stop this world [2/?]

[jecca-o9.livejournal.com]

stop this world [2/?]
PG; HS!AU
2,045 words
He comes in at 7 o'clock and 5 minutes in the morning
Interested? Watch pusong_kahon for updates.

notes I like comments. :D No seriously, tell me what you think.
_{I originally planned for this to have 10 chapters, but I'm writing chapter 8 now and the story is not where I expected it to be at chapter 8 :| So yeah, it's going to be longer than I originally expected. I hope you guys are still interested. :)}


Previous Prologue | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19

CHAPTER TWO

Kibum rushed to his classroom, hurriedly bowing to his teacher and ignoring her frown at his lateness. He sat down and poked Minho while their teacher called attendance. Minho ignored him in favor of reading his Algebra textbook. Kibum felt like bursting if he didn't tell anyone what had happened, so he poked Minho again, harder this time. Minho winced and shot him a dirty look.

"He. looked. at. me." Kibum hissed, elbow leaning on the edge of his table.

Minho appeared disinterested. Kibum was never one to give up a good story, so he said a notch louder.

"He looked at ME, Minho-yah, He looked at me and he waved. HE WAVED AT ME!"

The whole class was looking at him now. Their teacher was frowning. She pushed her glasses up her nose.

"Is there something you'd like to share with the class, Kibum-sshi?"

Kibum sunk a little in his chair, before sitting up straight and smiling, "Nothing. I'm sorry, Ma'm, it won't happen again."

The teacher blinked at him. A few of the girls in class giggled.

"It better not." She said and resumed calling roll.

Kibum kicked Minho, who was grinning, under the table.



Unfortunately for Kibum, he didn't have a chance to talk until lunch. The hallway was crowded with students waiting for their friends, or heading to the cafeteria. Minho and Kibum made their way past the sea of students.

"Did he introduce himself?" Minho asked, adjusting the strap of his backpack.

"No," Kibum groaned. "But he smiled. And he waved. That means he likes me, right?"

"Did you introduce yourself?"

"No," Kibum said again. Minho cocked an eyebrow at him. He narrowly avoided hitting a boy headed in the other direction.

"I got shy, okay?" Kibum mumbled, favoring the floor instead of Minho's eyes. He tugged on his hair.

Minho stopped walking. Kibum turned, opened his mouth to tell him to hurry up--

"You're actually capable of being shy?" Minho said, a look of disbelief on his face. The corners of his mouth were twitching.

Kibum eyes narrowed into slits. "Yah, stop mocking me and start walking. We'll have a hard time finding seats at the restaurant."

Minho thought of saying, 'Was he so good looking that you lost all your vocabulary?' or 'Finally, someone who can shut you up', but he thought of the consequences, and decided they were not pretty (the first one was an extensive analysis of Jonghyun's features coupled with some gushing, and saying the second would lead to a screeching Kibum), so he kept his mouth shut and resumed walking.



They were seated comfortably at the corner of the restaurant (Kibum had come to think of it as their spot) when Jonghyun and Smiley Friend entered. They scanned the restaurant, obviously looking for something. Jonghyun's friend nudged his side and pointed discreetly in their direction. Jonghyun glanced at their table and Kibum quickly averted his eyes.

"Huh. They pointed at our table," Minho said, stating the obvious.

Kibum picked up a fry and started eating it while watching the pair out of the corner of his eye. They were talking. Jonghyun shrugged and the other one sighed. He headed over to the counter. Jonghyun stood at the doorway biting his lip, glanced at their table, and then headed for the counter too. They seemed to continue their discussion.

Jonghyun's friend looked over at them. He blushed when he saw them both looking at him and went back to talking to Jonghyun.

"He didn't wave at you this time." Minho said, crumpling the paper his burger came in.

Kibum sulked.



The next morning, Kibum watched out of the corner of his eye as Jonghyun removed his books from his locker and tossed them into his bag. He ran his hand through his hair, and slammed his locker door shut. Kibum went back to getting his books out of his locker.

"Hey," he heard a voice say, and he looked up. Jonghyun was looking at him and smiling.

"H-hi," Kibum stammered, caught by surprise. He groaned mentally.

"I'm Kim Jonghyun," Jonghyun held his hand out.

"I know." Kibum couldn't stop himself from saying out loud.

"What?" Jonghyun asked, eyebrows shooting up.

"I mean, I don't know. Don't think I'm spying on you or anything, I--" Jonghyun looked confused and Kibum stopped rambling. He tried to quell the butterflies in his stomach. He took a deep breath before saying, "I mean, hi. I'm Kim Kibum."

He shook Jonghyun's hand. The butterflies multiplied.

Jonghyun grinned at him, "Nice meeting you, Kibum." He started walking backwards, lifting his arm up in goodbye. "I'll see you around."

What Kibum had wanted to say was, 'Looking forward to it,' and give one of his grins, but he found that he could only stutter an "Okay," as he leaned against his locker while the bell for first period rung.



The restaurant was packed with students, as always. At the table in a corner, two boys in the public school uniform across the street were talking.

"It was so embarrassing," Kibum muttered, hiding his head on Minho's shoulder. Minho snorted, torn between wanting to comfort his obviously insane friend with possible dissociative identity disorder or laughing. He settled for winding his arm around Kibum instead and patting his shoulder.

Kibum groaned and gave him an accusing, "You're no help at all." As if it was all his fault.

Minho opened his mouth to answer but closed it again when he noticed Jonghyun and Smiley Friend enter the restaurant. He poked Kibum instead and motioned to the doorway. Like last time, the two seemed to be looking for something.

Unlike last time, however, the two headed straight for their table as soon as they saw them.

"Hey," Jonghyun said, hand running through his hair. He flashed a smile. "Kibum."

"Hi," Kibum said, reservedly. He looked at the table before looking at Jonghyun. Minho looked at him, lips twitching in amusement. Minho felt like he entered a parallel universe, one where Kibum didn't talk.

Jonghyun grinned. "This is my friend, Jinki." He motioned to his friend, and Minho knew Kibum was vaguely disappointed that he couldn't call him Smiley Friend anymore.

"Do you mind if we sit here?"

Kibum shook his head. Minho was growing more amused at Kibum's unnatural silence by the second. The two pulled up chairs, and Jinki turned to him and flashed a blinding smile. "Hi, I didn't catch your name."

Minho bowed politely and introduced himself. It was a little awkward. The age gap (Jonghyun and Jinki were their hyungs, which meant they had to treat them respectfully) accounted for that, and the fact that they all just met for the first time. And possibly the fact that Kibum, who wasn't exactly Kibum at the moment, had a crush on one of them.

They managed to find common ground by talking about their classes and teachers. Jinki offered them advice on how to get good grades on which teachers, and Jonghyun told them which ones could be fooled with enough aegyo.



"That was weird," Minho said on their walk home after school. "They seem nice, though." He put his arm around Kibum, "You've finally met someone who can shut you up."

Kibum shoved him away, groaning. "I can't talk when I'm around him," He gave a dramatic sigh, hand on his chest. "It must be love."

Minho rolled his eyes. Kibum saw the action and stuck his tongue out at him. Minho laughed. "Seriously, Kibum. It's weird."

"What's weird?"

"You, not talking. It's not...” Minho paused, looking at Kibum out of the corner of his eye. "..You." It was a simple statement really, but to both of them it meant so much.

"Well, I can't help it! Words die in my throat and I feel like the world stops whenever he looks at me." Kibum said, a little too quickly. He was kind of in love with this idea.

Minho was silent for a moment, before he said, "That's sweet. And kind of gross."

Kibum shot him a dirty look and sped up. The sun was starting to set, bathing the street in a beautiful orange glow. Other kids were walking home from school, and there were a couple of toddlers were playing in their yards.

"Is it really weird?" Kibum asked when Minho finally caught up to him, voice low and unsure. He smoothed his hair down.

"Yes," Minho knocked into his shoulder gently. "If you keep acting like that, then what were the past couple of years for? It's not you."

"Hmm," Kibum said, looking at the sky.



"I invited them to eat lunch again with us today," Kibum announced as he carefully placed his designer bag on his seat. The classroom was filled with the students' early morning chatter, and the hurried scratches of pencil on paper, courtesy of those copying homework. Kibum had a small grin on his face. Jonghyun had looked more than surprised to see a confident and talkative Kibum that morning. It was a complete 360 from the Kibum he met earlier.

Minho looked up from his book to raise his eyebrow at him.

"You were right. How will he fall for me if I don't show him my fabulous self?" Kibum said, hand on his hip.

Minho was going to say, 'that's not what I meant' but Kibum sauntered off to talk to one of the girls in class. Minho sighed and returned to his book. Lunch couldn't come soon enough.



Jinki asked Kibum if he was a vegetarian. Kibum had only been eating salad for the two days that they've been eating together. Minho cringed as soon as he heard the innocent question because he knew it wasn't going to be pretty.

It wasn't.

Kibum started with how fattening each burger was. And then he started to talk in detail about how fast food chains mutate cows--make them nice and fat--before mutilating them to make them into consumable food. Minho's heard this a couple of times before; he tuned Kibum out and looked at the other twos reactions instead. Jonghyun's eyes widened, mouth agape. He dropped his burger on his tray. Jinki had turned a nasty shade of green, a shocked look on his face. Minho didn't know if the shock was because of Kibum's sudden talkativeness or the topic at hand. It was probably both.

Kibum finished his tirade and asked them if they saw the new girl group dance that came out last night, switching topics easily. Jonghyun had recovered some and replied the affirmative, biting into his burger, all of Kibum's long speech forgotten. Minho looked over at Jinki who looked like he was having an inner battle with himself whether to eat the food or not.

"Are you okay?" Minho asked. Jinki jumped a little, surprised, and accidentally knocked over his drink. Minho was able to push his chair away from the table, but not fast enough. His left pants leg was covered with the cola.

"I'm so sorry," Jinki said, grabbing some napkins from the table. His face was red.

"It's okay," Minho said quietly, taking the napkins from Jinki as the other boy attempted to wipe him off.

Jonghyun was laughing, and Kibum looked grossed out at the stain on Minho's slacks. It registered that Jonghyun was singing something under his breath that made Jinki flush even harder.

"What's that?" Kibum asked, cocking his head to the side.

Jonghyun grinned and sang it again. "It's the Jinki Condition. He's like that a lot." He motioned to the spilt drink on the table and Minho's pants. "It's incurable," Jonghyun said seriously.

"I am so sorry," Jinki said again, hiding his face in his hands.



A week had passed and the four slowly fell into a routine of meeting up for lunch. Most of the time, it passed without much accident. Once, Minho saw Jinki signaling to Jonghyun when Jonghyun and Kibum were talking. Jonghyun shook his head slightly at Jinki, mouthed 'not now' while Kibum was poking at something in his bag. He continued the conversation with Kibum, a big smile on his face. Minho shrugged and thought it was nothing.

It was two months later when he realized how wrong he was.