Archive of Our Own

To Seungmin, an alarm has never sounded as good as it does on a Monday in mid-August, before the sun has risen or summer has officially come to a close. He springs out of bed as Hall & Oates’s You Make My Dreams blares out of his phone speakers, and he continues to let it play as he gets ready and makes his morning coffee. His awareness of his own dorkiness sets in as he matches his favorite navy tie to a pair of blue colorblocked socks, but he doesn’t mind. He was in a good mood; today was the first day of school.

Well, the students wouldn’t be back for another week, but today was Seungmin’s first day of school. He had the next five days to prepare his classroom and finalize his lesson plans before the year truly started. Next Monday would be even more exciting, but Seungmin, both a planner and workaholic, was happy to get back on campus in any capacity.

Seungmin arrives in the school’s cafeteria at 7:45 sharp for the staff meeting that is set to start at 8:00. He greets the office ladies sitting near the doorway and grabs a complimentary first day donut before heading to the back table he frequented during meetings. When he gets there, Minho and Jisung, two of his coworkers—and friends—are already seated, mid-argument.

“How are you guys already fighting?” Seungmin asks, pulling out a chair next to Jisung and settling in. He’d yet to be up to his actual classroom, so he took off his bag and set it at their feet.

“The entire freshman wing of the school smells like actual, literal death. Ask him why,” Minho orders, folding his arms across his chest. Seungmin sighs, unsure if he wants to hear what Jisung has to share. Seungmin taught algebra to the freshmen and Jisung, the biology teacher, was his classroom’s next door neighbor, so if Minho was smelling something all the way in his room, it was surely much worse for Seungmin.

“What did you do?” Seungmin asks, turning to face Jisung. Jisung grimaces.

“Don’t yell at me,” he requests.

“Motion denied. What did you do?” he repeats.

“I forgot to clean out the freezer after last year,” Jisung says innocently. Seungmin narrows his eyes, waiting for Jisung to get to the real issue. “Listen, it’s not my fault they cut the power to the school during the summer. It would’ve been fine if they’d stayed frozen—”

“If what had stayed frozen?” Seungmin says, pressing Jisung to cut out his excuses.

“Twenty-five fetal pigs,” Jisung replies calmly. Minho scoffs in disbelief.

“How can you say you let twenty-five pig fetuses rot in our hallway so fucking calmly?” Minho asks. “You deserve to be fired.”

“You have a lot of nerve to talk about who deserves to be fired after your students hung all those shitty limericks in the hallway last February,” Jisung snaps back. “The Valentine’s Day themed ones made me stop believing in love.”

“You’re an asshole,” Seungmin says through reluctant laughter. “They’re kids.”

“Kids who really fucking suck at writing poetry,” Jisung mumbles. Minho hisses at him in distaste. “Anyway, buy a fan, Kim Seungmin. It’ll help air out your room.”

Seungmin shut his eyes tight imagining the smell. Their windows were painted shut because of an incident in the 90s when a group of seniors had regularly climbed out of a window in an empty classroom to skip their afternoon classes. The fetal pig scent would probably linger for weeks.

“Good morning folks!” Changbin, the P.E. coach, calls as he approaches the group. He and Chan, who followed him in tow, were wearing matching sweats in the school’s colors, indicating to Seungmin they’d already started practicing with their teams. Chan taught geography and was in charge of the boys’ sports teams while Changbin coached the girls. They’d probably been on opposite sides of the football field training their athletes since before Seungmin had even woken up.

“Morning,” Minho calls back as the coaches sit down across from him. “How are the teams looking?”

“I think we could win a game this year,” Chan says hesitantly. Seungmin is a little discouraged by the obvious doubt in his voice; their school wasn’t exactly known for their athletic prowess.

“I haven’t let the girls actually play volleyball yet,” Changbin admits. “They’re sprinting to build character.”

“You are so evil,” Jisung gripes. “How do you even have enough girls for a team when you make them run at six in the morning?”

“If girls aren’t dedicated enough to show up for practice, they shouldn’t be playing,” Changbin maintains. Jisung rolls his eyes. Seungmin was certain Jisung hadn’t been much of a joiner in high school.

Seungmin is relieved when a smiling, freckled face comes bounding toward them, a drink carrier full of coffee in each hand. He couldn’t handle Changbin and Jisung getting into it about the value of physical education on day one.

“Happy first day!” Felix sings, setting the cardboard holders on the table and beginning to pass out everyone’s usual orders. Felix taught Spanish to the students, and he was everyone’s favorite teacher because you could get away with anything in his class.

“Thank you Saint Felix,” Chan enthuses as he takes a sip of his drink.

“No problem! I’m just excited to be back!” Felix declares, voice exuding joy. He and Chan were the only people Seungmin could count on to be as enthusiastic as he was. Seungmin loved being in a classroom; Chan and Felix just loved people.

“Can someone turn down the sun?” Minho requests, voice bitter as his glum attitude contrasted with Felix.

“I’m sorry! I’m just happy to be here,” Felix says with a warm smile. “I missed you guys. And I missed our students.”

“Gag,” Jisung replies. Felix sticks his tongue out at him playfully in response, and Jisung mimics him to make a point. Seungmin knows he agrees with Felix, though. Jisung complained a lot, but the boredom of summer got to him after a couple of weeks.

“You guys wanna hear what Jisung did?” Minho asks suddenly, clearly not ready to let the pig fetus issue go. Jisung groans loudly to express his exhaustion at being berated by Minho for the third time around.

Seungmin rubs his temples, turning to look at the entrance of the cafeteria as a subtle way of declaring his lack of interest in the issue. When he does, he looks up at exactly the right time to see his principal walking in with a man Seungmin hasn’t seen before. Everything about him was sharp and refined, from his facial features to his outfit choice. Most people who worked in a school were messy around the corners from years of working with kids. Not him. He was handsome, put together, and completely out of place.

“You should’ve thrown away the fucking pigs as soon as you were done with dissections—”

“Who’s that?” Seungmin asks, gesturing his head towards the door as subtly as he could possibly manage. They could talk about Jisung’s irresponsibility later (and they almost certainly would), but, right now, he needed answers.

“New art teacher,” Changbin replies. “Hyunjin, I think.”

“First year?” Seungmin assesses. Changbin nods.

“They’re gonna eat him alive,” Jisung decides with a laugh. Seungmin didn’t want to say it himself, but he wasn’t certain Jisung was wrong. Nobody had a good first year teaching, but Hyunjin was an elective teacher with a pretty face. He was almost certainly going to get pushed around by highschoolers looking to appear cool in front of their peers. “I can’t wait.”

Seungmin slaps Jisung upside the head as punishment.

“Don’t root for your fellow teachers to fail,” Seungmin orders sternly.

“Don’t tell me what to do,” Jisung bites back. “I’m reporting you to HR for assault.”

“Try it. I have four witnesses who say nothing happened,” Seungmin replies coolly. There’s a chorus of agreement from the others that they saw nothing.

“Guys!” Jisung yelps.

“Maybe if not for the dead pigs,” Minho barks, “I would be on your side.”

“Technically, the pigs were never alive, so they can’t be dead,” Jisung claims. Minho raises his hand like he’s going to slap Jisung, too.

The staff meeting starts shortly after, and Seungmin spends most of it staring at Hyunjin from across the room. It was unlike him. He usually liked to take notes, especially since he knew most of their back table would spend the entire meeting zoned out, so he couldn’t rely on them to remember anything. Instead, he focuses on Hyunjin and how he watches their principal intently the entire meeting. He focuses on how Hyunjin laughs at all the corny teaching jokes. He focuses on Hyunjin and how he tucks his hair repeatedly behind his hair even though it won’t stay in place. He focuses on how he bounces his leg nervously the entire meeting, how he fumbles with his classroom keys in his hands, how he seems so happy and anxious at once. Seungmin barely notices the meeting has ended until Hyunjin picks up his bag to leave.

“Ready to go smell our hallway?” Jisung asks.

Seungmin resents how quickly Jisung can ruin his mood.

Seungmin is able to work in his own classroom for roughly an hour before he can no longer stand the smell. He grabs one of his textbooks, his calendar and his laptop before vacating the room. He pops his head into Jisung’s classroom to find him throwing paper airplanes made out of sticky notes at his ceiling in an attempt to get them stuck in the fissures of the tile.

“I’m going to work in Felix’s room if you want to come,” Seungmin announces.

“Work or talk shit about the assistant principal’s divorce?” Jisung asks as he spins around in his chair to look at Seungmin.

“I’m going to work,” Seungmin maintains, “but I’m sure Felix will want to talk about our coworkers' divorces.”

“Coming,” Jisung says. He grabs only his phone off his desk before jogging to catch up with Seungmin, who has already taken off down the hallway.

Once they climb the stairs to the second story, Seungmin is relieved to finally be able to breathe through his nose. Jisung calls him dramatic, insisting the smell wasn’t that bad. Seungmin ignores him.

“You claim to love our planet, but as soon as you have to smell an animal in the last phase of the circle of life—”

Seungmin stalls as they pass the art room, desperate for a glimpse of Hyunjin inside. Jisung immediately notices. He always did. He was like a magnet for gossip; if Seungmin had the slightest change in mood, Jisung wanted to know why. He was nosy more than kind most of the time, but it meant he knew a lot about Seungmin, whether Seungmin wanted him to or not.

“We should introduce ourselves,” Jisung whispers with a playful raise of his eyebrows. “It’s his first day. He’s probably nervous.”

“Why do I feel like you have ulterior motives?” Seungmin says back just as quietly.

“Because I do,” Jisung replies. He tugs on Seungmin’s arm and pulls him into the art room before he can resist.

The place is, admittedly, a wreck. Hyunjin was sitting in the center of the room, surrounded by bins on all sides. He had a big trash bag behind him as he seemingly went through all the supplies, deeming what wasn’t worth saving and sorting the rest.

“Hello!” Jisung calls as they enter the room.

“Oh, gosh. Hello,” Hyunjin says back, quickly hopping to his feet and escaping the maze of expired art materials around him. “Sorry for the mess.”

“This the cleanest it’s looked in a decade,” Seungmin grumbles, and he means it. Before the school’s long-held art teacher had retired at the end of last year, she’d slowly given up on properly organizing and cleaning the supplies over the years. Seungmin had offered over and over again to help her clean, but she wouldn’t allow it. He was happy to see someone fixing the damage she’d done.

“Yeah, things were pretty bad,” Hyunjin agrees. He forces a smile, likely to make it seem like he wasn’t complaining. Seungmin probably wouldn’t have been able to manage one if he was being forced to scavenge through a senile old lady’s leftovers. “I’m working on it, though!”

“Thank you for your service,” Seungmin says, returning his smile. He can feel Jisung’s judgmental eyes on him without even looking his way.

“Um, I’m Hyunjin, by the way,” he adds. Seungmin can’t get over how scared he seems. He and Jisung were probably the two least intimidating people who someone could meet at this school, save for Felix himself.

“I’m Jisung. I teach biology,” Jisung explains. “That’s Seungmin. He does algebra.”

“Math, yikes,” Hyunjin evaluates. He realizes seconds later he’s probably insulted Seungmin and attempts to save face. “I mean, it’s cool you’re teaching it. I’m sure you make it fun.”

“He doesn’t,” Jisung claims. Seungmin knows it’s in jest, but making math fun truly was a challenge Seungmin had yet to fully conquer. He was not a master of teaching the most hated school subject just yet. “I hear he’s nice even when you fail, though.”

“You’re mean to kids who fail?” Hyunjin asks behind a furrowed brow.

“It encourages them to do better next time,” Jisung replies. He’s joking. Seungmin doesn’t know if Hyunjin can tell. “Listen, do you want some help with all this? We’re kinda avoiding our own classrooms. Some bastard made the entire hall smell like rotting pig corpses.”

“I wonder who did that,” Seungmin mumbles.

“Some bastard,” Jisung repeats in fake horror at his own crimes. “Anyway, we’d love to help you out.”

“Oh, that’s okay. I’m sure you guys have your own work to do,” Hyunjin says, gesturing to the textbook in Seungmin’s arms. Jisung just shakes his head adamantly.

“No, no. We teach the same thing every year. Let us help you,” Jisung insists. “It would be our pleasure.”

“Well, okay,” Hyunjin agrees. Seungmin tries not to look at his smile out of fear of going blind.

Seungmin sets his supplies down on one of the tables in the art room before Hyunjin leads them over to his minefield of old art supplies. They all sit down together, and Hyunjin begins to explain his system of sorting the materials.

Roughly three minutes into helping organize the art supplies, Jisung excuses himself to use the bathroom. Seungmin can’t help but notice he exits the room toward Felix’s classroom, not the restroom at the end of the hall.

“So, this is your first year teaching, right?” Seungmin asks. He stares down at a box full of glue sticks, checking to see which ones weren’t dried out. So far, they all had been.

“Yes,” Hyunjin confirms with a little nod.

“Did you recently graduate college or was this a career change?” Seungmin wonders.

“This is my first real job,” Hyunjin admits. He never looks up, focusing instead on sorting through oil pastels. “I worked through college, so it took me a while.”

“Congratulations,” Seungmin says. Hyunjin stops to glance over at him. “On graduating, I mean.”

“Oh, thank you,” Hyunjin mumbles. “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“Is it normal to be absolutely terrified?” Hyunjin wonders. Seungmin can’t help but laugh.

“Yes,” he confesses. “I’m a little terrified, and I’m not even new.”

“God. I don’t know. I did the whole student teaching thing, but I was in an elementary school for it, and third graders are a lot less scary than highschoolers, believe it or not,” Hyunjin rambles. He sorts through the pile of colors in front of him at lightning speed. Seungmin didn’t know if he always worked that fast or if it was the nerves.

“I believe it,” Seungmin mumbles. He loved his students. He’d also believed in his heart that nobody could fester more hurtful insults than a fifteen-year-old girl scorned. “They can smell your fear, too.”

“Really?” Hyunjin asks weakly. Seungmin shakes his head with a laugh.

“They aren’t evil, Hyunjin,” Seungmin assures him. “Just be nice to them, and you’ll be okay.”

Hyunjin sighs softly.

“Okay,” he says, though Seungmin knows his words are mostly meaningless for Hyunjin. Sometimes, you just had to see for yourself. “So, how is it teaching everyone’s least favorite subject?”

“Not great. Not great,” Seungmin confesses. “I like numbers, though.”

“I hate numbers,” Hyunjin counters. He moves on to another bin of supplies, working quickly through the boxes. “No emotion, no passion, just calculations! I don’t know how you do it.”

“That’s what I like about them,” Seungmin argues. “History has a million different perspectives. English can be interpreted in all these different ways. Science changes all the time. Math has always been the same. No opinions, no feelings, just facts.”

“Those are the best parts,” Hyunjin says with a tiny smile. “That’s what I love about art. If you’re making something that matters, it’ll make people feel something, and everyone will feel differently about it. Nobody feels that way about math.”

“That’s what’s good about it,” Seungmin maintains. “Nothing to argue about or misinterpret.”

“We’re very different people, I’d say,” Hyunjin decides.

“I’d agree,” Seungmin confirms. Still, he spends the next two hours helping Hyunjin tidy the art room, happy to share stories about past students and their coworkers. Hyunjin laughs and laughs, and Seungmin is content watching him become less nervous as the art room slowly comes together and comfort sets in.

Seungmin is in the middle of telling a story about a student who attempted to scale the flagpole before getting stuck at the top when Jisung and Felix trail into the art room.

“They had to call the fire department and get him down using the ladd—”

“This place looks great!” Jisung enthuses as he enters the room. Felix grins and offers a thumbs up in support.

“No thanks to you,” Seungmin grumbles back. Jisung ignores him.

“We’re gonna go get lunch with Minho. You guys coming?” Jisung asks.

“Oh, I wish,” Hyunjin says, pushing his hair back out of his face. He looks at Seungmin for just a few seconds too long before fixing his gaze back on Jisung. “I have a new teachers luncheon I have to go to.”

“Gag me with a spoon,” Jisung groans. “I would rather die than sit through that bullshit about giving our lives to our country’s future again.”

“It was pretty boring,” Felix agrees. The new teacher luncheon was a tradition in their district. They’d all been to it. And they’d all hated it.

“That’s encouraging,” Hyunjin remarks sarcastically. “This is gonna be the best two hours of my life.”

“Probably not,” Jisung laughs. “We gotta go. Minho is already in the parking lot. Have fun, though.”

Jisung and Felix give him a little wave before exiting the art room, but Seungmin hesitates for a few seconds. He didn’t want to leave. He wanted Hyunjin to come with them.

“Uh, listen, if you need anything, my room is on the first floor. It’s A112,” Seungmin explains. “Come by any time. If I don’t have an answer for you, I know who to call.”

“Okay. Thank you,” Hyunjin says gently, “and thanks for helping me deal with all this.”

“I’ve been wanting to do this for a while,” Seungmin assures him. “The disorganization in this place drove me crazy.”

“No promises it won’t get disorganized again,” Hyunjin admits.

“If it does, A112. I’ll help you fix it again,” Seungmin pledges.

“Are you coming, idiot?” Jisung barks from the hallway.

“Yes! Sorry!” Seungmin yells back. He grabs his things off the table as he leaves then turns back to Hyunjin before exiting. “I’ll see you around?”

“See you around,” Hyunjin affirms with a tiny smile.

Seungmin has to try to convince Jisung the school is really hot to explain away how red his face is.

Wednesday is set aside for school-wide staff development. The school’s entire staff gathers in the auditorium and sits through presentation after presentation about how to monitor during year end testing and how to show your students you care about them. One hour into the first presentation, Changbin is audibly snoring next to Seungmin while Jisung and Felix are playing rapid fire Rock, Paper, Scissors just to have something to do with their hands. By the second hour, Chan has joined Changbin in his slumber, and Jisung is seeing how long he can go without making a sound while Minho twists his arm. Seungmin worried for the education of future generations.

Toward the end of the day, they’re sitting through a lecture by the school’s counselor on how to avoid burnout. She goes on and on about not taking your work home with you and remembering to make time for yourself. Seungmin thought it all sounded nice, but it was unrealistic. Even if he wasn’t working when he was at home, he was still thinking about his students basically all of the time. Still, this was the school’s attempt to do something about rising staff turnover rates.

“Alright, everyone, we’re going to split into partners, so, if you would, please come to the front and grab the color card that matches your birth month!” their school’s counselor calls. “After you have your card, find someone with one that matches to be your partner!”

Seungmin feels immeasurable dread coming on. Chan and Minho both grab orange cards to represent their October birthdays, while Changbin snatches a yellow August card and pairs off with one of the other coaches who has the same color. Seungmin collects three green cards: one for him, one for Jisung and one for Felix.

“So, how are we going to do thi—”

Before Seungmin can even finish his thought, Jisung shouts, “Nose goes!”

He and Felix both rapidly press their fingers to their noses, leaving Seungmin staring at them, baffled that he was watching two grown men use a child's game to make a decision.

“Too bad,” Jisung says, patting Seungmin’s shoulder. “I’ll pair up with you next time, dude.”

“No, you won’t,” Seungmin concludes exhaustedly.

“Probably not,” Jisung confesses, “but that’s kinda rude to admit, no?”

Seungmin double checks to make sure no one’s looking before flipping Jisung off and leaving to try and find a different co-worker holding a piece of green cardstock. He wanders aimlessly around the auditorium until he feels someone tap on his shoulder.

“You have green, right?” Hyunjin asks with a bright smile. “Partners?”

“Yes!” Seungmin exclaims.

Hyunjin leads him over to where he was sitting, alone in the back of the auditorium.

“Are these trainings always this terrible?” Hyunjin asks as they wait for everyone else to sit down with their partners.Seungmin nods in admission.

“They’re required by the government, so,” Seungmin explains, “nobody takes them that seriously. We just suffer through them and hope they end a little early.”

“Noted,” Hyunjin laughs.

“We’re going to start the exercise by sharing with our partners a time we’ve been overwhelmed by our jobs,” the counselor announces. “I am going to give everyone two minutes to share. Make sure to alternate who speaks!”

“Mine was on Monday when I walked into the art room and the paints, colored pencils and glue were all in the same container,” Hyunjin grumbles to Seungmin. Seungmin snickers in response.

“We solved that problem!” He reminds Hyunjin.

“The mental image is going to stay with me,” Hyunjin insists. “Besides, that’s my only experience as a teacher anyway.”

“That’s fair,” Seungmin decides. “Mine was last year when I gave a student a C on an assignment, and she called me a ‘bespectacled nerd who peaked in elementary school’ when she confronted me about it. The worst part was that she wasn’t even wrong. Like, Minho, the English teacher, said she didn’t deserve detention for it because she was just stating a fact.”

“He sounds mean,” Hyunjin notes.

“He’s cool if you don’t hold him accountable for anything he says,” Seungmin says. Hyunjin bursts into laughter. Seungmin doesn’t know how to explain that he’s completely serious.

“Alright!” the counselor says, clapping her hands together to get everyone’s attention. “Now, I’m going to ask everyone a few introspective questions about how we deal with stress and explore some healthy stress management strategies. I want everyone to write their answers on the back of their notecards. After everyone has answered, we’ll share our responses with our partner.”

Seungmin and Hyunjin spend most of the training writing joke answers on their note cards. The counselor asks them to write down how they intend to deal with stress, and when they exchange answers, Seungmin finds Hyunjin has written ‘cry’ on his card while he’d written ‘sleep’ on his own. When she asks them to write down how they’ll unwind on the weekend, Seungmin writes ‘cry’ and Hyunjin writes ‘sleep.’ They continue like this for the entire half hour session.

Whenever the counselor comes over to check on them, Seungmin has to purse his lips together to keep from laughing as Hyunjin bullshits an answer about how they were discussing how they both like to read to relax. As soon as she’s across the auditorium again, neither of them can maintain straight faces any longer.

“Alright! That’s all we have for you all today. Remember to use these strategies to keep your cool throughout the school year,” the counselor requests. Seungmin was already starting to forget what she had talked about. He was just glad it was all over.

As he and Hyunjin gather their stuff and prepare to leave the school for the day, it dawns on Seungmin that Hyunjin was the fourth teacher their age the school had hired with the same birth month.

“Man, I can’t believe you have a September birthday, too. Me, Felix and Jisung all do, too,” Seungmin marvels as he pulls on his jacket. “What a weird coincidence.”

“Oh, my birthday is in March,” Hyunjin admits casually.

“Why did you get a September card then?” Seungmin asks. He furrows his eyebrows as he tries to make sense of Hyunjin’s statement.

“I saw you grab a green card, and I wanted to be partners with you,” Hyunjin explains. Seungmin tightens his jaw as he tries to decide how to respond to that. Hyunjin mistakes his silence for lack of intention to respond, so Hyunjin just shrugs. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“See you tomorrow,” Seungmin mutters. He closes his eyes after Hyunjin leaves, waiting for the waves of panic in his stomach to pass.

One Friday after school begins, at 4:30 P.M. exactly, Jisung enters Seungmin’s classroom. Seungmin was diligently grading quizzes from class that day while Jeongin, an awkward, nerdy student, sat at a desk a few feet away, reading a book for Minho’s class. He had taken a liking to Seungmin and tended to use hiding out in his classroom as a way to avoid going home. They sat mostly in silence, but Jeongin occasionally asked Seungmin what a word meant or talked about his hobbies.

“Kim Seungminnnnn, it’s Friday,” Jisung sings as he twirls through the door toward Seungmin’s desk. “Let’s get out of here.”

“I have quizzes to grade,” Seungmin mumbles.

“It’s Friday,” Jisung repeats. “Me and Felix and everybody are gonna go see a movie.”

“A movie? Did you already buy your tickets?” Seungmin asks, setting down his red pen after marking down a particularly disappointing grade.

“We don’t need them,” Jisung says. “It’s a movie.”

“Movies are typically ticketed attractions—”

“It’s not that kind of movie,” Jisung whispers.

“He doesn’t want to say they’re going to the bar in front of me,” Jeongin informs Seungmin from behind his book. “I’m fifteen, you know. I can handle knowing my teachers have an adult beverage from time to time.”

“Fine, we’re going to the bar,” Jisung confirms with an eye roll. “So, c’mon.”

“I don’t know—”

“You can invite Picasso,” Jisung taunts. Seungmin rolls his eyes.

“That’s not subtle,” he warns. Jisung shrugs.

“You’ve barely spoken to him since staff development. This is a really good opportunity,” Jisung insists. “You can get to know him in a group setting. Decide if it’s worth the potential awkwardness if it doesn’t work out.”

“I am not pursuing him,” Seungmin maintains. “I’ll look like an idiot. I’ll get reported to HR.”

“He’s not going to report you to HR. Do you know how many teachers are married to their coworkers? A lot,” Jisung argues.

“You’re into the art teacher?” Jeongin asks with an exaggerated gasp. Seungmin sighs heavily.

“Shut up, Jeongin. This is an adult conversation,” Jisung snaps.

“Don’t talk to him like that,” Seungmin grumbles.

“How have you not been fired yet?” Jeongin snips. “You barely teach anyway.”

“Please report me and free me from the prison that is this job,” Jisung begs. Seungmin can barely tell if he’s serious or not. “Why are you here late on a Friday anyway? Don’t you have friends?”

“That’s bold from someone who’s like forty, unmarried and has to beg his coworkers to hang out with him,” Jeongin counters. Jisung scoffs.

“I may be lonely and rely on my coworkers for companionship, but never suggest I’m forty,” Jisung demands. Jeongin ignores him, concentrating on his book.

“Go invite him, Seungmin,” Jisung urges.

Seungmin pauses as he considers telling Jisung to fuck off. But he realizes he wants to ask Hyunjin to come with them.

“You stay in here. And don’t be rude,” Seungmin orders as he stands up from behind his desk. Jisung scrunches up his face in rejection and takes over Seungmin’s seat without even contemplating asking for permission. Seungmin doesn’t bother scolding him for it.

Seungmin climbs the stairs up to the art room so slowly he thinks if someone saw him they would probably think he’d sustained some sort of leg injury. He and Hyunjin had barely spoken the past few weeks. What if he said no?

He reminds himself over and over that it was just a group of people hanging out, that there was no pressure or personal rejection aspect to it if Hyunjin said no. He still felt worried.

When Seungmin enters the art room, he finds Hyunjin cleaning paint brushes. Seungmin was thankful he was actually taking care of the supplies, unlike his predecessor. Hyunjin had already filled the space with his students’ work, covering basically every wall in the room with their paintings and drawings.

“Wow, you have some real talent in your classes,” Seungmin remarks. Hyunjin jumps, clearly having not noticed Seungmin enter. He exhales in relief and turns off the sink when he realizes it’s just Seungmin.

“They’re doing great work,” Hyunjin agrees. “So many quick learners.”

“I take it your first couple of weeks have been going well, then?” Seungmin assumes. Hyunjin bit his lip in uncertainty, putting the brushes he had been cleaning back into the cup he used to store them before responding.

“Depends on the day,” Hyunjin admits.

“That’s normal. I’ve heard great things about you from my students,” Seungmin swears, and it’s true. All the chatter he had heard in his classes about Hyunjin was about how nice he was or how good his personal art was. Or, in a few cases, how cute he was, but Seungmin tried his best to pretend he didn’t hear those comments.

“That’s a relief, really,” Hyunjin says. “I just don’t want to teach the class they all dread going to.”

“Don’t worry. That’s my class,” Seungmin jokes, though he knows, for many of his students, it was probably a fact.

“I hear your class is cool,” Hyunjin promises. “They just don’t like that you put letters in math problems.”

“Unfortunately, I didn’t invent algebra,” Seungmin notes. “They don’t like it when I tell them that, though.”

“You didn’t?” Hyunjin asks playfully. He puts on his best surprised face to add to the effect. They both laugh, and Seungmin has to actively ignore the fluttering in his chest.

“Um, hey, me and some of the other teachers are going to go get a couple of drinks, if you want to come,” Seungmin says, trying his best not to stutter out all the words. Be cool, Kim Seungmin. “Just like, if you want to. If you don’t already have plans.”

“Oh, that sounds like a lot of fun,” Hyunjin agrees. Seungmin instantly feels all the panic bottled up in his body disappear. “I walk to work, though, so I’ll have to go home to get my car first—”

“That’s okay! I’ll drive you,” Seungmin offers, maybe a little too eagerly.

“Oh, okay. Awesome,” Hyunjin says. “I’ll meet you in the parking lot?”

“Yeah. Yes,” Seungmin confirms. “Let me just go get my bag.”

Seungmin practically sprints down the stairs back to his room. When he gets there, Jeongin and Jisung are in the middle of an intense game of tic-tac-toe on Seungmin’s white board.

“He’s coming,” Seungmin announces.

“Let’s gooooo,” Jisung cheers. He uses his hand to erase he and Jeongin’s game then says to him, “go home, kid. We’ve got plans.”

“I swear to god, I’ll report you,” Jeongin threatens.

“I am begging you to do it,” Jisung taunts back as Jeongin gathers his things into his backpack. “Tell them I bullied a child.”

“Whatever. Have fun on your date, Mr. Kim,” Jeongin grumbles as he swings his bag over his shoulder and heads for the door.

“It’s not a date. There will be six other people there besides us!” Seungmin insists. Jeongin keeps walking, uninterested in the details.

“It really isn’t a date. Don’t think it’s a date. That’d be weird of you,” Jisung says. Seungmin thinks violence should be an option.

They stop by the English hall to collect Minho before heading out to the teacher parking lot to divide into cars for their outing. Usually, Seungmin would hop in the back of Felix’s car and ask Felix to drive him back to the school to collect his own vehicle at the end of the night, but, today, that wasn’t an option.

“Sorry about the mess,” Seungmin says as Hyunjin settles into his passenger seat. He frantically gathered his mail from the morning from his dash and hid it in his center console.

“What mess?” Hyunjin laughs. “This is what my car looks like when it’s clean.”

“Jeez,” Seungmin mumbles. He turns his car on, and before Seungmin even exits the parking lot, Hyunjin becomes visibly uncomfortable in their silence. He reaches forward and presses the button to turn on the radio in Seungmin’s car, sending What I Like About You playing from his speakers.

“Is this the kind of music you listen to?” Hyunjin asks through a wide grin. Seungmin instantly feels embarrassed. He listened to dad music, and he let someone cool like Hyunjin into his car without properly preparing himself.

“Sometimes. When I’m in the mood. Not usually,” Seungmin insists. He wasn’t above lying.

“That’s cool. I like this music. It’s nostalgic,” Hyunjin expresses. He twists the knob to turn the volume up. “Me and my mom loved this and The Piña Colada Song.”

“That song is on the playlist, too,” Seungmin admits.

“Seriously?” Hyunjin asks excitedly. Seungmin nods, trying to keep his eyes on the road and off of Hyunjin’s glittering smile.

They spend the ride over singing along to songs from the 80s. Seungmin is surprised by how Hyunjin knows every word to every song that comes on shuffle. He’d imagined Hyunjin having much more sophisticated music taste and loving bands Seungmin had never heard of. Instead, he beams about how How Will I Know is his favorite Whitney Houston song. Seungmin thinks Hyunjin is, perhaps, without flaws.

As soon as the group is all gathered around a table in the back of the bar, Chan disappears to go get a pitcher and glasses for everyone to share. When he returns, everyone pours themselves a drink. Seungmin is roughly two sips into his when Changbin excitedly claps his hands together.

“Who wants to play ‘Drink to That’?” Changbin asks. The entire table erupts into laughter and agreement. It was a game Chan had made up when they all first started hanging out together.

“How does it work?” Hyunjin asks, both hands clasped around his glass. Seungmin thought he was cute like that, anxious in a crowd of his coworkers he barely knew.

“We all go around the table saying the dumbest thing that happened in our classroom this week, then we drink to each of them,” Jisung explains.

“How is that a game?” Hyunjin wonders, slowly tilting his head to the side in thought.

“Don’t question us. We’re underpaid, high functioning alcoholics,” Jisung clarifies. Hyunjin just laughs.

“I’ll start,” Minho announces. He cracks his knuckles like he’s been waiting for this moment. “We’re doing a unit on philosophical writing. We had a socratic discussion over whether a person’s characteristics are more about nature or nurture. Three seconds into the first counter-argument, a student said that, if psychology was nature-based, their classmate was ‘destined to have a PO like their older brother.’”

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Chan mumbles, clearly disturbed by the exchange.

“I’ll drink to that!” Jisung announces, raising his glass to toast. The rest reluctantly oblige before taking sips of their drinks.

“I’ll go next,” Changbin says after the others set their drinks back down. “Three girls on the volleyball team found out they all have the same boyfriend in the middle of practice. Entire gym turned into a dodgeball game.”

“I have two of those girls in my sixth period,” Felix coborrates, “and the boy.”

“You couldn’t pay me enough to teach that class,” Chan grumbles.

“One of them asked me how to say ‘lying, cheating, ugly bastard’ in Spanish,” Felix adds. The entire table choruses about how they’ll drink to that as they clink their glasses together.

“Me next!” Jisung enthuses. “I was teaching about asexual reproduction. Student asked me if he could get pregnant if he swallowed his own sperm.”

“You’re lying,” Seungmin begs. He knows Jisung isn’t. He just doesn’t want it to be true.

“I wish,” Jisung laughs. “Drink.”

Seungmin sighs as he and the rest of the table once again chug their beverages. He continues to glance over at Hyunjin often as they work their way around the table sharing stories from their week. Hyunjin just laughs and laughs, clearly amused by all of them.

“What about you, Hyunjin? Anything insane happening in the art room?” Chan asks with a smile.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Hyunjin says. “I mostly just have to throw away drawings of dicks all day.”

“Boring,” Jisung sings. Seungmin narrows his eyes in warning. He felt protective over Hyunjin; he didn’t want any of them to be mean to him, even if he knew Jisung was joking.

“I’m sure something funny happened this week,” Seungmin insists.

“Well,” Hyunjin says, “I did have a student get his phone stolen.”

“Eugh. Paperwork,” Minho groans.

“We found it,” Hyunjin clarifies. “The student walked around the room shouting ‘Hey, Siri!’ until someone’s backpack started speaking.”

“Genius,” Jisung says. The word comes out at nearly the exact same moment Seungmin remarks, “Idiot.”

Still, they drink to that.

After a few rounds, the group gradually sobers up and begins to disperse. Seungmin is relieved Hyunjin becomes more talkative with the group as the night goes on. By the time they climb back into Seungin’s car, Hyunjin is rambling about a phone call he had with a particularly rude parent as though he has no filter at all. Seungmin doesn’t mind, of course; he’s happy to hear any and all stories Hyunjin wants to tell.

On the ride back to Hyunjin’s house, they turn back on Seungmin’s playlist, and again, Hyunjin coos every time a new track comes on. Seungmin was starting to believe that every song is Hyunjin’s favorite song. By the time they arrive back at Hyunjin's place, Hyunjin has sung praises for virtually every musical act that was active in the 80s.

“Thank you again for inviting me,” Hyunjin says as he unbuckles his seatbelt. “It meant a lot to me to have someone to talk to who gets it.”

“Yeah, any time,” Seungmin replies. “I’m happy you had a good time.”

“Do you guys always hang out like that?” Hyunjin asks. Seungmin nods.

“It started out as, like, just going out together to get all our stories out of our systems because we were driving all our non-teacher friends crazy talking about our jobs,” Seungmin admits, “but now I’m closer to them than most of my other friends.”

“I can see why. They’re really cool,” Hyunjin gushes. “I’ve honestly felt really out of the loop since I started this job, so I’m glad we could all talk.”

“Me, too,” Seungmin whispers.

“Uh, do you want to, like, come inside?” Hyunjin asks.

Seungmin feels his entire heart stop.

“W-what?” he stammers. The answer was yes. He wanted to talk to Hyunjin one-on-one. He wanted to get to know each other outside of just what happened within the walls of the school. But he was too scared of what would happen if it didn’t work out, too scared of Hyunjin not feeling the way he did.

“Actually, nevermind. It’s been a super long week. Maybe some other time,” Hyunjin decides. He gets out of the car and disappears into his house before Seungmin can even form a coherent thought in response.

Seungmin thinks Jisung will have a lot to say about this.

In the weeks following Hyunjin hanging out with Seungmin and his friends at the bar, Hyunjin starts to talk to Seungmin more and more. He drops by on his way up to his classroom in the mornings. He makes a point to say goodbye to Seungmin before leaving. He texts Seungmin about crazy things that happen in his classroom, and he makes Seungmin promise to invite him when everyone hangs out in the future. Jisung swears Hyunjin is in love with Seungmin. Jeongin, eavesdropping, agrees. Seungmin tells them both to mind their own business.

Jeongin is practicing a speech on climate change for his public speaking class in front of his usual audience of one, Seungmin, when Hyunjin stops by Seungmin’s classroom one afternoon.

“Hello!” Hyunjin sings as he buzzes into the classroom. Jeongin immediately makes eye contact with Seungmin and raises his eyebrows suggestively. Seungmin locks his jaw to avoid telling him off in front of Hyunjin.

“Hello, Mr. Hwang,” Jeongin sings with the brightest, fakest smile he can manage.

“How are you?” Seungmin asks, ignoring Jeongin’s clear belief he was Cher from Clueless, destined to play matchmaker with his teachers.

“I’m great, actually. I had an idea I wanted to run by you,” Hyunjin says.

“I’m all ears,” Seungmin replies.

“I’ve been trying to think of ways that I could use the art class to help the students learn about their other subjects, and then, I saw one of our shared students working on a word problem you gave them that had her calculating the slope of a rollercoaster,” Hyunjin explains. “I thought it would be cool if we could team up.”

“Team up?”

“Yeah, like, I help them design a theme park, and you teach them how to calculate all the angles and slopes on their attractions,” Hyunjin elaborates. “They could draw their rides or paint them or even sculpt them, and we could display them all somewhere in the school. Maybe we could both grade their projects together.”

“Together?” Jeongin enthuses. Seungmin thinks Jeongin is very lucky Hyunjin is looking directly at Seungmin.

“Yeah, it’d be cool if we could reward them for their work in both classes,” Hyunjin says. “I don’t know if you have time for a project like that—”

“We do,” Jeongin insists. “He was just saying he wanted us to start on a big project soon.”

“Really?” Hyunjin asks.

No.

“I do think it would be cool if they could do something creative in their math classes,” Seungmin says, dodging the question completely. He couldn’t exactly admit Jeongin was lying.

“I was thinking the same thing!” Hyunjin remarks excitedly. He drops his bag on a nearby desk and pulls out his laptop to show Seungmin something. “I was hoping you’d say yes, so in my conference period, I started typing up some documents for it. Instructions, rubric, all of that. I just need your help with the math side of it.”

Hyunjin sets his laptop on Seungmin’s desk and quickly signs on so he can show Seungmin everything he’s working on. Seungmin is surprised by how thorough everything is, and before Hyunjin is even done explaining all the documents he has ready, Seungmin is sold on the idea.

In the coming weeks, they each set aside a few days for their students to work on the project in their classes. In Hyunjin’s class, they brainstorm and mold and sculpt and paint, and in Seungmin’s class, Seungmin helps them calculate the math behind all the theme park rides they are designing.

Seungmin hates to admit it, but, for the first time, he sees his students genuinely curious about what they were working on. Most of the time, they only asked him questions when they were concerned about how they’d do on tests. With Hyunjin’s project, they actually cared to know the why behind everything they learned. It was a good feeling to teach something to students who cared to learn what he was talking about.

As the students wrap up their projects, Hyunjin convinces the principal to let them hold an exhibition in the gym for the students to see each other’s projects and show off their work to their parents after school. Hyunjin sets everything up and enthusiastically welcomes parents; Seungmin barely has to do anything except talk about the math of roller coasters.

Seungmin is pacing around the gym viewing all the projects when he makes the mistake of walking past Jeongin’s set-up.

“Psst,” Jeongin hisses. Seungmin holds back an eyeroll.

“What’s wrong?”

“Have you made your move yet?” he asks.

“What are you talking about?” Seungmin counters.

“Are you kidding me? I literally spent the past month painting this dumbass ferris wheel so you could have an opportunity to hit on Mr. Hwang,” Jeongin snaps, gesturing to the bright blue contraption made out of popsicles behind him.

“Watch your language,” Seungmin orders. “I did this project so that all of my students could practice cross-curricular achievement. Mr. Hwang had nothing to do with it.”

“Whatever,” Jeongin sighs. “I just want my two favorite teachers to be happy. I don’t want you guys to end up like Mr. Lee. Did you know he has three cats? Three.”

“I am happy, and I don’t need a fifteen-year-old meddling in my dating life,” Seungmin asserts. Jeongin crosses his arms in offense that Seungmin would discount his opinion just because he’s a highschooler.

“I’m begging you to just talk to him about something besides math,” Jeongin groans in annoyance.

“I will not be doing that because our relationship is purely as professional colleagues,” Seungmin says. He glances over at Hyunjin, who is showing a parent how he taught her daughter to make a fully functional track for her rollercoaster car. He admired Hyunjin’s creativity and ability when it came to constructing art.

“Your professional colleague who you want to kiss,” Jeongin whispers, lowering his voice just in case someone is listening.

“Say something like that again, and you’ll be in detention for life,” Seungmin threatens. Jeongin knows he’s bluffing, but he drops the conversation. “Nice ferris wheel, though.”

Jeongin sticks out his tongue as Seungmin walks away.

After the parents and students leave with their projects, Seungmin stays after with Hyunjin to help collapse the tables they’d borrowed from storage for the event and sweep up leftover trash. Seungmin can’t stop talking about how great everything was. He could feel himself becoming redundant, but he’d enjoyed the night so much. He’d loved seeing all the students excitedly showing their work off to their parents.

“You should do this for other subjects, too,” Seungmin says as he helps Hyunjin fold a table in half. “This was really a great idea.”

“I would love to,” Hyunjin agrees, “but I honestly feel kinda awkward asking anybody else to do something like this with me.”

“Why?” Seungmin wonders. He didn’t think any of the other teachers at the school were any more frightening than he was. They all interacted with kids for a living after all.

“You’re my only friend,” Hyunjin reasons. Seungmin furrows his eyebrows. Friends? They were friends? When did they become friends? Had Hyunjin always thought of them as friends?

“What about the other guys?” Seungmin asks.

“Those are your friends,” Hyunjin says with a tiny grimace. “I appreciate you letting me hang out with you guys, but it kinda feels like they just let me come because of you.”

“It’s not like that,” Seungmin promises. “Jisung is the one who suggested we invite you in the first place.”

“Really?”

“Yeah,” Seungmin confirms, “and I know they’d love it if you helped them do projects like this. You should reach out. I can go with you to see them if you want.”

“Okay, yeah. I’d like that,” Hyunjin agrees. Seungmin isn’t sure if the warmth he feels is radiating off of Hyunjin or if that’s his own happiness bubbling inside him.

With Seungmin’s help, Hyunjin organizes art project after art project based in other school subjects. His students study famous Latino artists in Felix’s class, then they create art in their style. They put together tiny habitats in shoeboxes for animals they study in Jisung’s class. They draw the characters from books they read with Minho and paint watercolor maps of places they research with Chan. Everyone is happy to see their students engaged with their content, but they also can’t help but tease Seungmin for how much time he spends with Hyunjin. Seungmin plays it all off, of course. They were professional colleagues.

Seungmin is sitting between Minho and Jisung at an after school staff meeting a few weeks before the semester comes to a close. His principal is yammering about preparing for end-of-year testing and, unfortunately, even Seungmin has completely zoned out.

“One last thing!” the principal sings. “Our Snowflake Dance is coming up on the last day before Winter Break.The sign-up sheet to help with duties is on the back table for you all to peruse on your way out.”

Jisung audibly groans so loud Seungmin is convinced their principal hears. Dances were the bane of any teacher’s existence. It was messy and hot, and you spent the entire night begging teenagers to stop touching each other. Volunteering wasn’t mandatory, but, if nobody did, their principal would start personally asking people to help, and, at that point, you couldn’t even pick your job. Seungmin always signed up to be a chaperone. No clean-up duties, no sign-up table, no decorating. Just a chaperone.

“Do you think I can fake my death to get out of this?” Jisung asks as they wait for their turn at the sign-up sheet.

“They would find you, and your punishment would be spending the rest of your life telling sophomores to leave room for Jesus,” Minho warns.

Jisung is the first to see the sign-up sheet, and a mischievous grin stretches across his face as he reads who has already taken what jobs. He quickly puts his pen to the paper, writing on four lines in total.

“Jesus, you’re signing up for a lot,” Seungmin grumbles.

“I’m not. You are,” Jisung says. Seungmin’s entire face falls.

“What? Erase that!” Seungmin orders, trying to look at the sheet to see what horrible fate Jisung is forcing him to endure.

“Can’t. It's pen. Imagine how bad you would look if our principal saw your name crossed out,”Jisung taunts. Seungmin bites down hard on his lip to avoid cursing Jisung out. “Besides, I did this for you.”

“For me? I’m going to kill you,” Seungmin snaps.

“Look for yourself,” Jisung orders, passing Seungmin the clipboard. Seungmin feels his mouth go dry when he sees Jisung has signed him up for three jobs, all shared with one other person: Hwang Hyunjin.

“I’m still gonna kill you,” Seungmin grumbles, shoving the clipboard back toward Jisung.

Jisung signs Seungmin up for three tasks: decorating, chaperoning and cleaning up. There were plenty of other chaperones besides just the two of them, but Seungmin comes to find that no one wants to decorate or clean up a dance. Seungmin couldn’t even understand why Hyunjin wanted to do such a thing. In any case, Seungmin meets Hyunjin in the gym bright and early on Saturday morning, a little under a week until the dance itself takes place.

“Good morning,” Seungmin says as he enters the gym. He does a double take when he sees Hyunjin has stacked dozens of cardboard boxes in a corner of the gym and has wheeled an entire cart of supplies in from the art room to assist them.

“Good morning!” Hyunjin cheers. He was sitting on the floor, cutting paper snowflakes out of what appeared to be copier paper. “Grab a pair of scissors! I’m making snow for our winter wonderland!”

Seungmin can’t help but be amused. He follows his instructions and sits down cross legged across from Hyunjin on the gym floor.

“Do you want to explain the game plan?” Seungmin asks. “I could’ve gotten here earlier if you needed me to.”

“Not necessary,” Hyunjin says, waving Seungmin off. “Right now, we’re making snowflakes. Next, I’m gonna make trees out of those boxes. Hopefully it’ll look like a winter forest.”

“Got it,” Seungmin acknowledges, unable to hold back his smile. None of the rest of his coworkers cared at all about a silly dance, but Hyunjin was preparing like it was his own wedding. “Am I supposed to cut these a certain way?”

“Absolutely not!” Hyunjin squawks. “No two snowflakes are alike, Kim Seungmin.”

“Understood,” Seungmin confirms. He folds his paper and begins to cut it into snow-like shapes, just like he’d done in kindergarten. It seemed childish, but he went along with Hyunjin’s request. When he’s done, he unfolds it to show Hyunjin his product. “Is this okay?”

“It’s perfect,” Hyunjin assures him. “Do another one!”

Seungmin cuts out snowflakes until his hands hurt. It is only when their copier paper supply is completely depleted that Hyunjin decides they probably have enough. Seungmin is just happy he doesn’t have to try and think of a 700th new way to cut a hole in a piece of paper.

“Our next order of business,” Hyunjin announces, “is the forest.”

“How exactly do you plan to make any of these into trees?” Seungmin asks. Maybe he lacked creativity or imagination, but he never thought of trees as quite so boxy.

“I’m so glad you asked,” Hyunjin chimes. “I have a fuck ton of PVC in my car, and you’re going to cut these into small pieces while I paint them to look like Christmas tree branches. Then, we’re going to glue them to the PVC so they stand up.”

“You’re kidding,” Seungmin hopes.

“I would never joke about something as serious as PVC pipe-based crafts,” Hyunjin says back. Seungmin wonders what Jisung has gotten him into.

Sure enough, Hyunjin puts Seungmin to work in his Christmas tree factory. Hyunjin’s vision involved the trees looking like they were still in nature, covered in snow, so he requested Seungmin cut the boxes into small panels Hyunjin could texturize and eventually use to cover the PVC. At first, Seungmin thinks he’s not nearly competent enough in the crafting department for such a job, but, once he finds his rhythm, he’s cutting up boxes like a pro. He barely requests approval from Hyunjin after a while.

“So,” Hyunjin says as he paints a piece of cardboard forest green, “why did you become a teacher?”

“That’s such a cliché question,” Seungmin points out. “God knows how many times we’ve both been forced to answer that.”

“Yeah, but everyone lies every time they’re asked,” Hyunjin argues. Seungmin supposes that was true. When principals or professors asked that question, they didn’t want a real answer. They wanted to hear about an idealized, perfect reason. “So, why did you really become a teacher?”

“Can I be honest?” Seungmin whispers. Hyunjin nods. “I don’t really know.”

“You don’t know?”

“Yeah, I don’t know,” Seungmin repeats. “I just— I never had some sort of particular love of kids or passion about the future or whatever. But I’ve always felt really out of place wherever I go, and the only time I ever felt like myself was in a classroom, learning. So, I guess education just sorta called to me.”

“Do you love teaching as much as you love learning?” Hyunjin wonders. Seungmin pauses for a minute.

“I love it more,” he decides. “I know now this is what I was supposed to do.”

“Good,” Hyunjin says softly. “I think so, too.”

Seungmin smiles to himself for a few moments as he continues to cut his cardboard. He liked that Hyunjin, despite never actually seeing him teach a lesson, had so much confidence in him.

“What about you?” Seungmin asks suddenly, realizing he’d forgotten to ask Hyunjin why he’d become a teacher.

“Mine is kinda embarrassing,” Hyunjin admits.

“It’s impossible to embarrass yourself in front of me. I’ve always done something worse,” Seungmin offers in assurance. Hyunjin laughs with a headshake.

“I got all the way through art school before realizing that I hate selling my art,” Hyunjin confesses through a smile. “I spent my entire life making art for me, and whenever I had actual clients telling me what they wanted, I hated it so much.”

“How did you think you were going to make money?” Seungmin ponders, joining in on Hyunjin’s laughter.

“I don’t know. God, it was dumb,” Hyunjin groans. “I just— I decided to become a teacher after that because I can keep making my art for myself while also sharing it with our students. It was kinda my only option.”

“Well, we’re really lucky you ended up here,” Seungmin chimes. “I think everything you’ve done with the students this semester has been really special.”

“Thank you,” Hyunjin says softly. “Now, get back to work. We have twenty of these to make.”

They spend the rest of the afternoon constructing Hyunjin’s trees and, despite feeling a bit unnecessary in Seungmin’s eyes to begin with, even he had to admit they looked cool once Hyunjin painted the snow on top of the cardboard branches. Seungmin thought he was maybe a little too skilled with a pair of scissors and a cardboard box.

Unfortunately for Seungmin, the more time he and Hyunjin spend talking, the more Seungmin feels like he’s in deeper than he ever hoped to be. He laughs at all of Hyunjin’s stories, even the ones from art school Seungmin doesn’t totally understand. He asks him questions, perhaps a bit excessively, desperate to know every single detail about him. He requests to see more of his personal artwork. He even offers maybe a little too much information about his own life, which was out of character for Seungmin. He just wanted Hyunjin to know him, to like him.

When they finish all the trees and Hyunjin declares them free to go home, Seungmin is a little devastated. He almost tries to trick Hyunjin into thinking they need ten more trees just to have a reason to keep them in the gym, together, for a few more hours.

Seungmin thinks he may be a little sick.

Thanks to Hyunjin’s talent when it comes to crafts and dedication to transforming the gym from its usual sweaty, sticky state, the dance truly does look like a winter wonderland. Seungmin figures it's the nicest looking dance they’ve had since he started teaching here. Paper snowflakes hung from the ceiling and his snowy, cardboard trees looked almost real in the dim, gym lighting. The students all came in their nicest suits and dresses, and it brought a smile to Seungmin’s face to see them all so excited as they entered and saw Hyunjin’s handy work.

“It really does look amazing,” Seungmin remarks to Hyunjin as they stand together behind the punch bowl to ensure nobody adds any questionable liquids of the alcoholic or poison variety to the mix. “You did a great job.”

“I couldn’t have done it without you,” Hyunjin admits with a smile. “Twenty trees made out of boxes do not make themselves.”

“Oh, please. This was all you,” Seungmin maintains. “I am simply the guy who cut the boxes into 3 inch panels.”

“That is true,” Hyunjin agrees, “but every great artist needs a guy to cut boxes into panels.”

“Did you learn that in art school?” Seungmin asks sarcastically. Hyunjin just rolls his eyes.

“Whatever, Seungmin,” he scoffs playfully. “You’re making me regret asking DJ Jisung to play a special song for you.”

“For me?” Seungmin echoes. He was flustered just imagining Hyunjin asking anybody to play a song just for him, even if that person was only Jisung behind a laptop.

“For you,” Hyunjin repeats. Seungmin wants to prod Hyunjin for further information, but Hyunjin becomes distracted by breaking up a couple of seniors engaging in PDA. Instead of returning afterward, he does a lap around the gym to make sure nobody else is up to anything unsavory.

Seungmin is on his third glass of punch, desperately wishing Hyunjin would return and talk to him more when he hears the first beat of The Romantics’s What I Like About You enter the gym through Jisung’s speakers. Seungmin’s head shoots up, looking for Hyunjin to see his reaction. Hyunjin just smiles at him when they make eye contact, eyes upturned in satisfaction as he bounds back toward Seungmin.

“It’s our song,” Hyunjin informs him, “from that first time in the car.”

“I remember, yeah,” Seungmin confirms. “I didn’t know we had a song.”

“How could we not?” Hyunjin asks, feigning offense. “I’d make you dance with me, but I don’t think the students would ever let you live it down.”

“You would be correct,” Seungmin agrees with a laugh.

“We’ll just have to dance to it together some other time,” Hyunjin decides. Seungmin feels his cheeks burning. He wanted to hang out with Hyunjin. He wanted to sing songs in the car at the top of their lungs and work on his art projects together and cheat to be partners on staff development days again and again.

“I don’t mean to alarm you, but those same seniors are making out again,” Seungmin says, gesturing behind Hyunjin. He needed to escape the conversation before he said something he regretted.

“Fuck,” Hyunjin groans, sulking away from Seungmin so he can scold the students. Seungmin just sighs, leaving the snack table to sit on the gym bleachers a few feet away. He climbs up a few levels before settling in to watch everything from afar.

As if he’s been summoned, Jeongin joins Seungmin on the stairs a few minutes later. He sits a level in front of Seungmin as though he’s hoping to avoid suspicion from his classmates that he’s actually speaking to a teacher.

“Hi, Jeongin,” Seungmin says. “How are you enjoying the dance?”

“It’s great!” Jeongin exclaims with a smile. “DJ kinda sucks, though.”

“Yeah,” Seungmin mumbles. He was listening to Jeongin, but his mind was elsewhere. All he could do was hopelessly study Hyunjin as he made sure students on the dancefloor were adequately spaced apart, wishing he had the guts to say something.

Jeongin catches on quickly, as he always does.

“Mr. Kim,” he says, leaning back on the bleachers so he can make eye contact with Seungmin. “Can I give you some advice, man-to-man?”

“You’re fifteen,” Seungmin reminds him. The student seems unfazed. “But sure.”

“If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my life, it’s that rejection doesn’t taste as bad as regret,” he explains. Seungmin scrunches up his face in confusion. “So if you like someone, tell them.”

For Seungmin, this feels like a personal low. He was receiving love advice from a teenager who ate lunch in his classroom every day because he didn’t have anyone to sit with in the cafeteria. He had virtually no life experience, and Seungmin wasn’t sure he’d ever been in an actual relationship before. And the worst part? Seungmin kinda thought he was right.

“You should put your money where your mouth is and go ask someone to dance,” Seungmin advises. Jeongin perks up at the suggestion.

“You know what? I think I will.”

With that, Jeongin disappears onto the dance floor to court a pretty senior wearing a gaudy pink glitter dress. Seungmin is relieved when she accepts his offer. He tended to get a little too invested in some of his students’ happiness.

Seungmin spends the rest of the dance watching from the bleachers, contemplating Jeongin’s advice and trying not to spend too long gazing at Hyunjin across the gym. He looked perfect in the dim gym lighting, laughing at all the silly jokes students made and complimenting their formal attire. Seungmin felt every inch of himself wishing he could just tell Hyunjin how he felt. Jeongin was right, wasn’t he? Seungmin would regret it if he didn’t say something, wouldn’t he?

The dance slowly comes to a close as students are picked up and, eventually, Seungmin and Hyunjin, the sole members of cleanup duty, are left alone in the gym. Jisung had vacated the school faster than Seungmin thought possible in fear he would be roped into helping. Instead, it’s just Hyunjin, Seungmin and several hefty trash bags.

“How do you want to do this?” Hyunjin asks. He carefully tied his hair up and rolled up the sleeves on his shirt in preparation of cleaning the gym.

“Divide and conquer?” Seungmin suggests. Hyunjin nods, but, as he glances around the gym, he quickly becomes discouraged.

“What if we just left it like this? Who would know?” Hyunjin jokes.

“I would know,” Seungmin reminds him.

“Well, then, if it’s for you, let me go pack up some corny dance decorations,” Hyunjin jokes. He bats his eyelashes at Seungmin flirtatiously, and Seungmin wants to sink into the earth. He knew Hyunjin was just teasing him, but it felt cruel. Seungmin wanted Hyunjin to flirt with him for real.

As they throw away empty cups and streamers and pile up forgotten personal effects, Seungmin thinks about Hyunjin. He thinks about how creative he is. He thinks about how he cares about people, especially his students. He thinks about how cute he is when he gets shy. He thinks about how he always listens to Seungmin’s advice and trusts his judgment. He thinks about how comfortable he is when they talk and how he’d like to talk to him more and more and more. Seungmin thinks about how Hyunjin makes his heart swell. And he thinks about how even Jeongin could tell.

“Hyunjin,” Seungmin says, dropping his trash bag and approaching Hyunjin, who was in the middle of picking trash up out of the bleachers. Hyunjin raises his head in acknowledgment, waiting for Seungmin to explain himself. “Do you want to go out with me sometime?”

“Like, with the guys?” Hyunjin asks as Seungmin climbs to bleacher stairs until they’re at eye level.

“No, like, with me,” Seungmin clarifies. “This is going to sound insane, and I know I shouldn’t outsource my life decisions to a teenager, but one of my students told me that regret is worse than rejection. So I just need to tell you that I think you’re really great. And I’m really sorry if this makes things weird—”

Hyunjin doesn’t wait for Seungmin to finish his thought before he meets his lips to Seungmin’s, clasping a hand onto either side of his face as they kiss. Seungmin supposes he’d heard enough. Hyunjin kisses gentle and slow, just like his personality, and Seungmin felt completely consumed by the prospect of continuing to kiss him, even after he pulls away.

“You’re sweet,” Hyunjin mumbles into Seungmin’s ear. He was still holding onto him tight, hesitant to let go. “I like you, too.”

“Thank god,” Seungmin whispers.

“It’s a little pathetic you needed a freshman in highschool to egg you on, though,” Hyunjin admits quietly as he untangles himself and picks back up his trash bag.

“Shut up!” Seungmin laughs.

“I’m speaking the truth. Emotionally stunted, much?” Hyunjin jokes. Seungmin picks up a crumpled up paper snowflake off the floor and throws it at Hyunjin in retaliation. “You’re gonna regret that.”

Hyunjin chases Seungmin up and down the bleachers, emptying the trash from his bag as he uses it for ammo. Seungmin just laughs and laughs, trying to avoid the garbage bullets and avoid tripping over his own feet. By the time they call a truce, the gym looks worse than it did when they started cleaning, with streamers and cups littering the area.

Still, Seungmin looks forward to cleaning it all up.

And he really loves his job.