The "Calm" Before the Storm
The Taste of Freedom
The semester is coming to an end and Baekhyun has two papers and a group project to complete before he can start studying for his finals. Baekhyun looks at his calendar and shrugs. He’s got two weeks, that’s tons of time.
Classes are over on Monday and Baekhyun has two ridiculously complicated and longass papers and a group project with absolutely bat crazy group members to complete before he can study for his final exams. . This weekend is going to blow.
“The disruption and reconstruction of identity in-”
“AAAHHHH!!!”
Baekhyun stops typing mid sentence and whips his head to the right, glaring at his flailing roommate with bloodshot eyes.
“What the hell was that man?!”
“My presentation… My baby… My liiiiiife!” Kyungsoo tugs at the ends of his short black hair in distress before turning around and facing Baekhyun with a crazed look in his eyes. “It’s all over, two years worth of University down the drain just like that. I can see my life flashing before my eyes and it’s not pretty Baek. Not pretty at all. I’M GOING TO BE FLIPPING BURGERS FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE!”
Shaking his head, Baekhyun wipes his face with his right hand and groans. He doesn’t have time for this.
“Check your OneDrive.”
Baekhyun returns to his essay and tries his best to get his train of thought back, he really needs to learn how to manage his time. He doesn’t know what possessed him to take two English classes when he can barely speak the language, but he did, and now he must suffer the consequences. Twenty four hours to finish two essays then another forty eight hours to finish a group project… Great. Just fantastic…
“I FOUND IT!!!”
Kyungsoo squeals in delight and gets straight to working on his presentation again. Baekhyun waits for some form of recognition for saving his roommate’s , but nope, nothing. Baekhyun continues to type, his eyes transfixed on the screen as he speaks up.
“You know, a thank you would have been nice. Or maybe you could treat me to dinner. Yeah dinner sounds good.”
Silence.
With a sigh, Baekhyun peaks over at Kyungsoo briefly and rolls his eyes. Kyungsoo’s face is inches away from his laptop and his fingers are moving frantically across his keyboard. He didn’t hear a single word Baekhyun said. Fine, be that way.
Handfuls of dark chocolate covered coffee beans, two cups of instant noodles and four bags of chips later, Baekhyun is finally done. Yawning, he lifts his arms over his head and stretches out the kinks in his back. Baekhyun didn’t think it was possible, but he did it again. He had managed to pull two decent essays out of his in the span of 15 hours. I must be a genius.
“Hey Soo, can you come look at these for me? I wanna make sure I didn’t make any stupid grammatical errors before I print them out.”
“Yeah sure, just give me like two seconds.”
Kyungsoo double checks the stats on his finance presentation then sends it to his group members. They are going to kill this on Monday. He’s been looking forward to suiting up all semester, it’s one of the few things he actually likes about business. Plus, this also happens to be the only time that the female population acknowledges his existence. What can he say? The ladies love his bowtie.
“Soo?”
“I’m coming!” Kyungsoo closes his laptop then walks over to Baekhyun. “Which classes are these for again?”
“The first one is for my senior English class and the second one is for my class on gender identity.”
“Kay, got it.”
Kyungsoo scans Baekhyun’s essay and curses his roommate for his brilliant writing skills. It would take Kyungsoo weeks to come up with something like this. Fricken English majors… “Looks good to me.”
“You sure?”
“Yes, now print them and get some sleep. We have to be up in like three hours. Luhan will have our heads if we show up late.”
“YOU’RE LATE!!! WE DON’T HAVE ALL DAY GUYS!”
Baekhyun winces at the sheer volume of Luhan’s voice while Kyungsoo stares dagger into the back of his greasy head. What? Baekhyun likes his sleep okay?
“Calm down Lu, we have all weekend to get this done.” Lay gets up and attempts to pacify the screeching banshee only to get a face full of spit (gross) and bony fingers stabbing at his chest.
“NO WE DON’T LAY! WE HAVE TO GET THIS DONE TODAY SO I CAN FINISH MY PAPER ON THE TROJAN WAR TOMORROW!”
“Didn’t we agree to finish everything else before meeting up today?”
“Shut up Kai, no one asked for your opinion.”
Kai frowns and mumbles some not so nice things about Luhan under his breath.
“Okay, why don’t we just get to work then? I need to go over my finance presentation with Jongdae later too.” Kyungsoo sets his backpack down and grabs a seat next to Sehun.
“Fine. But the next time you guys show up late will be the day you guys die.”
At this time, an innocent Minseok drops by to say hi, only for Luhan to take the steaming cup of coffee from his hands and gulp down the contents in anger.
“Hey, I kind of needed that…” The design major pouts, half his drink is gone and Luhan’s strawberry flavoured chapstick is all over the lid. He opens up his mouth to scold Luhan, but stops when he sees the flame burning in the taller's eyes. Miseok will just go buy himself another one later, an angry Luhan is scary. “I’ll just… um… go now, you guys have fun.”
Lay waves Minseok goodbye enthusiastically while Sehun nods his head, everybody else settling with a simple wave and look of pity.
“So, the project.” Baekhyun breaks the awkward silence. They’ve wasted enough time already.
“Right!” Lay’s eyes widen briefly before he scrunches his eyebrows at the realization that he doesn’t know what this project is on. He hasn’t gone to class in three weeks. “What are we supposed to do again?”
“We have a presentation on cave paintings Lay, I thought I told you this yester-”
“GOD DAMMIT! CAVE PAINTINGS LAY! CAVE PAINTINGS!”
Kai doesn’t know why he even bothers. He needs new friends.
Half an hour of arguing over the format of their powerpoint later, the boys settle on the default settings and finally get started on their presentation. Sehun has his textbook open to the section on cave paintings while Baekhyun has the assignment page open on his laptop.
“Okay, so we need to talk about why these cave paintings are important and discuss what they reveal about various neolithic cultures.” Baekhyun opens up a new tab and checks to see if their prof posted notes about this on their class forum.
“Well that doesn’t sound too bad… We can probably finish this in a couple of hours.” Kyungsoo pulls out his own set of notes then tells Sehun to flip to the pages they got assigned to work on. Hold up, this doesn’t look right. “What the ? These are all handprints.”
“What?” Kai looks over Sehun’s shoulder and stares at the handprints on the page. Kyungsoos right, they’re just a bunch of handprints. “How the hell are we supposed to do a twenty minute presentation on handprints?!”
Lay and Luhan scramble over to look at the pictures as well, both just as lost as the rest of them.
“WHAT DOES THIS EVEN MEAN?!”
“Aww look at the little ones.”
“Holy , this one doesn’t have a thumb.”
“We’re gonna fail.”
This is not how Baekhyun wanted to spend his Saturday. Who’s idea was it to take Art History as an elective anyways?
“Oh god, I’m going to be flipping burgers for the rest of my life.”
“Calm down guys, I’ll just google this.” Baekhyun sighs for the umpteenth time today then thanks the brilliant person who invented google, the sole reason he has yet to fail and dropout of school.
“Oh, that’s a good idea Baek.”
“Thanks Lay.”
“Okay, so this one says something about hunting magic and how it holds some sort of spiritual importance to their tribe.”
“HUNTING MAGIC IT IS!”
“I don’t think we can talk about hunting magic for twenty minutes.”
“I SAID HUNTING MAGIC!”
Kai really needs new friends. What’s he even doing in Art History, he’s a physics major… Lesigh.
“No, I think Kais right Lu, we can talk about hunting magic, but I think we’re gonna need more than just that.” Kyungsoo pats Kai on the back while the younger looks up at his friend with teary eyes.
“Yeah, I agree, Kai has a point Lu.” Baekhyun continues to consult with various google sources as Kai looks at him with gratitude. Okay, maybe his friends aren’t so bad.
“Fine, but I wanna talk about the hunting magic.”
“Can I talk about the baby handprints? They’re so cute.”
“Yes, you can talk about the baby handprints Lay.”
Sehun looks over at his friends and scoffs at their stupidity. He appreciates Baekhyun’s efforts, but do they seriously not know why these cave paintings are important? Their prof spent a solid four classes talking about this. Sehun takes Luhan’s unattended laptop and types out an outline of what they could talk about for their presentation. He color codes the individual sections, then snaps his fingers to get the attention of his idiotic friends.
“I’ve got the outline done. The pink one on hunting magic is yours Luhan, and the purple one about the children’s role in art is for you Lay. Everybody else can just pick a goddamn colour, I’ll take the leftover one. Call me when you guys figure this out cause I’m sure you'll argue about which font to use for the next hour or so. I’m out.” Sehun picks up his backpack and struts out of the library.
The gang looks at Sehun’s leaving figure in awe before Luhan snaps them out of their daze.
“Okay, so Times New Roman?”
“No, why don’t we go with something funky like Syncopate?”
“It doesn’t need to be funky Lay, we’re not in High School anymore.”
“Why are you being so mean to Lay Kai?”
“What?! Me, mean? You’ve been yelling at us all day!”
Kyungsoo’s phone starts to vibrate and he takes this as his chance to escape.
“Um, I have to meet up with Jongdae for a little bit. I’ll be back in an hour or two to finish this with you guys okay?” Kyungsoo looks at Baekhyun apologetically then scurries out of the library.
Baekhyun buries his face into his hands. This is going to be a long day.
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