1.2 | Anemoia

what if Shin was the head boy? (pt2)

Ju Manshik was a narrowly avoided crisis. Maybe if that kid didn't show up, he would've ended up with another boyfriend and with the midterms were on all their heads… no, HwaShin couldn't afford to fail. Even the slightest drop in his grades would affect his report card and his scholarships could be cancelled. (They wouldn’t really, but HwaYoung never had the heart to tell him there was no scholarship.)

No… the days of living recklessly were to be put behind. He didn't have as much money as his friends did, they could afford Ivy Leagues, he couldn't. He needed those scholarships and recommendation letters. 

"Shin-ah?" A knock on his door startled him from his thoughts and he looked up, blinking several times to accustom the silhouette of his mother in the dim lights. 

"Eomma." He smiled, hands carefully hiding the scholarship account books under his heavy books. "What's up?"

"SooMin was here a while ago. She was asking about you." 

"K-Kang SooMin?" Shin stammered, now with a new found sense of danger lingering on people who viewed him through a rose tinted glass. The girl next door who loved cakes and liked to hang around Shin a bit too much. These days she was trying to deliberately study higher mathematics just to corner Shin and ask doubts. "Why? Why's she here?" 

"I don't know?" Shin's mother shrugged, play dancing in her eyes. "Don't you like her?" 

"Who, me?" Shin said, unnecessarily loud. "No! Never! She's a child." 

Shin's mother stepped in his room, eyes judgmentally falling on the old stuffed mouse lying face up on his bed (which has a bedsheet with hamster print), the raccoon pen stand on his desk with its tail doubling as a cellphone holder and that panda desk lamp illuminating his notes. Not to forget the rabbit-in-a-sushi-roll stickers stuck on the edges of his barely legible notes. 

"Who exactly is the child, Shinnie?" 

"You don't know, Eomma. Times have changed. Earlier it was okay to like someone younger than you, but now it isn’t. It's criminal to do so." 

"And who told you that?" HwaYoung mused. She sat down on the edge of Shin's bed, nose wrinkling up distastefully at his messy blanket. "Almost everyone in my generation would be a criminal then." 

"No. You guys are old enough to make rational decisions. What I mean is, I shouldn't force someone younger than me and take advantage of their innocence just for my own satisfaction." 

"You sound old." Shin's mother leaned back, dipping the mattress carefully. "Look baby, I know studies are hard and the pressure is too much… but don't deny yourself happiness." 

"Dating isn’t happiness," Shin shrunk down on his desk, "it's just that I can't say no." 

"That's indeed a problem. Would you mind helping me in the bakery if you're finished with homework? Might clear your mind up?" 

"I want to watch a show right now." 

"Please baby? I'll give you a chocolate?" HwaYoung offered a flimsy, half hearted bargain. For the love of all sweetness, Shin lived upstairs in a bakery. His mother was a baker. He could have all the chocolate he wanted in the world. But for the sake of a joke, he decided to play along. 

"Make it five." 

"Two?" His mother grinned. 

"Nah-uh. Nothing less than five. Those bear shaped ones with caramel inside. And I want the bunny shaped custard filled mooncakes too." 

HwaYoung pursed her lips, seemingly in deep thought. "Okay. Now come to the counter." 

"Alright," he said. "Just let me clear up my desk." He pulled open his drawer and swooped his elbow over his desk, carelessly swiping everything down his eternally hungry drawers. Then he picked up his woodland animal theme highlighter set out from the rubble, polished it on his pants and put them back into his raccoon pen stand.