After eating his lunch (or rather Ryeowook scarfing his sandwich down like it was his last meal and the owner of the food too busy drooling over his geek-of-a-crush), the three friends took their belongings and dumped the leftovers into a nearby trashcan. They chatted on the way to their next class, and Donghae somehow managed to be the only one left to trudge all the way to the Science lab by himself. He walked into the crowded room, spotting a seat for himself at the back of the class. 

Donghae felt mentally drained. Today was the first day of school after a long winter vacation, and the last class of a Monday was always the worst for every student. Donghae didn't even know who were going to be his classmates, since the teachers changed everyone's schedules for the second semester of high-school. He honestly didn't care who he was going to be forced to interact with in the class. Well, he would care if—

“Hey, is this seat empty?”

Looking up from his desk, Donghae dramatically turned his head in slow-motion towards the source of the all-too-familiar voice. His eyes caught a streak of dirty-blonde hair and black-rimmed glasses, and the poor thing nearly fell backwards off of his stool when he realized who the voice came from.

“Ye- Yes… It’s fr-free…” Donghae stuttered, as he silently watched Hyukjae sigh in appreciation before dumping his stuff onto the table. He took out his VAIO laptop from its casing and quickly turned it on, the screen flashing where the teenager had left his Maplestory character during lunch-break.

The younger was close to having an anxiety attack. The love of his life was sitting right next to him, his fingers inches from touching the other’s skin. He could feel his arm brushing against the elder’s -- and if it weren’t for the fact that Hyukjae was within earshot, Donghae would’ve been whimpering right that second.

Soon enough, Donghae did however fall off his chair when the school bell rang a shrill cry, warning the students and teachers the start of yet another hour cramming information into the children’s heads. Hyukjae jumped as he heard the stool give way beneath the boy next to him, and the rest of the class tried desperately to contain their laughter as Donghae laid sprawled on the laboratory floor.

To the boy’s relief, the teacher chose that moment to walk through the doorway and instructed everyone to stop laughing at the whimpering teenager and pay attention to the board instead. When everyone (including Donghae) got back onto their seats, Hyukjae had tucked his laptop back into his bag and diverted his attention from the wildly blushing Donghae.

“So,” the middle-aged teacher started. “How was everyone's winter vacation?"

Out of the corner of Donghae's eye, he could see Siwon immediately shoot his arm into the air and maniacally waved it around to attract the older man’s attention.

He sighed. "It was a rhetorical question, Choi. I don’t care what you did on your vacation."

The arm went back down.

“Now, I would like you all to get your laptops out and go to my blog for today’s activity sheet. The resources are all in the document. Work with your partners if you need help.”

Right when the teacher finished his sentence, almost half of the class already had their laptops out of its casing and was madly clicking away on the mouse pad. Donghae noticed that Hyukjae had gotten his out too, and unlike the other students, he had decided to just continue with his intense gaming session on Maplestory. The younger sighed, pulling out his own laptop out of his schoolbag and flipping the screen of the out-dated Dell open. He navigated his way to the teacher’s website, downloading the documents he needed and opening them in Word Document. Donghae didn’t really feel like doing any work on a Monday morning, so he sneakily glanced at the elder’s screen to see what his seatmate was doing.  

The blonde geek had his single-lidded eyes squinted in pure concentration as his left fingers flew away on the alt, shift, A and D keys while the right fingers clicked the out of the arrow keys. Donghae blushed a bit as he noticed the other had his tongue poking out at the corner of his lips, making him look so irresistibly adorable to the love-stricken idiot.

‘I’m hopeless,’  Donghae bitterly thought to himself, as he continued gazing lovingly at the elder. Consequently, he had failed  to realize that the object of his desire had successfully beaten the Level 168 Lyka, and was now looking back at the brunette - who was too busy staring back at him to realize.

that is a terrible ending i'm sorry.

i swear next chapter will come sooner i had to split this chapter up because it was too long.