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Jiseol wasn't usually a very nervous or anxious person.
But here she was, so terribly nervous that she swore sweat stains were forming a map on her butt. She was alone in the empty lecture hall, eyes darting to the closed doors every two seconds though she knew she was the one ridiculously early. It was late in the evening and she had been nervous since she woke up.
They would be fucked to the core of their bones if her deduction turned out to be incorrect. How could she not be nervous?
Once her watch showed her it was two in the afternoon, the lecture hall greeted a few more people, all of whom happened to be Astral members and a clueluess Yangyang who Jiseol herself wasn't sure as to why he was there. While the rest of them chattered amongst themselves, raising the question as to why they were asked to meet in a lecture hall rather than their office, Mark approached Jiseol. Though he didn't know what was going on either, he looked almost as scared as she did.
"Are you going to tell me what we're doing here? And what's Yangyang doing in an Astral meeting?" Mark asked, making sure to keep his voice at a volume that only Jiseol can hear.
"Can't," Jiseol shook her head. "You just have to wait and see."
"Wait for what?"
Before Jiseol could answer, Mark's question was replied to by a dramatic swing of the door and Donghyuck cockily walking in. He was wearing sunglasses—Jiseol's sunglasses that she specifically told him not to take—and had the cockiest, smug grin on his face. He waltzed up to the podium, sassily nudged Jiseol away to take center stage and perched the pink-tinted sunglasses on top of his head.
"Lord, please have mercy on me." Jiseol pinched the bridge of her nose, her stress levels escalating to new heights. She knew she'd asked Donghyuck to summon his worst inner Haechan, the king of hot gossip and fierce arguments, but she didn't know how she wasn't counting on him to bother making an appearance this glamorous.
"Hello, bitches." Donghyuck flashed an obviously insincere smile. He tilted his head towards Jiseol, announcing that he would "take it from here, princess".
"What the hell are you doing, dude?" Jihoon was first to speak up. He wasn't the only one to look confused, some of them even seemed to be irritated by Donghyuck's unwelcomed presence. They hadn't seen him since the day the list was published and if they had bumped into him after, they would simply pretend he wasn't there.
It wasn't that any of them had anything personal against him. If anything, Jiseol was the only person there that Donghyuck had bad blood with yet she was the one squeezing his arm as an attempt to calm her own nerves.
"Remember the sexual predators exposè I did? Remember how awesome that article was?" Donghyuck sighed dreamily. "I've already done a written exposè. Pulled it off super well. But you know what they say, 'new is always better'! So here I am, trying out a new expose method: physically. For countless of eyes to see, including my own to see the reaction of the poor souls I'm about to be exposing."
