Collateral Love | Tao

Chapter 4

I was talking to Yugyeom in the hallway before class when Mr. Huang said, "You, in my classroom, now."

A few students around us fell silent as he basically dragged me into his classroom.

"What the hell?"

"What the hell did you do to my markers?"

"I told you I knew how to use super glue."

He handed me a marker, "Pull it apart."

"No."

He lowered his voice, "I'm not scared of you, Choi Jisoo, and I will never be scared of you, so I suggest you do something about my fucking markers before you see how scary I can get."

"Guess what, Huang Zitao? You don't scare me either," I said this, but truthfully he did scare me, a lot.

"Do you want me to fail you? Call me Mr. Huang."

"Um, excuse me, Mr. Huang?" A quiet voice said from the door. It was some kid in my class name Jongdae.

"What do you want?!" He basically shouted.

"Nevermind!" He shut the door and ran off.

"Everyone is going to fail because they're too afraid to ask for help."

"That's their problem, isn't it?" He pulled my bag off of my shoulder and dumped it on his desk, picking out anything I could possibly use to pull pranks with.

"Stop it."

"You can have that back at the end of the year," He took my phone off of his desk, "I'm taking this until you get me new markers."

"I can just buy new stuff to prank you with."

"If you prank me again I will make you regret it. Go find me some new markers."

I left in search of new markers. I didn't think I would prank him for a while, but I was kind of curious to see what he would do. I would wait a while.

I snuck into what I thought was an empty classroom to steal some markers, but I quickly found that Sehun was in there with his, lip-locked with another boy, "Sehun?"

"Um, hey, CJ. This is Luhan."

"Hi," I waved awkwardly, "I'm just going to go now."

I was pissed off once again. Sehun didn't even tell me he had a boyfriend. I went back to Mr. Huang's room, he was going through my phone.

"Why do you look upset every time you come in here?"

"Because I am," I set the new markers on the whiteboard and threw the old ones in the trash, "What are you looking at?"

"Your apps."

"You can stop now, I brought you new markers," I put my stuff back in my bag and sat at my desk.

He set my phone in front of me, "By the way, lunch detention."

"What for this time?"

"For pranking me."

"I fixed it though. Did one of my apps offend you?"

"No, I still feel like I don't have justice."

I rolled my eyes as the bell rang. I was absolutely silent the whole hour and I didn't dare to look at Sehun.

When lunch detention rolled around Mr. Huang made me clean off all of the desks and all of the trash on the floor, then he told me I could leave, but I didn't leave, instead, I sat in my chair by his desk and ate my lunch. He didn't really seem to care, considering I wasn't making any sound.

"I will trade you my strawberries for your raspberries."

He looked up from his computer slowly, I thought he would get mad at me for a second, "Half for half. I still want some raspberries and also I need to make sure you aren't trying to poison me."

I ate a strawberry, "Nope."

I ate some of each fruit and then unwrapped a cupcake.

"What is that?"

"It's a cupcake, doofus. My mom owns a bakery."

"Can I have it?"

"Why would I give it to you?"

He took a bite of my cupcake anyways, "Very good. What's your mom's bakery called?"

"Cutie Cakes. Don't come though," I set the cupcake down on his desk.

"Why can't I?"

"Because I said so."

"Is there coffee too?"

"Yeah, but don't come," I think we both knew he would still come, "Will you give me something in return for the cupcake?"

"You can still have it."

"I don't want it now. Can I have the rest of your raspberries?"

"No way," He shook his head.

"This is so unfair. You just got your man germs all over my cupcake and you're not even going to make a fair trade for it."

He opened one of his desk drawers and put a sticker on my vest that read "You're the best!"

"There you go," He looked back at his computer screen and continued to eat the cupcake.

The bell rang soon after, "See you later, Mr. Huang." He waved me off without looking away from his computer.

I made my getaway into the hallway and ran directly into Jongdae, "Sorry, CJ!"

"It's cool, my bad."

"Want to walk to class together?"

"Sure."

"You spend a lot of time in Mr. Huang's classroom. You two aren't like together, right?" He raised an eyebrow skeptically.

"No, I just get in trouble with him a lot," I laughed nervously.

"Oh," He laughed too, "Right, so that brings me to my second question. Do you have a date for homecoming?"

I pondered for a moment, usually, I went with Sehun, but I guessed we weren't going together this year since we weren't friends anymore, "No, I don't."

"Sehun must be going with Luhan then. So do you want to go with me?"

"Sure!" I smiled, "You knew about Sehun and Luhan?"

"Luhan and I are good friends."

I nodded, "Sehun didn't even tell me."

"Wow, dick move."

"Well, that's Sehun for you," I missed Sehun a lot. Even though it'd only been a day without him I still felt pretty alone. He didn't seem to miss me though, he had Luhan. I just wished I had somebody I could talk to about all of my feelings.