Chapter Text
"Sorry!" Soobin heard, as he was brutally pushed to the side by the smallest being he had witnessed this year. Only 3 weeks into the term and already he was being harassed by the goblins of the new academic year.
"God, they just get smaller and smaller, don't they?" Soobin turned to the side to see another boy to his left, but this one with the tiredness of a student in his last year weighing his eyelids down and more than enough greys among his head of black hair.
"Leo, you have got to start announcing your presence better, I thought you were a year 7, I nearly killed myself trying to get away from you," Soobin relayed. Leo made a face that rivalled only Soobin's when he ate a lemon.
"You thought I was a YEAR 7?", the disappointment and disgust coated his words like slime and Soobin almost felt bad for making such a comparison, "I really can't believe you sometimes.".
"You know what else you won't believe?" Soobin waited for Leo to show his full intrigue before continuing "I just got an email recommending, no, INSISTING for me to go to the maths catch up sessions."
"What? You? Maths catch-up? Aren't you getting a 9?" Leo questioned.
"Yeah, and a predicted THREE!" A group of students turned to find the source of the shouting, but Soobin had turned to Leo quick enough as to not let them know it was him hollering in the corridor "So you can probably guess where I'm headed now..."
"Well good luck to you, see ya." Leo made his way through the growing crowd of young students, leaving Soobin with a wave and a wish well. It was all he needed anyway; maths wasn't hard for him so it wasn't the content that dissuaded him, but after a few hours with the catch-up club on his mind, not only did he realise he had to deal with the attitude of a maths teacher at lunch but he also had to hang around in a room of kids his age struggling with quadratics. It wasn't his usual crowd, and he wasn't too optimistic they'd like him either. Only up until mocks, he repeated, only up until mocks.
~~~
12:30 had long passed but Soobin decided it was better to be late that early in a group of kids like that so when he arrived at the maths building, he waited out 10 minutes scrolling through his phone aimlessly. When he finally left the stall, he checked the time to see a big 12:43 staring back at him, not exactly when he wanted but close enough. The closer he moved to the door the more he thought it wasn't too great an idea to come late to a class of people he didn't know but then again there's no way he was the last person in that room. He breathed deeply before holding the handle of the door tightly and pushing it down.
He looked to the teacher's desk in hopes of someone familiar but to his dismay, an uninteresting character looked back at him.
"Nice of you to join us, Soobin, " He was slightly put off that she knew his name but not as shocked as he was to see the entire room almost completely full, he really was late. "Want to do your work standing or do you plan on taking a seat?" He didn't know where teachers got off saying rude stuff like that to kids 30 years younger than them, but he was too tired even to think of a retort, not that he'd talk back to a teacher - that'd create even more problems for him.
He made his way to the back of the room but not without a hiss from the bitch he could hardly call a teacher at the front.
"You think you can walk in 15 minutes late and sit at the back, come sit over here." He dragged his feet across the ground to the seat in the front right corner of the room. Not his preferred choice but what could he do. He kept his eyes on his bag as he unpacked his pencil case and paper, but he felt another pair boring into his head. It wasn't like him to intentionally catch someone looking at him, but when he turned his head, a pair of espresso brown eyes looked back at him. He wasn't a stranger; Soobin had seen him in passing a couple times in the past few years but not for long. His eyebrows were barely visible under his dark brown hair that wisped over his forehead like thin tree branches drooping down. A look up and down from him told Soobin to look away but his image didn't leave his mind. It was weird. How come he'd never noticed him until now?
The "lesson" flew past, maybe because he came halfway through but there was no way to know for sure. The thing he was most sure about was that there weren't many formulae on his mind as much as the boy he sat next to. Their desk was practically halfway through the door, so Soobin didn't dillydally when it came to leaving, but on his walk around the school his mind didn't waste time in thinking of that boy. "That boy", it was all he knew him as. He thought he should have asked for his name in the class, but it didn't make much of a difference. He wasn't speaking to anyone else about him, so names weren't important, right?
The rest of the day flew past. Well... In hindsight, the last periods of the school day went by quickly, but in each lesson, Soobin stared at the clock longingly, pleading for the minutes to go by faster. As the hour hand inched closer to the 4, Soobin tidied his things away into his bag, with almost all his belongings in his bag 5 minutes before the bell went. But when it did ring, he wasn't just the first one out of the door, but the first to tap his card on the bus and as he put his headphones on and shut his eyes, he drifted into a far-away world.
The lyrics floated gently through his ear canal, the song creating a pleasant image for someone with synaesthesia. He felt relaxed. This time travelling home was the only real alone time he had and he enjoyed it. Taking in every note of every song and every colour it brought to his mind, it was nice. It was free. It was peaceful. It was.
A rowdy group of kids snaked down the aisle of the bus and sat in the back row, the most obnoxious of the group plonking himself right next to Soobin. If it wasn't visible in his body language it was visible in his face. The corners of his mouth turned down as his eyebrows scrunched on his face and his eyes made their way to the corners. He didn't want to pay too much attention to their faces, but he still wanted to make his annoyance known.
"What're you looking so mad for?" said the idiot that sat next to him. Now Soobin was vexed, but something he wasn't, was confrontational, so he brought his eyes right back to his phone and restarted the music that was playing before his aura was so rudely punctured. And that should have been it.
The boy glanced at his friends and laughed; they joined in. It irked Soobin, sure, but he still didn't want any trouble, and so just rolled his eyes to himself and went back to what he was doing. He was just about to close his eyes again when the idiot said-
"Come on," as he elbowed Soobin in the side "Lighten up, nobody's doing anything to you."
"Leave him alone, Rika, you've tortured enough poor unfortunate souls today with that voice of yours."
"What voice of mine! I sound normal, I mean, I sound better than normal! Whatever, I sound more like a man than yOU,". The voice crack actually made Soobin giggle a little. Well at least one of them wasn't insufferable. Soobin sneakily looked around to see who exactly was defending him, but it wasn't a face he expected to see.
~~~
His wispy brown hair met Soobin's eyes - It was familiar. More than familiar. Of course, he knew exactly who it was. And of course it made sense. The boy was a part of friend group of professional noisemakers, the typical dumb crowd, so it made sense he was in the maths masterclass. He had never heard him speak before, but his voice was sweet, one that he wouldn't mind listening to.
Yes, it was that boy from school, near Soobin again. He didn't even realise he was staring until the boy started to sense his eyes on him. Before the boy's head could start to turn in Soobin's direction, he faced forwards with a speed comparable to an Olympic runner. Soobin waited for him to look away so he could keep admiring his face but instead the boy said-
"Alright, see you guys tomorrow," before getting up and walking through the aisle to the front of the bus.
"Yeonjun, I think you're forgetting something," one of the friends said. Soobin looked over to see a black jacket sprawled on the seat. But the boy didn't turn around.
Now this wasn't really like him. It wasn't like him at all but faced with the quick-time situation he acted before his brain could tell him not to. He reached over the boys and grabbed the jacket, none of them caring enough to say anything, and jogged up to the boy. He tapped him on the back and-
"You forgot your jacket," he said. No tone at all. Not a great first line but the words didn't go as badly as they could've. Sure, maybe speaking plainly would mean the boy wouldn't think anything of him, but it wasn't as bad as accidentally talking down to him. Or was it. Maybe he'd think Soobin was super boring and wouldn't even want to sit near him in school every again. Maybe-
"Thank you very much...."
"Um, Soobin! My name is Soobin,". What an idiot. He probably didn't even want to know his name and was just pausing for a breath. Why would he ever even assume he wanted to know his name. How stupid could a person be. He was setting new lows in iq levels, at least that's what he thought,
"Right, thank you very much, Soobin...Could I have my jacket?". Oh my goodness. He didn't even realise he was still holding the jacket. Soobin practically threw it at him before the boy could say-
"See you around,". Yeah. See you around. He would have said it out loud, but the boy was already speeding away from the bus door before he could make a word out. The boy. His name is Yeonjun. And Soobin had just spoken to him. Soobin had spoken to Yeonjun.
As he walked back to his seat, put his music back on and closed his eyes, he daydreamed something new, someone new.