Chapter Two;
Eunhyuk, spotting the rather plump guy rounding the corner, immediately ran ahead of the threesome to greet his ‘bruddeh’, leaving Donghae and Kyuhyun lagging behind, rolling their eyes at their friend’s random enthusiasm. After hanging out with Donghae and Eunhyuk for the past few days, Kyuhyun came to realize a few things. Firstly, every one of Eunhyuk’s greetings typically involved the word ‘bruddeh’ or a hard smack on the back. Secondly, Donghae, too, had regular spaz attacks where he ranged around their group in elliptical circles, showing off his talent as a basketball player by throwing things around the cafeteria. And thirdly, Sungmin quite blatantly hated Kyuhyun.
As Eunhyuk dragged Shindong towards Donghae and Kyuhyun, the latter pondered over the relationship between him and Sungmin. Every time before recess, Eunhyuk would invite him to eat with them, and in turn, Sungmin would respond with a curt shake of the head and a quick smile. Eunhyuk, already anticipating a decline, would immediately lead the other two off to recess while Kyuhyun looked back in dissatisfaction at Sungmin. During these times, Sungmin never failed to pull out a French magazine which was obviously the first thing he’d snatched off the shelf at the school bookshop. He’d put it over his textbooks, pretend to read it for a few seconds and then proceed to look out the window, completely ignoring the worn-out paperwork.
During lessons, Kyuhyun would observe the exact same scene (not that he stared, of course), except without the magazine. And as the days drew past, he began to long for the smile that had appeared on the first day. Sungmin did smile occasionally of course, for courtesy’s sake; but somehow it wasn’t quite the same as the first. Besides that, whenever Kyuhyun decided to give up the silence and attempt to initiate a conversation, Sungmin would disregard him, leaving him looking like an idiot and earning glares from their teacher.
And still Kyuhyun didn’t know what he’d done wrong.
He got along fine with Donghae and Eunhyuk; even though his lack of speech was in complete contrast to their constant chattering, he somehow managed to establish such strong friendship bonds with them from the very start. Yet with Sungmin…
“Kyuhyun-ah, why’re you staring into space?”
Kyuhyun gave a start and turned to Eunhyuk, laughing inwardly at his friend’s adorable pouting. “You’ve been ignoring me for the past twenty-eight seconds!”
While amazed at Hyukkie’s remarkably accurate observation, Kyuhyun also felt a pang of guilt. He knew what being ignored felt like; though a few seconds was hardly comparable to what he was going through.
“What’s wrong, Kyu? Thinking about Minnie again, are we?” Donghae said jokingly, slinging an arm around his shocked friend. Kyuhyun widened his eyes and made his weak protests. He struggled not to blush as Eunhyuk and Shindong laughed out loud at his apparent embarrassment.
“It’s okay Kyu, we were just joking. Chill,” Eunhyuk stifled his laughter. “It’s just that we sit right behind you two, and it’s pretty obvious you keep trying to grab his attention. He’s always like that… You’ll get over it soon enough.”
Kyuhyun smiled at that, and sincerely hoped he would.
After that, Shindong switched the topic to issues about their dance club, and Kyuhyun almost lapsed back into thinking about Sungmin when Donghae made an unexpected suggestion.
“Yah Kyu, why don’t you come to our dance practice next week? It’d be nice to have you there.”
“Oh… uhmm… okay then, sure.”
“Awesome.”
~
Heechul was in a bad mood. He’d been assigned to the transfer student from China who couldn’t even swear in Korean properly, and ever since Hangeng had timidly requested for him to go back to class on that very first day, he’d had a bad impression of him.
