Chapter Text
When Venti entered the science classroom this morning, he noticed that Xiao wasn’t sitting in the usual seat that he had been over the past week. Instead, he sat all the way on the other end of the classroom.
Venti furrowed his eyebrows, sighing as he made his way over to the teacher’s desk. He didn’t think Xiao was actually serious about switching project partners. He thought maybe it was a flyaway comment made during his moment of frustration.
“Venti. You’re on time today.”
“Haha.. Sure am.” Venti anxiously replied. He had forgotten all about last week- when this same exact teacher felt the need to embarrass him in front of the class just for being a little bit late.
“Apparently Xiao is now working on his own. You’ve been placed with Yelan and Yanfei instead.”
“He is?” Venti questioned, tilting his head to the side slightly.
The teacher simply nodded, turning her attention back towards the computer screen in front of her. “And I don’t have time for your friendship issues- so go find them and sit down.”
Venti complied, turning away from her desk and moving towards the table where two girls already sat. They weren’t particularly focused, and were instead laughing and giggling at something on the laptop screen.
“Hey- apparently I’m supposed to be working with you guys now.”
“Huh?” One of them spoke up, the one with the light pink hair and bright teal eyes. “Oh- that’s right. You’re Venti?”
“Yep!”
“Nice to meet you! Come sit down.” She gestured towards the seat next to her, smiling as she did so.
The other girl promptly switched the open youtube tab onto their presentation slides before turning her gaze towards Venti. She seemed a little bit scarier than the other girl- her eyes were a lot more piercing and she was almost too pretty. Pretty girls always scared Venti.
“Your full name?” She asked. Her voice was also a little scary- it was deeper than Venti’s was, and was somewhat monotone.
“Venti Schwarz?”
She typed his name into her keyboard, and then clicked the mouse pad button.
“You should be shared into the presentation now.”
“Oh- Thank you!”
“Yelan, you’re scaring him..” the pink haired girl softly spoke.
“Huh?” The girl with the short blue hair turned to face Venti, who did in fact appear to be somewhat nervous. “He’s fine.” she simply stated.
“Right.. Well- I’m Yanfei! And that’s Yelan.” The girl with the pink hair, Yanfei, introduced herself finally. The other girl, Yelan, nodded in agreement before turning to look back towards the computer.
“Nice to meet you both!” Venti smiled, taking his seat next to Yanfei. Yelan was a little scary to him at the moment- maybe he’d warm up to her eventually.
“Soooo.. Who were you working with before?” Yanfei asked, the corner of her lip tilting up into a smirk. Venti hadn’t even been here for a minute yet, and they were already trying to gossip with him.
“That quiet kid, Xiao?” Venti replied fairly quickly.
And that seemed to catch Yelan’s attention, her gaze quickly switching from the computer to towards Venti.
“Oh- Yelan used to be friends with him!” Yanfei chimed in.
“Really?” Venti tilted his head, turning to stare at Yelan.
Yelan simply nodded. “We were friends for years. ”
“Why did you stop being friends?” Venti asked, curious. He didn’t really want to pry- but he was also intrigued as to whether Xiao commonly had outbursts like that, where he’d distance himself from people.
“That thing happened, and as a result his mother distanced him from everyone and he disappeared for a few years, before returning back here again. It was strange.” Yelan seemed a lot more talkative now, compared to how she was a few minutes ago.
“What thing ?” Venti inquired. The rumours had stated that Xiao did some pretty bad stuff, and it wasn’t like Venti would ever actually believe the rumours, but sometimes they worry him a little.
“Oh- Did he not tell you?”
Venti shook his head at that. He didn’t really know how he felt being told these things about Xiao. It felt a little wrong to be going behind his back and learning things about him, but it’s not like Xiao would ever open up to him now, anyway. Especially not after what happened on Friday.
“Then I won’t say anything- it’s.. A sensitive topic. It’s best he told you himself.” Yelan stated. She suddenly averted her eyes from Venti, flicking them towards Xiao for a split second before turning back to the teal-eyed man.
“We got in a bit of an argument the other day so it’s unlikely that’ll ever happen, but I’d prefer if he told me himself, too.” Venti huffed out, letting out a slight sigh. He didn’t mean to vent or dump his problems onto Yelan, but he was curious as to whether she had experienced this before, too.
“Oh? An argument?”
“Mhm..”
“Was it one of his usual ‘I don’t even like you leave me alone’ things?”
“Is that-” Venti started to speak, but he was swiftly cut off by Yelan. He was going to ask if it was a normal thing for Xiao to do, but Yelan seemed to pick up on the questions that he had been asking.
“Yeah- it’s a defence mechanism. Just annoy the shit out of him and he’ll return to normal.” She chuckled lightly, the faintest hint of a smile forming on her face.
“ What?”
“I have first-hand experience.”
“No, no I know- I just. Why does that work?” Venti furrowed his eyebrows.
“He gets insecure and puts up a guard around people or whatever- just showing him that his existence isn’t a bother usually makes him return back to normal. If that even makes sense.”
“Right.” Venti noted, turning around in his chair to quickly make a glance towards Xiao at the back of the classroom, who was diligently typing away on his laptop. And for some reason, Venti’s heart hurt a little seeing him like that. All alone.
Yanfei, who had been silent this whole time, finally finds a chance to speak up. “We should get back to work.”
“Oh- Right!” Venti quickly responded, looking over towards the laptop in the middle of the table. The word ‘Electricity’ loomed ominously on the first slide.
This was going to be very dull.