*

KIM JONGIN

*

“Oh my gosh!” said my mother in complete shock, her voice both a mixture of disbelief and fascination...and possibly slight amusement. “Jongin, did those girls really chase you all the way into the girl’s bathroom just to film you on the toilet?!”

I hoped that was a rhetorical question. She could obviously see right in front of her that the girls did, indeed, chase me all the way into the girl’s bathroom, which I had only ran into on accident in all my desperation to get to the nearest toilet seat.

Regardless, whether it was or not, I didn’t respond to her question with anything more than a groan. I shut my eyes tight, and in in my head I wished to be anywhere else in the world than where I currently was.

Well...this is only slightly embarrassing, I thought to myself sarcastically. Then, as if the situation I was currently in weren’t already bad enough as it is, I heard the little voice in the back of my head add, Just wait until the rest of the board members see the videos and you have to explain the story of you ting yourself in public in front of the entire student body.

I wanted to groan again at the mere thought of it.  

Currently, my father, my mother and I were in the middle of having a little “family meeting” in my headmaster-father’s office.

Family meetings was something we did every once in a while, usually to discuss matters related to my future, goals, and other expectations my father had for me during each school year. Family meetings were also a time for my parents to tell me about any diabolical plans they had in mind for getting ahead in whatever business adventure they had taken on for the moment, and what role they wanted me to play in helping them achieve it.

Today’s meeting was to discuss the possibility of forming a case against my co-president to the head board members of Cheonan Academy in attempt to remove her from her presidential position. At the moment, both my parents were in the middle of watching some videos that Minji and the girls had recorded on the day that they had pranked us guys, which my father was only able to get through confiscating items from Minji’s dorm room.

I wasn’t surprised once I’d found out that he had ordered a “search and seizure” on her dorm room. After all, I was the one who had told him about the videos, but I still thought the measure was a bit extreme especially since it had caused so much commotion in the senior dorm house.

I didn’t see her face since I wasn’t around at the time, but I’ll bet Minji had been really embarrassed. Not that I cared…

I was still miffed about the fact that she had retaliated so well in her revenge prank. Thanks to her the girls on campus looked at me in a completely different way, often giggling and cackling amongst each other whenever I walked by.

No longer was I Kai, the academy’s handsome senior class president. Now I was Kai, the guy who had himself in English class.

Not only that but I had ended up failing the oral report in English all thanks to the girls teaming up together to give me a fake report with nothing on it.

And I don’t even want to mention the flying tennis balls that had left me a walking bruise the very next day.  

Yeah, Minji had got me good (way too good) in so many ways and now I hated her for that.

I really freaking hated her.

This was why I hadn’t been responding to any of the messages she had been sending me. Apparently she wanted to meet up “to talk.” What about, I wasn’t sure, but I wasn’t the least bit concerned, so I’d been ignoring not only her messages, but her as well.

In fact, I hadn’t even been showing up to class lately, thanks to my father, who had pulled me out of some of my classes for the time being so that we could focus more on preparation for this upcoming case.

It was taking longer than I would have expected though.      

“Omo! My poor baby!” I heard my mother cry, vehemently, now, her shrill voice grating against my eardrums. While my eyes were still clamped shut, I heard some shuffling and next thing I knew my head was being grabbed and my face was being shoved into the pillowy depths of my mother’s s.

She cooed as she cradled my head against her chest like I was actually a baby.

“Umma, please stop!” I warned and forcefully pulled my head away. It was just like my mother to overreact.

“What? Those girls did that to my little Jongin and expect to get away with it?” she said pointing to Minji’s laptop, referring to the videos my father was still watching. “They definitely will not!”

She then caressed my head again. “Don’t worry honey. Your father and I will make sure that those girls receive back what they did to you tenfold.”

I knew she was just being an overprotective lioness to her cub but I couldn’t imagine what else she and my father could possibly do to make things worse for the girls. I mean, wouldn’t ruining Minji’s reputation to the point that she had to be removed as president thus leaving the senior girls without their favorite leader, be enough?

I find it interesting that my mother would be the one to be encouraging plans that could possibly ruin Cheonan Academy when she was the one who had convinced my father to contribute so much money to keep the school open by making it co-ed, in the first place.

Then again, standing up for girl power meant absolutely nothing to my mother when she wasn’t the sole woman in power. She was a Kim, afterall and that meant that she was out for herself, first, above everything else. That was the way my family achieved things.  It was always “us first, everyone else.” That was practically our family motto.

Note my sarcasm.

I was going to ask exactly how she planned to make the girls receive back what they did to me “tenfold” as she had put it, but she began speaking before I got the chance.

She tapped her perfectly manicured nail against her smooth chin as she looked deep in thought. “I do have to say; however, that I am both surprised and impressed by Minji’s aggressiveness in delivering a revenge prank. I remember the girl back when she was a freshman. She had been so shy and meek back then. I honestly would’ve never have pegged her for being capable of pulling something like this.”

She then looked down at me and ran her fingers through my hair, lovingly. “I guess you just bring that out in her, sweetheart. You have such an impactful influence over people, Jongin, which just proves not only that you can do anything but that you can get anyone to do anything for you if you really set your mind to it. It’s as if you were born to lead-”     

“Don’t be ridiculous,” my father’s deep voice suddenly cut through like a blade, sharp and chillingly cold. This was the first time he had spoken since he had the laptop and found those video recordings on Minji’s laptop. He had been silent the whole time he had been watching them unlike my mother who had made her own commentary throughout the whole thing, and based from that fact I knew he had to be seething inside.

My father’s temper had always been like that of a silent scream. He wasn’t the explosive type who erupted at every little thing but rather kept a calm facade while fuming on the inside. He never even raised his voice, but with a voice as sharp as his he never had to. As a child I use to dread his temper the most despite the fact that it was silent, and would go out of my way to keep from making him angry. There was something about his silent temper that made not only myself, but others as well, very uneasy.   

You couldn’t see his anger but you could feel it.

“This isn’t a joke, honey,” my father continued to berate my mother, something he knew she hated but he tended to do anyway. “Our son, our prodigious son, was just caught on camera with his pants around his ankles, literally!” His eyes then landed on me, his irises dark and cold. “Words couldn’t possibly describe just how deeply embarrassed I am to be your father right now, Jongin.”

I flinched at his harshness. Ouch. But I was use to it. What my father lacked in expressing his anger through actions he made up for by being incredibly spiteful through his speech.

“How could you allow yourself to be ridiculed like that by some damn high school girls, Jongin? Do you have any idea how bad this will make you look? Us look? People will think you’re weak and easily pushed around. Do you know how that will make me look being both your father and the headmaster? Other important faculty members from other schools will think that I raised a little dip for a son who can’t stand up for himself.”

“Honey, that’s not fair,” my mother spoke on my behalf, which she often tried to do whenever my father came down really hard on me. “How would he know that the girls were planning to do something like that to him. He couldn’t have thought…”

“That’s precisely the problem,” my father cut her off, seeming to get more furious with every word he spoke. “He didn’t think! If he had he wouldn’t have been so completely humiliated by a bunch of girls!”   

In all his anger, he slammed the laptop shut, causing the things on his desk to jitter. “That is why I’ve decided not to go through with making a case to the board for you Jongin-”

“What?!” I interjected before I even fully understood what he was saying.

As sort of a defense mechanism to shield me from his harsh words, I had been half-listening to his rant, not bothering to look him in the eye but he grabbed my full attention the moment he said he wasn’t going to make the case.

I stared at him with incredulous eyes as his words began to dawn on me. “What do you mean you’re not going to make the case?”  

My father kept a blank face while answering, seemingly unconcerned with my feelings even despite my shocked face that showed I was not pleased. Instead, he chose to talk down to me, condescendingly.

“I meant it exactly as I said it, Jongin. I’m not going to make the case for you until...”

Now, it was dangerous for a person to interrupt my father when he was in the middle of talking, but as he spoke to me, slowly, like I was too stupid to understand mere words, rage filled me and I suddenly felt the need to curse.

So I did.

“You’ve got to be ing kidding me,”I spat out.

My mother gasped. “Jongin, watch your mouth!”

Honestly, I didn’t give a about appropriate language at the moment so I ignored her.

I stood from my seat suddenly feeling rather claustrophobic even despite the spaciousness of the office. I felt like I needed to literally walk off some of my anger, or else things were going to be all bad. Unlike my father, I was much more expressive when I was truly pissed off.

Slowly, I began to pace around the room and tried to gain control of my breathing.

“Jongin, what’s wrong?” I heard my mother ask.

I released a breath as I started carefully, trying to keep my tone even. “All I’ve done this year is do everything you two have told me to do. All I have ever done is do exactly whatever you two tell me to do. Now you mean to tell me that after you two specifically told me to do whatever I could to not only tarnish Minji’s reputation but also to help out in your plan to destroy Mrs. Jung’s that you aren’t even going to use any of the evidence I gained that could help achieve that because you don’t like the ways in which I went about doing it?”

Both my parents were staring at me obviously affected by the words coming out of my mouth, but whereas my mother was looking at me more dumbfoundedly, my father was looking at me like I was some annoying fly buzzing around his office that he wanted to swat at.

Yet, I continued in my tirade anyway.  

They had obviously forgotten about their part in all of this nonsense.  

Need I remind them that they were the ones who told me to “stir things up” on campus in order to make Mrs. Jung look like an unfit headmaster, incapable of controlling her own academy’s students. Since before the school went co-ed, Mrs. Jung had only ever headed a school with all girls. Messing things up on campus on purpose was supposed to make it look like she couldn’t handle the school if it had both boys and girls.

This was all part of the plan for helping mom in her goal to take over Mrs. Jung’s position one day, so that she could be headmaster of the school instead.

That’s why my father had taken that week off back when my aunt had gotten sick. It was to leave Mrs. Jung alone to headmaster the entire academy herself, and that’s when I was supposed to purposely mess things up in order to make it look like she had no control over the co-ed school without my father there to help her.

This was the reason why I had caused the food fight to happen specifically on the day that the superintendent had come to take a tour of the school.

In fact, even me and the guys’ prank against the girls, which technically wasn’t even originally a part of the plan, still helped in achieving exactly what my parents wanted which was to stir up trouble on campus, help make Mrs. Jung look bad, and as a bonus, even paved the way for gaining solid evidence that could be used against my co-president that could get her kicked out of student government because after all, my parents were the ones who told me how important it was to make sure that I was the school’s only senior president. That I should leave a legacy behind as the best senior president of the first prestigious co-ed academy in our district.

Messed up as it may be, I had kept up my side of the deal, doing whatever I could to both keep our family’s facade of “perfect ruling elitists” while using unfit, and downright deplorable means to keep up that facade, all of which I had informed them about every step of the way.

Now, here I sat being lectured about what an embarrassment I am? And on top of that my father wasn’t even going to follow through with the case? Here we stood with the perfect opportunity to take down those who were in our way, and my father wasn’t even going to do anything? Then what the hell had been the purpose in making me do all those things for?

If I was an embarrassment there were no words in all of human language to describe what they were.

“You both approved of everything I did,” I told them. “Yes, some of them backfired a little bit, but I still got the job done! Now you’re supposed to follow through with yours.”

By the time I was finished, my father looked so annoyed with me, I could see it through his clenched jaw. He probably wanted to strangle me for talking back.

When he spoke he started slow as if trying to refrain from lashing out. “Well if you would’ve let me finish talking instead of interrupting me then I would’ve been able to explain to you why I’m not making the case just yet.”

This made me halt. I blinked.

“Yet?” I repeated. “As in you’re still going to.”

My father sighed, exasperatedly. “Yes, but I’m not going to while your story is still so underdeveloped. If I presented what you told me as a case to the board, all they would see are two incredibly irresponsible children who are incapable of being presidents and both of you would be removed and you would put a huge stain on our family’s perfect image. I can’t have that.”

He sighed again. “If we’re going to do this then your case needs to be flawless without any ambiguities because it’s going to be your words against Minji’s. If you present a case against her, she’s going to have to present one against you as well and there’s way too much information floating around that paints you in a bad light. That’s why I said you didn’t think, Jongin.”

I stood thinking over what my father had just said. I hated to admit it but what my father was saying made sense. I hadn’t thought everything through. But it's not like I ever really had to. My father was always there to fix up the things I messed up. 

My father continued. “Now it’s my job to clean your story up and make it so that she has nothing on you when the time comes to present your cases, but I need to know everything, Jongin. And I mean, everything from the very day that the feud between you two started up until now. You must remember everything because one slip up could mean exposing the truth. You have to think about all the things Minji might have to use against you in her own case so that we can prepare in making sure that none of them have any merit by getting rid of them all.”

“Okay,” I said thinking back to the first day of school. “Well it started when us guys decided to prank the girls. Somehow they found out and that’s when-”

“How did they find out?” my mother interrupted.

“Um…” I trailed momentarily as I thought about it and that’s when I realized that I didn’t even know. “I think one of the girls had to find the cameras we installed in the girl’s bathroom.”

On my side, I heard my mom suddenly growl at me. “I could still smack you for doing that. Peeping on girls in the bathroom is so juvinile, Jongin.”

I rolled my eyes at what she was insinuating. “We weren’t peeping on them like some desperate, teenage boys trying to look at girls. We just thought it would be funny to film the results of that medicine-stuff we gave them.”

“Jongin, you can’t just think you know,” my father stated returning the conversation back to what was important. “You need to be sure about everything. Remember there can’t be any ambiguities. How Minji came to find out about the prank you guys played on the girls is a major factor in the case because it’ll determine whether we can go through with telling the board or not.”

I nodded as I thought hard. “Well, I don’t see how else she could’ve found out about the pranks other than finding the cameras in the bathrooms, unless…” I paused, abruptly as a sudden image popped into my head, my brain beginning to realize something.  

“Unless what?” my father asked.

Chansoo and Dongwoo. They had never brought back the cameras to any of us guys like they were supposed to have. In fact, now that I thought about it I hadn’t seen either of them since then.

They had straight up disappeared on us.    

“Damn freshman,” I muttered my thoughts aloud.

“What?” my father asked, completely stumped.

Coming out of my thoughts, I looked up and refocused my attention back on my parents.

“Uh...Chansung and Dongwoo,” I repeated. “They're the two freshman boys I had hide the cameras in the girl’s bathroom. They were supposed to bring them back to either me or one of the other guys but they never did. Maybe they might have...told Minji...”

Silence.

The room became eerily silent after that, both my parents glancing at each other before both their eyes landing back on me at the same time. That was when I knew something was terribly wrong.

My mother was the first to break the silence.

“Jongin, you put your entire senior prank in the hands of two little boys?”

My eyes widened in shock before furrowing as the realization dawned on me. It sounded extra terrible when it was put that way.

“W-well…” I began to stutter but my father didn’t want to hear it.

“That was very stupid of you, Jongin,” he chided me. “What were you thinking?”

He then barked out a harsh, derisive laugh, full of contempt and mocking. “No, wait. We already established that you don’t think at all!”

I looked up and stared at the man I called “father.” He had insulted me multiple times throughout this meeting and although I may have been used to his temperament style, I was still human. I was affected by cruel words.

I could feel the heat within my chest rising as I got angrier.

“I’ll find them,” I muttered out quickly, hoping it would appease him before he could say anything else but it was too late. He was on a roll.

“So, that means Minji could possibly have not only one but two witnesses to speak against you if we go through with this case.” He then looked up at my mother. “How is it possible that we could’ve raised a son this damn stupid?”

“Honey…” My mom said, her tone practically pleading him to stop but like I said my father was on a roll.

“Sometimes I swear I wonder if you are truly even my child because you’re just so dumb...”

“I said I’ll find them!” I barked suddenly with a base to my tone I had hardly ever spoken to my father in before.

After that, I my heel and walked out of my father’s office. I didn’t want to wait to get my handed to me for talking back to my father the way I just had.

Things in that room were getting just a little too tense. This was why I hardly spent any quality time with my parents, especially my father. We could only last in each other's presence for about five minutes before getting on each other’s nerves and eventually escalating to a fight.

Besides, I had a mission to carry out and that was to find my two little minions and figure out why they hadn’t come back to us with the cameras.

And more importantly, I needed to find out whether they were the ones who had told Minji about the prank.

*

I knew I would need a little help finding my minions, so I told all the guys to be on the lookout for both boys and that the moment they found them to bring them back to me.

Go figure, it was Lu Han and Tao who had ended up hunting them down and once they found them, they brought them back to the senior guy’s hangout in the auditorium.  

“Hey guys!” Lu Han’s voice rang throughout the auditorium as he and Tao entered, all us senior guys casually hanging around. He and Tao were both gripping the two scrawny freshman boys by the shoulders. Lu Han pushed one forward before tauntingly adding, “Look at what we brought back for dinner!”

Instantly, the guys took the chance to pounce all over Chansoo and Dongwoo.

“Ooh, how’d you guys know I was in the mood for fresh meat?” Baekhyun was the first to join in on the teasing as he grinned whilst his lips and rubbing his hands together like he was hungry.

“Take your pick,” Tao added pushing the other freshman forward. “Do you like them lean or more juicy? Though I’d personally go for this one. He’s got more meat on him.”

The two boys looked up at everyone in the room with eyes as wide as saucers. They looked so scared like they just knew they were about to die. Well, they weren’t exactly wrong. But then they say that it’s best to decapitate a chicken when it least expects it otherwise if they know they’re going to die, they’ll be tense and the meat will turn out to be tough.

It was for that reason that I decided to play nice especially since I was going to need answers from them.

I got up from my chair and moved over to the two trembling chickens.

“Now, now guys let’s not scare them,” I said as I pulled up two chairs in the center of the room and snapped my fingers, pointing to them. “You two, take a seat.”  

They didn’t immediately do as I had demanded, instead, staring at me dumbfounded, like they didn’t understand basic Korean. I guessed they were just too shocked.       

“That was an order,” I deadpanned.  

They got the message. Quickly, the two frantically scrambled to get their butts in the chairs, causing the other guys to snigger.

Afterwards, I began to slowly walk around them in a similar manner that a hawk circles his prey before going in for the kill, as I began to ask them questions.

“So, how ya guys been?” I asked starting the conversation off light.

They both nodded, their heads moving a little too fervently and I knew they had to be nervous.

“We’ve been fine,” Chansoo, the brown-haired boy, with the slightly more innocent-looking face said in a little piglet sounding voice.

I almost wanted to laugh. Teenagers in the midst of puberty was such funny thing to witness.

“Good,” I replied as I continued to circle them. “So...do you two have any idea why you two have been brought here today?” They both looked to each other with blank faces but didn’t answer.

“Go on, take a wild guess,” I added.

“...Um...is this about the cameras?...” Chansoo asked.

I smirked. “Yes, yes it's about the camcorders.”

I finally stopped circling them once I was standing behind them both. Leaning forward until I was looking at them at eye level, I decided to stop beating around the bush and tell them exactly why they were here.

“Look, we have a few questions to ask you guys, okay? Now, how you answer those questions will ultimately determine what happens to you both. As long as you both tell the truth, then you have nothing to worry about but if you lie…” I paused and smirked mischievously. “Well, I won’t even finish that part of the sentence cuz you guys wouldn’t lie to your hyungs, right?”

They both looked like deers caught in the headlights but shook their heads.

I stood back up. “Alright, now we can get down to business.”

Lu Han stepped up now to speak. “So you both remember doing us a little favor regarding some camcorders in the girl’s bathroom, right?”

Both boys nodded slowly. “W-well...yeah,” Chansoo said while fidgeting in his chair. “The c-camcorders in the girl’s bathrooms. How could we forget about those?”

“Right. But do you guys remember what you were supposed to do after that?”

They both looked blank again.

“Oh…” Chansoo mouthed, his mouth shaped like an “O”.

“You see, here’s why those cameras are so important to us,” Lu Han began to explain. “We senior guys are working on a very important project right now. It’s top secret and is going to be legendary, but in order to finish that project we need those camcorders back which was why we had told you to bring them back to any one of us, your hyungs, but see, that’s where the problem lies...neither of you ever did.”

“In fact,” I said jumping back in the conversation. “We haven't even seen the two of you since we last asked you for your help with our senior project. You guys just up and disappeared on us.”

“If I didn’t know any better I’d say it sounded like they were trying to hide something from us,” Sehun, on the sidelines, added.

One of the boys gasped as if Sehun had just hit the nail on the head.

It was then that I decided to have a little more fun with them.

I looked back at Sehun and joked. “Hey dude, what if they really were hiding something from us, like, what if they lost those really expensive camcorders.”

Sehun caught on to what I was doing and joined me in joking around about things we already knew were true in order to make the two freshman more nervous. “Or better yet, what if they got caught by the girls while trying to retrieve them and they didn’t tell us.”

By now, all the guys had caught on and we all pretended to laugh, boisterously even though we all knew it was true.

“That would be hilarious!” Baekhyun gagged as well. “And what if because they didn’t tell us, we didn’t know to be on guard for a possible revenge prank by the girls.”

“And then because of that all the guys in our entire dorm ended up suffering the most brutal pank of our entire lives!” Lu Han finished.

BWAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

The room erupted with fake laughter, all except Chansoo and Dongwoo who both looked completely stupefied.

Chansoo then began to lean over to Dongwoo. “Um...dude, I think they know our secret.”

Almost instantly, everyone in the room stopped “laughing” and it became dead silent. They stared at us while we stared back at them.

“Oh yeah,” I said gravely. “We know everything. What we don’t know is why you never bothered to inform us.”

“Wait,” Lu Han stepped up. “Go back to the day you guys tried to get back the cameras. What happened on that day?”

Both boys glanced at each other again right before Chansoo spoke up, first. “Well, you see, this is what had happened…”

Apparently Chansoo and Dongwoo had attempted to retrieve the camcorders. Chansoo was supposed to go in and get them while Dongwoo stood on guard outside the door, but it seems Dongwoo had gotten a little “sidetracked” while standing guard.

“Really?!” I screeched, shocked by what I had just heard. “You mean to tell me you failed at guarding the door because you were distracted by by some pretty girls!”

While guarding the door, Dongwoo had described being approached by three “pretty noonas,” two with long dark hair and one with short brown hair. I knew exactly who those “pretty noonas” were once he mentioned the name, Yoona.

It had to be Yoona and a couple of her friends.

“I’m really sorry,” Dongwoo, the slightly more mature-looking boy, pleaded, earnestly. “It’s just they were all so pretty. The one with the long black hair even put her arm around me...”

I rolled my eyes. “Then what happened?”

“Well, they wanted to go to the bathroom and were wondering why I was standing in front of the door,” Dongwoo continued his side of the story. “I tried to think of a really good excuse and that’s when I told them that I was guarding the door because my friend, who had to go to the bathroom really bad, accidentally ran into the girl’s bathroom, so I had to make sure no girls went in while he was in there.

“Initially, they actually believed me and had even thought the story was kinda cute, that is, until they found out I’d lied when Chansoo had come out holding up the cameras while exclaiming “I got ‘em! I got ‘em! I got back the cameras!”

Chansoo looked down shamefully now. “Unfortunately, that’s when Yoona a got suspicious and grabbed the cameras from us. We tried to stop her but she played back the footage and that’s when everything went bad…”

He said after the girls watched the footage, they forced them to tell them everything they knew and were so angry that they grabbed them by the collars and dragged them all the way to my co-president’s dorm room.

“Hold up!” Sehun suddenly interrupted grabbing everyone’s attention. I had actually thought he had something important to say with the way he had stopped the discussion, until he revealed what was on his mind. “They actually took you two inside the senior girl’s dorm house?”

His tone was ridden with jealousy as he added, “Man, lucky little bastards!”

I shook my head. “Dude, that’s not important right now,” I said with my arms crossed.

“Continue,” I told them.

Chansoo began again. “After that they’d made us tell the story again to the girl named Minji and she was so mad that they decided to prank you guys back, but they made us swear that we couldn’t say anything about it...so, we decided to hide.”

“And you actually listened to them?” I asked disbelievingly, surprised that they actually listened to the girls. “You took their side against your very own hyungs?”

“Well...yeah,” Chansoo admitted sheepishly. “They were all just so pretty, plus, that girl, Minji, threatened to tell the headmasters on us if we didn’t comply...”

“You little s!” I scolded, harshly. “ You sided with them just because they’re pretty! How lame can you guys be?!”

It was a rhetorical question I wasn’t actually expecting anyone to answer, but then, in the background, I heard a voice, that without a doubt had to be Sehun’s, snidely comment, “This coming from the guy who’d bought almost a thousand dollars in chocolate just to get a chance to kiss his pretty co-president a week ago.”

I don’t know why, but this little remark made my blood boil like lava and I exploded.

“SHUT THE UP SEHUN!”

I wish I had known the rest of the guys were going to join him. Pretty soon, I was the object of torment in the room instead of the two little brats in the chairs.

“That is so true,” Chanyeol added now. “He even made me steal her ticket from Kris just because he thought he would get a chance to kiss her.”

My mouth puckered, annoyed that I was being reminded of my behavior during Yoona’s kissing booth, when all I wanted was to forget. Luckily, said person wasn’t in the room at that moment or else Kris probably would’ve wanted to strangle me all over again.

“And not to mention,” Baekhyun inserted. “He almost got in a public brawl with Jongup.”

Okay, I was beyond annoyed now. I brought my hands up to my face and groaned. Sometimes I really hated these people I called “friends.”

“Can we please get back to what’s important?” I gestured to the two freshman still seated in the chairs.

I heard Lu Han chuckle. “Alright you guys let’s not too much. You all know he’s not quite ready to reveal his crush on his co-president just yet.”

“Really?!” I snapped. “Again with the stupid crush-thing? Just how many of you actually think I like her?

I shouldn’t have asked. Instantly, the whole room raised with hands all over the place. Even my minions raised their hands.

Motherers.

Standing there, stunned, I began to stammer. “W-well, it’s not true…”

Lu Han shook his head before swinging an arm around my shoulder. “Jongin, my man. I believe you are in what they call the five stages of grief.” He started holding up his fingers as he counted each one off. “There’s denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.”

He  then paused as he looked at me who was glaring daggers back at him before finally saying, “You’ve definitely got the denial and anger parts down.”

I frowned for a moment, not convinced, but I finally decided to go along with their little amatuer psychology moment anyway. .  

“But that’s only for people who have lost something. I haven’t lost anything by liking Minji...”

“Hah! Baekhyun yelled, triumphantly, pointing a finger at me. “So you admit it!”

It was then that I realized what I had said.

“W-what?” I panicked. “N-no, that’s not what I…”  

“Are you sure you aren’t in the process of losing something, Kai?” Lu Han asked me. “Remember, admitting to liking someone puts a person in a rather vulnerable position since they have to be open about their feelings. I don’t think your pride or your ego is ready for that.”

You know what was sad? What they were saying actually got me thinking for a minute. Like I actually started to wonder if what they were saying about me might have been true, but as I glanced at the two munchkins sitting in the room, I knew I still had more important things to finish taking care of, plus, I wasn’t in the mood for psychoanalysis right now, so I brushed off any thoughts of me possibly liking Minji.

I turned to the two boys still in the center of the room.

“Let’s go,” I demanded.

They both shot up from their chairs and started following behind me as I headed for the door.

“Hey! Where are you taking them?” I heard one of the guys suddenly question from behind me. That’s when I skidded to a halt.

Oh. It suddenly occurred to me that the guys didn’t know about the case or anything my family had going on and I definitely couldn’t tell them now. Honestly, even as my best friends, I didn’t think they would approve of my family’s plans if they knew about them.

I turned back around.   

“Um...first, I got a special task for my minions to do for me,” I said as I grabbed them both by the ears. “We can figure out what we’re going to do with them later.”

After that, I made them come along, dragging them out of the door. I didn’t have a task for them. Really, I was taking them back to my father.  

***