Mingyu was left stunned by Wonwoo's sudden outburst. But he did catch something other than fury in his eyes, when Wonwoo had grabbed him by the collar to leave a punch on his now-aching nose. It looked vaguely familiar to what Mingyu saw in the mirror each morning.
Mingyu would have retaliated right then, if not for how internally distraught Wonwoo had looked, as Mingyu had held out his diary.
Of course, Mingyu felt extremely wronged for being falsely accused in front of other people. He'd never meant to come across the diary in the first place. Heck, he didn't even know it was Wonwoo's. The day earlier, when he'd bumped into him in a hurry, Mingyu figured he must have picked the diary up in a rush to reach the examination hall, and it definitely wasn't his fault that it was open when it fell, it was all on Wonwoo that it had been open on a page, if anything.
Mingyu had never been one to meddle with something so private to anyone. Anyone's gaze could have flitted across the pages of an open book while trying to close it – exactly what had happened to him.
And now, because of Wonwoo's big mouth, Mingyu would be ridiculed even more at Pledis. The incident of him regressing still hadn't died down, and it had been over a month.
Mingyu ran to the bathrooms, shaking his thoughts away as he cupped a palm over his bleeding nose. Now that he'd recovered from the confusion, he noticed how badly it ached – he'd barely registered the painful crunch when Wonwoo's fist had collided with his nose. As he made his way to the bathrooms in a rush, he just happened to run into Chaeyeon. He tried to quickly dive out of her vision, failing terribly when she met his eyes. It wasn't really difficult for him to not get noticed, especially when the hallway was nearly empty, and he stood out like a sore thumb because of his height.
"Mingyu?" Chaeyeon approached, making Mingyu curl his head further downwards to hide any evidence of his bleeding nose. "Are you okay?"
Mingyu nodded, a bit too vigorously to go unnoticed.
"Why are you holding your face?"
"If's nuffing."
Nonetheless, Chaeyeon tore his hand away from his face, gasping loudly when she saw his bleeding nose. "Good heavens! What happened?!"
"I slammed into my locker, don't worry." Mingyu winced with each word.
"Mingyu, there's blood literally ready to drip into your mouth, I'm sure a locker door can't cause that much damage?"
"Well, it did. I need to go wash this off, bye."
And Mingyu left, without letting her speak further.
--
Mingyu couldn't bring himself to sleep, repeatedly thinking about the few contents of Wonwoo's diary he'd seen. Just the word choices explained Wonwoo's constant sour behaviour and what type of a life he lived. He had it pretty bad, Mingyu agreed, but that didn't give him any excuse to act the way he did.
And he had absolutely no reason to target Mingyu, of all people.
The amount of misunderstandings Wonwoo had about him could have made him laugh, if only they weren't as severe. In Wonwoo's eyes, it seemed as though Mingyu was the worst thing that had ruined his life. He may not have actually said it, but the way he was treated by Wonwoo conveyed more than words.
Mingyu felt hurt by Wonwoo's view about him, but it usually transformed as rage towards the boy who always had to single him out in front of everyone. Mingyu was already accused of buying his way through the best grades, highest GPA, and the overall liking all professors at Pledis had towards him; and Wonwoo just happened to up-play it even more, making Mingyu seem like the stereotypical, rich brat.
If anything, it made him hate his life even more, making him wonder why he was born to a disgustingly wealthy mother who didn't know how to love her child.
Maybe that was the whole reason why Wonwoo targeted him so much, although Mingyu always managed to rub his academic superiority in Wonwoo's face eventually as the only way to get to him. He wanted to make Mingyu's life even more miserable, just because he had a shitty one too.
Wonwoo was a fucking monster.
