“Sorry to interrupt, Mr. Kwon, but I’m afraid Lee Sungyeol is needed at the office.”

Ah, . 

Knowing he couldn’t escape- the nearest window was at least 5 feet away and the exit was another 3- Sungyeol decided not to shrink into his seat. But he also decided not to move at all when his English professor called out his name impatiently.

“Lee Sungyeol, your presence is requested.”

No movement, not yet. 

“Lee Sungyeol!”

Sungyeol obeyed the next command. He stood from his seat and excused himself from the class, ignoring the snickering from his wonderful classmates and the less- than- amused expression of his English professor. How immature, honestly, you’d think they’d be used to him being called out in the middle of classes by now. As he exited, he was greeted with the radiant face of the dean’s secretary, Ms. Jung. 

“Sungyeol, dear. I think we both know why you’re here.” 

Sungyeol was sitting on chair number 5, his favourite seat. It was in the middle of the row of ergonomic, ugly brown chairs that were arranged in front of the office. The chairs were meant to be ergonomic, good for his back and all that. But they obviously weren’t being considerate about his height. The whole of his back didn’t even fit into those little curves. Being in chair number 5 meant that it was a slow day for the office, with less parents and other students than usual. 

Chair number 5 allowed him to look into the tiny window of the dean- who lets face it, even with a name like Dean of Gyeonggi Academy of Foreign Languages, was really just the administrator who dealt with kids- without the dean being able to look back at him. 

There was currently someone inside. The dean wasn’t shouting, which was a good sign, and also meant that the person in there was probably some nervous first- timer. A junior, probably. 

Sungyeol was in his last year of high school and amazingly enough, hadn’t gotten expelled from the school yet. As prestigious as it was, with only 265 students admitted each year, Sungyeol was both parts proud of himself and amazed at the school’s tolerance. Even if he was the top ranked student for his majoring language, Chinese and his minoring language, English, he didn’t think he’d last this long.

His previous school, Gyeonggi- Suwon International was a normal school, not specialising in languages or anything at all. He had gotten kicked out of that just because he thought the pool looked nicer pink. He even used non- toxic dye, which you’d think the school would’ve appreciated at least. But they hadn’t, and they’d kicked him out without so much as a goodbye. 

The door opened slowly and quietly. Sungyeol looked up quickly to get at least a decent look of the first- timer- junior- troublemaker in the dean’s office. Surprisingly, it wasn’t some ruddy cheeked, crumpled- uniform kid. Instead, he was pretty well-dressed, even wearing the school blazer, which nobody was really wearing anymore, and he had a pretty handsome face.

He was tall, had some insanely curly hair that just seemed to grow like a box around him and big- ish eyes. His face was pretty flawless though, despite the stoic- yet gracefully expressionless- mask he had on.

The boy nodded deeply and bowed slightly to the dean- Sungyeol had never done that before- before he closed the door behind him and left in the opposite direction of where Sungyeol was seated. 

Miss Jung had then called out to Sungyeol, who had been watching the student walk away. How had he never noticed the- way more than very- attractive student in school before? 

The dean was a pretty good looking guy for someone aged somewhere over 50, with slightly greying hair and a kind smile. But you never judge a book by its cover, as Sungyeol had learnt from meeting over a dozen deans during his expansive career as the ever- present resident troublemaker. 

“Good morning, Sungyeol.” 

Sungyeol stood by the chair in front of the dean’s desk, knowing that he had to be given the permission to sit beforehand. The first time he sat without permission, the dean had gone completely off his rocks, yelling at Sungyeol and then lecturing him about manners. It has got to be one of the weirdest pet peeves Sungyeol had ever encountered in a person, let alone a dean. Still, after that day, Sungyeol learnt to never seat himself without permission again. 

“Good morning, Mr. Kim.”

The dean remained seated as he stared up at Sungyeol. He had his hands clasped in front of him, his golden wedding band obvious. 

“To what wonderful unpleasantness have you caused to have granted me the value of your presence in my office today?” 

Honestly, this guy was such a drama queen. He probably wanted to be a poet or something, but Sungyeol guessed that his parents weren’t really into that idea. Like his own, who had threatened to disown him when he suggested applying to that artsy school for aspiring actors. Sungyeol had then been forced to follow his second passion, which was languages and writing. 

Sungyeol shrugged in response. 

“Well, let me answer my own question. It seems that you thought it would be funny to change the opening of our PA speeches into the opening lines of…”

The dean was frowning, his eyes narrowed as he tried to remember the name of the song. 

“It was Back, by INFINITE, Mr. Kim.” 

“Ah, yes. Now, did you think it was amusing to hear some pop singer ask if he could be saved while we had potential students and their parents strolling on school grounds?” 

Sungyeol smirked. Every few hours, their school had public announcements. Thanks to the wonderful wiring and speakers around their school, every corner of the compound would be able to hear all PAs. Before the current speaker announced anything, the instrumental chorus of their school song would play, fading in and fading out. Sungyeol had thought that since Back was a relatively new song, that his fellow students would enjoy listening to it instead of that god- awful- trumpet- violin thing. 

It had taken a fair amount of research and bribing of their school’s multimedia club president, Lee Howon. That guy was not an easy one to please. Sungyeol was now tied to buying Howon’s lunch for the next whole semester.

“Lee Sungyeol, are you even listening?”

The taller boy shook his head, bringing his attention back to the dean. 

The dean opened his mouth and before Sungyeol could even count to 3, his face seemed to colour in pink and Sungyeol was slightly afraid that he would have a heart attack.

Long story short, Sungyeol was given detention and community service for a month. Nothing too bad, Sungyeol thought, as he tied the strings of the apron around his back. He was on kitchen duty for the first week, where he would help to do stuff like peel potatoes and clean spills. Or something. He wasn’t too sure about his job, really. 

The canteen ladies were relatively nice and Sungyeol had made a mental note to be nicer to them the next time he ordered something. Week 1 was down and now he was stuck with restroom duty. Again, Sungyeol had to admit, he had been punished worse. No punishment would ever beat that time he was forced to volunteer for “fashion week” at his previous school and his junior, Lee Sungjong, had forced him into a dress, calling it haute couture. Sungyeol was so embarrassed he couldn’t even be grateful that at least the dress made his look nice. 

Sungyeol was required to check in with the dean at the end of every week, where he would turn in his “punishment form”, which was just a bunch of signatures from the person in charge of his duties. 

On his 3rd week, Sungyeol had just finished washing up and cleaning the boys’ locker room- which was every level of disgusting, by the way- and was on his way to the dean’s office. Hoping he didn’t smell too much like decade old pee and sweat, Sungyeol waited by sitting on his favourite chair. The dean was busy with another student. It seemed that the dean was always busy with a student after school hours and even though Sungyeol was sure it was the same student each time, he never got to catch even a glimpse of the student’s face. 

Sungyeol was just assessing and judging the school’s head coach’s amazingly ineligible handwriting on the piece of paper he had to hand in to the dean when he heard a clatter and a curse. He looked up to see Ms. Jung desperately picking up pieces of flying paper, saving them from what looked like a serious coffee spill. 

Jumping up, Sungyeol helped her pick up the cup and mop up the spill with a bunch of tissues from a tissue box that sat by the edge of her desk. Picking up whatever piece of paper that hadn’t been stained by the coffee, Sungyeol handed them to Ms. Jung. 

“Thank you, Sungyeol.” 

Ms. Jung looked a little embarrassed as she dropped the stack of paper onto her seat and began to thoroughly clean her desk. Sungyeol bet everything would smell like coffee for a while and she probably wouldn’t even think of drinking coffee while on the job for a weeks. 

“No problem, Ms. Jung!” 

Just as Sungyeol was about to turn back to return to his seat, the door to the dean’s office opened and Sungyeol turned to see that junior he realised he had completely forgotten about. 

He looked exactly the same as when Sungyeol first saw him. Boxy hair, expressionless and wearing the school blazer. Sungyeol watched as the boy bowed low and turned to leave. Sungyeol stepped out of his way when the younger boy looked up at him. His expression all of a sudden didn’t seem so expressionless, but more annoyed now. 

After that day, Sungyeol started to hunt for the junior. Amazingly enough, he was nowhere to be found. Even after he had asked all his friends, and any teacher he was friendly with, he still came up empty. It had been almost a month since Sungyeol had first seen him so it wasn’t possible that nobody had ever met him before. He was a student, right?

On his fourth and last week of community service, Sungyeol was helping sweep up fallen leaves and other rubbish from the school gardens. Autumn was fast approaching this year and Sungyeol thought about whether he wanted to go home for the winter break or not. The leaves crunched under his feet and under his rake while Sungyeol tried to gather as much leaves as he could. 

“The leaves aren’t going to gather faster like that.” 

Jumping out of his skin and letting the rake fly back to hit him in the forehead, Sungyeol watched as the junior who frequented the dean’s office more than him seemed to appear from behind a shrub. 

The slightly- mocking, slightly- amused smile the junior wore after Sungyeol had smacked himself with the rake made the ice- cold boy seem a lot warmer. So while rubbing his definitely- bruising- forehead, Sungyeol introduced himself. 

“I’m Sungyeol. Who are you?” 

He should have said what’s yours instead. Who are you sounded so demanding and pompous Sungyeol wanted to hit himself with the rake again. But he decided not to when the junior in front of him smiled a little more. 

“I’m Myungsoo. I’m a student here, like you.” 

Sungyeol frowned.

“Are you sure? Cause I’ve asked around and nobody has ever laid eyes on you.”

Now that made him sound like a stalker. 

“So you’re stalking me now? I didn’t know I was that handsome.”

An obvious blush creeped up his cheeks and Sungyeol was glad he was wearing a hoodie. Obviously this Myungsoo guy was handsome, he was the definition of an adonis, minus the cute boxy hair. And unfortunately, he knew it. Also, damn, did he just think Myungsoo’s hair was cute? 

“I wasn’t stalking you, okay? I was just curious. You’re the only other person who sees the dean as much as I do, if not more.” 

Myungsoo walked closer, staring at Sungyeol as if it was the only thing he could see. The thought made Sungyeol frown again. Was there something on his face? He brought up his free hand and lightly wiped his face, holding out his bare hands in front of him to find that they were spotless. 

A chuckle made Sungyeol look up and drop his hand. Myungsoo was smiling with crinkly eyes and pearly teeth. Sungyeol grinned widely. Somehow, Myungsoo had gotten even more handsome.