Meridian ◈ Seungjin

32 ◈ Take It From Me

"What's he doing?" Minho asked as he peeked over Chan's shoulder, taking in the rapid taps from the older's fingernails producing flashing hues on the abused screen of the phone he held perched horizontal between his hands, with more lights bumping every second thsn at an EDM music rave. He observed the rhythm of the combat for a few moments, pupils flickers and skin his nose twitching, as he noted the complex extremities and finite details which occupied the vampire in their last few minutes waiting for advanced math to end. He looked across to Hyunjin on the far side of the older, a gesture he wouldn't have noticed if Minho hadn't reached across to steal the mechanical pencil he was fiddling with, "Is that a game?"

"Some MMORPG Changbin convinced me to get," Chan groaned lowly, more engrossed by the flow of the gameplay than interrsted in his friends watching him on either side. The tapping of his fingers became frantic, the hurried taps of his pads ringing harsh into the chattering air of the students sat around them, the trembling of his phone shuttering with every quickened slam against it's screen as his eyebrows began to furrow. Hard. And harder. And harder. And harder, until there was no such thing as a gap needed to be bridged between the two features. His shoulder began to hunch forward, drawing him in, pulling the phone screen closer to his strained eyes as he battled like his life depended on it. As if it truly had, he let out a whimper? A groan? An intense lilt of disappointment?

As his last character collapsed to the ground and his phone flipped to the loading screen, he set the device down with a sigh, "I can't get past this boss. Do you either of you want to try?"

"I'll give it a shot," Minho picked up the discarded phone.

From what Hyunjin could see at the poor leaned angle, he gave himself a few minutes; Wandering around the picturesque landscaping, familiarizing himself with the basic controls, the basic characters, listening attentively to every word Chan said when he lectured like a proper teacher, quickly becoming immersed in the simple combat, simple mechanics, learning the engaging inquisitiveness of the expanding graphical horizon, and the game which as Chan said, 'Turned his phone into a nuclear reactor', when Minho commented on how warm the device became. The vampires became infatuated with the game. Lowly, falling in love, with the new world none of them would have the change to explore, or discover, besides through the eyes of the unique characters they controlled.

When Minho decided he had fallen deeply for the paradise of polished particles and perfected Shangri-La dissolving his precious seconds on, he went to fight the boss with an air Hyunjin noted to be bliss.

Not even five minutes later, Minho nearly chucked the phone across the classroom,

"FUCK!"

"Lee! Language!"  The math teacher immediately shouted back at him, an offended glare squinting his eyes at the group of friends.

"Sorry!" The vampire hollered back the apology, coming to set the phone easily back into the concealing palms of his hands as Chan and Hyunjin exchanged a wordless glance. When they were sure that their teacher was preoccupied with assisting the students closer to him, attempting to work them through the developed equations strung together by a madman's mind, the two of them erupted into laughter at their friend's mild embarrassment; Chan proudly chortling through his fangs like there was no tomorrow with a joy like this one, while Hyunjin choked back his own minor chuckles with a concealing fist. Minho promptly narrowed his eyes at them. His head bobbing from side to side in a chicken-like way as he mocked them back, "Haha, so funny."

Somehow, the attempt to jeer back only made the two fall farther into the pits of their own laughter. The intense scowls and glares they received from peer and teacher alike didn't need to be mentioned. Nor the one from Minho. Though, the few raised hands smacking the top of Chan's head was enough to completely break the barrier Hyunjin's hand provided to dam back his laughter.