To say Nayeon, Jeongyeon and Jihyo were a problem whenever they had to work together would be downplaying it by a lot. The three were a nightmare, and ms Lee always wondered which wrong life choices got her to have them as her students. The worst part for the poor woman was that they were geniuses and she knew she couldn’t afford to remove them from the club, not when they single handedly wiped the floor with their competition in nationals the previous year. It was like the trio was freshly out of tartarus just to terrorise her life, but they were great, what can one do.

Nayeon and Jeongyeon had met in middle school, they got into the science club in their first year (surprise, I know) and had been great friends since then. Jihyo came up as the opposing team’s champion on their first official competition. After the younger one had wiped the floor with the older two, who couldn’t stop bickering to save themselves, he waited for his teacher to get distracted and went to the other team. He was fascinated with Nayeon and Jeongyeon, so he just went to the, still bickering, duo and just hugged both really tight. To say the older two were surprised wouldn’t describe it, Nayeon let out a little squeal too, which he will never admit to.

When the small boy let go, neither could really get mad when they looked and saw Jihyo with his innocent and shiny eyes, looking at them like they were the most interesting people in the world. Jeongyeon cooed (a very rare occurrence) and Nayeon definitely squealed this time (this one he never denies, especially if it’s to point out how cute Jihyo is), both squeezed the small intruder between them and started fighting over who was hugging more of their new friend (Jeongyeon, surprisingly, was the one to declare they were friends right then and there). 

When the teacher responsible for Jihyo’s group found him, he let out a relieved sigh and a small laugh, despite having his life squished out of him, Jihyo looked absolutely delighted. The man just took a photo to give the boy’s parents later and called after his student, they had to get going. Nayeon, the more courageous of the two, stepped forward defying the unknown man who was trying to take his new friend away, Jeongyeon stood behind him, fists already up and snarling at the man. That was until Jihyo let out an excited ‘Mr Choi!’ and made his way over to the man.

“Park, you can’t go off like that. I was worried that you might have disappeared.”

“I’m sorry, mr Choi, but I just wanted to give them a hug. And now we are friends!”

The boy was known for being affectionate with people he liked, and him liking someone was completely arbitrary and unpredictable. Right now, for example, Jihyo liked Nayeon and Jeongyeon because he saw minds like his, and strong personalities to back them up, he liked seeing how the other two worked and understood perfectly how their brains worked, it was something he hadn’t seen before, and interested him immensely. The teacher just shook his head and told Jihyo to give the boys his number so they could go home.

“Mr Choi said we have to go now.” Jihyo said to the other boys shyly, handing them a piece of paper. “That’s my phone number, I’ll be waiting.”

“We’ll call you later. Have a safe trip.” Jeongyeon, always the more accomodating one, said, waving the smaller boy off.

“Shut up.” Nayeon said, trying to keep his sniffling low, a few moments after Jihyo had disappeared into the crowd.

Jeongyeon just throws his hands up and doesn’t say anything. They are called by their own teacher and just follow to go home. For the two older boys, the ride home was just too long, they wanted to get home, or Nayeon’s house, which was closer to school, and call that cute starry eyed boy and start being friends already. When they do call, mr Park is the one to answer, asking Jeongyeon (the one calling, because Nayeon was unable to) to wait a little as his son was in the bathroom. After they did have that one first conversation, Jihyo came running to his father, asking him to talk to a mrs Im about playing together.

The adults do settle things for a first playdate, it was to happen at the Parks, they had a big backyard and a barbecue area. Not to mention mr Park said the other parents should come too and they’d have a barbecue party, and mrs Im couldn’t say no to that. They both settled on the following saturday and the boys have been great friends since then. Sure, the Sons and their own boys came too, but both Nayeon and Jeongyeon understood, even at that young age, that their new friends were brothers to each other and inseparable already. 

They were very cute whenever they interacted, except and unfortunately for ms Lee, when they had to use their brains together. Sunmi was a great teacher and a good woman, but she was tethering on the edge of murdering three students and hiding the bodies in a desert every single time science club came around. Jihyo was the better manageable one, he would relent as soon as a valid point was made, Jeongyeon would be a little more difficult, but would settle down once he was proven wrong beyond doubt, but Nayeon, that kid was a nightmare, and the teacher was certainly not being paid enough to deal with him on a daily basis.

Nayeon was very prideful and usually wouldn’t stand down even after shown he was wrong. It took a lot to get him to settle down, and he would never just back down, usually they let it be and continued with whatever like nothing had happened. When things dd get out of control, the teacher knew she just needed to call over some strategic people and things would go back to normal. For Nayeon it was Mina, the younger boy had this power where he could just send the older one a specific look and smile and everything would go his way. For Jeongyeon, Tzuyu did the magic, it was a couple thing and nobody cared to understand as long as the shorter boy had been tamed.

In Jihyo’s case, there were two who could get him to settle, it was just a matter of who was available for the task. In Seungwan’s case, he would come in, do their thing and JIhyo would understand he was wrong and apologise, Dahyun, on the other hand, would follow a more ‘feelings focused’ approach, he would talk to the boy until they worked out whatever was wrong, then sit Nayeon and Jeongyeon down and force the three to talk and settle everything. Which prompted anyone who was calling for reinforcements to avoid Dahyun as much as they could, not that they didn’t like the boy, but his way of going through things would take too long, and all everyone just wanted was for the bickering to stop already.

Right now, we have ms Lee not as annoyed as she would be on the daily, it was nearing the sports competitions, so the problem trio was starting to miss science club meetings. All three were star athletes, and would be excused from science club when they were preparing for the first competitions (after the first ones, they knew where to go with their training and got back their normal schedules), the sameway they’d be excused from their respective sports clubs to focus on science club when the science competitions came around. Jihyo was attending today, the other two weren’t, and peace was really prevailing, until another student asked Jihyo a ‘stupid question’, as the boy had dubbed it, and everything went downhill.

The girl was already crying, ever since Jihyo had started his very angry and very mean explanation to the girl’s question. Sunmi had stepped out to deliver some documents, and came back to the calm completely destroyed, a whimpering girl sitting in front of the board and the most calm of her problem trio violently explaining some very basic organic chemistry to a very frightened group. She could already picture the girl batting her eyelashes and sliding up to Jihyo to ask a basic question she should know the answer to, only to get the full extent of the boy’s wrath.

It was understandable that Jihyo was on edge, he had just started slimming down, his coach asked if he could lose the weight to the category below, as some of the seniors would be joining in his current one and the coach felt like said seniors should be handed a better chance of victory and decided Jihyo was going to drop the weight to a lower category. It was ridiculous, Jihyo was pissed, and even Sunmi had stood up for the boy (behind closed doors, that is) but coach Zhen was a coward and had fallen under the pressure the seniors’ parents had put on him. But, understanding the boy didn’t mean Sunmi was excusing him, so she sent him out of the classroom and told him to come back after club hours for his punishment.

Nayeon was the one present the following meeting, Jihyo had been excused permanently until he got past the weighing phase. He would be able to relax a little after the first round’s winghing and would get much less irritable. The oldest of the problem trio, however, was bulking up, that meant he was absolutely sluggish and looked like he was about to fall asleep anywhere. Nayeon was in the basketball team, great player, but too thin on a normal basis to take the hit of the official games. His coach, coach Kim, was a middle aged woman who took care of her players like they were her own kids, and told Nayeon to bulk up a little more, least the boy would collapse in court again. It happened in Nayeon’s first game the previous year, and the woman would never let the boy live that down.

It took Jeongyeon about three more meetings to show up at the science club. He was on the track team and had been working on his endurance. He was the best sprinter, but wanted to try for long distance when his coach offered it to him. You could find him on the streets around the school with the other long distance runners on his team, but he did show up, a lot more tanned than before, and slightly tired, definitely hungrier as well. Sunmi just gave up on him and Nayeon eating during club hours and asked that they didn’t compromise experiments, which they never would, then she’d be fine with whatever.

Say what you want about Sunmi, but she loved her kids, and really missed her students whenever they were absent for longer periods. Sure, Nayeon, Jeongyeon and Jihyo were the main cause for her continuously depleting supply of medicine for headaches, but it got too quiet when they weren’t around.