No one ever mentioned to me what only two hours of sleep could do to your mood the next day. After stumbling through the maths classroom doors and ignoring Kris’s odd looks, I managed to make a decent attempt at the stupid paper without falling asleep. Over the sounds of pencils scratching furiously over paper and the ominous clock tick, I could hear Kris mutter as he tried figuring out questions. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t try and eavesdrop. I mean come on, the guy was good at maths. Fifty minutes later, I emerged looking like a half-dead cat and feeling very much like one too. In the second period, I plonked my head down on the table and fell straight asleep, snoring my way through class, completely oblivious to the pieces of chalk aimed at my head. According to Eunji, I refused to wake up and kept at it like a log so in the end, the teacher gave up and slammed me with detention. I didn’t even care, I just wanted to sleep.

“Hey what’s wrong with you?” Lay asked worriedly as he joined me in the hallway as I staggered out of class on my way to the cafeteria for some more caffeine. “You look like a zombie, did you not get enough sleep last night?”

“I’m fine,” I mumbled, brushing him off. “I went for a jog in the morning, I think it all my energy out.”

“Right…” he replied looking unconvinced. “Look, if you have trouble or anything just go see the nurse and I’ll keep your homework sheets for you, okay?”

“Thanks Lay,” I replied with a smile. The guy really knew how to cheer me up.

“So how did you find the test?” Kris asked as he caught up with us, slightly breathless. “I was stuck on the last question.”

Dammit, I was stuck on that one too. I made a show of turning my head and ignoring him, a stony expression evident on my face. Lay quickly put two and two together and chuckled awkwardly, scratching the back of his head in an effort to put an end to the tense atmosphere.

“Hey guys, I’ll just make a quick trip to the bathroom,” I said quickly. Ignoring Lay’s protests, I headed up to the restrooms on the second floor and splashed some water over my face in attempt to wake myself up. Halfway through the day and I was still struggling to fight against my eyelids that kept on closing every five seconds. The day dragged on forever and everyone in the school assumed that Kris and I were having a little lover’s spat. Funny how we never knew we were such good liars. No one had figured we were indeed fake just yet.

The walk home was painfully awkward. Kris made no attempts to apologise and I certainly had no intention of talking to him either. Stupid and childish, I knew but my pride prevented me from extending my hand first. 

The really stupid thing was that we had a history assessment due tomorrow and owing to my fierce competitiveness, I spent all the time I could’ve spent on doing my project on studying for an insignificant test. I guess it was another all nighter I was going to have to pull. Usually under these circumstances, I would make my way to Kris’s house and beg him to help me but I had an ego and that ego was preventing me from setting put anywhere near a five metre radius form his body.

“Minhee,” my mother admonished as she rushed into my room, not dissimilar to a hurricane. “I noticed that you didn’t go to sleep last night. You’re already so short, get enough sleep so you can grow taller.”

“Thanks mum,” I muttered in reply.

“Honey, it’s okay. Our daughter can just go and stand in the rain for a bit and she’ll grow like a bean sprout,” my father yelled from across the hallway where he was trying to shave his beard. I shook my head and hid my smile behind a curtain of hair. 

I turned back to the document I had opened up on my computer and watched as the sentences blurred into each other as if my eyes couldn’t figure out where to focus. Shaking my head, I took a deep breath and took a glance at the clock. The red numbers read 5:00PM. That meant I had about six hours to finish if I wanted to get to bed. Suddenly, I felt queasy as if my stomach was twisting itself into little knots. With a sigh, I plonked my head down into my arms and let my eyes shut for a few seconds. My body seemed to respond in contentment and it wasn’t long before I drifted off into a deep slumber.

I awoke to the harsh beeps of my alarm clock.

Scrambling into a semi upright position, I groggily took a look at the time.

4AM

“Holy crap!”  I hissed, shooting straight up. I’d slept through dinner and the time I’d allocated for finishing the task. I shot a look out my window and noticed Kris’s lights were out which meant he was asleep. Lucky bastard, I scoffed in my head. Panic started settling in my veins and I found myself staring dumbly at the three sentences I’d written of my introduction. The stark whiteness of the word document made me feel like hurling. Maybe I could get my doctor to write me a sick slip? That would excuse a late admission of a paper right? I’d be lucky if my mum didn’t pluck out my ear hairs one by one if she found out how I was conducting my studies.

I was going to be in for a long, long night.

----

I found myself struggling to keep myself awake as I stood up to hand in my paper.

“You’ve looked like this for two days in a row,” Eunji hissed at me through the corner of as not to get caught by our teacher who seemed to have hawk like eyes. “Are you really serious about this study thing? Relax, I told you that you’d have a position in my Taekwondo studio as a janitor. Don’t worry about your future, I’ve got you covered.”

Despite her comment making me smile, I replied with a snort, “Covered my .”

“I noticed Kris hasn’t been talking to you for a few days,”  Jiyeon said snidely, chiming in to our conversation. “Maybe he’s losing interest in such a dumb student.”

“You’re not much better yourself,” Chen defended me. Well I don’t know whether it could considered as an insult or a defence but it was good enough. “Minhee may be dumb but you’re way dumber.”

“That’s not very nice,” Lay interjected with an eye roll.

Kris shot me a quick smile, as if he wanted to reconcile but was too scared to apologise. I showed him a cold, emotionless face partially out of annoyance and partially out of sheer tiredness.

The lesson started and we shifted back into our positions. The teacher stepped into the room with a solemn expression, one I had seen one too many times. Usually, when Eunji or I had spent time outside of class doing weird stuff we weren’t supposed to be doing (like saving bird’s nests) and we got caught each of our teachers would announce our punishment in front of the class. Except I’d done nothing wrong except for falling asleep mid-speech but his stare made me feel somewhat uneasy.

“MIs Choi, a minute please,” he said, beckoning me with one dismissive wave of his hand. I scraped my chair back and followed him into the hallway. Once we were outside, he shut the door and turned to me with a pitying expression. “I understand that you have been embroiled in a scandal recently, Miss Choi? Of course it’s understandable that you’re stressed but that’s no excuse to be copying Kris.”

“Wait what?” I spluttered tyring my best not to look outraged. “No that never happened.”

“Unfortunately, your test results indicate otherwise. Your attitude and behaviours towards studying are widely known throughout the teacher’s faculty and your sudden rise in rank is not only surprising but suspicious. Also , it is well known amongst teachers that Kris is your neighbour and the fact that his rank has fallen from 2^nd place to thirtieth is strange. We can only come to the conclusion that you swapped papers,” he told me sternly, scrutinising my facial expressions through his steely brown eyes. My rank out of the grade of 200 students was usually within the bottom fifty.

“If you haven’t noticed by now,” I said, my voice dripping with acid. “We aren’t exactly on good terms with each other.”

“Your love life is irrelevant to this topic,” he replied equally as firmly.

I sighed and looked up at the heavens for some patience. “Did you compare the handwriting?”

“Yes and unfortunately, everything suggests that you have switched the papers,” he responded. “We will talk to you later but for now it seems like suspension is an option-“

Kris burst out of the classroom, looking irrevocably guilty.

“I switched the papers,” he gasped. “I’m sorry, I did it.”

“YOU WHAT?” we screeched together in unison. I had a sinking feeling in my stomach because Jiyeon's smirk from inside the classroom was too malicious to miss.

A/N:

I kept my promise right, update in a week :) Anyways, I've totally regained direction for this story and I have a complete idea of where it's going to end and a possible reconciliation with Kai and maybe even marriage? (LOL only featured in side chapters though) And.... the drama version of wolf is out! To be honest, I'm not all that impressed especially with all that unnecessary flipping that made Luhan,look like a blonde pixie but I'm excited for the second part :D