Sungyeol soon finished his punishment, all the cleaning and the detention and if Sungyeol said that hard labour had really taught him a lesson, he’d be lying. Kind of why he was currently dropping little handfuls of confetti into the organ pipes. In an ideal world, Lee Sungyeol would be doing as his fellow schoolmates were, lounging around at the student cafe, studying at the library or taking a nap back at their dorms. But this was reality and Sungyeol was having a hard time containing his laughter as he thought about tomorrow’s assembly and how little shoots of confetti would rain down on the organist as they played.

“Up to some trouble again?”

As predicted, the little handful of confetti that he was about to drop into a pipe flew into the air and they slowly sailed and floated back down around Sungyeol, catching and landing on his hair and shoulders. 

When the taller boy turned, the shreds of coloured paper were shaken off and Sungyeol almost jumped out of his skin again. Myungsoo was standing by the front of the stage, his hands in his pockets and that tiny smile where only one side of his lips quirked upwards. 

“Myungsoo! What are you doing here?”

Sungyeol kicked the bag of confetti behind the velvet curtains, smiling. 

“Well, I’m supposed to be checking the sound system for tomorrow’s assembly, seeing as it is open week, and parents will be joining us… Again.” 

Myungsoo took a step closer to the stage. 

“But it looks like you already beat me to it.” 

In less than 3 seconds, Sungyeol had been reduced to a bumbling mess, stuttering and giving excuses about how everything was totally fine and Myungsoo had absolutely nothing to worry about and why was it that Myungsoo always had odd jobs to do?

Myunsoo walked up the stairs lazily, his hands still casually tucked in his trouser pockets. He stood in front of Sungyeol, still slightly smiling- as if mocking him. Sungyeol hid his hands behind his back, there were definitely some strips of confetti stuck to it, now that it had become clammy. 

It was an awful experience. Awful, not because he and gotten caught, but because Sungyeol had never been nervous about getting caught playing pranks before. Whenever a teacher or a prefect caught him, Sungyeol felt completely at ease, as if being caught was the whole point of the prank. But now, Sungyeol couldn’t bring himself to even look at Myungsoo’s face and he was getting annoyed at his heart palpitating like that. 

Then Myungsoo chuckled and cleared his throat, forcing Sungyeol to stop looking over Myungsoo and instead at the younger boy. 

And just like that, Sungyeol felt amazingly at ease. His heart seemed to pound at human speed again and every bit of nervousness seemed to drain away. Sungyeol smiled at Myungsoo while Myungsoo only continued smiling, albeit with a confused furrow of his eyebrows at Sungyeol’s sudden smile. 

It wasn’t very long before Sungyeol was sent to the dean’s office again, this time for a classic he had done at least twice at all his previous schools. He had finely superglued a replica of every teacher’s belongings onto their tables, keeping their real belongings in a drawer. Which he had also superglued shut. It was amusing, to say the least, to watch his amazingly uptight math teacher struggle to pick up a pen. Her angry- confused look after that was even better. 

But of course, he was caught as soon as they checked the security camera footages. 

Oddly enough, Sungyeol hadn’t gotten such a big punishment. Ms. Jung had suggested that perhaps it was because he hadn’t actually spoiled the real belongings. But Sungyeol had a feeling it ran a little deeper than that.

As he shared these thoughts with Myungsoo, whom he had gotten wonderfully close to in an alarmingly short amount of time, Sungyeol noticed how the younger suddenly averted his gaze.

“Myung? Is there something you know that I don’t?”

“No, no. It’s nothing.” 

Then the younger had promptly continued fooling around on Sungyeol’s phone.