History

Chapter 19 // The Flutist

Chen opened the bag of chips sitting in his lap, eagerly ignoring the other instructors in the teacher's lounge. He was an emotional wreck. The past several days had been clouded with thoughts about Lay and nasty flashbacks of his past rejections and failures in general, he was still overworked, and to make it even worse he had just been assigned to be in charge of the school musical.

Sure, there was going to be three others around to help--an acting professional, music director, and a choreographer but he was still going to be swamped. It was almost as if the whole world was against him, hoping he'd die of stress and loneliness.

"Chen! Chen! Chen!" an overly enthusiastic voice called out, paired with a feminine man rushing into the room.

The brunet squinted up at the fast approaching male. He was always glad to see his only friend in the building but he felt a bit overwhelmed by him as well.

"Hello, Luhan," he greeted in a much quieter volume. He didn't want to draw attention from his other coworkers.

"Why didn't you tell me you volunteered to help with the musical!?" he asked with a huge smile.

"I was voluntold, actually."

Luhan laughed, "Oh, don't act so disappointed! You'll get to spend thirty more minutes of your day with me! Isn't that AMAZING!?"

"Careful, your reputation as a manly man's going to be in danger if you keep squealing like a girl," Chen warned as if Luhan's currently pink hair wasn't already doing just that.

"It's not a reputation, it's fact."

"Well, here's another fun fact for you," Chen said,"As it turns out, I don't really want to spend extra time at the school, not even if you're part of the package."

The older male pouted, "Rude."

Chen couldn't help but smile at him. His good mood and high energy were highly contagious and he thanked the heavens for gifting him with Luhan.

He could still remember the day they met. It had been his first day as the choir teacher and he'd been trying to introduce himself to his students over the loud playing of instruments from the classroom next door. After that period, Chen had stomped into said classroom to harass the band teacher, Luhan.

Except, Luhan didn't give a shit. He'd gone on a horrendously long rant about how fortissississimo was the new sexy and that he was unwilling to settle for anything less than that. Chen had taken it upon himself to make his own students sings in the same, loud dynamic just to piss the band teacher off.

In the end, the rising number of noise complaints from the other teachers put a stop to their battle of musical dynamics and they both found themselves in a penalty month of pianissississississimo. The two were inseparable after that.

Besides doing his job as the band teacher, Luhan was also in charge of being the music director for the musical every year. As Chen was the only existing choir teacher, it made sense to put him in charge of the vocals, but it was still ridiculous in his opinion. They weren't even getting paid since they already worked for the school. The choreographer and acting professional, being outsiders, were at least getting some money out of their services.

"What musical are we even doing anyway?" Chen asked after biting a potato chip in half.

"The Lion King."

"Let me guess, you chose that one."

Luhan grinned from ear to ear, "Well, of course, I fucking did. It's a super popular musical with a male lead and not a stupid bitch princess that's hiding her whorish golddigger ways under a mask of beauty or plastic surgery more likely."