Beomgyu's Reasons Why [ BeomJun/ YeonGyu / TaeGyu ]

The Stigma

TW: Swearing.

Once a cheater, always a cheater. That was the stigma, the mark of disgrace Choi Beomgyu had to carry, all because of Mr. Kim.

He and the entire class were taking a test, and for some reason, Mr. Kim kept his eyes trained on Beomgyu. Fixated on him as if anytime he would look to his side and copy answers off his classmate's paper.

This always happened, it all started from the stares and looks from Mr. Kim that made Beomgyu feel inferior and doubt himself. Mr. Kim always looked down on Beomgyu.

Maybe Mr. Kim's prejudice was brought about by Beomgyu himself. He was too shy to make friends... not that anyone wanted to be his friend after Taehyun...

There goes another stigma. The loners are always the losers. And Kim Namjoon does not tolerate losers.

Beomgyu's pencil rolled off his desk while he rubbed the eraser on his paper to undo an entire sentence he wasn't satisfied with on the essay.

When Beomgyu leaned down to pick it up, the teacher's voice boomed in the air.

"Choi Beomgyu."

Fuck. What now? Beomgyu didn't want to look up. The entire class was probably eyeing him already, wanting to see him get humiliated first-hand. Sick bastards.

"Sorry, sorry sir. I dropped my pencil." He turned back to his test, only for Namjoon to stand up from his table up front and walk towards the boy.

Namjoon, all with his intimidating stare, looked down on Beomgyu yet again, gaze averting from Beomgyu towards a piece of paper, crumpled right under Beomgyu's desk.

Beomgyu noticed this and picked it up.

"Sir, I'm sorry, I didn't see there was litter—"

"Litter?" Namjoon repeated in disbelief. He took the ball of paper into his own hands and unfurled it.

1.A

2.D

3.C

Namjoon didn't have to finish reading the lengthwise sheet to know it was a written copy of his answer key.

"Beomgyu, I expected better of you."

Fucking lie. He was just manipulating his students, the ears that could hear him, into thinking Beomgyu was worse than he already was.

"Sir, that isn't mine, please believe me."

"It's obvious, Beomgyu. We all saw it didn't we?" He asked the class as an open question.

"I said it's not mine!" Beomgyu raised his voice... realizing his mistake, he lowered it again. "Please, believe me I didn't even touch it."

It was a shot to the moon that Namjoon would believe him. Course he didn't.

"Meet me in my office later Beomgyu, let's have a talk."

-

That was all for the sake of show, though. Namjoon never talked to Beomgyu.

You know what? Namjoon didn't even forward the incident to the principal. Instead, Namjoon dangled the "cheating case" above his head as leverage.

Because giving Beomgyu bad grades, and possibly making him fail high school was way better than giving him an F in integrity. The pull-down was too great since Mr. Kim's subject was 3 full units on his report card.

Oh? And it didn't stop there. Namjoon didn't stop at calling Beomgyu an alleged cheater.

-

"Yeonjun-hyung... when my parents asked me about why I was failing English... I couldn't tell them anything. I don't know, maybe I've accepted the fact that no one will believe me.

They'd rather believe the lies of someone else... everyone does.

So they did what any concerned parent would do— they fucking arranged a meeting with Mr. Kim. And of fucking course they believed him when he told them I was failing because my project was copy and pasted from the internet.

He also told them that I have plagiarized one of my classmates flash-fiction stories, which I did not.

It hurts, to pour all your fucking effort just to be called out for plagiarizing, which I did not and will not ever commit.

Jun-hyung... if I don't manage to leave this wretched world, I wouldn't be able to graduate anyway. So... there's not really much to lose."