roadside ; yoonmin.

Misery Hates Company

Started: 2020-05-20

Exhaling slowly, I slumped in my desk, making a makeshift pillow out of my hoodie; incomprehensible polyester Chinese characters pushed against my waxen face. Walking into class as drowsy as I was wasn't exactly ideal. Walking into Chemistry first period on a Friday with an oncoming headache that merely waited to be set off by the first screech of a chair, certainly wasn't ideal either. I sat slumped in anticipation for the arrival of the teacher so I could later await the second she'd leave. If school had just gone minutes faster, maybe sleep wouldn't be the only thing on my mind (and maybe the 4 hours of sleep propelled that thought, but I wasn't in the mood for self reflection). Shouts and laughter awoke my resting migraine and irked what little patience my inapt sleeping schedule had allowed me.

It was all too predictable, though. Class would drag on, teenagers like chairs screeching would puddle my thoughts, coagulating into a mal de tête and the sinking regret of prioritizing my attendance over my forecasted irritability would drown out any notion that I could even attempt at making the flat Chemistry terms the focal point of my attention.

The clacking of stilettos (surely they didn't follow up to the dress code... not that it mattered to me) directed my inattentive attention towards my surroundings and set in the reminder that I was, in fact, in class; I wasn't in the Shangri-La my throbbing mind would have blissfully accepted in place of the monotonous colours of the classroom walls constantly in contrast with the glaring fluorescent lights aloft. I was starting to regret wishing she'd come faster, her beady eyes analyzing the childish crowd in front of her.

Her pseudo-smile remained peculiarly indifferent to the now constant clattering of desks, paper, students, all of the above and the rest. She cleared her scratchy throat; an entirely unnecessary exertion (at least in my opinion) on her part that could've nearly prodded my legs through the door in attempt for the chance of serendipity outside this hollow box of desks and unnecessary lectures. The action, however, ended my short-lived annoyance as the classroom gradually stilled to a wavering silence. Eventually fully lifting my head and further setting in the fact that I was here, and unfortunately not anywhere else, I collected my books out of my rucksack and drew the Chemistry slab of pages to the last page number I could recall.

Before she began her regular endless drilling of unnecessary review of stoichiometry for the week, she pushed up her glasses with a nimble finger and, with the same aid, she gestured at a slender boy in a nude coloured knit cardigan and a shy look painted on his olive skin. His timid gaze locked on hers as he froze with a misshapen bubblegum pink sphere on his plump lower lip.

"No gum in class." She muttered, hoarse voice threatening.

"Sorry, Miss." His dulcet voice in comparison bashfully replied, pulling out its wrapper. I swear my eyes were drilling into the back of my head. Just start the goddamn lesson, incessantly repeated in a mantra as I resisted the temptation to return to my original position with my forehead flat against the desk.

Thankfully, she began messing through her mountains of paper for today's lesson plan. Once organized (if you could call it that), she started the day with a metaphorical toast to Jeremias Richter and another push of her glasses.

+

Lunch was quite the blur; mind wandering to God knows where as I processed Taehyung's mundane stories through my bullshit filter; a typical Friday afternoon. My blissful ignorance was interrupted by the shrill cackle of a bright boy and a rough hand resting on my shoulder.

"Yoongi! Down for a party tonight?"

Now this wasn't typical. I could say with unfaltering confidence that I had been asked to a party of Hoseok's a total of once, maybe twice times, my entire high school career. This was inward shock, apparently, as his characteristically nonchalant look held me down as if we were more than acquaintances (we were nothing more). I was positive he had a such the event at least once every 2 weeks; his divorced parents and his father's competitiveness with his mother proved itself useful, as he used his dad's home like an apathetic and primitive customer would use an Airbnb, as if the proprietor been dead (all of this occurring with his father's permission, of course; clearly giving up boundaries in favour of being the "favourite" parent).