amber pacing outside the theatre doors.

“They’re arguing,” she’d said to Chanyeol in lieu of a greeting upon spotting him. Chanyeol hadn’t understood until she’d opened the doors, giving him a chance to take the scene in himself:

Baekhyun and Soojung had been standing centre stage, with props strewn all around them, practically screaming at each other. It had made for quite the stark difference to their tight-lipped, mild-mannered dynamics the previous night.

Amber had then led Chanyeol down the auditorium rows and into a seat in the front row. There were a few dreary-eyed students already seated there, slumped down in their seats in an attempt to disappear from view.

“Verdict?” Amber asked them as she sank down into the seat between them and Chanyeol.

“An hour and forty minutes,” one of them deadpanned, looking at his watch. The other student just grunted in agreement.

“I-I’m sorry, what exactly is going on?” Chanyeol asked hesitantly from his seat beside Amber.

The teacher turned to face him, hands fidgeting anxiously where they were stuffed inside the wide front pocket of her hoodie, before she answered, “oh, no, I was just asking how long they’ve been fighting for. Sehun and Jongin are playing two of the main leads in the play, so they got here early to rehearse, but they’ve been stuck here since they arrived.”

Chanyeol just nodded in agreement, before his eyes were forced back to the two bickering teachers on the stage as their volume slowly started to flood the vast, empty space within the proscenium theatre, echoing off the high ceilings and walls.

“—then maybe you should have told me that they were struggling with the choreography!” Soojung was screaming. Chanyeol grimaced at the shrill sound and ducked down in his seat, effectively emulating the two students to Amber’s left.

“Well how are we supposed to improve when you’re busy taking up the whole stage?” muttered the boy—Sehun—directly beside Amber. She lightly slapped him on the arm, silently pressing him to shut up. His classmate let out a quiet snort at that, though he also fell quiet when Amber offered him a pointed glare.

“How am I supposed to tell you something like that when you’re too busy ranting about ing stage props?!” came Baekhyun’s enraged reply. His voice was far more levelled than Soojung’s, but he still managed to sound intimidatingly angry.

“If Taeyeon were still here, she’d have this all under wraps by now—” Soojung began, ignoring his question, but she never managed to finish her sentence because Baekhyun was suddenly advancing on her with a vexed expression, the likes of which Chanyeol had never seen before.

“Don’t you dare bring her into this!” he bellowed then, voice finally raising to meet Soojung’s own, startling the duo’s small audience. Chanyeol’s eyes went wide at the outburst, completely transfixed on the man. He looked almost scary like this; chest puffed out with his hands balled into fists at his sides, the veins in his arms cording furiously all the way up and under his T-shirt sleeves. He was staring Soojung down, towering over her due to their proximity, and it made her seem very small suddenly; almost powerless, like an antelope that had just been spotted by a lion.

The man’s different sides seemed practically paradoxical. How could someone go from a leather-clad, -on-legs stage foreman that screamed machismo like he’d been when Chanyeol had first encountered him, to a dorky, unremarkable teacher like the one he’d later appeared as for a fleeting moment in the canteen, all the way to the flustered, dishevelled mess he’d been at the meeting the previous evening—and now to this? The hostility on his face now, the way his eyes gleamed with anger; it didn’t suit him. It made Chanyeol feel anxious, like anything anyone did now could set him off, push him even further. The true extent of Baekhyun’s anger was unclear to Chanyeol, but he looked like he was about to explode any second, and Chanyeol didn’t want to bear witness to it.

Soojung looked like she was about to say something back, but a voice from the backstage area cut her off before she could. It sounded like it might be Jongdae, but Chanyeol couldn’t tell.

“If the two of you would just settle down—” it began, but was halted rather abruptly by the two teachers as they yelled “shut up!” in unison, once again jolting the small group in the audience.

Amber stood up then, finally losing her well-kept temper as she replied in an annoyed tone, “no, you two need to shut up! Otherwise we’ll never resolve this and—”

She was cut off mid-sentence by Soojung, the coordinator’s arms flying up in exasperation as she exclaimed, “oh, no, no, no; you—” and she turned to Amber then, pointing a disdainful glare at her, “—don’t get to in! You’ve been of absolutely no help all morning!”

Amber went very still at that, obviously hurt by Soojung’s harsh words. Beside Soojung, Baekhyun was giving the woman an incredulous look. He took a step back, away from her, and just looked at her for a second, seemingly also taken aback by what she had just said.

Finally, he seemed to collect his thoughts, said “you’re not the grande dame of this production, Soojung! We aren’t your lackeys! We’re equals; so we either work together, or this doesn’t work at all.”

Soojung didn’t protest at that. Instead, she kept quiet. Her eyes were searching Baekhyun’s face, as if they were looking for some surreptitious detail that might be hidden there. Eventually though, it seemed that she gave up on whatever she was looking for, threw an exasperated “hmph!” at her co-coordinator and stomped off the stage towards the backstage area, her heels tapping furiously as she went.

Once she was out of ear-shot, Amber finally sprung back to life. She swung herself up onto the stage in one smooth movement and walked over to Baekhyun, exclaimed, “can you believe what she just said to me?!”

He didn’t answer her, though. His face had gone blank, utterly void of emotion as he turned away from the group and walked towards the stage exit opposite to the one Soojung had just left through. There, he picked up a water bottle from where it stood just off stage. The group remained quiet, still wide-eyed and staring as he unscrewed the lid and took a sip. The sound of the water sloshing as Baekhyun drank filled the almost deafening silence in the room. It sounded unreasonably loud to Chanyeol, considering just how far across the stage the man was standing.

Once the bottle was half-empty, Baekhyun turned back around to them. The strange expression from before was gone, instead replaced by a firm, authoritarian stare that was directed towards the two students to Chanyeol’s left.

“Well?” he called to them. “What are you waiting for? Get this mess cleaned up and start rehearsing.” The boys didn’t need to be told twice. Leaping up from their seats, they made haste in relocating to the stage.

Once the two coordinators had separated for a while though, things seemed to have settled down. Soojung had resorted to helping the two students get to grips with the choreography—with Jongdae supplying the backing music for them from the control room backstage—whilst Baekhyun focused on reworking the music score with Amber and Chanyeol down in the orchestra pit. Thankfully, Chanyeol was now equipped with proper writing material, so he could quietly jot down notes as the two of them threw ideas at him, occasionally glancing over at where the students were working through the choreography on stage.

Despite the now-focused atmosphere, Chanyeol was finding it a little hard to come up with musical concepts and reworks for a piece he was so unfamiliar with. The fact that he was in such close proximity to Baekhyun wasn’t helping, either. The man was dressed relatively casually today, in a pair of jeans and a loose T-shirt, and his hair was back to its natural, fluffy state. Chanyeol found himself wanting to reach up and smooth the locks down for him where they stuck out around his head in a bright, auburn, wavy halo—

Thankfully, his sudden inappropriate urge to touch the coordinator was interrupted by a thoroughly worn-looking Amber, who had apparently decided they’d concentrated for long enough. Straightening where she was perched against the conductor’s stand, she clapped her hands together and called, “okay! Jongdae, cut the music. I need a smoke break.”

The two students on stage perked up at that—despite the disapproving look Soojung gave them—and after a few codswallop-excuses directed at the coordinator, they hurried after Amber, already pulling their cigarettes out of their respective pockets. Chanyeol quirked a brow at the sight, before heaving a sigh of relief. He’d been hunched over his notes for too long already, his shoulders were so tense he could feel a crick forming; he could definitely also do with a break, if only to process everything they’d already discussed that morning.

Standing up from his seat, Chanyeol stretched his arms over his head, his back cracking satisfactorily. His could feel his shirt riding up a little with the movement, and he hastily dropped his arms again in the hopes that it went unnoticed, before making his way out of the orchestra pit and heading up onto the stage. He could feel a pair of eyes on his back as he went, and it made a light blush creep onto his cheeks, though he pointedly paid the feeling no heed as he decided that he’d better finally take the chance to check out the control room if he was to spend any long periods of time there during the actual live production.

As he made his way onto the stage, it dawned on him that he was leaving Soojung and Baekhyun alone together. The thought made him still for a second, one foot already braced on the bottom step leading up to the stage.

Was that really a good idea after the way they’d been at each other’s throats earlier?

Well, it probably wasn’t, but they were both adults; they knew not to start an actual fight in a school. Or at least, that was what Chanyeol was going to tell himself. Brows furrowed decisively, he shook his head free of the thought, made his way up the stairs and into the backstage area.

***

Chanyeol quickly learnt that the backstage area was less so an area than it was an unnavigable maze. He had never seen a space so narrow packed so full of odds and ends; there were stage props lining the walls, worn from repeated use, the colours flaking, and tables, chairs—even a king bed!—scattered about, making Chanyeol draw his shoulders together to squeeze past them as he went. To top it all off, an array of disused light fixtures hung from the ceiling beams, the lampshades varying in size and hang, and as the light from the auditorium slowly faded into darkness and Chanyeol’s vision became impeded, he banged his head into a few of them, wincing pitiably each time.

Eventually, it became so dark that he could barely see anything at all. Huffing, Chanyeol resorted to scrabbling about with his arms extended out in front of him, feeling around for any obstacles that may be obstructing the path ahead as he edged his way forwards.

Unfortunately, due to his height, he missed the old piano that was jutting out a few inches below his hands where it had been shoved against the wall, and walked straight into it, his hip slamming painfully into the edge of the side-arm, forcing a drawn-out wail from him.

“Ah,” came a voice then. Jongdae. “I see you also couldn’t find the light switch.”

“Yeah,” Chanyeol wheezed where he was bent over with one hand braced against the piano, the other rubbing at his hip. “Where are you?!” he called out, his voice echoing off the various items of furniture crowding the cramped space.

Instead of receiving an answer, Chanyeol instead saw a light turn on in a room a short way ahead of him. It framed Jongdae’s silhouette where he was leaning against the doorframe as it seeped out into the dark passageway.

“Listen, you almost made it. Pretty good for someone who’s never had to navigate the backstage before,” Jongdae said as Chanyeol navigated his way over, careful not to knock into anything else as he reached him. “Shame on Minseok for not showing it to you on your first day,” he added in a mock-disapproval.

The control room was considerably less cramped than the walkway that led up to it, despite its small scale; there were cabinets lining the far wall, probably to hold a variety of recording equipment, and there were some music stands in the corner. As Chanyeol spun around to take the room in, he noticed a set of swivel chairs standing in front of a huge mixing console lining the entire stretch of the right wall, the likes of which Chanyeol had never seen before. He let out a low whistle, before walking over to inspect it. Each slider, switch and button had a little label taped neatly below it, stating exactly what it was for. The console controlled everything; the entire theatre’s sound reinforcement system, by the looks of things—as well as the stage spotlights, and even the sconces lining the house walkways. Plus, there was a small recording studio set up in an antechamber on the other side of the room, which was also controlled from the console. Chanyeol stared with wide eyes as he took it all in.

“She’s quite a sight,” Jongdae said behind him, and Chanyeol had to force his eyes away from the console to turn to him, the look of awe never still plastered across his face. He’d always dreamt of owning his own mixing console, though he’d never had the funds to actually finance said dream.

“This is amazing,” he said, running a hand along the main mixing board.

Jongdae chuckled at that. “Well,” he said, his tone turning thoughtful. “Maybe if you’re good, I’ll let you play around with it sometime. I’m not directly responsible for the sound engineering here, but I know the guys that are… I could pull some strings.”

Before they could start discussing any further though, Amber appeared in the doorway to the small room, looking significantly less tense than she had earlier.

“Guys, we’ll have to continue tomorrow,” she announced. “The bell’s about to ring, this place will be swarming with performing arts students soon, and technically we’re the ones intruding on their turf.”

Chanyeol pouted at that, but he followed after her with Jongdae hot on his heels as they all headed back out onto the stage. Instead of being greeted by a horde of theatre students though, they were presented by an even livelier scene; Baekhyun and Soojung were standing together in the orchestra pit, nearly toppling over with laughter, having to grab onto each other to support themselves. There seemed to be very little context to their sudden outburst this time, and Chanyeol found it hard to take his eyes off of them, stopping dead in his tracks as he stared at them, taken aback by the sudden change.

Jongdae, not having registered that Chanyeol had stopped moving, walked straight into his back. The gesture was almost comical as he yelped, before exclaiming, “Jesus, Chanyeol, watch it—”

He cut himself off when he realised what Chanyeol was staring at. Snorting softly, the teacher shook his head, before muttering, “that’s just how they are. It’s probably because of their extra-curricular familiarity.”

’Extra-curricular familiarity’? What was that supposed to mean?

Chanyeol kept his eyes on them as he jolted back into motion, almost falling down the stage stairs as a result. A chuckle from Jongdae followed, accompanied by a light-hearted, “hey, staring’s rude. Let’s get moving, lover boy.” Chanyeol felt himself blush all the way up to his ears at the term “lover boy”, and wondered cringingly if he had perhaps been a little too obvious in his actions. The thought had him turning away from the coordinators so fast that he nearly gave himself whiplash as he dashed after Amber and out of the theatre.

Thankfully, the students milling about outside served as the perfect distraction as they made their way back to the visual arts building, and Chanyeol soon found himself flipping through his notes to busy his hands with the lack of conversation being stricken up.

Just as he was attempting to decipher a particularly illegible scribble, Amber spoke up from beside him.

“So, have you got any solid ideas already for the rework?” she asked. Chanyeol turned to look at her, his lips drawing into a thin line, before shaking his head no.

“Hey, it’s no biggie. If you need inspiration, I think the film department has the original somewhere in their archives. Just go ask them if you can borrow it.” She offered him an encouraging smile.

“Ah, sure…” Chanyeol said a little hesitantly. He’d already forgotten where the film department was. Thankfully he had a longer lunchbreak on Wednesdays, so he could probably go look for it then. “Thanks,” he added quietly, though it fell on deaf ears as Amber had already turned to Jongdae to discuss something about the theatre’s speaker system.

***

It turned out that the film archives were situated in the basement of the visual arts building. The film department itself was spread out over three or four buildings, encompassing both videography and acting, which resulted in Chanyeol spending the best part of an hour running all over campus in search of a singular film building, only to learn that it apparently didn’t exist, and that his target was only two floors below his own classroom.

Now, he was sweating and looking the worse for wear, having resorted to tying his flannel shirt around his waist with his undershirt’s sleeves hiked up to his elbows. He felt a little awkward with all his tattoos on display on a school campus, but his pride had taken second place for the time being. Hell, he’d have rolled his jeans up as well, if they hadn’t been so tight.

His hair was matted against his forehead by the time that he finally arrived at the small desk in front of the film archive’s doors. There was a very small, elderly woman sitting behind it, reading a foreign magazine.

“Excuse me,” Chanyeol croaked, his voice hoarse from all the running around.

“Mmh?” said the woman, not bothering to look up from her magazine.

Chanyeol hesitated for a moment, taking note of her general disinterest in helping him—or probably anyone, for that matter—before asking, “w-well, I was wondering if you have the movie ‘Grease’? I’m working on the school play and I really need to—”

“Someone already borrowed it,” she deadpanned, flipping to the next page in the booklet.

Chanyeol’s brows furrowed at that. “Well, who was it? Maybe I could ask them if they could lend it to me. It’s pretty important.”

The woman looked up at him then over the rim of her reading glasses. “It was some young thespian—ah! That good-looking coordinator. I don’t know his name.”

Ah.

Ahhhhh.

“O-oh… thank you for your help, ma’am,” Chanyeol managed. The hairs on the nape of his neck were standing on end, and he’d started sweating again, despite the cool air filtering into the basement through the air vent above their heads.

“Mmh,” said the woman in response, before peering back down at her magazine, Chanyeol’s presence already long-forgotten as she flipped to the next page.

Regardless, Chanyeol offered her a curt bow before hasting back upstairs and making a bee-line for the canteen. Of course it was Baekhyun that had borrowed the film, he’d been working on the theatrical adaptation since before Chanyeol had even been in the school’s employ. However, after how awkward Chanyeol had been earlier, what with all the obvious staring, he was rather hesitant to ask the man if he could borrow it.

Heaving a sigh, Chanyeol kept his head down as he selected a sandwich from one of the multideck chillers lining the till, stood in line to pay.

As if on cue, a familiar pair of jeans-clad legs walked past him then, and Chanyeol couldn’t help but look up as Baekhyun cut the queue in front of him.

“H-hey, you can’t just cut the queue like that,” Chanyeol whispered, eyes wide in disbelief.

“Sure I can, seeing as I’m the one paying. Eat with me?” he said, reaching over to pull Chanyeol’s sandwich out of his now rather clammy hand, before stretching past him to grab one for himself out of the chiller behind them, his bicep flexing with the movement where it poked out of his sleeve.

Chanyeol actually choked on his own spit. He wanted to protest, to refuse the offer—’this is a married man flirting with you! Stand up for your morals, Chanyeol Park!’—but he somehow found himself unable to do much more than sputter unintelligibly as he watched Baekhyun pull out a ₩5000 note and hand it to the cashier with a familiar smile, which she returned in kind as she handed him his change. The man turned back to Chanyeol then, beckoning for him to follow after him. Chanyeol wordlessly complied, letting himself be led over to a free table in the far corner of the room. They weren’t sitting with any of the other teachers, Chanyeol noticed as he seated himself a safe distance away from his rather amused-looking new lunch-buddy. Sure, most of the teachers had already headed back to their classrooms to prepare for their afternoon classes, but he could see Kyungsoo and Soojung sitting together with some teachers from other departments at a table by the windows; Baekhyun had quite obviously intentionally steered clear of them, and Chanyeol couldn’t help the way his nerves tingled at the thought.

“You know, you’re pretty physically awkward for someone who works in the performing arts,” Baekhyun said then, eying up the list of ingredients on his sandwich’s wrapper before delicately peeling it open.

Was the man deliberately flustering him, or was it just a God-given gift that he had no control over?

Chanyeol stared at him for a second, blinking, before he finally managed to formulate his thoughts into words.

“W-well, I’ve really only ever been good with instruments. I never studied any other visual arts or anything,” he said, before tearing his eyes away from Baekhyun to finally start eating his own sandwich, which Baekhyun had placed on the table in front of Chanyeol for him.

“What do you play?” Baekhyun asked around a mouthful. Chanyeol could feel the man’s eyes on him, though he couldn’t bring himself to meet his gaze with his own. This whole thing felt oddly intimate for a lunch break in a canteen, and Chanyeol didn’t know what to make of the sudden flurry of questions, or the butterflies fluttering about in his stomach that had come about as a result of said questions.

“Ah, I teach guitar, so obviously… the guitar,” he answered, cringing internally at how inarticulately the words had come out before continuing. “I also play the drums, djembe, bass… and the piano.”

Baekhyun stilled at that, and the sudden lack of a witty answer had Chanyeol confused. Peering up at the man, he saw that he was grinning.

“What?” Chanyeol asked softly, a confused smile on his face behind his sandwich where he held it to his lips, his hand frozen mid-air.

“No, nothing. I just wouldn’t have taken you for a piano player…” Baekhyun said, leaning back in what Chanyeol thought was an impossibly cool way, considering that they were sitting on a canteen bench. “I guess you’ll have to show me sometime.”

Chanyeol had always been shy about the piano. Whilst he usually strayed more towards genres like rock and pop with his other instruments, he preferred more mellow tunes for the piano. Most of the ones he knew were about love and heartbreak, and somehow the prospect of playing anything like that for Baekhyun seemed awfully… well, intimate. The thought had Chanyeol averting his eyes again, his face burning.

“So what about you, then? Since when do theatre coordinators also dress up for costume rehearsals? Or is it just part of your ‘hands-on’ methodology?” he said, changing the subject a little less smoothly than he had hoped for. It was something he had been wondering for a while, though.

Baekhyun snorted at that, before leaning forwards to rest his elbows on the table, rest his head in his hands.

“I was standing in for a sick student. Nobody else knew his part of the routine, so there wasn’t really much choice in the matter.”

Chanyeol eyed him suspiciously at that. “And the not wearing a shirt part?” he asked. “Was that also a mandatory aspect of the role, or a personal touch?”

Now Baekhyun was the one looking away. “Well, the fashion department custom-tailors the students’ costumes, and unfortunately I’m a little broader than the student I was standing in for, so I guess it was both…? I had to improvise.”

Chanyeol was about to ask why Baekhyun didn’t just call off the costume rehearsal until the student returned, when the bell rang. Baekhyun seemed pretty happy with this, and he offered Chanyeol a triumphant smile before saying, “ah, saved by the bell. I’ll catch you later, maestro.” He added with a wink.

“I—” Chanyeol began, but Baekhyun was already heading towards the doors, leaving a very bemused Chanyeol staring after him.

***

The next day, Chanyeol was reading through some sheet music at the desk in his and Kyungsoo’s shared classroom during one of the other teacher’s classes, when he suddenly became aware of the fact that he’d completely forgotten to ask Baekhyun about borrowing the Grease film from him. Hesitantly, he asked Kyungsoo if he knew where Baekhyun was, only to find out that the coordinator didn’t teach on Thursdays, instead part-timing at Jeongdong theatre. It had initially brought him some comfort that he got to wait an extra day before asking him, though it had also allowed for his nerves to build in the meantime. By the time Friday morning rolled around, Chanyeol was so out of it that he accidentally went to work with his T-Shirt on back to front, only realising once Amber subtly pointed out during one of her classes—he’d been instructed to shadow her for the morning—that not only was his label showing, but it was doing so on the wrong side of his body.

Once the class had broken up for the morning break and Chanyeol had stopped feeling like a complete , she asked him to accompany her outside for a smoke break. Chanyeol, eager for a moment’s time to work on his game plan, had been only too happy to agree, gladly following her to the smoking area near the academy’s car park.

The two of them ended up standing in silence, Amber preoccupying herself with puffing perfect vapour circles from her e-cigarette, whilst Chanyeol brooded about his rework-predicament.

“You know, it’s okay to be nervous about the rework,” she said suddenly through a cloud of vapour, drawing Chanyeol out of his thoughts. “I was nervous about translating the play, but there were always people around to encourage me. You’ll figure it out eventually, I’m sure of it.”

Chanyeol thanked her softly, though her words did little to comfort him. Due to the sheer amount of people involved in the production, he had to accommodate a variety of different tastes, as well as excise the right parts and only leave the most significant songs in, in order to cut down on the play’s length as deftly as possible. According to the most recent full rehearsal, the play was around three hours long, which was pushing it, so it had been collectively decided that Chanyeol was to find a way cut down on the number of musical interludes. However, due to his lack of familiarity with the play’s actual subject matter, he was struggling to make the cut.

Just when the two of them were about to head back inside for the next class, Chanyeol caught sight of Baekhyun heading towards the campus parking. Turning to Amber, he offered her a quick “sorry, I’ll be back in a second!” before rushing off after him.

“Hey, Baekhyun! Wait,” he called, finally catching up to the man inside the garage. Baekhyun slowed, turned around to him, puzzled. His face broke gently into a smile as Chanyeol approached him.

“Already missing me?” he said in greeting, twirling his car keys around his finger. Chanyeol furrowed his brows at him.

“I needed to ask you something,” he gasped at last, still a little out of breath. He raised his hand to rub sheepishly at the back of his neck, before offering Baekhyun a pleading smile.

“I’m all ears,” said Baekhyun, before readjusting his satchel on his shoulder. He was dressed in a full suit again, and Chanyeol wondered for a split second if he was perhaps holding him up from something important.

“Well, I found out that the school has the original movie from the play we’re working on, but when I went to borrow it from the archives, I was told that you’d already taken it… so I was just wondering if you could maybe lend it to me.”

Baekhyun nodded, before moving to the side a little as a car drove past them.

“I left it at home, sorry.” He said, offering Chanyeol an apologetic look.

“Oh, that’s not a problem… could you bring it for me on Monday, then?”

Baekhyun sighed at that, casting his eyes skyward before answering, “unfortunately not. Soojung and I are taking our senior year on an end-of-year field trip to the Seoul Arts Centre.”

Chanyeol frowned, confused. “But it’s April,” he said, though it came out as more of a question.

Baekhyun just shrugged at him, “Hey, I don’t make the rules. This is the only time slot we were given, unfortun—” the man cut himself off mid-word. Chanyeol could practically see the lightbulb turn on above his head.

“Or—” he said, and this time he looked a little hesitant himself, “—you could always come by tomorrow to get it?”

Chanyeol stilled at that. Had Baekhyun really just invited him to his house? The prospect of ever seeing the man outside of work seemed like a huge taboo; he was married, and yet he actively flirted with Chanyeol, and whilst Chanyeol would probably eventually have to admit to himself that he had the world’s biggest crush on the man, he did not want to become a homewrecker.

“Err… well, if your wife doesn’t mind?” Chanyeol managed, and his voice sounded foreign to his own ears.

Baekhyun offered him a very strange look then, and Chanyeol was about to come up with some sort of apology—perhaps Baekhyun didn’t like talking about his personal life at work?—when the man suddenly burst out laughing; that same, lovely sound from after the meeting on Tuesday filling Chanyeol’s brain to capacity—

“No, Chanyeol,” Baekhyun managed between breaths. “I certainly think she won’t.” Chanyeol found himself nervously laughing along with him, still not fully understanding, though he didn’t protest when Baekhyun rattled off his address to him, which Chanyeol noted down in his phone, before bidding the new teacher goodbye and heading off to his car.

Chanyeol stood and watched him for a minute as the man unlocked his car—an expensive-looking Audi—remotely, got in. A moment later the lights , and he was reversing out of the parking space and driving off. Heaving a sigh, Chanyeol also turned and exited the garage, headed back to Amber’s classroom.

****

My mood whilst writing this chapter:
- heavy eyerolling at my ineptitude -

M A N, I really struggled with the beginning of this chapter! Baekhyun and Soojung have a very complex relationship in this AU and I really wanted to successfully portray that, so I ended up spending like 80% of the time I invested into this chapter purely on the first scene lmao. Rip meeee

Aaaalso, I would like to point out these two short clips of Baekhyun on my Tumblr:

Post Nr. 1 (with context)

And post Nr. 2 (just Baekhyunnie)

because his expressions there are just IT for me. Like that is the EXACT vibe i am going for with him in this fic.

yOU'RE SO WELCOME.

Also, as always, please leave a comment! They really help me, both motivation and inspiration-wise. Plus, if you find any typos or whatnot, feel free to let me know!

And some kudos wouldn't hurt either but you know no pressure or anything

P.S. Next week's update might be a little delayed—I'm going back to school tomorrow after a two week break, so depending on the workload, you may have to hold out for a little. Sorry!