Life is but a Dream {ChenJi} | ongoing

eleven

The red slip of paper arrives in the hands of a tiny year 8 student. She knocks on the classroom door and, under the teacher's expectant stare, calls Chenle's name in a wavering voice. The teacher pauses her explanation of algebraic fractions, pen poised in her hand to point to Chenle, and everyone's heads turn to him. They all know what red paper means. Chenle's stomach sinks. He's already on the teacher's bad side for missing yesterday's test. She raises an eyebrow of distaste. The girl throws him a short, apologetic glance and Chenle feels bad for her in return; no one likes running the errands for reception, much less when you have to enter an older year's classroom and hand out detention slips.

Only this one isn't for a detention, and Chenle's brow creases as he reads it over. The teacher resumes the lesson and the students get bored of staring at him, instead pretending to listen to the lesson while they all doodle in the margins of their exercise books.

"What's it for?" Yizhuo, sat to Chenle's left, leans to read the note. She sighs, and Chenle's heart thumps aggressively.

He has to go to the headteacher's office at breaktime. Taeyong will be there. The note is a darker red than the paint smeared on his blazer, but it still feels like mockery.

"It's bullshit," Chenle mutters back to his friend. "It wasn't even my fault."

"That lot always away get with it," Yizhuo replies. She copies down the example question from the whiteboard in her perfect, swirling writing. Her lip gloss shimmers as she talks. "Just rat them out. They should be kicked out the school, if you ask me. Should have happened back in year 7."

Chenle scrunches up the note and stuffs it in his pocket. The clock ticks behind him and he sneaks a glance back, bites the inside of his cheek when he sees there are still twenty minutes left of the lesson.

"But why make my parents come in?" He tries to copy down the question but can't focus and messes up a few numbers, so scribbles it all out before starting again. There's already red ink on the previous page scolding him for his messy workings.

"They're on your side, right?" Yizhuo blinks. Her eyelashes are long and obviously caked in mascara, which is the most makeup the girls can get away with. But she's naturally pretty, with clear skin and glossy hair that reaches well past her shoulders. She wears a pink headband to keep it out her face. All the boys chat about her in the toilets; she says she doesn't care about them. She told Chenle she's going to dye her hair red for the summer, and that she'd help Chenle dye his hair too, if he wants.

"Stop gossiping while I'm speaking, you two." The teacher points her ruler in their direction, and yet again Chenle winds up on the wrong side of everyone's attention. He scowls down at his book.

The numbers jumble together, then he moves onto the next page and copies the date and title down again to start fresh. The squares on the paper blur and hurt his eyes. That familiar chill creeps under his skin again. If the meeting takes all of break he won't have time to eat his snack that he promised Taeyong he'd eat today. It'll make him late for French afterwards, too. He places his pen down and lets his fingers trail over his stomach, fiddling with the buttons on his shirt then rolling the end of his tie. The fabric is silky, a little bobbly from so many washes over the years, and it burns when he presses harder. The heat is a mean contrast to the iciness of his bones, but not unwelcome, so he lets it simmer with the forced in and out of his breaths.

He stays like that for the whole twenty minutes. The teacher doesn't notice he isn't working – she's busy helping two students in the front row – and a murmur grows across the room until it turns into two boys shouting to be heard over everyone else's conversations. Chenle can't hear his own thoughts, which makes the sear of anxiety worse. The teacher hits her table with the ruler to quiet them down with three minutes to go. The silence falls abruptly, like a spell, and she narrows her eyes to examine each student before dismissing them with the reminder to hand in their books on the way out. Chenle hasn't done his homework, missed the whole test from the previous day, and certainly hasn't completed the questions from the lesson. It'll be another chiding comment in his book and a quiet conversation at the end of the next class.