All's Fair In Love And War

forming bonds

"Everybody, eyes on me!", the English teacher, Mr. Oh, entered the classroom dramatically the next day. He lifted a fist in the air. "Can any of you tell me what I'm holding here?" He asked, catching his students' interest.

"Air?" Tried some.

"Wrong."

"Dust!"

"Try again."

"Light!"

"Not even close. The answer, little monsters, is your attention. And I am warning you, I will do this every time I enter the classroom and find you talking. If I happen to be late, like today, you ought to keep quiet as to not disturb the other classes. But enough of this, I have an activity planned for you today!" The teacher scanned the classroom, spotting a couple of empty seats at the front of the class. "Where are these two?"

"Outside, sir. Should I fetch them?" Wonwoo asked, hoping to be granted ten extra minutes of break.

"There'll be no need for that, I can hear them coming," Mr. Oh reassured, leaving Wonwoo highly disappointed.

Indeed, two distinct sets of footsteps could be heard outside the classroom, coming to a halt by the door. Some hushed bickering rang back and forth in the silence of the hallway, followed by a yelp and something heavy falling on the ground, then an irritated-looking Jungkook stepped inside with Jangmi tailing after him reluctantly. He apologized to the teacher for being late and roughly sat himself down.

Junghae eyed his deskmate amused, to which she replied in a whispered tone, "I insisted that it was better to ditch since we were late anyway, but this guy wouldn't budge! You know, he can be one stubborn being, he nearly picked me up to bring me inside!"

Her venting was cut short by the teacher's patient look, waiting for her to end her chatter so he could finally begin the lesson.

"Good! Now that you're all paying attention, I have a little game prepared for you! As I told you yesterday, you will be organised in pairs of two and each team will need a sheet of paper on which you will write the titles of the books you have read this summer. Pay attention, I said books, so I don't want to find any webtoons, manga, manhwa and whatnot listed on your paper sheets, understood?"

The students commonly protested, for the new demand automatically chopped their endless lists to maybe three or four titles.

"Have fun now! The longest list will get a surprise reward at the end!"

That sparked the students' interest slightly, so they quietened down their laments and began to mingle through the classroom, each finding their pair.

Taehyung also got up from his seat to move next to Junghae and Jangmi hopped next to Jungkook, the faint frustration she had felt towards the boy before, completely gone.

"So.. do you wanna go first or should I?" She asked, tearing up a page from her notebook and uncapping a pen to write the titles down.

"I was thinking you could write down your books first and then I will, mine," Jungkook suggested, certain that he outnumbered her. He hated it, that weirded out look on his former classmates' faces whenever he listed his summer lectures. As if people no longer read these days!

"Okay, we can do that. Let's see. My first book was Aristotle and Dante discover the secrets of the universe, by Gabriel Alire Sáenz.. Absolutely loved that one. I highly recommend it to you too, if you don't have a problem with queer lit. Then there would be To kill a mockingbird, by Harper Lee.. oh! And then there's The glass castle, of course! How could I forget?! By Jeannette Walls. And last but not least, In five years, Rebecca Serle. Huh. Not as many as there should have been.. I had a pretty lazy summer, I guess."