Unkind

You Worry Me

Minho attempts to fight the brightness. He reaches for his eyes to rub the night out of them. His body ached; he mentally scolds himself for running into the woods yesterday. What led him to do that something he should sort out and get over it. He hates causing people trouble. Chan was kind enough to deal with him last night. Ran him a bath, prepared him clean clothes to wear and food for a late supper. And for that, Minho is grateful. However, he would much prefer if it never happened again.

When he becomes adjusted to the light, Minho lifts his lids open. Sunlight is dancing all over the room. Like how his memories with Jisung lingers around the room still. Haunting him. Minho winces. He hates the sun.

The door suddenly creaks open, revealing a well-prepared Chris in a newly tailored Welton Academy uniform, and a bookbag that he places on the floor beside him while he goes straight to rummaging through his closet and failing to acknowledge his roommate is awake. Minho stays silent, observing his savior the night before. He notices Chris’ dark curls this time. It was in the shade of a deep, rich brown. He becomes intrigued out of the blue. His suspicion of it being bleached turns out to be correct. He muses, “Why did you change your hair?”

Chris whips his head around in surprise, “oh, you’re awake. How are you feeling?”

Minho shrugs as he gets up. He asks the question again.

“You don’t like it?” Chris asks. “Does it matter what I like?” retorts Minho.

“I don’t know, I feel like I should always commend to whatever you’d prefer.”

Minho tenses up at that. He tries to shake it off with laugh. He did and the guilt still starts kicking in. “What do you mean?”

Suddenly, Chris stands in place and animatedly makes a salute to Minho. “As your new roommate, I refuse to cause you any discomfort. So as long as I’m here, you won’t have to worry about unlawful deeds.”

“You don’t have to, you know.” Minho insists. And he means it more than he makes it out to be. He knows Chris meant the silly rules he made when he roomed with Jisung. Contrary to what Chris intends to do, Minho feels overwhelmed of the whole ordeal. Chris must realize that Minho doesn’t need to be accommodated. He doesn’t want to trouble Chris like that. He doesn’t need pity.

“But I want to help—”

“Nobody asked you to!” Minho bursts. He shuts his eyes. Just great. Back to square one, and the first one had only happened yesterday. He peeks at Chris who clearly is taken aback, but Minho can’t blame him. He hears the other mutter an apology before grabbing an object from his closet and shutting the door behind him.

Minho feels awful.

He purses his lips. Contemplating about class.

Nolan will kill him if he doesn’t show up.

***

Chris plops down on a chair that is placed midway from the back of the room. Sam suggests taking the seats beside the rest of the circle, but he politely refuses. If Chris learned anything today, it is to not take the seat close to his friends. He loses focus on almost every class because of how much they’d rather chatter than listen to the discussions. He isn’t going to risk getting into trouble with them.

“First day teaching at Hell-ton and the new teacher is running late,” Sky asks, pushing back his glasses with two fingers. He tilts his head to the side. Chris watches as he grins cockily. “Why don’t I take over the class? What do you say, gentlemen?”

“Seung’, Seung’” Sam calls Sky in his birth name from behind laughing from what was said. “Go do it, man.”

Chris shakes his head, also laughing. These guys are always up to something whenever they feel like it. It is funny to watch from the sidelines, but Chris has no intention of participating.