Chapter Text
The room fell quiet when he entered behind Ms Park.
“Good morning guys, today we have a new student,” Park spoke into the silence, her voice seemed to ring in Taehyung’s ears.
“Can you introduce yourself?”
Taehyung nodded slowly. They were all watching him like hawks, hungry eyes boring into his thin figure, ready to pounce.
“I’m Kim Taehyung, it’s nice to meet you.” He spoke up. Immediately the class broke into hushed conversations.
“Eh? Kim Taehyung?”
“Isn’t that the guy from the news?”
“I think so.”
“He went to prison I heard!”
“And they let him in here?”
“That’s scary, we shouldn’t get too close.”
“Don’t be stupid, he cant have gone to prison, he’s our age isn’t he?”
“Still, he attacked that politician guy…”
“I saw him coming into school with that first year Jeon kid this morning.”
“Really? Do you think he’s being bullied already then?”
“Okay listen up guys,” Ms Park clapped her hands, startling Taehyung out of his growing panic. These kids were as horrid as he’d expected them to be. Although thinking about it, he couldn’t blame them. He’d be worried too if a student with a criminal record showed up at his school.
He lowered his head awkwardly, staring fixedly at the wooden floor.
“Taehyung, you can sit over in that free seat by the window.” she pointed towards the desk.
Taehyung ended up sitting behind the class president, also a member of the student council, Park Jimin.
He was a short boy with black hair and soft round cheeks, and when he’d smiled at Taehyung in greeting his eyes had disappeared into crescent moons.
“You can ask me for anything if you need help, okay?” Jimin grinned, patting Taehyung on the forearm and turning back round in his seat to face the front of the room.
Taehyung nodded hesitantly, skin tingling underneath his blazer where Jimin had touched him.
The boy seemed nice, but how long would that last before he turned against him as everyone else had done?
❀ ❀ ❀
Jeongguk found Taehyung and dragged him up to the school rooftop to have lunch in peace and quiet, rather than sitting in the cafeteria and being judged for an hour whilst they ate in awkward silence.
Taehyung was beyond grateful for that.
He’d spent the whole day so far listening to people muttering about him under their breaths whenever they saw him. Some first-year students had even started a betting pool for how many days they thought Taehyung would last before he was inevitably expelled. The longest he’d heard was three weeks. Taehyung hadn’t stuck around any longer to find out if there was anyone who said higher.
“And then we won a BBMA award! In America! Can you believe it?” Jeongguk grinned, lifting his banana milk carton high in the air in a sort of victory pose.
The younger was currently recounting a bizarre, long-running dream he’d been having for the past couple of nights. Something about being a world-famous boy group. Taehyung would have said it sounded a little far-fetched, however, his dream from that morning still burned vividly in his brain.
“It sounds amazing, Jeongguk.” Taehyung gave him a grin, although he wasn’t sure if the boy would be able to tell that he hadn’t really been paying attention.
“What’s your weirdest dream you remember, Hyung?”
Taehyung bit his lip, debating whether or not he should tell Jeongguk about his tiny dream cell and the weird guy at the desk and the twin wardens. What if he just thought he was crazy? What if he took it the wrong way and thought Taehyung was trying to play off an ‘actual prison experience’ as a dream? What if Jeongguk went around spreading rumours about him?
Taehyung decided that his new school experience couldn’t possibly get any worse, even if he did lose his one and only friend.
“Well, I was in this weird prison room-”
“You actually went to prison?”
Taehyung almost jumped out of his skin upon hearing a voice from behind him, clenching his juice carton so tightly that some of it sprayed out onto his face.
Jeongguk yelped in surprise, toppling backwards off the desk he was sitting on and landing with a painful thud.
“Sorry, did I scare you?”
Taehyung turned around and came face to face with Jimin, eyes scrunched closed in an angelic smile.
“Sorry for interrupting, I was just a little shocked.” Jimin giggled lightly and leaned on the railing overlooking the school entrance. “I have to patrol the school as part of my student council duties and technically you’re not allowed to eat on the roof so-” he trailed off, awkwardly rubbing the back of his neck.
“Oh.” Jeongguk made a little huff of disappointment and got to his feet, leaning warily on the desk as if it might throw him off if he sat back down.
“Oh.” Taehyung echoed the younger boy, putting the straw of his drink back in his mouth and standing up. “I guess we’ll get going then.” He glanced over at Jeongguk and they both started to pack up their food.
“Uhm, actually-“ Jimin’s face had flushed bright red. Taehyung tilted his head curiously.
“You don’t have to go. I won’t force you out or anything.”
Jeongguk raised an eyebrow, leaning his chin on Taehyung’s shoulder as they both watched the class president. “For real? But wouldn’t that like- get you into trouble?” He questioned.
“Maybe, but- maybe uhm,” Jimin fidgeted on the spot, picking at the stitching on the sleeve of his blazer. “Would you mind if I hung out with you guys?”
There were a few moments of silence. Taehyung stared at Jimin with wide eyes and felt Jeongguk’s mouth open on his shoulder.
“Eh?”
Jimin’s face flushed a dusty pink and he quickly turned around to leave.
“Wait!” Taehyung jumped forwards, grabbing the boy by the wrist and pulling him back. “Of course you can, right Jeongguk?” He looked over his shoulder at the first year, still standing with his mouth open in a little ‘o’ shape. He gave a small nod.
Jimin seemed to let out a quiet sigh of relief as he broke into a wide grin. Taehyung noticed that one of his front teeth was slightly crooked. Cute.
“By the way, I didn’t actually go to prison.”
“Really? Oh no, I’m so sorry for assuming like that,”
“Don’t worry about it, come and sit down.”
❀ ❀ ❀
Taehyung ended up learning about the Vice President of the student council, Jung Hoseok, after Jeongguk very brashly asked why Jimin ‘didn’t have anyone else to hang out with’.
It turned out that Jimin’s only friend had stopped coming to school a week before Taehyung had shown up, with no contact whatsoever with the school or Jimin himself.
“For real? That’s horrid.” Jeongguk frowned, taking a large bite of melon bun and almost choking on it. Taehyung sighed, thumping the first year on the back as he spoke, “No offence but this school is pretty shitty and I’ve only been here for one day.”
“None taken,” he waved the statement off, “He was actually staying with me at the time. He lives alone so I thought it would be better for us to stay together until the photo issue blew over, but he’s just gone MIA. He vanished from my house and I haven’t heard from him since.”
Taehyung noticed Jimin’s shoulders slump in defeat. A queasy feeling settled in his stomach.
“If you don’t mind me asking, what is this ‘photo incident’?” He asked gingerly, slumping against the wall he was leaning on.
Jeongguk and Jimin looked at each other, then at Taehyung, then back at each other.
“You know what the red light district is, right, Hyung?” Jeongguk fiddled with the straw in his milk carton. Taehyung nodded slowly. “Well, someone spread loads of pictures of Hoseok working there-”
“But it’s not him!” Jimin quickly interjected, clenching his fists in his tartan-print trousers. “I know it’s not him. Even I didn’t believe him at first, but even when he was at mine and we were with each other all the time, the photos kept appearing. There’s got to be someone out there manipulating all the photos to try and get Hyung expelled or something.”
“I can’t believe someone would do that to him,” Taehyung mumbled, staring up at the grey sky above them, deep in thought.
“We should find out who’s targeting him then!” Jeongguk said loudly, slapping his hands against his thighs. Jimin looked at him, startled.
“And how exactly do you propose to do that?”
Jeongguk grumbled under his breath, rocking back and forth on the desk in agitation.
“We can still try, Jimin-ssi,” Taehyung said gently, looking over at his classmate. “How about we start asking around the school? Someone’s bound to know something.”
Jimin frowned but nodded anyway. “Go wild, I don’t think it’d make you very popular though.”
“We’re not popular anyway, it’s not like it’ll make our reputation any lower than it already is.”
Jeongguk snorted at that. “He has a point.”
“So we’re detectives now!” Taehyung grinned, raising his hand to high-five the first year.
Jimin laughed, covering his face with his hands. “Thank you, thank you both so much.”
“Woah! Jimin-ssi, are you crying?”
“No! Shut up and go to class now before you're late, you can’t do anything if you're in detention all the time!”
“Aye-Aye Officer Park!”
“Just call me Hyung you brats!”
❀ ❀ ❀
“So, after joining Seungli Academy for your probation sentence, you set out to befriend two boys, a delinquent student from the year below you, and a member of the student council, to help out with whatever you were planning to do? Was it your intention to get them into trouble as well or just an unexpected bonus?”
Taehyung grumbled, shifting in his chair, staring at his hands cuffed to the table in front of him. “Neither. I was trying to help them. I still am.”
“At the rate this is going, all of your comrades are going to end up in prison with you. Keep talking. I want to get to the bottom of this.”
❀ ❀ ❀
Park Jimin
Class 2-B
Age- 16
Height- 5'7 ft
Affiliations- Seungli Academy, Student council
Arcana- Justice
Romance Arc Available?- Yes