"I'll have you know one thing, Kim. No one, and I mean absolutely no one, is allowed to step over me around here."
The amount of hatred that had been blooming in Kim Mingyu's heart – all directed towards the overly cocky boy, Jeon Wonwoo, who had everyone drawn towards him through just his outgoing personality and golden hand at everything he did – had reached its peak just by the end of his first week at Pledis University.
Mingyu believed he was the only one who saw right through Wonwoo's repulsive attitude.
Jeon Wonwoo; the most popular guy at Pledis, the most unideal one too, not only in his department, but nearly every student and professor knew about him and his activities all across university. Everyone flocked around him – guys and girls alike, and offered him anything and everything, just to project it proudly later.
Well, everyone except Mingyu.
The latest student to begin his degree at Pledis, Mingyu had joined one term late – having moved back from the States after spending his preschool, middle school and high school life in San Francisco. He was pretty socially acceptable that way. Other than the fact that his English sounded way more expensive and native as compared to others, he easily blended in with everyone else. That would have been the case, if he wasn't Korea's richest solo-entrepreneur's son.
To top it all off, he projected nothing but hatred towards the charismatic Jeon Wonwoo. That set him out like the sorest of thumbs.
Wonwoo's condescending attitude, and his snobbish tone had always irked Mingyu. He didn't have a particular reason to, since he had seen several of Wonwoo's kind back in high school. But what ticked him off was the unnecessary threat thrown his way the first time he ever got a point more than Wonwoo on an assessment, just in his first week at Pledis. It hadn't been too difficult in Mingyu's opinion, and he had been convinced anyone could have gotten a score that good.
That was, clearly, Mingyu's opinion, seeing as how everyone else in the course had ended up with laughable C's and D's on that assessment.
And ever since those vengeful words had been spat at him, Mingyu had made it his goal to tread over Jeon Wonwoo's work every single time.
--
Mingyu sat at his desk, grinding his teeth as he barely managed to stay focused on the assignment due in five hours. Five hours may have sounded like sufficient time for a submission, but the catch was that he was wide awake at three in the morning. Mingyu hadn't slept since the past twenty hours.
Six empty mugs, once filled to the brim with black coffee, sat at the edge of his huge desk lined against the wall – right below the window that shone in the moonlight. His desk was ridiculously large, and yet the mugs were just half an inch away from tumbling over and waking his mother up because of the noise that would echo in the humongous house – which was quite empty at the moment.
Integrals were never meant to be this tedious; he'd been doing those since high school. Mingyu racked his brain; why couldn't he solve the most insignificant portion of the main equation he was supposed to complete? Not once did it occur to him that he needed some sleep for his brain to function at full power once again. He thought caffeine would work the trick.
His pen ran out of ink moments later, and Mingyu let out a loud sigh, trying not to let the little inconvenience get the best of him. "Fuck," he muttered under his breath. He had to now pull out a new pen from somewhere, but he'd have to switch the fucking lights on and tiptoe his way down the extravagantly twisty stairway in his house, for he'd left his backpack down there last evening.
And that meant performing a circus show until his toes hurt, along with the impending fear that his mother might wake up. It was her own security system. Apart from being an extremely light sleeper, Kim Minkyoung slept with her bedroom door wide open. Even if the slightest bit of light happened to catch her strict eye when it wasn't supposed to, Mingyu would have his head torn away.
Having the necessity to finish his work before his class, Mingyu decided to take the risk of going downstairs to snag his stuff as quickly as possible. He slinked till the very end of the hallway, made two left turns, so that he was a wide distance across his room on the same floor, with only the exquisite, polished, mahogany bars keeping him from falling to his head smack in the middle of the silent living room, and possibly banging into the expensive chandelier hung right in front of him. He could have taken the easier way – a single right turn, the second room on his left, and he'd be in front of his mother's bedroom. But the problem was the floorboards in that quarter of the square-ish first floor creaked a bit too much for Mingyu's liking, and the bedroom next to his mother's had been locked ever since they both left the country to move to the States. Mingyu couldn't quite remember why it had been locked.
He soon reached his mother's bedroom, and peeked inside to check if she was fully asleep. To his relief, she was, and as Mingyu cautiously closed the door – so he could safely turn the lights on – when his eyes landed on a framed photograph.
It was a strange one. It always sent his mind reeling in a blur, yet every time he returned to the present, he had never been able to recall what the photograph had done to him. Jumbled bits and pieces of each incident ate at him, leaving him unsatisfied at his incapability of recalling all of it.
His mother was part of it – the only time Mingyu ever saw her smile – with her arm wrapped around a man's shoulders - Mingyu had no idea who he was, though logically, it could only be his father – judging from the wedding attire they both wore. The man was smiling too, as his arms snaked around her waist, and his head leaned onto hers.
Mingyu felt a dull thrumming surfacing from the back of his head; this wasn't part of the plan, when Mingyu had more important things to complete – like his fucking assignment.
The mild ache wasn't as mild a few moments later, and in a matter of few seconds, his head began pounding uncontrollably. Stumbling backwards, Mingyu clutched onto one of the wooden bars with one hand, the other rubbing his forehead in hopes to calm the sudden, yet familiar, headache. It didn't work.
Mingyu began to lose consciousness of his surroundings. He blinked once, and suddenly everything seemed quicker and animated, and the colours around him looked exaggerated. He found his arm resting on a particularly shiny type of wood, and Mingyu stroked it once out of curiosity, and twice for it was a really interesting texture.
Footsteps approached him, and he saw his mum standing in front of him, staring at him from her bedroom doorway, with a look on her face he didn't understand quite much. Mingyu giggled at the sight of his mum. He pointed at the photograph behind her, causing her to turn back and take a look as well. This time, Mingyu knew exactly who that man in it was, without any logic involved. Mingyu squealed gleefully.
"Appa!"
