MINISONG | i'm seeing stars (and they belong in your eyes)

"oh no, he's cute."

minhee sometimes thinks stars shine in places you don't always notice.

like the bottom of a half-empty water bottle when you shine a phone light underneath it, so the light disperses into different directions and creates a myriad of dancing lights that bounce off the walls and illuminates the burning loneliness minhee feels when he's alone in his two-now-one-person dorm room on a particularly quiet school night.

but really, sometimes minhee thinks the only stars professor han sees are the ones so far up wooseok's ass it comes out of his goddamn mouth -

no, no , minhee mentally swallows and snaps himself back to sanity, the guilt creeping up his spine at the sudden rant against one of his favorite professors.

as much as minhee wants to deflect responsibility on another party - god bless wooseok for his questionable slytherin upbringing - professor han wasn't at fault at all, really. really .

professor han seungwoo - aka minhee's favorite person on this entire campus and his brother wooseok's fiancé - called minhee up to his office and promptly sat the sophomore down without a word of greeting and quietly pushed the student's recently submitted criminology paper towards him.

"miniyah," seungwoo started slowly, the affectionate nickname he'd always used to simultaneously placate and scold minhee making the criminology student perk up from his post-deadline stupor. it was a nickname that minhee seldom heard as of late due to them mutually agreeing not to know each other in public in a poor attempt to hide their close relationship.

"what is this?"

minhee had glanced at his immaculate paper, and then back at his professor's questioning look, and then back at his paper.

"my criminology paper that's worth 40% of my grade?" minhee quipped.

so long story short, seungwoo calmly and slowly explained that while minhee's paper was near perfect - great deductions, unique perspectives, and an out-of-this-world method of problem solving - minhee was also going to fail his fucking paper because his dumb tree ass wrote his paper on the wrong case topic .

minhee was this close to having a panic attack right then and there in the middle of his brother-in-law's office out of shock at his own carelessness, his heart catching onto his throat and his sudden inability to properly breathe making his head spin and his vision blur.

he could barely remember what happened after, but he knew that seungwoo ended up essentially saying fuck it to student-teacher formality and went to securely wrap his arms around the shaking sophomore, whispering panicked reassurances to the younger boy while rubbing his back in comforting circles; the way he used to do so back home when helping wooseok deal with minhee's sudden and unplanned panic attacks.

"no, no, miniyah , baby, please calm down. it's okay. shh, shh, please don't panic. let me finish speaking okay?"

professor han seungwoo had a special set of rules for his own classes that were well known throughout campus. while he was infamous for his "no extensions unless you're halfway close to death, do it by the deadline or you fail" and "extra credit? i don't know her" work ethic, he was also highly respected for his perfectly legal, "underhanded" way of giving assistance to students who actually gave a shit while keeping slackers on their toes.

his rules were set like this: as long as you submitted your assignments regularly, and on time, and had a positive class participation rate as well as attendance, you were permitted a chance to resubmit your paper within the same day. it was a clever and - minhee might add - a very slytherin way of dealing with latecomers and slackers who thought they could skip class or beg for extra credit while simultaneously helping out students who were struggling or needed extra time to beef up their paper. a quirk minhee was sure the criminology professor picked up from a certain "woosatan".