Dealing With It | skz

ii. the deal of deals

content warning: profanity, mentions of heavy drinking, anxiety
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HAN JISUNG HAS never been to the principal's office. Ever. The only reason he was in the principal's office now was because he accidentally fell asleep during class.

Now, you may be thinking that being sent to the principal's office was too harsh a punishment for simply falling asleep in class. Jisung would usually agree with you, but he fell asleep in chemistry. During an experiment. An extremely DANGEROUS experiment.

It wasn't his fault his mother was screaming on the phone last night, drunk out of her mind, yelling about his "dead-beat" dad she divorced when he was seven.

But that's besides the point.

Jisung was terrified out of his mind. Everyone around him, with the exception of one, looked like they had good reason to be here. Jisung didn't like stereotypes, really. He hated them. But half of these guys looked like problem students, and that made him uneasy.

The dude beside him looked busted up, literally, his lip was busted and bleeding. The dude beside busted dude looked like he was guilty about something he shouldn't be guilty about and kept running his hands down his thighs, and the dude across from leg dude, who just got out of the principal's office, would grimace if he moved his torso too much.

The boy on the other side of Jisung was the school's known, and pardon Jisung's lack of better vocabulary, man whore. Hwang Hyunjin was his name, but he looked sad, disheveled, and honestly, Jisung felt like he just needed a hug.

Beside torso guy was a confused looking blonde with absurdly cute freckles, and he didn't seem to know what was going on. His eyes were wide, and naive, and Jisung wondered whether or not he's seen him before.

Beside freckle dude was a kid who looked like he was a mischievous fellow, but Jisung could tell by his red eyes that he had probably been crying a few minutes before he arrived.

And the last dude was Kim Seungmin, an esteemed pitcher on their school's baseball team. The only reason Jisung knew him was from all the drama the cheerleader he sat beside in history talked about. He was lucky he could hear the drama, especially because Seungmin was rather quiet outside of baseball, and no one really knew anything about him except a few rumors. He also looked ready to commit murder.

Not the group of kids he thought he'd be surrounded by when he got sent to the principal's office for the first time.

Rather awkwardly, Jisung sighed and took another glance at all the faces that surrounded him. After he successfully did so without making eye contact, he stared at the principal's office's door. He wished it would hurry up and open. He didn't want to be in this God-awful room anymore.

He then heard a quiet mumbling across from him, and when he turned his head to hear who it was from, his eyes widened. The freckled dude had spoken, and the words that left his mouth, though in English, were rather provocative.

"Tardy to my shitty classes a few times and now I'm a fucking criminal."

Maybe freckles wasn't as cute and naive as Jisung had originally thought.

Jisung wasn't the only one surprised. The guy with a hurt torso stared at him, exasperated, and the baseball player, Seungmin, had his mouth hanging open a little bit.

And now Jisung knew half of them knew English.

Whoopee.

Jisung wanted to introduce himself though. He thought what freckles dude had said was funny. He was about to speak up, but hurt torso guy did first.

"You know English?"

"Fuckin- duh! I'm from Australia." Freckles said. Jisung looked from freckles and torso guy, and wanted to laugh.

Freckles looked annoyed, and torso looked enamored. Torso's face lit up in a smile, and he said with pure joy, "Me too, mate! What's your name?"

Jisung thought freckles couldn't get any cuter, but he could. Freckles began beaming at torso with the cutest eye smile Jisung has ever seen. Torso smiled back equally as large, and it seemed to urge freckles to introduce himself.

"I'm Felix Lee! Nice to meet ya!"

"Christopher Bang, nice to meet you too!"

Jisung might've died from a cuteness overload if the principal took any longer. Fortunately, she didn't. Mrs. Bae swung the door open wide, letting it hit the wall next to it with a bang. Jisung flinched at the noise, his head snapping to make sure the door hadn't made a hole in the wall. It didn't.

Mrs. Bae instructed all eight boys into her office, and carefully shut the door behind them.

Hyunjin sat in one of the leather chairs, and the dude with a busted lip sat in the other. Jisung stood on the end of the line behind the chairs, next to the guy who was rubbing his thighs earlier.

Mrs. Bae quickly stood behind her desk and handed all of them a slip of paper. Jisung looked at it in confusion, and began to skim the words on it. As he was half-reading it, he saw some words he didn't like. Those words were:

By signing a previous contract to get out of suspension, you agreed upon being paired with another student also looking for a way out of suspension. You will become their "person". This entails checking up on them everyday, eating lunch with them, and going to all school activities together if one wishes to do so.

You'll both attend a meeting with the enforcer of the contract twice a month until the contract is either terminated or ends.

You and your "person" will exchange phone numbers, addresses...

Jisung was not having it. He didn't want to do this. He could already see everything going wrong with this, and he wanted to die. The anxiety was already eating at him.

What if he messed it up?

Looking farther down the piece of paper, there was a line that said who his "person" was.

And it couldn't get any worse.

In all caps, blue pen, with nice hand writing he could tell was the principal's, it said: Hwang Hyunjin.

Throwing himself out the nearest window seemed like a lovely idea. Jisung glanced at the boy who sat in the leather chair, and the image of Hyunjin's sad face from a few minutes ago flashed in his head.

Maybe it couldn't be so bad.

"Okay, boys. Let me let you in on a little secret. This is the deal of deals. Why? Because this gets you out of suspension, a plus for you, a new friend, hopefully a plus for you, and helps me and the school try out a new form of dealing with troubled students, a plus for me." Mrs. Bae explained. "I'm sure I gave you enough time to skim the paper, but just in case, let me explain a few key components.

"You're getting what we're calling a 'person'. They will be just your person. You and your person spend any and all your free time at school together. You will eat lunch together. If one of you has a club meeting, the other has to either go with you or wait until you get done to go home. If someone has a sports game, you have to go to it. All school activities one of you goes to, the other has to go to as well, except for field trips. You also have to exchange numbers and hang out two weekends out of the month. You also have to check up on each other everyday." Mrs. Bae said, taking a big gasp of air at the end of her speech.

Jisung just stared at her in disbelief. Then busted lip spoke up.

"Can we trade 'persons'?" He asked, lifting up his hands to making air quotations before letting them plop back down onto his lap. "I don't like mine."

"I don't like you either." Seungmin spoke up, crossing his arms carefully so he didn't crush the paper.

"No, you can't trade." Mrs. Bae said, obvious frustration growing in her tone. "You both need this the most. I don't want to hear any complaints from you."

"Then if we can't trade," Hyunjin suddenly spoke up, annoyance evident on his face, "who the fuck is Jisung?"

Jisung no longer felt bad for Hyunjin.