Forget Me

Chapter Seventeen

Two weeks had never flown by so fast nor dragged on so slow. Korn felt like he had walked through hell and come out on the other side singed to the bone. Every thought, every action took more energy than was normal. But if he'd had it bad, Mew's experience had been a thousand times worse.

"I thought you had this all together?" Korn had asked when his concern could no longer be overruled by the demand to focus on their exams.

"Tell that to my stomach. I keep losing my breakfast and then my lunch and...ugh." Mew had complained only to excuse himself five minutes before the paper.

There was nothing Korn could do to help. It made him feel powerless and angry. Enduring it the best he could. They made it to the end of their exams in one piece, or whatever passed for that, after the gruelling schedule of late nights, nerve-wracking exams, hardly enough sleep and way too much studying.

Korn was amused when he found himself sitting in the quad with some of his basketball teammates and a few other students. Mew was lying down beside him fast asleep. The temptation to run his fingers through the other boy's hair driving him insane. He had to satisfy himself with putting a gentle hand on his head. The answering sigh from Mew was like a caress down the inside of his thigh.

"Why do we have to stay in school while they grade the papers?" Game asked nobody in particular breaking Korn out of his thoughts.

"Yeah...they should let us go home and sleep," Nat responded and made his point by yawning long and loud.

"I thought you were going to party all night long after you were finished." Chimmon offered but he seemed to like Mew's idea because he lay down and put his head down against Korn's leg using it as a pillow.

"That's what he kept saying but I don't think he can even remember how to move his feet now that his brain is mush," Korn said of Nat's earlier plan for their end of exams celebration.

"He's right. There is always a plan to do so much after all that torture but I think Mew is the one with the right idea." Game also lay down. He used Chimmon's stomach as a pillow and surprisingly didn't get tossed off.

They were all eager for the break after exams. Even more so because it was supposed to give them time to figure out what they were going to give their focus to. While every student did eight subjects, most universities needed a combination of only four to be admitted. If your grades were good enough in the right combination, it didn't matter as much what you got in the rest, although a strong average gave you an advantage.

There were, therefore, two parts to the solution; picking courses already in line with the proficiencies you possessed, or improving those classes you weren't good at to qualify for the course you wanted. Korn was still unsure about his future plans and was happy to put it off.

Sadly, for Korn and the rest of his teammates, the torture wasn't done yet. The basketball team was having a training camp and he was charged with helping organize it together with the other members. There were enough of them that it was light work but he had to be there every single day. It meant he couldn't spend time with Mew.

As much as he minded, he also didn't. It was obvious they were heading into new territory in their relationship. Although he was eager to find out what they could do together, he was also nervous and a little afraid. It was a dick move, but he was okay with using practise as an excuse to keep his distance.

Until the exam results came out.

"Wow...Korn!" Mew said when he joined him and several other students at the bulletin board.

They had passed. That was a given but he realized what had caught Mew's attention. Korn was in the upper 25 percentile for the first time in his entire academic career. A few of the other students turned to check him out when Mew made the observation and he could see the admiration in the eyes of some of them. In the others, he didn't want to think about the anger and jealousy coming his way.