Hearts Aflame

028: Four Out of Nine

"Can I just say how much I loathe university classes?" Mina actually leaned down on the table she, Sehun, and Kai were occupying and moaned out loud. The two boys simultaneously winced at the sound, but said nothing. "Can I just show how much the classes are whispering for me to hurt myself by the ugliness they radiate?"

She was such a bad student, she believed, and she didn't understand how the principal hadn't revoked her scholarship yet. Sure, she's great with sculpting and building things, and sure, her mathematics skills are superb, but she failed a few of her tests before and she partied way too much for a scholarship student to do. Maybe she needed to lay down being the person she currently is and start to think about falling back into her old studying routine to save her scholarship before it shatters. However, for now, she was just going to whine about it. It felt great, though, that she had two friends to nag with.

"Are you doing poetry?" Sehun quickly asked, blinking his small eyes and trying to hide a growing smirk. "Because you suck at it."

"Where did that idea come from? Poetry? Really?" Mina blinked her eyes confusedly, staring up at his face without bothering to lift her head from the table.

"She's right, Sehun," came Kai's response, his voice a bit muffled due to the strawberry milkshake he was slurping. Mina guided her offended eyes toward him. "We all know Mina's not very.. eloquent or artistic at all."

(Eloquent? Sure, maybe she truly wasn't with her street slang, but artistic? She damn was! Did Kai not know creating buildings, shops, and homes is artistic? What was his definition of artistic?)

"Thank you, Jongin— wait, what the heck?" She roared, sitting straight in her seat and pointing a finger at him. He bit on an amused smile. "Are you insulting me? What happened to my sweet Jongin? You've been corrupted."

"I agree," Sehun ignored her. "She's bad at a lot of things to be honest. The only thing she's good at is being evasive."

"Evasive?" She said loudly, looking away from Kai's face to Sehuns', a blotch of confusion painting her delicate face. Sehun nodded, a gleam of something in his eyes. He stared at her as if he had her all figured out, she wondered now why the heck she decided to sit with him in her lunch break.

"Yeah, like what you're doing right now." Sehun said in a fake posh sound, pretending to be a wise turtle or something. "You're moaning and groaning about university classes when you're a top scholar which only means you're trying to distract us from the Junmyeon issue."

It was magnificent how only now Sehun was acknowledging her scholar status and underlining her smart-ness, or something, when he'd rather drink bleach than admit she's smart, even smarter than him. However, his seriousness didn't thaw her armor of steel, and so she glared.

"I'm gonna tell Suho you think he's an issue."

"See? Evasive." He snickered, amused of himself and what he came up with.

"I'm not trying to be evasive," she rolled her eyes at him. "I simply think there's nothing more to talk about. We've discussed everything already and Suho told you everything too. What's more to say?"

When she and Suho sat everyone down after Minseok's fine words, they told the boys about their bond. They weren't sure of it, or Suho wasn't sure of it since it wasn't as consistent as Baekhyun and Jongdae's, but it has always been with him. He told them that it might be the cause for their triggered emotions, Mina's crush and his unconditional love for her, or it could be the opposite: their feelings triggered the bond. Whatever it was, Suho explained that their bond was what made the others's bond happen, which didn't make Baekhyun and Jongdae happy. He told them that to infiltrate between a pack — she didn't particularly like the word 'infiltrate' — she had to go through the Alpha first, which made their bonds easier — he had pointed at Baekhyun and Jongdae when explaining — or that's what he thinks anyway. He wasn't quite sure, and so he said he'd have to do more research and talk to his parents too. All of the boys agreed to talk to their parents for more information as well.