Seclusion was something few sought comfort in. Others often strayed from the concept and the thought of being lonely and alone, but sometimes odd flowers like to bloom in places others would not. If people were to describe Byun Baekhyun, class introvert and isolationist, "flower" would've been the last thing on their mind if asked what they thought of the boy. Rather than a flower, they would have most likely described him as a weed, stubbornly sprouting through the cracks of concrete, which could've symbolized the natural norm of society.
It wasn't as though Baekhyun was weird in a physical sense. Many have admitted that if he wasn't so into the alternative, Byun Baekhyun would actually pass as the most wanted guy around. However, Baekhyun wasn't one to conform. He didn't care if the girls complained about barely seeing his eyes when he talked to them (if he really needed to). It wasn't his problem, nor should they have cared so much.
In a mental sense, Baekhyun wasn't stupid. Being an outcast for his brains was not a primary reason. In ranks, he was average. If he truly wanted, he could've climbed up the rank ladder and perhaps secured a spot in the top ten, but frankly, he didn't care for his name being grouped next to other people who he didn't care about either.
Baekhyun didn't care about a lot of things. Everything around him was like a dull, unsharpened pencil, and he hated wooden pencils that needed to be sharpened. Baekhyun used mechanical.
If people were countries, Baekhyun was like the United States after the First World War: an isolationist. Everyone else could fight over what country they represented whether it'd Britain, France, or Russia. Baekhyun didn't care. They were all European countries. He was the United States. He wanted nothing to do with them.
He doesn't necessarily understand when he started closing himself off to other people, but before he knew it, Baekhyun was sitting by himself during meals with nothing but his music and cellphone to keep him company. Oddly enough, he liked it that way.
Nobody really tried to talk to him unless they had no other choice, because although he wasn't close and intimate with any of them, he'd sometimes agree to help them with math or science. His grades in those subjects said "dumb", but everyone knew it was only because Baekhyun never cared to do any of the assignments or put any effort in the tests.
Byun Baekhyun actually had brains, but he didn't care to share that fact.
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Why anybody would even take an interest in him, Baekhyun would never understand.
As he sat in the corner of the classroom alone, listening to his phone with his buds plugged in his ears during a passing break, a large shadow loomed over him. For a while, Baekhyun didn't even notice. It took a hand tapping on his shoulder to snap his attention up.
The sight that stood before him caught him off guard. He had seen the individual around school often since it wasn't hard to miss him for his size and Baekhyun knew that he was a basketball player just from all the eavesdropping that he did. Other than that, Baekhyun couldn't figure out what purpose the giant beanstalk had with him. If he was like everyone else, Baekhyun had the idea.
"Math or science?" he said platonically as he only bothered to take one of his ear buds out of his ear.
"Date."
Blanking out for a second, Baekhyun took a moment to render what the giant could've meant. "Date..." he repeatively muttered. "It's a Thursday—"
"That's not what I meant," the giant jock said.
Baekhyun kind of wanted to punch the grin off the male's face. Asshole probably thinks he's being funny, he thought. Feeling as though it was just a "joke" hosted by a dusty joker, Baekhyun rolled his eyes as he turned his attention back to his cellphone. He put his ear bud back in and jacked the volume back higher.
He assumed that the giant was still trying to crack jokes because although Baekhyun had gone to ignoring him, the male's deep alto voice could still be somewhat heard through the screaming music in Baekhyun's ears. When the muffled voice of the giant stopped, Baekhyun silently thanked the gods above and waited patiently for the male to silently remove himself from Baekhyun's space bubble. However, the shadow over him never left.
His eyes were on the table as he idled with his cellphone, but then the giant's hand slipped into his view as he slide a note to the introvert.
I want to go on a date with you, it read.
"No." The answer came immediately. "Please go away," Baekhyun added as he pushed the note away.
A few seconds later, he could still see the giant standing over him, until suddenly, a hand came down and gently tugged his left ear bud out. "I'm Park Chanyeol," the male introduced. "I'm on the basketball team."
As Park Chanyeol introduced himself, Baekhyun tuned him out, internally gagging at what he thought was the basketball jock trying to brag his way into a great first impression. And although he was sort of interested in what the guy had to say, overall, the amount of care Baekhyun had for the joke that kept dragging on was bland and dry.
In the middle of the giant's hearty introduction, Baekhyun looked away and stood up, halting Chanyeol from continuing on. When the jock's smile faltered for a moment to awkwardly ask the brunet where he was going, Baekhyun made no response, promptly took his phone and left the classroom.
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After the break confession, Baekhyun tried to recede back towards himself. It wasn't really every day that he got confessed to, but in the end, he already knew it was one of those things where people dared one another to confess to the odd man out of the crowd. It wasn't the nicest thing to do and it was part of the reason why Baekhyun hated school more than Hell itself. And as he tried to repress the event that had happened back in the classroom to the back of his heavy mind, he changed the song on his phone and slipped back into wilful indifference.
Prior to his knock in with the giant raven-haired basketball player, Baekhyun never paid much attention to the giant enough to actually notice him. However, ever since then, he started taking note of the male more than he would have liked. In the hallways where he would sometimes sit against the wall and play online checkers with strangers, he began to see the giant frequent the area as he talked and conversed with boys and girls alike.
Chanyeol was a social butterfly, but what Baekhyun couldn't understand was why he couldn't be a social butterfly in other areas where he, Byun Baekhyun, was not present. All too often had Baekhyun felt himself being paranoid and he hated that. As much as he enjoyed focusing on himself, he hated the feeling of paranoia just for the fact that it emphasized the selfishness in him that thought that all of a sudden, the entire universe began to revolve around him.
He had let the hallway events slide. For all he knew, the jock could have always been there prior to his confession and Baekhyun (always busy on his phone) just never noticed.
The introvert kind of wished he'd stop noticing the giant. By the third time that he accidentally made eye contact with Park Chanyeol, he decided to relocate, moving to the stairs where people rarely ventured to as opposed to the hallways during class breaks.
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There weren't many people that Baekhyun considered as "friends", but there was Kyungsoo. The fact that they were friends was sort of comedic in the sense that people often thought they were the polar opposites of one another, but in reality, Kyungsoo was just as pessimistic and hateful of everyone around him as Baekhyun was. The student body president was the best damn actor the brunet had the best luck of ever befriending.
When Baekhyun told the student body president elect about the basketball player's confession two weeks later as they sat on the rooftop, the stone faced boy only snorted as he finished off his cigarette. "That's fucking lame."
"You think he's on some sort of drug?" Baekhyun said, contributing to the conversation as he looked onto nothing, but the sky line.
"No, but he did that shit on a bet," Kyungsoo said surely as he diminished the butt of the cigarette by smashing the end on the concrete. "I wouldn't have fallen for it either."
"No one has a good sense of humor around this school."
"Everything's either bullshit or drama," Kyungsoo added, pulling a slice of gum out from one of his back pockets. "Then there's the occasional prank by the immature ones. It's fucking ridiculous."
"I hate this god damn school, Kyungsoo..."
"I fucking hate this shit hole, too."
Baekhyun laughed at the irony. "Why're you student body president again?"
"So another shit hole will accept my ass into their establishment and I can get a shitty degree and get a shitty job and live a shitty life." The boy chewed on his gum for a moment before turning his head and blowing in Baekhyun's face. "Can you tell I smoked?"
"No."
"Alright then," Kyungsoo sighed as he pushed himself up from the ground and started patting away any possible dirt on his pants. "I have to go back to the student government room since there's going to be a meeting about the complaints from students this week. Fuck my life and fuck all these people who can't fucking resolve their issues with each other without taking up my time."
"I'll see you later then," Baekhyun said, raising a hand in farewell.
"Are you going to go home yet?" the male asked as he fixed his appearance. "School's over. I don't know why you'd want to waste your time here when you have a choice."
"I don't feel like going home yet," Baekhyun shrugged.
"You want a cigarette to pass the time, then?" Kyungsoo offered.
Shaking his head, Baekhyun kindly refused. "I don't smoke."
"Good, because I don't have any on me anymore," Kyungsoo grinned. When he finished, he stuck his hands in his pockets. "I'll see you around."
"Okay."
After Kyungsoo left him alone, Baekhyun let his eyelids close and only meant to rest his eyes for a short while. The sudden arms of Sleep came onto him without warning, wrapping him with desires to rest permanently for an extended period of time. The pleasant feeling of the warm weather underneath the cool shadow of the wall he was leaning against inevitably lulled him to sleep and the next thing that Baekhyun knew, he was waking up to the depleting orange sunset.
Immediately, he checked to see if any part of his skin stung from any possible sun burn. When it seemed as though everything was in the clear, Baekhyun let out a breath of relief before he staggered upright off the ground. Grabbing his cellphone, he checked and found that it had died. Groggily, Baekhyun muttered a curse as he stuck his phone in his back pocket and carefully coiled his headphones and putting it in his front pocket.
The school was eerie when there wasn't a single human present. Even Baekhyun was slightly uncomfortable with the ghostly silence of the building as he made his way through hallways and stairs. Unable to get into the classroom where he had left his bag, Baekhyun decided to leave everything for the next day. To him, it wasn't as though it was going to go anywhere.
The brunet went about exiting the large building with his arms folded, feeling a slight chill running though his body. As he passed by clocks on the walls, he found that it was nearly six-fifty in the evening.
With the entire school feeling as though it was an isolated desert, Baekhyun found himself becoming accustomed to the eeriness and hollow feeling of his environment after a while. Perhaps it was because he had retreated to the new norm that his entire being practically clawed for death when a large hand touched him on the shoulder just as he reached the front of the school gates.
While the world was covered in darkness, anyone and everything seemed to pose as a threat. The street lights along the road and the ones perched above the gates only gave everything a creepy, skin tingling effect that Baekhyun wasn't necessarily fond of. When he felt the hand, he had jumped off to the side out of reflex, his heart ready to jump straight through his skin and leave the rest of his body for dead.
Under the dim, yellow lights, Baekhyun had issues overcoming an obstacle of getting his eyes to focus and recognize the figure that had snuck up on him. It wasn't until he heard the deep voice through his tuned out ears that Baekhyun faintly remembered who the voice belonged to. When it came onto him that it was the basketball player from weeks ago, he felt his shoulders release tension before he let out a quick breath then turning on his heel and resume walking off school grounds.
It didn't take long, however, for the long legged player to catch up to him despite the large duffle bag that he was carrying on his shoulder. Baekhyun hated the fact that his cellphone was dead since it disabled him from genuinely being too busy to care. Just as he felt the giant approaching, he reached into his pocket and took out his headphones, slipping the buds in his ears while keeping the plug in his pants, preparing to pretend as though he couldn't hear.
As the jock finally caught up, Baekhyun hugged himself even tighter to protect himself from the night air, but to also make it clear that all he needed was himself, not a school athlete following him all the way to the bus stop two blocks down. But when the two of them began to fall into step together, Baekhyun closed his eyes for more than a second and a fraction of a second as he felt a foreboding life error about to happen: a conversation.
"I tried calling out to you a few times, but I don't think you heard me."
Opening his eyes, Baekhyun kept his goal at hand, intent on focusing on getting to the bus stop. He didn't respond or make a comment to what the giant had said. Instead, he tried to speed up his pace, but decided he didn't like how the subtle wind was hitting him harder than he would've liked, making him slightly colder than before. In the end, he kept at the same pace, deciding he could endure the latter's company for a while.
"What're you doing here so late? I was surprised to see you still at school. Practice kind of ended a little later than usual so that explains why I'm still here," the tall male said, laughing awkwardly as if he couldn't sense the fact that Baekhyun didn't want to talk to him. "I don't recall any other after school activities going on besides basketball. Were you being a creeper lurking around school at night?"
The joke ran dry and Baekhyun didn't find the male to be amusing. Sparing the tall giant a blank look, Baekhyun hoped that his cold face would've gotten the message through. With all the people that he had ever encountered, he found that if he stared at them with a blank look, his eyeliner thick eyes would be interpreted in a negative way, often letting people know to fuck off, henceforth leaving Baekhyun off to himself.
The basketball player was a different story. Although sensing Baekhyun's unwillingness to converse with him, Park Chanyeol continued on with the one sided conversation he was having. "Alright. I get that you don't want to talk to me," the giant said, inserting his hands in the front pockets of his basketball shorts.
Turning his head to the left and giving the male another look once again, Baekhyun met the giant's eyes, barely seeing them underneath the street lights. His face softened, receding from the coldness of the previous expression.
"To be honest," Chanyeol said, looking up at the gradually darkening sky, "I don't know what I'm doing here walking with you. My house is in the opposite direction."
Baekhyun withheld the desire to scoff in the male's face, but he succeeded in retaining himself.
"I guess I just wanted...I don't know, actually." The brunet watched as the player flipped his damp hair (probably from showering in the locker room) and looked back at him. "I just saw you and felt compelled to come over?"
Drawing his eyes down, Baekhyun turned his eyes away.
"I don't know if you remember, but I'm Park Chanyeol," the giant said, reintroducing himself. "You kind of rejected me a few weeks ago. Um, I don't exactly know what else to say."
Silently, Baekhyun made up a mental response that involved telling the male to say nothing else and walk the other way. Just as he was about to cross the street, he felt Park Chanyeol touch his shoulder and turning him around.
"Maybe—I'm not sure—but I think you were under the impression that I might've been joking around when I came up to you that day," he said very seriously. "I don't know what I did to make myself come off that way, but I didn't mean it. I was being completely serious. I do like you."
Baekhyun's lips slightly hung open. Picking up his composure, he quickly shut it. He tried to turn back forward towards the bus stop on the other side, but Chanyeol seemed persistent to say what he felt like he needed to be out in the open.
"I know you're not listening to anything. I saw your phone in your back pocket," he said, giving Baekhyun a look that reminded the brunet of an adult who was subtly lecturing a child. "I don't know what you were doing so late at school, but I'm kind of glad because here we are. Again, in case you didn't get it the first or second time around, I'm Park Chanyeol. I know that you're Byun Baekhyun, just to let you know that I'm not mistaking you for someone else."
The shorter male remained platonic although it was clear that he was giving the giant his attention. After taking a pause, Chanyeol continued, letting go of Baekhyun's shoulder when he was sure that the latter wouldn't run off in the middle of his words once again.
"When I asked you out, I wasn't joking around. No one's forcing me to do it," Chanyeol adamantly insisted, which Baekhyun was still very doubtful on. "I should've just asked you out verbally rather than write it out on a piece of paper," he muttered. "Maybe that's why you left. I don't know. If that is the reason, then I'm sorry, but like I said, I'm serious."
After a while and still no response, Chanyeol furrowed his brows as he lifted his arm to his nose. "Do I still stink?" he asked, thinking that Baekhyun's lack of interaction with him had something to do with his body's smell.
He doesn't know why, but Baekhyun squeaked out a sound. It would have been a short laugh if he hadn't caught himself a fraction of a second too late, ending with a cut-off "heh". His face twitched and Chanyeol accidentally saw the curve of his mouth twist upwards before the brunet forced his face to stay down.
Before Chanyeol could take his new grasp of hope and play on the crack of Baekhyun's introverted armor, the bus arrived on the other side of the street. Both of them looked at the lit up vehicle and after a second, Baekhyun looked back at the giant and blinked.
"The bus is here."
Chanyeol felt himself subtly smiling, thinking about how of all the things that the brunet could've said on their short walk together, he had to say something obvious just before going their separate ways. Baekhyun started walking across the street after signalling to the driver that he was planning on getting on and Chanyeol watched as Baekhyun's black figure enlarge the distance between them. But as the brunet was reaching the middle of the road, he took off his head phones and looked back at the basketball jock.
"I'm not really your type," he said in the most casual tone of voice that Chanyeol had ever heard, making it as though the smaller male was completely brushing him off.
However, as the athlete watched the punk kid who everyone had socially outcasted for being too indifferent and introverted, he grinned, thinking about how ridiculous it was for the brunet to say that he wasn't the basketball player's type.