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“I swear I didn’t start it,” a voice huffs behind Hansol.
Running a hand through his sweat-matted fringe, the student council president sighs. His shoulder is sore and his initially crisp white school shirt crumpled and stained at the collar with blood.
Someone else’s blood.
“So you’re saying Ten punched you in the face just out of the blue?” Hansol questions as he searches the cupboards for a first aid kit. “Well, I can’t say I’ve never had the urge…”
It’s not exactly a lie. This is the first time Hansol’s met the other boy face-to-face, but he’s done enough filing and paperwork to know what this boy’s been up to.
“Fuck off,” the boy behind him mumbles. His face is covered in his own drying blood.
He’s notorious at Sooman High— the black sheep of the herd— what with the way he stalks down the hallways with his scuffed up shoes, shirt untucked, blatantly non-regulation black studs littered around the parameter of his right earlobe.
“You know,” Doyoung, council secretary, had commented offhandedly one afternoon when they were stuck in the muggy council room, filing reports. “He’s actually really cute if you look past the fact that he looks like he’s in this really violent eternal fight. He’s got nice eyes,” he mused.
He does, Hansol acknowledges privately. But said sheep, otherwise known as Nakamoto Yuta, with his split lip and bloodied nose, was nothing but trouble and the cause of Hansol’s continuous stream of work and ever-present migraine, no matter how nice his eyes were.
Hansol massages the bridge of his nose, dreading the paperwork he knows he’s going to have to stay back to finish up.
He groans aloud.
Clearly, this displeases Yuta, who scowls and crosses his arms sourly. “I didn’t ask for you to come in and play—.”
“I’m council president,” Hansol snaps back. “I don’t have a choice. You think I like being pulled out of class to clean up your blood?”
Yuta scoffs. “Council president,” he recites mockingly. “Well, thanks, Wonderboy. How charitable of you to take care of worrisome kids like me.”
Hansol fights the urge to roll his eyes. “Just shut up and let me disinfect those cuts so I can go back to class,” he says witheringly, soaking a cotton pad in saline solution.
The first cool press of the cotton to Yuta’s skin makes the younger boy flinch from the sting, but he grits his teeth and lets Hansol clean up the broken and bruised skin without further protest.
The infirmary is completely silent save from the quiet whirring of an air purifier in the corner of the room. Yuta is stiff as a board as Hansol neatly covers his cuts, eyes screwed shut tightly. This close, Hansol can see each individual black eyelash fanned out against the younger boy’s skin. He smells like grass and chalk and perspiration and something almost sweet that Hansol can’t quite place. It’s intoxic—
He swallows.
Backs away. “You’re good,” he says.
Eyes flutter open.
“Thanks, Wonderboy.”
“Stop fighting in school,” Hansol calls as he watches Yuta slip out of the nurse’s office. “And don’t call me that,” he adds lamely.
He knows the other boy doesn’t even hear.
Hansol rolls down his sleeves and puts his blazer back on before switching the lights off in the nurse’s office and heading back to class. He doesn’t think of much as he walks, but he should’ve known that from then on, there’d be no running from what was to come.
It’s 4 p.m. Class ended an hour ago, and yet, here Hansol is, sitting in the stupid council room in front of a stack of regretful paperwork with Nakamoto Yuta scrawled on the cover page.
“Dammit,” he curses mournfully.
“Aw, c’mon,” Jaehyun, the treasurer, sings. “Give him a break.”
“Yeah,” Mark pipes up. “It could be way worse. You could be filling in the forms for his suspension. There are like, 25 pages, or something for that one.”
Taeil (vice-president) shrugs. “Heard from Jongin that he’s pretty cool. Like, he watches anime, and stuff.”
“Nice,” Mark (events) nods approvingly.
Hansol frowns. “Uh, no? Not nice. He’s the reason we’re even here in the first place. Look at this work. That’s not nice. He’s— he’s a hoodlum.”
“Who’s prettier? Yuta or Lee Taeyong?” Doyoung questions, tapping his pen on the table and ignoring Hansol completely.
“What?” Mark protests. “No, dude, Lee Taeyong takes this, no competition.”
“But have you seen Nakamoto’s smile?” Jaehyun argues. “He could sell toothpaste.”
“When did you see him smile?” Doyoung asks, shocked. “Whenever I see him, he’s either smouldering or glaring.”
“Does no once care about the fact that he gives us more work and is generally a troublemaker?” Hansol demands, exasperated.
“So… Are you voting for Taeyong, then?” Mark asks after a short pause.
Hansol sighs.
“I quit.”
It’s nearly 5 when they (read: just Hansol) finally finish all the work and can go home.
The others are still bickering about the aesthetic qualities of their schoolmates as they leave Hansol to pack up his stuff. Shouldering his messenger bag, the council president shuts the door to the council room behind him and walks through the deserted halls towards the back gate.
The dragging of footsteps along the road behind him and the sound of a something soft hitting the ground stops him in his tracks.
“Hey, Wonderboy,” the voice greets as Hansol turns.
“Here,” Yuta says, and to Hansol’s horror, reaches down and tugs his shirt off.
Before the older boy can splutter out a response, Yuta tosses the balled up piece of clothing over.
“You can wear this. That’s my blood on there. I’ll wash it,” he says, inclining his chin at what must be Hansol’s stained school shirt. “There’s no soccer practice today, anyways.”
“I— um,” Hansol stammers, so disorientated he drops his bag.
“C’mon, Wonderboy, hurry it up. You gonna make me stand here without a shirt on forever?”
Obviously Hansol doesn’t respond fast enough for Yuta’s liking, since the other boy clicks his tongue irritably and surges forward till they’re a mere foot apart, waving a hand in Hansol’s face. Once again, the smell of grass hits, and Hansol can hear his own loud, strained breathing.
“Wonderboy,” Yuta grumbles, reaching up to unbutton Hansol’s collar. “Take your shirt off.”
Hansol lurches back, cheeks heating up. “T-That’s okay. I can go home and wash it.”
Yuta rolls his eyes. “I already took mine off. Don’t be difficult. Just let me wash the damn shirt so I don’t feel so bad about causing trouble,” he gripes dramatically, throwing his hands up. Hansol does not notice the flex of his defined stomach muscles.
Quickly, he turns around and unbuttons his school shirt before pulling on the top Yuta had offered him before. Then he hands over his own shirt. The younger boy looks appeased.
“Finally,” he says, pulling the garment on and buttoning it haphazardly. Reaching down, he grabs his abandoned backpack and shoulders it effortlessly.
“See you around, Wonderboy,” he nods before disappearing off in the other direction.
Slowly, Hansol picks his bag up off the ground and slings it across his shoulder. His mind is blank the entire 10-minute walk home, still too shocked to really process what had just happened.
He’s halfway up the stairs headed to his room that his sister oohs and yells, “Nice shirt! Who’s Yuta?”
Shutting and locking the door behind him, he peels the shirt off and flips it over to see Yuta’s name emblazoned on the back, complete with a large number 20 printed below it. His face flames and his heart pounds loudly in his chest.
The faint smell of grass works its way round Hansol’s bedroom as he flops onto his bed and buries his head in a pillow, wondering what on earth he did to get himself into this mess.
Hansol goes to a soccer match.
Just, you know, out of curiosity. As council president, it is, no questions asked, his job to keep up with the general interests of the student body.
Yeah.
It’s been a week since what he likes to refer to as The Shirt Debacle.
He’s been… out of sorts.
He wakes up that morning and changes his shirt twice before berating himself for even thinking of going in the first place. They’re not friends. They’re not anything. Yuta is… Yuta is paperwork.
He gets in the car when Doyoung pulls up in his driveway anyway.
Needless to say, the entire thing is extremely confusing, and it doesn’t help that he has both Mark and Jaehyun on either side of him, yelling their lungs out.
“GOAL!” Mark roars for the third time. Hansol thinks he’s about to go deaf, but he claps anyway because he knows that this “goal” was scored by player number 20, whom he, coincidentally, happens to recognise.
Sooman High ends up winning four goals to none, Yuta beaming as his teammates clap him on the back. Hansol does not smile.
He stupidly lets the others go ahead before him and of course, it starts to pour with rain on the one day he forgets to bring an umbrella. His beanie is doing little to keep his hair from getting soaked through and there are already little puddles forming in his shoes. There’s no sign of Yuta either, and Hansol can’t remember a time he’s ever felt so dumb.
Sighing, he stuffs his cold hands into his soggy pants pockets and starts to trudge in the direction of home when he hears the rapid patter of footsteps.
“Wonderboy!” Yuta yells.
Hansol turns to see the younger boy, running towards him with an umbrella.
Which is almost good enough to be something out of a cheesy romance flick—
Until he slips.
“Ow, fuck,” he curses when Hansol accidentally jostles his ankle.
“Sorry,” the older boy says, wincing. He’s got Yuta balanced on his back, arms twisted round his neck and shoulders.
“Take a left here,” Yuta instructs, and Hansol turns.
There’s silence for a while, just the squelching of shoes and occasional hisses of pain from the younger boy.
“Saw you in the stands,” he says, breaking the quiet.
“Yeah,” Hansol nods. “You— You were good.”
Yuta scoffs. “Good? Really? That’s all you have to say?”
Hansol hesitates for a second, but what the hell, he thinks. “I know nothing about soccer,” he confesses awkwardly.
Yuta chuckles. It’s a pleasant sound.
“Thanks for coming to see me, Wonderboy.”
Hansol’s cheeks heat. “I didn’t— It wasn’t—”
Yuta knocks his unstrained leg against Hansol’s. “Shut up and keep walking.”
“…And then we’ve got one in for Johnny,” Wendy (head of discipline) reads off the list of student offenders for the week.
“What for?” Doyoung asks, chewing on the end of his pencil.
“He changed all the desktop wallpapers of the school computers to a collage of that frog meme.”
“Pepe?” Jaehyun tries.
“That’s the one.”
“Sweet,” Mark nods.
Hansol sighs. “Okay. Seulgi, you can file that one under minor. What’s next?”
Wendy shakes her head. “That’s it.”
The whole council room goes silent.
“What do you mean, that’s it?” Hansol questions. “You’re telling me Yuta’s name…”
“Not on the list,” Mark confirms with wide eyes, reading the list over Wendy’s shoulder. “He’s not on the list.”
Hansol finds Yuta doing drills on the soccer pitch. The swelling on his ankle has gone down completely.
“A little busy right now, Wonderboy,” the player pants, jogging up to Hansol. He refuses to drop the nickname.
“I just wanted to ask you something,” Hansol assures.
Yuta raises an eyebrow, and Hansol takes it as his cue to continue.
“So, uh, I notice your name wasn’t on this week’s list,” he says.
It may have been his imagination, but he swears Yuta goes a little red.
“Didn’t you have fights to get into this week? Classes to skip? Walls to spray paint?” Hansol lists out, feeling a little bold.
Yuta scowls. “I… was busy this week,” he argues unconvincingly. “Don’t think I’m letting you off, or anything, Wonderboy. Don’t get used to it.”
Hansol shakes his head solemnly. “Of course not.”
Yuta nods. “Knew you’d miss me. Don’t worry. I’ll be back to kicking up a fuss first thing Monday morning.”
Hansol rolls his eyes.
It’s been four weeks and three days since he met Yuta.
Not that’s he’s counting or anything.
Are they friends? Hansol isn’t sure.
At least, he thinks they must be when Yuta shows up outside his door one Saturday afternoon.
If he were to be really honest, maybe, just maybe, he’d sort of like it if they could be a little more.
“Wonderboy,” Yuta greets, leaning on a porch beam. “I’m bored.”
“How do you know where I live?” Hansol frowns, trying to pretend his stomach isn’t flipping out.
Yuta waves his hands dismissively. “Irrelevant. I said I’m bored. Let’s go out. Buy me a hot chocolate.”
Hansol momentarily considers turning him away, not wanting to get any further into this and risk developing even stranger feelings, but he takes another look at Yuta, appearing for the first time in torn up jeans and a fading Naruto hoodie and he can’t seem to say the words.
“I’ll go get my wallet,” he concedes, and the younger boy beams. If Hansol’s cheeks go red as he turns away, no one has to know.
“Buy me a hot chocolate,” Yuta repeats as they settle into a booth at the coffee shop around the corner from Hansol’s house.
“Why?”
“I washed your shirt,” Yuta shrugs.
“It was your fault it got stained!”
The younger boy pouts. It is most definitely not cute.
“Come on, Wonderboy. Buy me a hot chocolate in return for my fantastic company on what would otherwise be a boring as fuck day,” he pleads.
“Do you enjoy making my life difficult?” Hansol asks wearily in response.
A small smile spreads itself slowly across Yuta’s face. “Yes,” he answers earnestly. “You have recently become my favourite pastime.”
Hansol buys him a large cup.
It’s dark out when they get back to Hansol’s house.
Yuta flops down onto the front porch steps and leans against a beam. Hansol joins him.
“Why do you do it?” Hansol asks after a few beats of comfortable silence. “Act up, I mean.”
Yuta shrugs. “Do you think I’m a bad person?” he challenges in response.
“No,” the older boy answers sincerely.
“Boredom,” comes the reply. “I skip class because it’s boring and I spray painted that wall because I was bored. The fighting,” he pauses to think, “…was just because Ten was being an asshole, so I pushed him and the psycho freaked out and decided to sock me in the face. It was a one time thing.”
Hansol bites on his bottom lip.
“I know, I know,” Yuta beats him to the punch. “I know it’s lame. No excuses. I was being dumb. But hey, haven’t you noticed I’ve turned over a new leaf, or something? Haven’t done anything recently, have I? I’m… trying.”
Hansol smiles at that. “You are,” he acknowledges, and Yuta hums lightly in response.
“What are you thinking about?” Yuta asks after another lull.
“Astronomy,” Hansol answers, and Yuta scoffs.
“Liar,” he says. “I know you really mean me.”
Hansol’s cheeks redden, but he sticks to his story. “If that makes you feel better about yourself, then sure,” he says airily, letting his eyes slip close. His heart is beating steadily in his chest.
There’s no response for a while, and Hansol almost wonders if Yuta has left until he hears some vague shuffling. Then, he feels warm breath puffing across his face and the smell of grass and sugar is strong and heady, making his fingers tremble and his palms slick.
“It does,” Yuta whispers in confirmation, and then soft lips press against his own and his whole chest seizes up and Hansol swears that if it weren’t for the sweet smell of freshly cut grass mingling in the air around them, he wouldn’t even know that he was still breathing.
His legs are jelly and his eyes won’t seem to open, but he feels (mourns the loss) when Yuta pulls a way a little and laughs softly. “You still with me, Wonderboy?” he asks quietly.
“Yeah,” Hansol manages thickly. “I’m here,” he nods, before leaning forward again and giving in to the scent of football pitches and sticky sugary chocolate and everything he never knew he craved till now.