Chapter 14.

Over a week.

Nine days to be precise.

That was how long it had taken for Kyungsoo to decide that enough was enough and finally work up the nerve to go and talk to acting head master and senior science teacher, Kim Joonmyeon.
Of course, his friends had been telling him to go and talk to the overly serious headmaster for a good chunk of the week, but Kyungsoo hated conflict and uncomfortable situations and meeting with Joonmyeon would undoubtedly be an extremely awkward event. In all honesty, Kyungsoo wasn’t particularly put off by the fact that Jongin was no longer coming to his English classes, but at the end of the day he knew that it was important for the teen to show up, whether he liked it or not. His more professional teaching side won over, and of course like the many hundreds of times before, Kyungsoo had eventually caved and agreed to go and talk to the acting headmaster about the now totally absent Kim Jongin. After all, Joonmyeon had been the one to organise the tutoring lessons in the first place – it only seemed natural that he would be the one to do something now that the student involved (in this case, his obviously troubled younger half-brother) was no longer showing up.

“I don’t like this.” Kyungsoo had muttered more to himself than anyone else as he, Chanyeol and Minseok walked to the principal’s office. “Are you guys sure this is a good idea? I mean, Joonmyeon is a very busy man. I don’t want to cause him any problems…”

“Shut up and stop making excuses, Soo. Of course you should go and talk to him. If you have a student that’s causing problems, Joonmyeon is the man to go to, trust me”

Even if the troublesome student is his half-brother? Kyungsoo had to bite his lip to stop himself from speaking.

“Just make sure you don’t look Joonmyeon in the eyes for any longer than five seconds at a time” Chanyeol said quite suddenly from beside him. “He can sense lies and smell fear”

Minseok smacked the back of the tall English teachers head. “Don’t listen to him Soo. Joonmyeon isn’t that bad, once you get past his fifty outer layers of coldness and possible unpleasantness. At least, that’s what I’ve been told. I still haven’t managed, but Yifan has mentioned how nice the guy can be”

Kyungsoo nodded with widened eyes at the math teacher’s words, only to be made quite insecure once more by Chanyeol, who seemed to have a knack of speaking unnecessarily in what he thought was a reassuring manner. “Joonmyeon will only attack when he sees the whites of your eyes, because he knows that’s when you’ve lied. We all know what a bad liar looks like, their eyes get all darty. You’re a bad liar, Soo, so I can say this in absolute sureness”

“SHUT UP CHANYEOL” Minseok bellowed as he grabbed a hold of the curly haired man’s ear in rage, cutting off Kyungsoo’s terrified gasp of ‘I have lots of eyes whites’ half way. The math teacher turned back to Kyungsoo, his chest rising and falling rapidly as he pulled the ear of the now yelping Chanyeol, who was withering and flailing about in pain. “Just knock on the door, go in, explain and get it all over and done with. Forget everything this idiot just said” Minseok gave yet another strong pull to Chanyeol’s ear, earning a surprisingly feminine scream from the normally deep voiced and manly English teacher.

Kyungsoo nodded once more, his eyes almost inhumanly wide. Minseok nodded at the smaller man in an encouraging manner, giving him a strong and determined pat on the shoulder with his spare hand before turning and walking away, pulling an incessantly complaining Chanyeol along with him.

The last thing Kyungsoo heard after turning to face the large and impressive wooden door of the principal’s office was the sound of Chanyeol being slapped and ordered by Minseok to “Say good luck to Kyungsoo!”

Chanyeol’s warbling voice reached him rather weakly from down the hallway. “You can do it, Soo. Please let go of my ear now, Seok, I’m begging you”

Joonmyeon was kind of scary, Kyungsoo had decided. Of course, he had made this deduction much early on in the year when he had first started teaching at Malhana, but his belief had simply been resolidified with his current predicament: he was sitting on the other side of the principals desk with a cup of tea placed in front of him, made specially by the oddly beautiful twenty nine year old. Of course, the whole situation from the view of an uninvolved onlooker would have been one of niceties; however, Kyungsoo was feeling far from at ease.

Joonmyeon stood only meters away, carefully stirring his own mug of freshly brewed tea with his back facing the nervous English teacher. He was wearing a button up collared shirt tucked into his pants, the long sleeves rolled up to his elbows. The fabric was impeccably pressed, snow white cotton. Like his shirt, Joonmyeon’s pants were also a perfectly ironed pure white. The hems had been rolled up to reveal his slender ankles and… new balance sneakers? Kyungsoo struggled to stop himself from dropping his head onto the large hardwood table in front of him. Was Kim Joonmyeon really twenty nine?! He was dressed more like one of the trendy frat boys that Kyungsoo had used to envy when he was back in college The acting headmaster  was dressed in a fashionable summer outfit, fresh and almost casual, but not to the point where it was too tacky to not be worn to work. Kyungsoo suddenly felt very underdressed. Joonmyeon was nearly thirty, for crying out loud! Why did he look so damn young and handsome?!

“Is something the matter, Kyungsoo?”

Kyungsoo jumped in his seat, narrowly avoiding spilling hot tea all over himself. “Ah, no. I was just thinking”

Joonmyeon eyed the English teacher with what Kyungsoo could only assume was a look of concern as he settled himself into the impressive looking chair across from him. The acting headmaster probably thought he was mentally unstable, Kyungsoo inwardly groaned to himself. “So, would you like to explain to me as to why you’ve showed up here, quite unexpectedly, if I do say so myself?” Joonmyeon smiled politely, lifting his tea to take a delicate sip before placing his mug back down onto his saucer. Like his younger half-brother, his smile lacked warmth, Kyungsoo noted in mild surprise. The English teacher quickly shook the thought from his head.

Kyungsoo swallowed nervously. “Well, I wanted to talk to you about the tutoring lessons you wanted me to start giving close to a month ago”

“Ahh yes. I recall leaving you a note. What is it about the lessons you’d like to discuss?”

“Well, rather than the lessons, I wanted to talk to you about the student involved and how his apparent lack of interest is proving it rather difficult for me to… how should I put it… make possible to even have the lessons occur?” Kyungsoo didn’t miss the glint of iron that flashed through the calm faced man across from him. “To put it simply, Kim Jongin is no longer coming to the scheduled tutoring lessons and seeing as you had been the one to organise them in the first place, I was hoping you could inform me as to how I should go about this all. Kim Jongin’s tutoring lessons were put in place for an important reason, after all, and if he doesn’t catch up on the work he’s missed by exam time there’s a high chance he’ll fail this year. By not even coming, he’s only jeopardising his chances of passing further and as his English teacher, this does concern me”

Joomyeon’s face seemed to have hardened, and Kyungsoo could suddenly see what the dandy appearance of the senior science teacher had all but hidden earlier: Kim Joonmyeon was a discontent almost thirty year old who had not gained one ounce of happiness from his personal family life in all his years of living. It was all too obvious from his expression at the mention of his younger brother. Kyungsoo suddenly felt that he had made a terrible mistake by going to talk to the acting headmaster.

“I think, Mr. Do, that it might be a good idea to get the involved student in here to explain, don’t you think?” Joonmyeon’s voice was barely controlled, his eyes unable to conceal the storm brewing within him.

“No, no! I don’