Ships Passing In The Night ｜Markhyuck (OT21 AU)

Chapter 57

A/N: There are some callbacks in here to previous chapters. See chapters 29 and 45 if you get to the end and you're confused... :)

TW: Implied/referenced homophobia, implied/referenced child abuse, mentioned minor character death, mentioned physical violence. All minor or relatively brief, but please be safe.

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"Please, hyung."

Heart thundering in his chest, the boy hurtled down the empty hallway, narrowly avoiding a stray trash can unfortunate enough to stand in his path. He was only half convinced he was going the right way, seeking out a classroom he'd never been to before, but he couldn't afford to slow down.

The fear he'd witnessed on his best friend's face was more than enough to negate most of the tightness in his chest, and the chance of getting spotted by a teacher really didn't concern him today. All that filtered through his brain right now was that he had to make it there before it was too late, before one stupid decision—made in the heat of the moment—could ruin everything.

Failure wasn't an option, not when it came to this.

Rounding a corner and almost losing his footing on a patch of particularly slippery floor, Zhong Chenle barely gave it another moment's thought, righting himself quickly and setting off again at a dead sprint. He careened towards a large sign that hung overhead, which he sincerely hoped would confirm that he'd finally reached the correct wing of the building.

He'd be too late if he'd taken a wrong turn somewhere downstairs, if he had to retrace his steps and take another staircase, so he prayed that it was this floor.

Fortunately, Jisung's instructions had been flawless—despite the younger boy's overwhelming hysteria at the time—and 'Foreign Languages' loomed large in white block characters above his head an instant later. A few seconds after that, he spotted the classroom he needed off to his right, the interior half-concealed through the lightly frosted glass pane in the door, just above the label Jisung had told him to look for.

"Hyung!"

Chenle didn't stop to consider the stupidity of his next move, too frantic to fully comprehend how strange it might look to a room full of juniors for a red-faced freshman to come crashing through the rear door in the middle of class. As it was, the teacher broke off mid-flow when the door slammed loudly against the thin partition wall, whirling around to blink at him in bewilderment, before every head snapped up and over to stare at him.

"What's going on?" The teacher didn't sound mad. Merely curious, Chenle noted with detached interest, as his eyes landed on the only person in the room he recognised. His desk was over by the window, clear across the room from where the younger boy had just made his dramatic entrance, but the shock on Lee Donghyuck's face at that moment was priceless.

...Would have been priceless, if not for the fact that this was an emergency.

"Hyung," Chenle repeated, ignoring the adult now pacing purposefully towards him between two rows of desks, lesson plan abandoned for the time being. Chenle didn't take his eyes off Donghyuck, who looked like he wasn't sure whether to wrap his friend up in a hug or jump out of the window behind him, and the younger boy hoped that some of the urgency he felt was translating into his wide-eyed gaze. "Hyung, I need you."

"Young man, what is the meaning of this?" the teacher demanded, stepping up next to Chenle so that he loomed several feet directly overhead. Chenle tried to ignore the shadow that the tall figure cast over him but, when the man moved to stand between him and his friend, he was forced to look up at him.

"I'm sorry for the intrusion, teacher-nim, but it's an emergency." Chenle tried to look innocent and worried—which wasn't much of a challenge, considering the tumultuous flock of birds of prey currently warring for space beneath his ribcage. "I need to borrow Donghyuck-hyung for a few minutes."