In the morning, Taerim crept out of bed with gritted teeth, trying to ignore the burning pain in her back and the soreness of her joints. She took the opportunity to dress while Minho was in the shower, but came upon an obstacle when the injured muscles of her left arm wouldn't allow her to reach behind her to fasten her spare chest band.

In any other situation she would simply skip over the hard parts and come back to them later. But this was essential. When Minho came out of the shower a few minutes later, drying his hair, he found Taerim sitting on their one chair with her back to him, holding the band to her chest.

“Help?” she asked sheepishly. Without a word, Minho stepped forward to take the ends of the band and fasten the hooks behind her. His hands brushed over the bandages that she'd slept on.

“변경할게,” he said. He hadn't returned the first-aid kit he'd taken from the infirmary, and he used the bandages in it to carefully redress the scrapes on her back. He looked at the cut on her side, too, but since it had stopped bleeding and the butterfly bandages were holding it together well, he decided to leave it alone for now.

“Thanks,” she said. “It feels much better.”

“Mm,” Minho replied. He went to throw away the used bandages, and Taerim carefully maneuvered herself into an undershirt, then shrugged her button-up over that. With clothes like this on, nothing looked wrong at all, as long as she was careful to keep her left arm from looking too stiff.

Minho didn't try to stop her going to class. At least he must understand how important it was to not draw attention to herself by skipping, especially with exams coming up. But when they walked to trigonometry, a class above their grade that held none of their usual classmates except Jongin, Minho kicked one of his teammates out of the seat nearest Taerim on her right and sat there instead of his usual place. As usual, the class was a clamor of students chatting about their weekends or the latest episode of their favorite show, but since most of the students were sunbaes, Minho and Taerim rarely joined in. Minho opened his textbook and began studying that day's lesson, but his shoulders tensed when Jongin walked into the classroom, as devil-may-care as always with his pack thrown over his shoulder like an afterthought. He was greeted with friendly calls of “hubae” and “dongsaeng”, and he exchanged a few easy words with one or two of the students before glancing at Taerim's desk.

He'd obviously expected it to be empty. His face went blank with surprise, and when Taerim met his eyes, he looked away quickly and went to his seat. He sat down quietly, white-faced, and said nothing more until the teacher entered and class started.

Even though she didn't want to, she found herself glancing over at Jongin, wondering what he must be thinking, and how angry he must be that she was acting like everything was normal again. She remembered his face on the bus, when she'd stepped on and found a vehicle full of hostile faces, all watching her and waiting for something else to happen. But Jongin most of all, with his accusing eyes.

She couldn't look at him for the entire class, even when he went to the front when he volunteered to write out a problem on the board. The lecture passed through her without a single aspect of it sticking in her mind. That was fairly normal – much of the time she had to decipher the textbook later to get any meaning at all from what had been taught in class, and that wasn't too hard. Ever since she'd told Jongin her secret, classes they had together had been a blur of enduring the betrayal she knew that he felt. But now, Taerim herself knew what betrayal felt like – Jongin, who had been her closest friend, not lifting a finger to help her when Jonghyun pushed her out of the bus.

~~~

The way Jongin was looking at Taemin, Minho knew that he wanted to talk to her. But Taemin was doing that thing again, where she hung her head and didn't look at anyone like she was ashamed of something. She wasn't up to speaking to anyone right now. Minho tried to listen to the lecture, since lately sports was making him fall behind slightly in maths, but he was acutely aware of Jongin glancing their way constantly. God knew the boy was popular but he had no sense of subtlety. Minho made sure to walk close to Taemin when they walked out of the classroom, but even so Jongin came towards them like talking to Taemin was the one thing that he absolutely wouldn't stop for anything to do.

In the hallway, he grabbed Taemin's arm and said something in Thai. Taemin shied away like he'd burned her. Minho pushed Jongin away. “Jongin,” he said. “Leave him alone.”

“I just want to talk to him,” Jongin said, for once annoyed with his hyung. “You don't have to worry, it'll only take a minute.”

Minho looked at Taemin. She was standing a little behind him, looking for all the world like the skinny, awkward teenage boy she was trying to be. The problem was how defeated she looked. “Fine,” she said quietly. “I should...”

It had to happen sooner or later. Jongin wasn't going to just give up.

“I'll be right here,” Minho said. “Just... be careful.”

Jongin scoffed. Minho went to hit him, but thought better of it. At least it made Jongin look sufficiently afraid. He took a few steps back and leaned against a wall of lockers to wait.

There wasn't any point in listening in. Minho didn't know any Thai, and when Jongin began speaking to Taemin, his voice was low and, to Minho, seemed penitent. He stood in front of her with his head bowed, and from where he was standing Minho couldn't see what Taemin's reactions were.

Jongin talked alone for over a minute while Taemin stood with her arms crossed, closed into herself, looking not at Jongin's face but somewhere in the middle of his left shoulder. Finally, when he paused expectantly, she replied with a single, short clipped phrase.

Jongin looked as shocked as if she had slapped him in the face. His mouth snapped shut, then opened again, but Taemin turned and walked away.

“Let's go,” she muttered as she stalked past Minho, and he followed her wordlessly.

They were almost to English before Minho felt it was safe to ask. “Are you okay?”

“Fine,” she snapped.

Jonghyun rounded a corner into their hallway.

“Hold on,” Minho said. He grabbed Taemin and pushed her behind him, but they'd already been seen.

Jonghyun's expression instantly changed to one of both incredulity and delight. He had four other boys with him, and they all approached with unabashed confidence.

“Yah, foreigner,” Jonghyun said. “You don't ever stop, do you?”

Even though Taemin had been shooting fire out of her eyes just seconds ago, all the fight went out of her in an instant.

“Never,” she said, but her voice was so small as to hardly be heard.

“This isn't the time,” Minho said. “We'll all get in trouble.”

Jonghyun turned his hostile eyes on Minho as if he'd only just now noticed him, even though Minho had shoved Taemin behind him and almost completely obscured her from view. “Stay out of this,” Jonghyun said. He tried to push past, but Minho held his ground.

“Why should I?” he challenged.

Jonghyun looked at him again, the light of a new challenge in his eyes. “Don't tell me,” he said, incredulous. “Now that Jongin's abandoned that worthless piece of trash,” he jerked his head at Taemin, “you're taking over as his protector?”

“Why?” Minho shot back. “You scared?”

Jonghyun laughed. “Not scared,” he said. “I just can't understand why everyone's so quick to defend the weakling. Is it pity?” He stepped closer to Minho, pushing his face too close. “Or is Taemin just the sort of boy you like?” He laughed again, low and malicious, and pushed past them to go into English just as the clock struck the hour. He shoved Taemin hard as he passed.

~~~

Author note! Thanks for reading my fic and for your comments! I'm sorry to those who would rather I don't write in Korean when I'm writing from Taemin's POV - I decided to keep it in for the sake of the story so you can get a sense of how much Taemin is struggling to understand. However, I am trying to make it simple and the meaning obvious from the context surrounding it. Later there are going to be some longer, more important conversations that I'll write in English as far as Taemin understands them, so don't worry and enjoy :)

As for the Thai, I didn't include any in the text because 1. it's a language Taemin and Jongin completely understand (why? You'll find out later *evil laugh*), 2. part of the purpose of it is to keep Minho in the dark, so we don't get to know what they're saying (yet) and 3. I don't know any Thai :P Thanks again for reading! I'll try to keep updating regularly :)