Previous chapter:

“Actually, this time I’m planning to make it onto the top 50 list. You think you can do it?”

Luhan’s smile was replaced with a mischievous grin. It was almost like he was mocking Sehun, relaying the message that both of them knew: “I’ve got you now. What are you going to do about it?”

“You are the most troublesome guy I’ve ever met in my life.”

Luhan laughed.

“I’m honored. Tutoring starts tomorrow after school, arasseo? Don’t forget!”

“Wait, what about the photo?”

“You’ll get that back once the finals are over, of course.”

Luhan waved the photo in the air before running into the house. For the first time in what seemed like ages, Sehun felt like crying. Like he was faced with the most terrifying crisis in his life.

No way. Tutor him and his friends from Class F?!

Chapter 16:

“I really don’t get this, Luhan geeee!” Tao whined over the phone.

Luhan scratched his head again as he stared at the complex quadratic equation laid in front of his eyes. He was sure he had emphasized this many times, but math to him was as good as any foreign language. It was almost an equal opponent against the unbeatable English language. Luhan could only furrow his eyebrows in a mixture of confusion and annoyance as Tao continued to whine.

“Can’t you do me a favor and ask Sehun for me? You live a room away from him!”

It was nighttime and Luhan was studying for midterms again. He knew that tutoring with Sehun and the others were scheduled for tomorrow but he wanted to get as much studying done as possible. Luhan stayed silent as Tao continued to pester him.

“Pretty please?”

He maintained the silence.

“With bubble tea on the line?”

Tao had no choice but to pull out his hidden card. Bubble tea on the line? Tao knew there was no way Luhan could say no to an offer as tempting as that. Never.

Luhan could only bite his lip as he was faced with the harsh decision. Either he had to get his lazy up and conquer his cowardness, or he had to risk losing a precious offer to free bubble tea. Free. There wasn’t any better time than now to resent the fact that he was so infatuated with bubble tea, it was suffocating.

Luhan finally decided. He knew that the bubble tea at the store a few blocks away from the school was waiting for him, calling out for him to come take him. He couldn’t resist. Then, of course, while he was making the decision, all he thought about was the bubble tea, not the potential situation he was about to face.

“Tao, I’ll go ask Sehun now...” He said calmly through the receiver.

He tried not to make it sound like his voice was quivering but in all honesty, it was. Luhan hated to admit it and many excuses to deny it popped into his head.  

1. I’ve liked him for 4 years. Of course I’d be nervous; I’m not used to being around him! He’s too handsome and bright.

2. He’s intimidating. Everyone is somewhat intimidated by him. He’s always been admired, not approached. (Besides the letters in his locker, I guess...)

3. He’s too smart. Someone as low as me asking him such simple questions just doesn’t cut it.

No matter how many excuses he came up with, it all boiled down to one conclusion: Sehun had no faults. But then again, Luhan wasn’t one for conclusions and he had to immediately throw that one into his mental trashcan. He picked up his math workbook and quietly tiptoed to the door. It was about time he stepped up a notch. As he turned the doorknob slowly and poked his head out the door, he tripped on his own foot and lost his balance right away. And of course, Oh Sehun happened to walk out of his room the exact moment Luhan flopped onto the floor.

Luhan groaned. From the moment he stepped into this house, every event that had happened was bad luck. This was one of those embarrassing moments, and especially embarrassing since he himself knew that he had flopped onto the floor like a fish.

To think that I was supposed to be a deer...

“Kwenchana?” Sehun asked carefully as he peered down at Luhan.

Luhan was sprawled across the floor, a mess of math papers folded and crumpled underneath him. He didn’t even want to answer Sehun, but he knew he had to get something out out of making a fool out of himself. Sometimes, Luhan wondered what he was doing with his life. Was the bubble tea on stake really worth this much?

“K-Kwenchana,” Luhan uttered as he struggled to get up.

When he finally got up, he brushed his clothes back into place and began to unwrinkle the math worksheets that were caught under his weight. He hated creases in his papers the most, but he couldn’t complain. After all, he was the one who tripped on himself in the first place. No one else, really, was to blame -- although he secretly blamed Oh Sehun for all the misfortunes that have happened to him by far in his life.

For a couple of seconds, Sehun watched as Luhan picked up each paper and unwrinkled them. Then, he realized what he had come out of his room for. He had to refill his cup of tea and continue studying. As he turned to walk away, a mug in his hand, he felt something grasp his ankle.

“Wait. I need your help.”

He stopped in his tracks and looked down to see Luhan getting up, and using him as a pillar of support.

Sehun raised an eyebrow.

“Go ask someone else. I’m busy.”

Luhan frowned. He wasn’t about to take a rejection so easily after embarrassing himself this much. He’d already been rejected once -- severely, if one might add -- and Tao would definitely hold this failure against him for the rest of his life if he couldn’t get the answer to one tiny math problem out of Sehun. He quickly grabbed Sehun’s free hand to stop him.

“No, seriously, I really need help on a math problem, Sehun...-ssi.” Luhan hesitated, not knowing what to call him.

Luhan figured it probably wasn’t a good idea to call him by his name. He was here to get math answers, not to provoke him into another ‘Oh Sehun Is A Jerk’ fight.

“I told you to go ask someone else!” Sehun replied, slightly irritated.

“Just this problem. Please? I’m in the middle of studying for the midterms and I’m completely stuck!”

Luhan swore that he would never again beg Sehun like this ever again after this encounter. This was eating at his pride so much, it hurt his soul to think about what he was doing.

Tao, I hate you.

“...What math are you doing right now?”

“It’s Algebra 2 review,” Luhan sighed. “It’s all a foreign language.”

He held up his pile of half-destroyed math papers and almost teared up as he tried to decipher the letters and numbers both in the same equation. There were exponents, complex fractions, completing the square, and a bunch of other questionable problems that required previous knowledge of laws and theorems. Those kind of things never did fly with Luhan.

As Luhan entered the world of confusion once again, Sehun could only imagine the worst case scenarios he would have to face tomorrow. He didn’t have to deal only with one Luhan, but with a whole group of Luhans, some even worse than him! Just the thought of tomorrow’s training session pissed him off. He grabbed the pile of papers from Luhan’s hand and strode into his room, the sound of his slippers shuffling on the hardwood floor. He slammed the door close and left Luhan outside alone to fend for himself.

“W...what just happened?” Luhan said out loud, taken back by the current situation.

He stood outside in the hallway in front of Sehun’s door, dumbfounded and speechless. He was robbed of his own worksheets and a door had been slammed in his face. Six minutes later, the door to Sehun’s room swung open and Luhan caught a quick glimpse of what looked like an extremely organized study filled with books. The colors of the walls were painted a darker shade of sky blue and the furniture was a shade of mocha brown. Everything was simple yet complex at the same time.

Intrigued with the first time seeing Sehun’s bedroom, he failed to notice Sehun emerge from it with his pile of math papers in his hands. Sehun, who could do nothing but get pissed off at the moment, shoved the papers into Luhan’s hands. A few sheets scattered onto the floor, creating a miniature replica of the mess made just minutes ago.

Before Luhan could protest and pick the papers up, he noticed neat italicized writing printed all over the worksheets that had fallen, neatly scribed in a 0.5 blue pen. The writing was so neat, it looked like a series of math equations were typed up from Microsoft Word and directly pasted onto his worksheets. Sehun looked at Luhan pathetically before retreating downstairs, probably to the kitchen for the cup of tea he had been delayed from getting for almost 10 minutes.

Luhan watched him leave before he retreated to his room and sat by his desk. He immediately shuffled through the rest of the papers that had been shoved into his hands. To his surprise, each problem was filled out in that same blue font with the same blue pen, step-by-step work written so clearly, there was no need for any explanation. All of the answers were present and popped out clearly on the page.

Luhan leaned back in his desk chair and let out a breath. He couldn’t help but admit that Sehun was indeed too amazing. He finished all of the problems in record time, even writing out the steps that Luhan was pretty sure he would have done in his head at a regular basis. As he stared blankly at the door of his room contemplating what he should do with the worksheets, he glanced back at them and noticed some printed writing in purple on a worksheet that had been flipped over. He pulled it out of the scattered pile and his eyes widened.

“You won’t have a problem on the semester test. Flip all papers. - Sehun.” Luhan read out loud.

The memo was written at the top of the page. Luhan scoffed.

“He could’ve at least written something friendlier...Even his writing sounds like him...”

Luhan faltered and scanned the writing below the memo. To the left of the page, there were handfuls of math problems that Sehun personally wrote out for him. To the right, Sehun had included the steps, laws, and theorems needed to complete the specific math problems.

“There’s no way there can be more of this, right?” Luhan murmured to himself as he looked the steps over carefully.

He fumbled with the other sheets and flipped them all over. He could only gape in awe as he saw problems upon problems upon problems of math work Sehun had written. Luhan almost felt that he was set for life when he landed his eyes upon Sehun’s neat and clear explanations. Just Sehun telling him that he wouldn’t have a problem with the test was enough to make him relieved, and even determined to get some studying done.

“I guess sometimes Sehun has a positive effect on me..”

Luhan shook his head in confusion, ruffling his hair once, before he got to work, reading Sehun’s instructions carefully and completing the math problems.

~*~

Tao could only burst into a fit of giggles as Luhan caught onto his bait and immediately hung up to ask Sehun about the math problems. It was weird that Luhan hadn’t caught up yet. Tao was the only person besides Luhan to ever listen in class, It was impossible that Tao didn’t know how to solve equations as simple as completing the square and factoring. Though, of course, Tao didn’t give a care in the world for tests and grades. As long as he was learning, nothing else mattered to him.

Luhan was the only person who would ever fall for Tao’s schemes. Kris and his other friends were always wary of Tao and the mischievous tricks up his sleeves, but Luhan had completely let his guard down upon the mentioning of the heavenly bubble tea, which probably ranked second on Luhan’s “I Love...” list, Sehun reserving first place.

“Yah, how can you betray your friend like that?” Kris’s voice blasted through the line.

Tao was facetiming Kris on speaker as he relayed the story to Kris, the hyung he loved to talk to the most. Kris could be weird and clumsy sometimes, but he always had a sense of responsibility and knew when to back out of things that were unclever and definitely dangerous. He also had an awesome fashion sense, and Tao believed they were a BFF match made in heaven.

“What do you mean, betray? I’m a Hunhan follower, you know!”

“...Can you repeat what you just said? Hun...Hunhan?!”

Kris, on the other side of the line, was lying in his bedroom when Tao used the OTP slang term first. He sprung up from his bed and gave Tao the weirdest look he could muster that would convey his emotions through his iPhone camera.

“Yeah, Hunhan! SeHUN plus LuHAN. So obviously, they equal Hunhan. I ship them!” Tao said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

Kris could not believe his ears. Tao had just been playing the role of a matchmaker behind the scenes, and now he was even making up potential names for the couple that didn’t even exist.

“Whatever you say, peach. I’m going to crash now, I’m dead tired and there’s school tomorrow.”

“But ge, it’s only 7:30PM! We can still make it to the Haagen Dazs free cone day event!”

Kris just shook his head.

“You can go yourself...I’m too tired to get up and go to the store just to get a scoop of free ice cream...”

“Ge, you’re no fun.” Tao pouted.

“I’m going to sleep now! 晚安！Good night!” Kris blurted out quickly, before clicking the “end” button on his iPhone.

“God, I swear, if I stayed on that video call for one more second, I would’ve been lured by Tao’s aegyo. No, no, no.”

Kris slapped himself in the face to wake himself up.

“Aishhhh! That hurt!” He complained as he collapsed back into the depths of his blankets and rubbed his stinging cheek lightly to ease the pain.

~*~

A/N:

I literally sprung up and wrote this after I saw that I had 200 subscribers (now 201, props to that one person, xD). I love you all and I assure you that all of you are amazing. I wouldn’t have gotten this far without you guys ^^ -- A sidenote: I was actually fangirling over this at school today. The comments are really making me happy LOL. P.S. To anyone who wants to make a poster for this fanfic, just message me and I'll be sure to use all of them at least once (I really want a poster :3).

Anyhow, I hope you enjoyed this chapter, and anticipate the “tutoring” going on tomorrow! I wonder how Sehun will cope with Luhan’s group of friends...