call out my name [2gether]

CH 16 ⏳

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"Dude, you missed out on all the action! Why is your body so weak?!" Peuk exclaimed, ambushing his taller friend into a headlock as soon as Tine walked though the school gates. Tine squeaked indignantly at the manhandling, getting woozy very quickly since he had been holed up at home with barely any movement for the last couple of days whilst his body fought against the cold. He still looked a little pale but his eyes shone bright with vigor.

"Yeah, we basically got into a fight with a couple of guys from another school," Ohm supplied while placing a friendly arm around Tine's shoulders once he got out of Peuk's clutches. He sounded mighty proud for some reason.

"What? Why?" Tine scrunched up his pixie face in confusion, swiveling his head from one friend to another as they kept walking over the school grounds, steering their steps to the main building. Doe eyes curious as Tine noticed that Peuk had a shiner at the outer corner of his eye while Ohm sported a busted lip. What the hell had they gotten themselves into?

"These two idiots got carried away during the music festival and crashed into some other dudes standing behind us," Fong explained, rolling his eyes in annoyance and crossing his arms over his washed out purple colored, high school uniform shirt.

"We did try to apologize but there must have been some kind of misunderstanding," Peuk lamented with a pout.

"For sure," Ohm contributed and then winced as he accidentally split his wound open from taking too much. He quickly pressed a hand to his mouth to stop the blood from dripping onto his shirt. A little grossed out, Tine shimmied out from under his arm.

"Fucking ridiculous, I can't believe you guys started waving your fists because of some scuffle in the crowd, it's not like there was a mosh pit," Fong muttered with a shake of his head while riffling through his school bag and pulling out paper tissues, handling them to Ohm so that he could apply pressure to his bloody lip.

"As if you're such a saint," Peuk snickered. "They were actually going to leave peacefully but then you had to and grab that guy's shirt and rip it." Peuk laughed obnoxiously.

"I just wanted to make sure they heard our apology. Who knows, maybe we'll go to the same university, I didn't want to leave anything unresolved," Fong muttered, eyes averted. But instead he had accidentally gotten them into more trouble than planned.

"This is pure gold!" Tine exclaimed, eyes alight with mirth just as he burst into a melodic laugh that echoed throughout the school grounds, Ohm and Peuk joining him as the guys chuckled at Fong's sheepish expression.

But just then the warning bell rang, signaling that they had just five minutes left to get their asses to the first block.

"Oh, shit! Hurry up," one of the guys spluttered as they hustled over the school grounds, hauling a wheezing Tine along with them. No man shall be left behind.

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It was a freshman orientation night out at a local pub. Supposedly, it was going to be an alcohol free event because of the collaboration with the students' union but it seemed that the joint was not especially concerned with sticking to the rules. More than half of the students present were already pleasantly buzzed and the dimly lit bar was bubbling with excited, young energy as laughter and sporadic screams were drowned out by the loud music blaring from the speakers.

Tine, on the other hand, was not really in the mood for any partying. But his faithful gang of friends was not up for leaving him to wallow in his own misery in an empty dorm room. Tine did have a tendency to overthink so it was better for everyone not to leave him alone when he was sad, since things only tended to escalate – fast. So they had desperately dragged his mopey ass out to the freshman event, which promised shallow entertainment in the form of a snazzy quiz, while a couple of bands from the university's music club would take over the stage later into the evening.