Here With Me (ZhongChi)

I

   It wasn't his fault.

   Well... it wasn't his alone.

   He had warned them, threatened them, and they instead directed their attacks at him. Whilst it's better than continuing to harass their victim, it didn't help that he already had a bad reputation, and a new black eye didn't convince otherwise.

   Childe huffed as he stood in the empty halls.

   He was given detention for the incident, while the others were allowed to simply go home after the nurse patched them up. He had to go there too before it, but the nurse simply gave him an icepack for his black eye, and band-aids for his cuts, then told him to leave.

   It was unfair for him to be punished this way, when he was just trying to save someone.

   He stopped walking when he arrived, and stood outside. He was already late by five minutes, and he was considering just going home. It's not like he deserved this.

   'Okay, maybe I do deserve this,' he rationalised, as he opened the door, entering the room.

   He plopped down on a seat with a frown, crossing his arms, and that's when he noticed the presence at the desk in front of the class.

   The other person in the room scrutinised him, looked down at a paper on his desk, then looked back at him.

   "Uh."

   "Are you Ajax?" asked the person.

   "Yeah, please call me Childe," he said, with a glare, but trying to be polite.

   "Nice to meet you, Childe. I am Zhongli, the student council's vice-president," he said, unfazed by the glare. "I will be supervising you today."

   "Okay," he nodded, shrugging as he looked away.

   "You arrived five minutes late, and it is in my power to address this, so I'll be extending your detention time," stated Zhongli, "by another thirty minutes."

   Childe gaped. "What?! I was only late by five minutes! And that's 'cause the nurse's office is on the other side of the school." Most of it were excuses since he did consider going home. "Also, wouldn't that inconvenience you? You're a senior, right? Surely you have better things to do than supervise me here," he tried.

   Zhongli met his challenging gaze, and immediately shot him down. "If anything, this is very convenient for me. I need to study, and extra studying time is no problem for me," he said.

   "Huh."

   Childe sighed and leaned back against his seat's backrest. There wasn't much else he could say to have himself excused. He adjusted his hold on his ice pack, pressing it against his eye, to test the pain. He hissed at the sting, and he pulled out his phone to check his face, receiving a warning look from Zhongli.

   "I'm just checking out my face, relax," he sighed, pulling up the front camera, and looking at the injured area around his eye.

   Apparently, his nose had been bleeding earlier. The blood tracks on his nose bled down to his school shirt, and it was all very unsightly. He was dirty all over, and it's almost unbelievable that the nurse rushed him out when he looked like an utter mess compared to the others.