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Kibum could hear a rustling coming from the back of the lecture theatre, he glanced in the direction of the noise only to catch a student sitting down. His face was flushed, jeans ratty and hair messy. This student had obviously overslept and missed the first 15 minutes of his 1 hour lecture. He normally makes a point of calling attention to them, however, it was a 9am lecture and the boy looked like he genuinely just ran straight from his bed to make it in time. Letting it go with a pointed glance at the young male, he continued.

“So even though the novel is primarily about vampires and blood-ers there is a strong layer of homouality between the two main characters, also there is lots of evidence to suggest that although taboo, homouality was much more prominent than once thought in the early 1800’s…” Kibum spoke, reading from his facts and research that had taken him a good three days to organize into just a one hour lecture. His task was to get his literature students to think about a different critical approach to the gothic, vampire and horror texts they were studying. He was looking forward to reading some assignments that were diverse, well researched and also full of opinion and arguments. He loved that part of his job the most, challenging the students and throwing around ideas. Also, if he was completely honest, he loved it when he could shoot them back down to earth with bang, he loved to prove them wrong and make them think again because this always ended in the best results.

So as he opened the middle of his lecture to questions, ideas and feedback, he was excited about how the students were taking in the lecture.
He saw the first hand go up at the back, it was the shoddy looking, late boy from earlier.

“Yes…you in the back…” he asked reluctantly.

“Your last statement about homouality in the early 1800’s…” The boy began, almost like a question “…I disagree with you professor.” The boy finished, a challenging look in his eyes.

“Please continue…” Kibum answered, wondering where the younger male was going with this.

“Well…I simply can’t believe that homouality would have been written about in the early 1800’s so blatantly like this. It just wouldn’t happen. It is still such a taboo subject in many countries around the world today, so what makes you think that writers in the past would even dare to write about such things? Honestly, I think you are grasping at straws professor.” And with a cocky smile, the younger boy leaned back with a haughty air.

“You’re wrong and now I'm going to show and prove to you why, Mr 15 minutes late to my lecture - you would have known this if you were here on time.” Kibum retorted with his sharp tongue and he saw the challenging look from the dishevelled boy. “Class, you can all thank Mr….” he gestured towards the boy in the back.

“Kim Jonghyun, professor.” The boy answered un-phased.

“Well, you can all thank Mr Kim here when this runs over time because I am about to stop this lecture to prove to him why he is wrong, although the people who were here from the beginning of the class will already know this.” The professor stated and began to rewind his slides with a loud groan from the other students in the room.

Kibum went back over his notes meticulously, reciting it just as before, but punctuating the important parts a little louder and aiming them at Jonghyun.

“Furthermore, if we look at Oscar Wilde’s ‘The Picture of Dorian Grey’ which was published in 1890, there are no arguments about the undertones and clear homoual references. If we look at these reports and reviews from after the release of this novel, we can see that many people found it scandalising and Wilde himself had to re-locate in order to protect himself from the onslaught.” Kibum finished with a large breath, his eyes still boring straight into the sloppy student’s. He folded his arms in a challenge as he knew he had won this battle.