Fallen (Baekyeol Fanfiction)

Chapter 2

          Chapter Two

     The moment the final bell of the day sounded, Baekhyun was already halfway out of the building, winding through the mass of people with his head down and movements precise. His legs moved swiftly as they carried him across the paved sidewalks and well-kept lawns of the courtyard, through the gated brick wall that surrounded the campus and out to the small student lot on the south end. He quickened his pace, shifting the bag on his shoulder and pulling out a glimmering set of silver car keys. His vehicle sat where he left it hours before, where he always parked it in the mornings.

     Baekhyun popped the door open on the small import. It had seemed to be the envy of his classmates in the months since his nineteenth birthday, though he rarely noticed the difference between his car and some of the older models that were passed down to the students by their older siblings. Baekhyun was always one for practicality more than anything else. A car was a car, as long as it ran well and could get him from point A to point B, and even a new was 718 Cayman no exception to that rule.

     Instead of waiting as he normally would, Baekhyun shrugged off his school bag, throwing it in the backseat before buckling himself in. The engine purred as he turned the key in the ignition. Maybe there were some perks to having a newer vehicle, Baekhyun thought. He smiled to himself as he pulled smoothly out of the parking lot.

     On any average day, he would have waited for Lu Han so the two could go somewhere together. Sometimes it was to be productive. They would spend hours sprawled out on Baekhyun's bed, with heavy textbooks strewn between them as they discussed council matters and the newest homework assignments. But it was more often than not, he was willing to admit (to anyone outside of his parents or brother), that they spent the time doing any and everything besides thinking about school. They had a shared interest in music, and there was that. And sometimes they read manga or played games online or just did things you might actually expect from two teenage boys, while Lu Han gossiped to Baekhyun about things he would not otherwise have found out in his own little bubble of the world. Then, when Lu Han went back home later that night, Baekhyun would actually begin on the work he promised he had been doing all along, and more often than not, he did feel guilty about it.

     But considering that it was a Friday, and prime time for drunken, negligent behavior, Lu Han went home alone, just to get ready for a party somewhere in the more money-saturated part of the city, where students still threw massive parties every weekend just to prove that they could, that people would flock to them because of their wealth, despite how they may have actually felt about them, and that no one, their parents or the police, could stop them. And it would undoubtedly be more enjoyable than Baekhyun's night out with his older brother. Part of Baekhyun did wish that he could go - even if he didn't really enjoy drinking, or the antics of high schoolers with too much money to waste, let alone the stares and whispers he got for being there - but the other part of him had already accepted his lot in life. Inebriated shenanigans were made for other people. People that weren't born into a family like his, or were at least fortunate enough to escape them. He tried not to feel bad about thinking that or even wanting it as he turned another corner, but it didn't really work.

     After only a few minutes, Baekhyun pulled through the towering steel gates situated in the front of his family's sprawling estate. He shifted his car into park, eyes fixed on the blatantly empty drive in front of him, before gathering his bag and climbing out. He stopped for a moment to look at the home he had grown up in, the maintained lawn, the perfectly sculpted hedges and trees, the vibrant, exotic flowers shaping every entrance and alcove. It looked so... ideal on the outside, he thought with a self-deprecating laugh, and he didn't remember the last time he had actually thought about it as anything other than it just being what it was. He couldn't remember ever feeling so bitter at the thought, or ever even feeling anything more than indifference once he had gotten older. Because it had always just been how it was, but now everything felt wrong. Baekhyun shook the thought away before he could consider it any further and started towards the front door, locking the Porsche behind him.