Bubblegum Bitch [WooSan FF]

Chapter 1

3, 2, 1...

His shaky hands grabbed the latch of the door and opened it slowly. He inched his way in through the doorway and found himself face-to-face with a nearly full classroom and a professor in the early midst of a lecture. Not only was he new, he was late for his first class. The professor paused to beckon him on over and join him in front of the class.

With warm eyes and a pleasing smile to go along, the professor nodded at the student, "Everyone, here is a transfer student that will be joining us for the rest of the semester." He turned to the student and continued, "Please introduce yourself."

The welcoming appearance of the teacher and the class wasn't enough for the new student to confide in himself. His chocolate eyes took in the sight of his new classmates. Most of them appeared bored out of their minds, but a particular group in the front few rows over to the right caught his attention. Smiles lay upon their faces and the whole group seemed to revolve around a boy in the middle of them. Maybe it was really like that, or that one student just caught his eye. Maybe it was the overload of pink he was wearing. When their presumable leader finally craned his neck to look at the new student, words fumbled out.

"Hello, my name is Choi San..." was all the new student could muster out before hurrying to take a seat in the front row across from the group. He glanced at them cautiously, missing the conversation the professor attempted to have with him.

"Welcome, San. Everyone, remember when taking notes, copy the correct notation I am applying when solving these problems in order to receive full points on tests and quizzes!"

[***]

When the class ended, none of the students went up to San to welcome him. The majority of the class left except for that group who'd remained on San's mind the entire time. He stood up from his seat and walked over to them, planting a smile similar to the professor's on his lips. It was trembling and imperfect. The group of boys were in the middle of bickering when he reached them, but his sudden appearance put them all to a stop.

One of the buff guys, whom smelt of smoke and burnt food, tossed a paper packet in front of San, landing on the desk right in front of him. "Take it," he encouraged. "Copy the notes and catch up. My name's Kang Yeosang. Culinary major."

Yeosang didn't seem very high in the group's hierarchy, but San nodded awkwardly, taking the packet into his hands to examine it. His widened eyes blinked at just the first example. Right as he was about to thank Yeosang, he read the top page of the packet, which had the name 'Jung Wooyoung' written on it with a neon pink pen.

"Jung Wooyoung..?" San murmured, looking at each of the boys sitting there. There were seven of them, but it felt like one plus six to him. The boy closest to him yanked the packet from his hands, rolled it up, and slapped Yeosang on the head with it. He realized that the aggressive one was Wooyoung, but also that Wooyoung and Yeosang were close, which meant it would be difficult to be genuinely acknowledged by them. It would be a rough experience at this university, joining late when everyone's made friends already.

"Do you have a class after this? I'll ask the professor for a blank packet so I can teach you what we've learned so far. I'm Park Seonghwa, physics major." A different guy in the group began speaking, but his careful expression led San to trust him immediately.

San shook his head, "I don't have another class until 3."

"That's enough time to study and eat lunch. Let's just go to the cafeteria." Yeosang butted in, wrapping an arm around San's shoulder before wrapping the other on Wooyoung's shoulder. He grinned at the two of them, and it felt like there was a sense of sincerity when Yeosang looked at him. But as he had no other friends or the bravery to say 'no', San walked along with them.

As they made it to the cafeteria, he'd been introduced to the rest of the group. The friend group hung out almost everyday outside of classes, meaning they had been together through thick and thin despite the school year only being a couple of weeks old. However, they parted ways with the theater majors, Yunho and Mingi. They would have been distractions anyways, the others told San jokingly. Just ten minutes and he already felt like he would be able to become one of them. That was until the pink one, Wooyoung, spoke up.

"Did you transfer here because you got into a fight?" he asked San, zeroing in on the chocolate eyes from across the table. He pointed an empty spoon to the bandage on San's cheek, the only wound visible at the moment.

Their eye contact was hesitantly broken when San looked away and propped his head on his hand, covering his bandage. "I don't fight," was his only response before he turned to Seonghwa and asked, "What's a logarithmic function?"

Seonghwa bit his lip as he and Wooyoung exchanged looks before he made his response, "It's similar to an exponential function, but you must memorize their differences. While exponential functions have the starting point at (0,1), logarithmic functions have the starting point (1,0). There is a vertical asymptote..."

They were eventually swallowed up in the chapter work when Jongho leaned over to Wooyoung. "You've glaring intensely at San for the past thirty minutes," he whispered and poked in between Wooyoung's furrowed eyebrows. "Relax your face. Don't get angry because he won't share his private information with a stranger. Or are you perhaps...jealous of him and Seonghwa?"

The death glare shifted to its new target, Choi Jongho. Wooyoung nudged Jongho back and whisper-yelled into his ear back, "Why didn't you tell me I was glaring sooner?"

"You were so immersed," Jongho shrugged, his comment catching San's attention, as if his concentration on the algebra hadn't already been broken a second earlier. The temporary tutor took the chance to talk to the foreign exchange student, Hongjoong, on the other side of him, relieved to finally get a break.

With the other five guys talking amongst themselves in pods as if San weren't there, emptiness flooded over San's mind. He saw Seonghwa and Hongjoong speaking in deep conversation, and he saw Wooyoung, Yeosang, and Jongho laughing with each other with wide grins. Were they...laughing at him? Were they laughing at how math wasn't his strong suit? Their lack of attention for him taunted him ferociously, it was consuming him and throwing him off the edge. They weren't actually trying to welcome him to their school. A tightly-knitted group of friends suddenly inviting some random kid to join them sounded like some prank. A singular tear slid out from San's right eye, but he swiped it away quickly before anyone could see and replaced his quivering frown to a forced smile as he pretended to be focused on his paper packet, when in reality, he wanted to burn it. Another tear slipped out, followed by another, and another, and another, and then San fled the scene.

He raced around the first floor of the building, until he found the restroom and locked himself in a stall to empty out his eyes. With blurry vision and an unhealthy state of mind, the walls of the stall crept closer to San. They brought themselves closer until he shoved the door open, but he did not yell alone. The stall door slammed into someone who had just entered the restroom, cried out in pain and surprise, while San cried out in fear. He crawled under the sink, mumbling someone's name under his breath as he broke down.