Meridian ◈ Seungjin

12 ◈ Mold

"No, you don't do that. Change the— Move your hand. There. Flip this."

Minho glanced up at him with an overgrowing frown, already beginning to move the graphite tip of the mechanical pencil against the lined paper in compliance with the requests. Chan the impromptu tutor watched his work progress in a saturated horror for a few beats, an silence grimace pulling his lips tight across his teeth as the other navigated the numbers and complex equations to find basic solutions wrapped in imaginary numbers. His satisfaction didn't last long. It was hardly a few more second before Chan quickly reached across the library table they chose to study at and slammed the other's hands flat on the table, effectively halting him from scribbling any more gibberish down on the pencil mark abused and eraser edge torn math homework they had been grinding slowly at for the past hour or so, "Stop. Don't, just, don't. Erase your work and start over."

"I'm going to flunk this class," Minho buried his forehead in an unsteady hand as he flipped his pencil around and began to undo the minutes of progress both had been slaving over. The one time he wished to try the problem on his own, and it ended in cataclysmic damage. A.k.a, the new addition of the wrinkled rip next to the inked equation, an infinite taunt of how many attempts he made, how many times he failed, how many times he promised this time he would get it correct. Only, he didn't. He didn't this time. He didn't the past ten times. For as long as Hyunjin had been watching from his reclined spot facing away from their issues, a jittery foot balanced on the empty seat next to him and back pressed firmly to the back of his own chair, he wasn't able to get it quite right. There was always something off. Something wrong. Something that didn't fit quite right, something that was out of place. The great mystery was to guess what that 'something' is.

But even the greatest mysteries had an answer to them; A solution. The Big Sleep, The Hounds of Baskerville, The Maltese Falcon, it all had to be solved eventually.

He forgot the negative, Hyunjin thought as he shifted into a comfortable position turned away from them, his hands fiddling with the opened potato chip bag in his grip. It looked even more unappetizing than the cafeteria food; A bolder smell, a decaying color, and no matter how loudly his stomach growled, he couldn't bring himself to eat even one salted potato chip. No matter how the hunger began to grate on his restless nerves, no matter how the value of zero drained him of his positives and reciprocated a want for a solution, he couldn't bring himself to eat it. Hyunjin rattled the bag, observing the way the chips moved against each other, I haven't eaten since the cafeteria yesterday, maybe I should just choke it down and not think about it?

On the other side of the table, Chan held his breath. His shoulders deflated as his gaze once again raked over the math work, a heavy puff of air escaping from his lungs, "The likelihood of that is now high."

"Maybe I should take a lesson from your page and set the trash bin on fire."

"That was an accident."

"How do you 'accidentally' set a bin on fire?"

"It. Happens. Okay?" Chan's teeth gritted together.

"Sure," The other drawled as he scanned the other, a caustic tone turning more and more sarcastic with every twitch of his eye and every jerk of his fingers in the seconds the older refused to claim defeat. His stature was unwavering, unbeatable, there was no foreseeable way to penetrate that mind and find what information Minho was truly looking for. An acceptance? An admittance? It was impossible to tell what he truly wanted. Impossible, up until the moment Minho leaned over in his seat to bug a certain someone contemplating death by food while gawking at potato chips. Hyunjin felt an elbow ram between his shoulder blades, the intrusive bone prompting him to croon his neck at an awkward angle to stare at them. After a few moments of silence, Chan watching both him and the math assignment with pity, Minho interrogated, "Did you already finish this?"