Meridian ◈ Seungjin

27 ◈ Leviathan

The remaining students of the class period filtered out of the room. They slung their bookbags over their shoulders, exchanged glances, borrowed stares from enviable opinions, thrown as easily as a flattened river rock skipping across a frozen lake, without a care of which cracks it caused and shattered on the opaque froth collecting on the top. Froth, a thick foam, dripping like saliva on a rabid dog. Although an acceptance was promoted among their peers, their academy, their society, it wasn't rare to see the infectious bites laying beneath their unaware stares. As the other students in the class left, oblivious to the tension they created with masterful brushes, a vacant space was left behind. Lightly, he thought to himself, When that malicious air is gone, there's nothing else to fill the gap it leaves behind.

Alone at his desk, Hyunjin quickly scribbled on a wrinkled slip of lined paper pressed on the occupied desk with a concentrated palm, the same wad crumpled and flattened on various surfaces a few too many times throughout the passing hours of classes. More times than fingers he had to count the repetitive action out on. The graphite of his mechanical pencil scratched words between the soft blue lines, filling the crinkled space with his own thoughts. If that was what this could be considered. Or the absence of thought. The complete, and utter void of coherent mind, dumped in a single sentence onto a torn strip of paper no bigger than the hand which he used to write with. The graphite scrambled to complete the line. Before the teacher currently stalking over to his desk could comment on him lingering behind the rest of the class.

He rounded the sentence off, a question mark completing his thought with a light tap of the tip of his pencil. Hurriedly, he swept up the paper in his palm and neatly folded it, only for the slip to be mercilessly shoved into his pocket for safe keeping. He then ripped the remainder of the torn page out of his notebook, ensuring to ball it into a tight palm, and before anyone could attempt to notice the protesting noises it argued with when he crumpled it, he tossed the trash in his bookbag. Mentally, he made a note to himself to throw the unnecessary clutter in a garbage bin.

As he began to slot his mechanical pencil and notebook into their respective places within his bag, a shuffled pair of footsteps approached his desk. Hyunjin was barely given enough time to look up, or even think out a proper excuse to not talk to the person, as he caught the encroaching form of Minho from the corner of his eye. He was holding his own notebook, curled in his hand. Before he could speak, Minho spouted, "Are you free? Let's go for a walk together. 

Hyunjin scanned him, eyes raking over the shoulder's of the other vampire as he attempted to find the simplest route out of doing anything involving being active. When he couldn't find it, he let a frown pull his lips down and his eyebrows furrow together into something he easily identified as displeasure. He murmured, "Where?"

"Trying to find Jisung," Minho told. The notebook in his hand flopped straight, the older coming to raise it and wave the material back and forth like a flag used to surrender in a battle with little to no hope. Within the cover, the pages filled with disastrously poor handwriting becoming of speed note taking while the teacher lectured and bored doodles which should have been bulletpoints, waving miserably in clumped oppression, "He wanted my old history notebook. Figured this was the best time to hand it over."

Actually,

That's perfect.

"Fine," Hyunjin muttered, shoving the cover of his textbook up to force gravity's pull to make it fall unceremoniously closed with a painful thud. He dragged himself up from the seat, a frustrated groan on the edge of his lips and his chest rounded into displeased disgruntlement weighing like sandbags dropped over his wingspan. He unhooked his bookbag from the seat and slung it over a free shoulder. Even though he made his reluctance evident, his older friend stared him down with a grin. The younger vampire narrowed his gaze and shot him a firm glare. A bullet, like the ones loaded in the silver revolver Seungmin kept equipped on his belt. Imaginary, of course. But there nonetheless.