Chapter Text
The shuffles of feet against waxed, wooden floorboards send multiple waves of annoyance through Rin’s body, her muscles taut and her knuckles clenched tight, fingernails digging into the palm of her hand.
Of course, that could also be because she found herself in front of the one person she dreaded ever being partnered with—because of course her luck would be this bad.
Judging by the sour look on his face, Yin Nezha had the exact same thoughts running through his mind.
Their Physical Education teacher, Mr. Jun Loran, didn’t seem any happier with any of this. He’d much prefer teaching the sports units and Self-Defense classes Nezha almost got her kicked out of, but according to Nikan’s mandated curriculum that stated the same core subjects be taught across the country, their Physical Education classes had a dance unit that had to be taught, their first lesson being the basic waltz.
Each girl in their class was assigned a random partner, and by sheer unfortunate chance, whatever Jun used to choose the pairings spat out the names Fang Runin and Yin Nezha side-by-side.
Her foot getting run over by a truck seemed to be such an enticing prospect when she first found out about it. Unfortunately, she couldn’t risk skipping out on any class because of her scholarship. Rin isn’t sure what Nezha’s excuse is, only surprised that he didn’t immediately demand a different partner the moment he found out.
“First closed position with your partner,” Jun barks, and Rin grimaces, looking to Kitay hand-in-hand with Niang on the other end of the dance room.
“Don’t step on my feet,” Nezha hisses to her, barely touching her shoulder. She gives him a hard glare as she loosely intertwines her fingers with his.
“Don’t tell me what to do.”
“Proper first position! Yin! Fang! ”
Rin grimaces the same time as Nezha wrinkles his nose.
“Let’s just get this over with,” he mutters, more to himself, and Rin is incredibly tempted by the thought of kicking his shin—if Jun wouldn’t kick her out of this class the moment she made things difficult for his darling student, of course.
Reluctantly, she places her left hand on his shoulder, right hand’s fingers closing around his. Nezha takes a deep breath and pulls her in a little closer, hand resting gently on her waist.
She despises how soft his skin is, and how his stupid rich person cologne’s scent is so subtle yet somehow muddles her senses and thoughts—but most of all, she despises how she’s forced to look up at his irritatingly pretty face as they begin to dance.
“Pay attention to the beat! Is that so damn hard?” Jun shouts from somewhere in the room. “Do none of you know how to count?”
Rin barely registers it, though, because Nezha won’t look away from her for a single second.
Granted, his face is schooled in an expression of careful neutrality, and she hates to admit it, but all those snobby dance classes he’d bragged about taking growing up must be helping, because he guides her seamlessly through the steps, despite her incredibly apparent lack of experience.
But for all his insults about her being a mud-skinned peasant, he sure is staring at her pretty damn hard. It makes Rin’s skin tingle, those dumb, deep almond eyes focused on her face, and makes self-consciousness crawl on her skin like tiny insects.
Then he flinches, and his features transform into a scowl.
“I told you not to fucking step on me!” he exclaims, and whatever weird spell of silence and tension they were having is broken.
“Can you not be a fucking baby for more than three seconds? It wasn’t even that bad!” Rin snaps back, and Nezha rolls his eyes at her.
“Your shoes are caked with dirt! They’re gross, and you’re ruining mine!”
Rin’s cheeks burn with humiliation, acutely aware of her ratty, faded, secondhand shoes looking so out-of-place among the designer, name-brand shoes all of her classmates have; another stark reminder of how she, the lowly scholarship student, didn’t belong in this fancy academy high school—but trust Nezha to be the pretentious prick to point it out time and again.
“ Fuck you ,” she spits at him, and stomps on his foot harder, making him cringe through clenched teeth, ignoring the irrational shame threatening to close her throat. Nezha raises an eyebrow at her.
“Stop being so sensitive. Don’t tell me those are the only shoes you have?” he scoffs as he spins her.
She doesn’t reply, her chest now tight with that mix of anger and self-pity.
“What, you seriously don’t have another pair? Those things are falling apart.”
“God, just shut the fuck up, will you?” she says a tad bit too loudly, which catches Jun’s attention.
“Yin! Fang! Stop your yapping and start over. All of you, from the top!”
They spend the next two hours dancing in relative silence, Rin forcing her eyes on a spot on Nezha’s neck, not once looking at his face, despite feeling his judgmental gaze on her face.
When they break, she shoves him off her without a word and stalks out the dance room, flinging at every traitorous squeak her damn shoes made with each step, and cursing Yin Nezha to every god she thinks exists.
This is why, during their next class, she’s more than baffled when he drops a clean, plain white pair of sneakers in front of her on the bench as she’s talking to Kitay.
“What is this?”
“Shoes. Lay those poor things to rest. Burn them in a garbage can fire somewhere or something,” Nezha replies in a pretentious tone that made her want to gouge his eyes out.
She blinks down at the shoes, then back up at him, before kicking them away.
“Hey, what the fuck?” he splutters, bending down to pick them up.
“I’m not going to wear those, keep them the hell away from me.”
“It’s for my sake, so my sneakers stop getting dirt footprints on them every time we have a PE class. Just wear them.”
Rin looks to Kitay incredulously, a silent request to back her up, but the little traitor simply shrugs.
“You’re an asshole, Nezha. And you need new shoes, Rin. There’s duct tape on those things. It’s a safety hazard at this point. Just see if they’re the right size.”
She gapes at Kitay, and from her periphery, a smug grin forms on Nezha’s face that made her blood pressure shoot up.
Even more so when the shoes fit perfectly, and the grin gets wider.
“Comfy?”
“Shut the fuck up.”
She hates him. She really, really fucking hates him.
She hates his stupid pretty face, his snooty, elitist prick attitude, his condescending and goading tone.
Most of all, she hates the fact that the damn shoes were so fucking comfortable on her feet, it made her feel like she was walking on clouds.
That’s the whole reason why, when they started to dance, she refused to take her glare off his face—and he met her stare right back.
That’s the reason why her skin seemed to tingle long after they split ways, when Jun instructed the final bow be flourished with a kiss on the hand.