"Read the instructions at each station and ask me if you have questions. Remember that the front desk is a station too. I'll let everyone take whichever flower they want: lilies or gladiolas. Everyone partner up and pick a station. We'll have one group of three since our number is odd. Oh, and remember to be careful with the scalpels and any wet stations."

The class started moving with Teacher Zhang's instructions. Jongdae latched his arms around Kyungsoo before he had even looked back down to grab his journal.

"Kyungsoooo, be my lab partner."

"Yeah, yeah," Kyungsoo chuckled. "Let's try to do the easy ones first."

"I think the definition ones are—"

"Teacher Zhang, we don't want to partner up with him."

Kyungsoo and Jongdae looked over at the voice. Two of their classmates, one sour-faced and the other hiding behind him, stood with Teacher Zhang and Jongin. The biology teacher tilted his head.

"Unless you are allergic to your fellow human being and classmate, there should be no problem in civilly working on a biology lab together."

"I won't be able to concentrate if I'm near him. And he probably won't help anyway."

"Han Seungwoo, that isn't respectful to say. You didn't give him a chance yet."

"He scares me, Teacher Zhang."

"Seungsik, why don't you try saying hi to him first?"

As Kyungsoo's classmates complained to Teacher Zhang and the teacher combatted them, he stole a glance at Jongin. He leaned against his desk, his arms crossed, his gaze somewhere on the floor. Disinterest weighed in his eyes like Kyungsoo had seen in the beginning of the year, but he noticed something else too. The trace of disgust. Teacher Zhang's words echoed back at him as he remembered that he had seen it when Jongin explained the kitten story to him, when he mentioned Lee Woosung, and he saw it again when Han Seungwoo pointed at Jongin.

"Look, he's not even participating in this discussion about him. What's there to try?"

Jongin turned his head to look at Han Seungwoo then, who flinched, retracting his finger to scratch his neck instead. 

"A-Anyways, neither of us want to work with him."

Teacher Zhang let out a small sigh. Jongin turned his head back, once again looking at the ground. The whole class was sneaking glances at the situation. Kyungsoo didn't want to be looked at or create another scene of gossip for him so easily, but he supposed that it couldn't be helped at this point. Tapping Jongdae's arm, Kyungsoo nodded in Jongin's direction before pointing at himself. His friend nodded, a smile pulling his cheek bones up into cherry wells, and the wisp of dark red flashed in his irises. 

"Then I'll go with Chanyeol's group," he whispered.

He picked up his things and quietly got up from his seat. Kyungsoo almost tugged him back to say that he meant for Jongin to join the two of them when Han Seungwoo crossed his arms and turned his head away from Teacher Zhang.

"I don't want to, and neither does Seungsik."

"You two—"

Kyungsoo scooped up his journal and weaved around the still bodies of his classmates, plopping his journal at the station closest to the scene. He turned to Jongin and tried not to sputter a laugh at how wide his eyes had gotten.

"Jongin, I'll be your partner. We can do this one first."

The whole classroom dropped into silence for three seconds, which was three seconds long enough for Kyungsoo to start squirming under the gazes of his classmates. The breath he didn't know he was holding puffed out when Teacher Zhang hummed.

"Jongin, are you okay with Kyungsoo as your partner?"

He nodded and started picking up his things.

"I guess that settles that. However, Han Seungwoo, see me after class. Don't think that this can be forgotten."

Seungwoo paled but grumbled a 'yes, sir' and led Seungsik to the opposite side of the classroom.

"Everyone start on a station. It'll be hard to make up if you don't finish within classtime."

Chairs slid and shoes scuffed the classroom back to normal. At least, that was what Kyungsoo wanted to believe. As Jongin set his biology notebook next to his, Kyungsoo saw the station on his left be filled, eyes watching him. He faced his back to them while pulling the instructions closer to him as an excuse for his position. But then he caught the glances of those at the next station. They pulled up their journals and their hands to cover their mouths, but their eyes darted over and over at him. He looked down at the laminated paper, but the feel of their gazes, relentless and scrutinizing, bore through him.

Then Jongin shifted, leaning on the counter, angling his back to the next station and blocking the gazes. Kyungsoo in a mini breath in relief, and a fleeting thought that he had done so for Kyungsoo flitted through his mind. He immediately waved it away, but it came back with blaring neon signs when Jongin reached over and turned the instructions so that the words read right-side up to Kyungsoo. 

"T-Thanks."

Jongin nodded and nudged at the textbook between them.

"What are we supposed to do?"

"Uh..." Kyungsoo told himself to calm the function down and skimmed through the instructions. "This is the definitions one, so we just have to look through the textbook and draw pictures."

Jongin nodded and flipped open the book.

"What page first?"

They completed the first few stations smoothly. Kyungsoo thought that were relatively easy and straightforward even for him. He thought too soon though when they got to the leaf disc station. He got as far as measuring out three-hundred mililiters of baking soda before the rest of the directions started swimming across the page. He reread the sentences a few times but didn't get any closer to comprehending them.

"Jongin, what are we supposed to do?"

He looked over from pulling apart the needleless syringe and set it down, walking over and leaning in to read the paper. He looked calm reading over the instructions while all of Kyungsoo either froze, tensed, or started internally screaming. Not a bad screaming, but he thought he had caught the faint smell along Jongin's clothes and forced himself to stop breathing in case he breathed in loud enough for Jongin to hear. The scent smelled the same as the one that had lingered on his scarf, and Kyungsoo could not—would not—be caught doing something as weird as sniffing his lab partner to confirm it, especially in public.

Jongin also radiated heat. Kyungsoo felt the air around him warm at least a few degrees after he had leaned in, although that could have been from the nervousness that shot through Kyungsoo and caused something to pulse in his chest. And he didn't dare turn his head or look at Jongin. He was one-thousand percent sure that he would lose whatever strand of sanity he had left to the land of dancing animals and rainbows with hands for feet if he allowed himself a close look of Jongin's face.

When Jongin leaned out and started poking around the baking soda, Kyungsoo tried not to explode his wigging-out in Jongin's peripheral vision. He managed to sneak a light slap to his face to get himself together before Jongin turned to him, holding up the beakers.

"We're supposed to fill these up with three-hundred mil of water each."

Kyungsoo felt his eyebrows shoot up.

"How much baking soda do we need then?"

"About four."

He smacked a hand to his face.

"Greatest common factor. Sorry. I'll put it back in the box. Somehow."

Jongin blinked at him, the ends of his lips curling up. Kyungsoo knew that he had done something dumb, but just this once, he didn't mind because Jongin had smiled.

And he liked seeing his fellow human beings smile. Yeah.

Funneling the excess baking soda back into the box, he watched Jongin fill their three beakers with water, then add in a few drops of dish soap in, stirring them. He added the baking soda to one of the cups and plucked a few leaves from the ivy plant nearby, handing the leaves and holepuncher to Kyungsoo.

"Punch twenty discs out of these but don't touch the major veins."

"The what?"

"These big lines in the leaf."

Jongin traced them out with his pinky. Kyungsoo actually knew what major veins were, but the confusion of the science part made him want to ask questions. He held in what he could though, because he didn't want to seem... behind on their experiment togther. 

Kyungsoo did as he was told, watching as Jongin swept a handful of discs into the tube body. He pushed out the air, the plunger almost touching the leaf circles, then up a bit of the water, flicking the syringe. He plugged his finger over the end of it and made the syringe up air. Turning it upside down, he looked at it before pushing out the water and doing everything again. Kyungsoo tried reading the instructions to understand what the function Jongin was doing and why, but none of the words would register in his brain. At one glance-up, he jumped a bit at Jongin looking at him.

"I'm trying to get them to sink."

A ripple of embarrassment spread through Kyungsoo knowing that Jongin knew that he was completely lost, but at least he was cluing him in on the procedure. He dumped the syringe contents into a cup labeled 'without CO2' and held the syringe out to Kyungsoo. 

"Your turn. I did the control, so you do the one with baking soda in it."

He took the syringe and looked at the cups of water, trying to remember what Jongin did. He swept the leaf discs into the tube body, then looked at Jongin.

"Uh, I don't remember what to do."

Jongin smiled again, teasing laced in it. A small fire of playful indignation fanned within Kyungsoo, but it appeased itself when Jongin chuckled behind the back of his hand.

"Push out the air first, then pull in a little bit of the baking soda water."

"Okay, then?"

"Tap the side to make them float. Put your thumb over the opening and pull it back slowly for about ten seconds. There are air spaces in the leaf, so we're trying to fill them with the baking soda water."

"To make them sink?"

He nodded, and he guided Kyungsoo through repeating the making-the-leaf-bits-sink step until he could dump them out into the 'with CO2' beaker. Jongin positioned them under the lamp and gave Kyungsoo the timer. 

"After every minute, we check to see how many discs are still floating."

Jongin watched the water, and Kyungsoo watched the timer, but his mind was still trying to figure out what they were doing and why. He knew that it was a photosynthesis experiment, but beyond that, he understood zip. He had to know what they were doing in order to finish the conclusion questions at the end, so he might as well ask Jongin what they were doing while they were doing it. After about twenty-six seconds of hesitation (because he was watching the timer), he cleared his throat.

"Jongin, can you explain the... this to me? I don't get any of it."

He looked up, staring at him, and for a moment Kyungsoo thought that he would have to ask his question again, but Jongin shuffled closer to him and tapped on the instructions.

"According to this, the leaves will start photosynthesis using the carbon in the baking soda. The photosynthesis produces oxygen, which makes the leaves float. Cellular respiration is also happening, using up oxygen, so however long it takes for the discs to rise is an indirect net rate of photosynthesis."

Kyungsoo blinked, looking from the paper to Jongin and back again because for some undefinable reason, Jongin's explanation made exponential times more sense than the paper. He didn't even use any analogies this time, and Kyungsoo still understood the science better. This was biology, his least compatible subject, after all, but the process sounded easy rolling off of Jongin's tongue.

"Wow. I actually understood that. It sounds way better when you say it."

"I was ready to use math metaphors again."

A clack sounded, and Jongin covered his mouth, a hint of red peeking out from under his hand. Kyungsoo chuckled, a little louder than what he could hold back because of the joy springing from his chest. Jongin had remembered and was willing to use the teaching strategy best suited to him, and that fact made him feel warm. Deciding to spare Jongin the teases, he showed him the timer. None of the discs had started floating, so they recorded zero and reset the clock. As the discs floated up and they finished up the station, Kyungsoo took the beakers out of Jongin's h