Just a reminder (or not if you're new omg hi there then), the 'you' character of my other fic has been named in this fic ^^

When Luhan accepted the offer to transfer to Korea, he didn't expect much. He was probably to transfer to some small, quaint school and learn about Korea more extensively in a quiet enviornment. That was definitely not the case. Luhan looked up at the building looming over him. Students were swarming inside the gates; some greeting their friends while others seemed to be in a rush to who knows where. A few brushed past Luhan or bumped his shoulder. Most of them didn't apologize but Luhan was a bit overwhelmed that he didn't care about the lack of manners. He clutched his backpack closer to his chest and shuffled forward. This was it, he was about to enter a whole new place. 

There was a tap on his shoulder suddenly and he whirled around, eyes wide. God damn it, he would have to speak in his extremely limited Korean now. Luhan settled his gaze on the person's face before realizing it was a familiar one. 

"Lay," he greeted, relieved.

"Oh, it's you, Luhan," Lay also visibly relaxed. "I was so scared I had to speak Korean there for a second."

Luhan laughed. "Me too. I didn't know you transferred here."

Lay shrugged. "I didn't know until recently either. Come on," he grabbed Luhan's uniform sleeve and led him towards the school, "I think we need to go towards that building thing."

"I'm pretty sure that building thing is the auditorium," Lay simply blinked at Luhan. The latter shook his head, remembering that Lay was known for blanking out. He started walking, dragging Lay behind him. "We should hurry up. Anyways, what were you going to ask me?"

There was a brief moment of silence and then, "What did you say again?"

"What were you going to ask me before?" Luhan patiently repeated. 

"Oh. I was going to ask what we had to do and why everybody was walking towards the building thing," Lay said, falling into step with Luhan so he didn't have to tug his uniform sleeve.

"I guess it's a meeting or something," Luhan shrugged, quickening his pace to catch up with the wave of students funneling into the too-small double doors to the auditorium. After getting shoved and pulled along with the crowd of students, they finally entered a spacious room b with people. 

"Holy heck," Luhan breathed. Lay muttered something similar. "How are we going to find a seat here?" 

"Ayo!" Luhan managed to hear above all the noise. He scanned the rows and rows of students before he saw a giant hand waving back and forth. 

Luhan grabbed Lay's arm and tugged him over eagerly. "Look, there's Kris; maybe we can get seats!" 

Kris actually did have seats, his long legs draped over them. Luhan breathed a sigh of relief at the sight. When they finally reached him, Kris swung his legs off the seats and leaned back. Luhan got a good glimpse of the person sitting next to Kris, his eyes widening. 

"Tao!" he slid into the seat on Kris's other side. "You're coming here too? I thought you didn't want to ever leave China." 

Tao shrugged. "Change of heart, I guess. Korea's cool so far so I don't mind. Oh, hey, Lay," Tao acknowledged the other boy. Lay waved back and smiled. He opened his mouth to say something but an earsplitting screech erupted through the speakers. 

The feedback effectively cut off all conversation in the auditorium and replaced it with some girly squeaks and manly shouts (Luhan liked to think he was part of the latter but his friends would definitely say he was the former). The principal stood at the podium, face stoic as he continued tapping on the microphone. When he deemed it okay, he finally spoke into it. 

"Welcome back to school, ladies and gentlemen. I hope you had a nice break. A friendly reminder that finals are coming up soon and that you need to study hard for them," the principal droned on but Luhan only understood so much with his limited Korean so he tuned him out after another minute or two. Without knowing, he nodded off to unknown Korean phrases resounding in his ears.

Luhan woke with a start. The principal was just wrapping up his speech and Luhan smiled to himself because of his impeccable timing. Although they were friends from his old school, Luhan really doubted Kris, Tao or even Lay would wake him mainly because they would want to laugh at him about it later. 

"You are dismissed," the principal finally said. Everybody seemed to stand up unanimously and rush towards the exits. There were a few screeches of chair against floor as people pushed their way through to freedom (wait, it wouldn't really be considered freedom if they were still in school) and Luhan was swept along with the crowd, hanging onto Lay's uniform sleeve for dear life. When they were finally outside, though, Lay carefully pried off Luhan's fingers. Tao and Kris had disappeared somewhere else, probably to their classes. 

"As much as I know you love me, I think we have different classes," Lay gently said, clearly unaffected by Luhan's kicked puppy look. 

Luhan pouted even more and looked down at his schedule before sighing. "Alright. I guess we better get to class." 

"Yeah. See you at lunch or something," Lay waved and gave one last dimpled smile before leaving in the other direction. 

Luhan helplessly whimpered and took off in another direction.

Luhan was lost. Utterly. Completely. Lost. 

If being in a new school was bad, being in a school whose main language was one that Luhan can speak very limitedly was absolutely nerve-wracking. He had no one to turn to in this situation and he was forced to roam around and hope to find the classroom marked 4A.

He stared between the map and schedule in his hands blankly. A few more turns and an empty hallway left Luhan even more confused. Maybe he was reading his map wrong. He turned it upside down and tried to decipher the lines on it again. No luck. He had no idea where he was (not like he didn't already know that). 

The sound of rubber soles squeaking against polished floor brought Luhan's attention away from his map. 

"Are you lost?" a smooth voice asked. 

"Yeah. Do you know where-" Luhan's voice died somewhere in his throat when he saw the boy in front of him. 

He had his hands in his pockets and his uniform was in a bit of a disarray but Luhan (being the perfectionist he somewhat was) didn't seem to mind. Brown locks framed his face and he stared at Luhan, face blank and expressionless and lips pressed into a thin line. Luhan thought he was gorgeous. Wait, what?

"What were you going to say?" the other boy asked. There was no concern etched on his features and he looked so disinterested, Luhan thought he wouldn't even care what he would say next. And maybe he didn't. But Luhan still asked anyways. 

"Do you, uh, know where Room- wait, let me check, 4A would be?" Smooth, really really smooth.

The other boy tilted his head forward before bringing it back in what Luhan assumed was a nod. "Go down this hallway, make a right, then a left, and there should be 4A on your right hand side." 

"Thanks," Luhan bowed and stumbled in the direction the boy had pointed at. Right, left, right hand side. Right, left, right hand side. Right, left, right hand side. He repeated the instructions in his head. He couldn't get lost again, that was why. It wasn't because Luhan loved the other boy's voice. Definitely not. 

Luhan stared blankly straight ahead. The other students were socializing around him but the amount of Korean entering his ears was starting to make his head hurt. He was a bit afraid that he would open his mouth and say the most awkward phrase possible. Best thing to do was to avoid talking. 

"Hey, are you new?" Darn it. So much for not talking.

He turned to see a girl looking at him curiously. She was tightly clutching her own books to her chest and seemed a bit wary of him. Hopefully, if he said something wrong, she wouldn't laugh at him. 

"Y-yes. I'm new," he stuttered out cautiously. 

"Cool," she nodded. "I'm Soojin and I sit here," she tapped the desk right next to Luhan's. 

"I'm Luhan," he replied politely. 

She laughed and fear struck Luhan's heart. Did he already say something wrong? But it didn't seem to be the case because Soojin just said, "No need to be so formal, god."

Luhan took a little bit to process before nodding in understanding. "Oh, okay then." 

"Oh right. You probably don't understand that much Korean," Soojin rapidly fired. Luhan stared at her, lost. "Would you like help with your Korean?" Soojin said, slowly this time. 

Luhan eagerly nodded and Soojin smiled. 

"Well, looks like you can't escape this friendship." 

Luhan believed he never would have the intention to. 

When lunch came around, Luhan was pulled along by Soojin to the cafeteria. shot out words like bullets and Luhan almost had to remind her that he had no idea what she was talking about but then her talk slowed when Luhan didn't respond after a while. 

"Would you like to sit with me at lunch?" Soojin sounded out slowly. 

"Ah, uh, can my friends come too?" 

"Sure," Soojin grinned and led him over to her table. Surprisingly, Kris, Tao, and Lay were already seated there with two other students. 

"Oh, it's Luhan!" Lay waved at him. Soojin looked at Luhan and he somehow managed to translate the silent exchange. 

"Yeah, they're my friends, Lay, Kris, and Tao. Guys, this is Soojin," he gestured. His said friends waved at Soojin.

"These are my friends-" Soojin said before Lay cut her off. 

"Oooh! I think I got this!" he waved his hand in the air. "This is uh... Chen. Like tangerine. And I think this is baozi!" 

Kris looked like he was about to do a spit take but thankfully held it in. Tao corrected Lay, trying to hold his own laugh back. "This is Xiumin. Not baozi."

Luhan greeted the two, taking special care to call Xiumin baozi. The other male looked lost at the nickname while Kris and Tao fought to hold in their laughs.

Soojin just raised an eyebrow at them. "Let's go get lunch. I'm starving."

Luhan was halfway through his sandwich and an intense conversation about baozis with Xiumin when a group of boys entered the cafeteria. Luhan chose to ignore them and tell Xiumin more about the meaty goodness in as much Korean as he could use but he could barely even get a word out of his mouth that could be heard over the extremely loud whispers from everybody in the cafeteria. He sighed and waved the topic off, not noticing that Xiumin had quite visibly relaxed after hearing Luhan spew out incomprehensible Korean. Instead, Luhan was more focused on one of the guys in the group that just entered. 

It was that boy that helped him find his classroom earlier. His expression was the same blank look from before and Luhan half wondered if he was always like that. But then one of the boy's friends said something and then his facade broke and he laughed for a few seconds before he seemed to catch himself and hid his emotions under a indifferent mask. Luhan tilted his head in curiosity. Why did somebody have to hide his emtoions? As a person who laughed with his jaw unhinged - "You'll never attract any girls," his mom had said; not like he cared much for them in the first place - and cried freely (he doesn't like to admit that because he is a MANLY MAN god damn it), he found it stupid that anybody has to act so... emotionless. 

He leaned over to Soojin and prodded her. "Hey, who are they?" 

She looked up from her lunch and glanced at the group of boys. "Oh them? They're the popular boys in school. There's Suho, our class president, Kyungsoo that everybody calls D.O for some reason, Baekhyun, an SNSD fanboy, Chanyeol, the happy one," Luhan recognized him as the guy who made mysterious emotionless boy laugh. "And the one that always has on a poker face is Oh Sehun." 

"Sehun," Luhan said absentmindedly. He liked the way his name rolled off his tongue and reveled at how nice it felt coming from his mouth. He unknowingly smiled to himself, smothering it behind his sandwich. 

Soojun just eyed him strangely before also biting into her own sandwich. 

"Okay, let me get this straight. You're gay," Soojin deadpanned. She threw her towel down on the table and started wiping. Right now, they were at Xiumin's mother's boba shop where Soojin, Chen and Xiumin worked at. Almost immediately after they all sat down, Soojin started questioning him and Luhan was forced to answer in his limited Korean. 

Luhan nodded, playing with his straw. Chen stifled a laugh that made Soojin look pointedly at him. 

"What?" he raised his hands in defense. "You said 'let me get this straight. you're gay' and that just holds so much irony because you know... he's not straight." 

Kris groaned, taking a loud slurp from his coffee ("I'm too cool for this girly boba thing," he claimed). "That was so bad, I swear." 

Tao seemed less interested with the joke. "Do you have somebody you like at the moment?" Luhan noted that he looked exactly like a teenage girl waiting for some new gossip. 

"I do," he said shyly. He took another sip of boba before saying, "God, this is the best boba I've tasted in a while." 

Tao ignored him and pressed on. "Who is it?" 

The others seemed equally interested in this and they turned towards him expectantly. 

Luhan sighed, finding that he had no choice but to tell them. "Uh, I like Sehun." 

His friends just stared at him blankly. Luhan fidgeted in his seat, unsure how to feel about their reaction. But then, they all burst. 

"Dude, I would totally date him. He looks so cute." 

"Tao, that sounded pretty gay." 

"I'm just saying I would date him but I won't."

"Still gay."

"Oh, shut up, Kris."

"Hey, I heard Sehun does this thing sometimes," Chen said. "I hear he laughs and smiles once in a while. It's a freaking miracle." 

"I heard of this thing where your sarcastic comments are funny. Sadly, it hasn't happened yet." 

"Oooooh, burn. Nice one, Xiumin," Soojin high-fived him. 

Luhan just laughed. Trust his friends to turn this funny. He smiled and drank from his boba again. He also has to mention that they make amazing boba. 

Luhan fidgeted with his shirt and glanced nervously at where the soccer team was practicing. Today, he was trying out for the team. Although tryouts had long since ended, he was given an opportunity to make the team because of his recent transfer. 

He smoothed his shirt with his palms, feeling them clam up. He took shaky step after shaky step towards the coach. He didn't even realize he was holding his breath until the ground swayed a little in his vision. After that, he had to keep chanting for himself to breathe. 

The coach's face was serious as Luhan talked to him and he honestly would've thought the coach was really planning on rejecting him if it weren't for the approving nods in between as he wrote comments down. Luhan was surprised he managed to understand him through his heavily-accented, very limited Korean. 

Finally, the coach looked up from his clipboard and said, "OK, show me what you've got out on the field." 

Luhan sighed in relief because if he was out on the field, at least he passed the talking part. It wasn't the actual sport that brought his nerves out but the interviewing. On the field, Luhan was the most natural. He practically grew up playing this sport and he loved it enough that just dribbling the ball around was enough to make him happy. He breathed in and concentrated before taking off down the field. 

The coach had a few of the other players set up to block him from reaching the goal but Luhan easily surpassed them, almost wondering how they made it on the team but he figured the coach had his reasons. He was nearing the goal now and he looked up. 

Luhan grinned when he saw that no other defenders were in his way but the smile slowly slid off his face as he realized who the goalie was. 

It was Sehun. 

The goalie was Sehun. 

Sehun was staring straight at him and Luhan gulped, quite aware of his gaze. Concentrate, Lu, he's staring at you because you have the damn ball, he told himself. But having his crush stare at him proved to be much more nervewracking than he thought because when he brought his foot back to kick, the momentum made him slide on the grass and land hard on his . Hastily covered snickers reached his ears and he hung his head in shame. 

Luhan was a natural at soccer. He wasn't bragging or anything. It was just that... he was. But making a fool out of himself was definitely not part of his agenda. So much for making the team, he thought. Like the coach was going to accept him screwing up his tryout. 

"Hey, you okay?" A voice asked. Luhan glanced up and almost choked. Sehun was standing next to him, staring down at him in concern. He found himself dumbly nodding in response with an equally stupid "I-I'm f-fine." 

"Hey! Kid!" the coach was jogging up to him now and Luhan was ultimately sure of his rejection. The coach nodded at Sehun before facing Luhan. "Kid, you seem to have a lot of experience with soccer but we can not accept any mistakes this late in the year. Thanks for trying out. Maybe next ti-" 

"No," Sehun said firmly next to Luhan. 

The coach and Luhan both stared at Sehun in surprise but it was the coach who spoke first. "Excuse me, Oh?" 

"It was just one mistake, Coach. You saw the talent in him," Sehun gestured at Luhan. "We could use him on the team. Plus, weren't you the one that said we improve with mistakes? He would be a nice addition." 

The coach seemed to think this over before he nodded slowly. "OK, I'll trust your judgement. Luhan, you've been accepted in the team. Be sure to pick up your jersey later from my office." 

With those words, the coach turned back, barking directions at the other players to run five greens. Sehun held out a hand and Luhan grabbed it, pulling himself up. His hand was soft and warm, Luhan noted. Also, he helped you get a spot on the team, thank him, you idiot.

"Th-thanks," he managed to stutter out. 

Sehun nodded at him, face devoid of emotion. Luhan felt a little hollow after that because what happened to the Sehun that looked so concerned about him when he fell and helped him get a spot? He felt a bit lost as he stared after Sehun leaving the field and wondered what it would take to break that shell. 

The bell finally rang for the end of the day and students started shoving all their materials into bookbags. The teacher tried to shout over the hubbub which page numbers were part of their assignment for the night. Luhan doubted that any of them really heard the teacher except maybe the most studious ones so he took his time collecting his things and putting them safely into his backpack. 

The classroom was mostly cleared out when Luhan finished packing up. He took a few more minutes talking to the teacher about the day and what the homework was. By the time Luhan finally slung his backpack around his shoulder and left the classroom, it was ten minutes well past the dismissal time. Luhan didn't mind, though. He didn't have many places to go (he didn't attend hakwon like the other students, thank god) and today was a slow and easy day. He slid open the door to the classroom and was surprised to see Sehun on the other side. 

The boy seemed to be equally surprised because his mouth dropped open and his eyes widened when he saw Luhan, his usual poker face broken. Then, his face settled back into the normal, nonchalant facade. Luhan hurriedly nodded his head politely but Sehun simply slid past him into the classroom. He suddenly turned and looked at Luhan. 

"Hey," he said. 

Luhan was starting to fell a little giddy. Did he recognize him or anything? Well, Sehun did help him with his tryout and finding his classroom so it couldn't possibly be hard to remember him. Luhan started thinking of scenarios. Next thing you know, he was going to ask for Luhan's name and invite him places and Sehun would realize they click and then there would be dates and other boyfriend things and- 

Luhan's fantasies were shattered when Sehun followed his previous statement with, "Have I seen you anywhere?" 

At this, Luhan's smile fell because maybe he was just that insignificant in Sehun's life that he won't even recognize him even just a little. Luhan shook his head at Sehun's question. "No, I'm not sure you've seen me anywhere." 

Then, he turned and left the classroom. 

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/nervously laughs hey I'm alive?? I mean I promised an update 290485390 years ago but it comes now lol If you've read the old chapter, I've changed it up a little because some of the parts were either pathetic or just unnecessary. I'll try to get the next update as soon as possible :D

Also, it's a coincidence that Sehun's birthday is today and I'm posting this lol Happy Hunhan month everybody ^^ Here's to our ship still staying slightly alive :D