Chapter 9.

When Kyungsoo had become a teacher, he had made a promise to himself to never get involved in the personal lives of the students he would be teaching -- in fact, the silent promise he had made to himself had simply been an extension to the motto he had based his entire life around: stay uninvolved and out of trouble.

For Kyungsoo, it had been a promise that was easily kept. It was well known that Do Kyungsoo was a introverted person by nature, and he had never been the type to actively pry into the lives of others, as it would mean having to divulge information on himself in the process. He was content with living his life personally and without fuss, and only allowed access to a few select individuals who he felt he could trust in comfort.
Kyungsoo was someone who simply wished to live a life free of drama and preferred to focus on his own internal affairs -- because quite frankly, if it wasn't any of his business to start with, why should he make it so?

It was in this way that Kyungsoo had lived his life for the past twenty four years, and he had had no plans of changing his ways, at least not until Kim Jongin entered his life.

Kyungsoo narrowly missed walking into a wall as his thoughts raced back to the teen for what felt like the millionth time in the last hour. Kim Jongin's defenceless expression had been flashing continuously through Kyungsoo's mind's eye since his detention the previous afternoon, and Kyungsoo wanted to bury his face into his hands in misery because of it. He had never meant to hurt the teenagers feelings, but from the expression on Jongin's face, Kyungsoo was almost 94.7% sure he had definitely struck a nerve.

And for reasons that Kyungsoo could not even begin to fathom, he had suddenly found himself being consumed with a buring desire to find out what it was that made Kim Jongin tick.

... which was exactly the type of insensitive behavior that Kyungsoo had lived his whole life firmly avoiding!

To find out obviously personal things about the seventeen year old broke the promise Kyungsoo had made himself swear to only months before, and it went against everything the english teacher had lived by. He had always been the type to look down upon people who were nosy and intrusive, and to suddenly find himself in such a position was making him vastly uncomfortable. It was frustrating and exasperating and Kyungsoo had been fighting off the desire to seek out Chanyeol to make his tall friend smack him about the head firmly to knock some sense back into him. He wanted to gain an understanding, but at the same time he couldn't help but feel a great sense of guilt for wanting so selfishly to figure Jongin out. He had been repeatedly reminding himself that the teenager was a human, not a lab specimen he could dissect to gain knowlege of, and that there was something that was obviously unaligned in Jongin's life that had caused him to be the way he was.

But even after telling himself that his curiosity was wrong and that it was none of his business, Kyungsoo still wanted to understand.

After fretting and internally warring with himself for a majority of the previous night and the entirity of his working day, Kyungsoo finally came to a conclusion and a course of action: he would simply talk to Jongin, and if the teen so wished, perhaps he find out what it was that made him tick in the dysfunctional way he did. In no way what so ever would he fall to the level of the people he had lived his life frowning down upon. He wouldn't pry, he wouldn't try to force the teen for information and he wouldn't be sly and go behind his back to find things out. He was going to be a responsible adult and teacher to the teen by simply offering him what he could, because Kim Jongin didn't seem to get much kindness from anyone, as far as Kyunsgoo could tell.

Kyunsgoo exhaled all of the air from his lungs in one long sigh and looked up at the door infront of him. He hadn't seen Jongin for the entire day and he found himself feeling unexplainablly worried about it. Kyungsoo knew the teen was at school because he had specifically checked the daily absentee notice and had not seen Jongin's name there, and he was sure Jongin had purposely skipped English class that day (to avoid you, the little voice in Kyungsoo's mind added miserably)

After a second longer, he opened the door and entered his classroom, immediately squinting at the brightness of the afternoon sun that was streaming in through the large windows that alligned the walls.

"You're late, Mr. Do"

Kyungsoo jum