"What do you think I should do?" Bada asks in a pitiful sounding voice which must always make his brother smile as indulgently as this.
"In all honesty, I think the best thing is to just ignore it."
Great to find out all his secrets have been spilled in pursuit of the worst, most basic and irrelevant advice possible.
"Bada, you need to revoke his permission to know these things right now."
"Why?" Bada asks. The fact that he sounds genuinely baffled is painful. Taehyeon will need to suck up his pride and his reluctance to stand up for himself.
"You aren't being helpful enough for me to be comfortable with you knowing so much about me," Taehyeon says to a bewildered looking Haneul.
"Why not? I think I am your best bet at working out how to deal with this situation."
"How? Did you like a stupid, handsome boy who wasn't worth it?"
"No," Haneul says easily, helping himself to a slice of apple. "I used to be a boy like that."
Taehyeon looks very seriously at Bada. This isn't going to affect their friendship, Taehyeon is determined to see that through. "I think I should go home. I'll see you at school tomorrow if you feel well enough."
What Taehyeon hadn't prepared himself for was Bada bursting into tears and begging him not to leave. Taehyeon doesn't start crying because of Haneul's glaring which is later claimed by the troublemaker in question; in an already delicate state, Taehyeon is vulnerable to things like the tears of his best friend who deserves the entire world.
After giving in, Taehyeon eats the takeaway Haneul orders and he seethes over the anecdotes of what life as a stupid, handsome, popular boy was like five years ago. Feeling very much like he's here under duress, Taehyeon makes sure to visibly portray his reluctance right up until bedtime when he discovers Taeri didn't bother to pack his razor amongst his other overnight toiletries.
"What do you need a razor for?" Bada asks whilst patting toner into his skin. After the day they've both had, Taehyeon doesn't bother pointing out this is the expensive toner Taeri bought him from duty-free as a birthday gift. Taehyeon reclaims the bottle and wonders whether he can at least manage to look presentable in the morning.
"I need to shave. How rough would I look with gross, patchy stubble sprouting out."
Bada smiles almost mysteriously like he is waiting for something else.
"What?"
"Where are you expecting stubble?" Bada asks with a chuckle. "On your face? At this age?"
"Yes?"
It takes a while for Bada to reconcile his question and Taehyeon's response. Flustered after knocking down bottles and containers, he haphazardly replaces them around the sink and says, "You're not being serious, are you? You already shave? Why did I not know this before? Can you actually grow a beard?"
"I've never tried," Taehyeon admits. "It wouldn't be a good one if I did. Like I said, it grows in patchy. Do you have any masks? If it is bad tomorrow, I'll have to pretend to have a cough."
There is no response from Bada who is pressing his face against the mirror and squinting.
"What's the matter?" Taehyeon asks. Bada turns to look at him with heartbreak in his eyes.
"I can't grow facial hair. I'm just hairless and stupid. Like a baby."
The lamentation itself isn't funny but Taehyeon can't help but laugh. If Bada hasn't started to grow awkward facial hair, he's the lucky one. This is no time to explain that much. The precious innocence Bada turns on him is too funny.
Taehyeon tries to approach the rest of the week with a positive outlook, or as close to positivity as he can manage. There are only two days left of school before the glamping trip next week. Whilst he wasn't totally looking forward to the school trip after the weird room assignments, he is relieved to get away from everything going on here.
There won't be any Eoleunjeol boys on the trip. Taehyeon can live in denial for the entire week. Woobin who?
The new boy finally got the right uniform for Jeonwon Metropolitan High School so Taehyeon doesn't immediately recognise him. Standing in the sports hall, Taehyeon glances over at the girls lined up on the other side in groups of their assigned rooms for the trip. Hyejin, Taeri, Jeongwon and Minjeong are chatting happily with Cha Jiyeon and Kang Gyuri from class 2. They're all having so much fun, as though nobody fell out with Minjeong in the first place.
Taehyeon peers around Bada and eyes the back of Dongmin's head. He's pure evil. He must be. The new kid who transferred from Eoleunjeol Technical College is standing behind Taehyeon. Somehow they've succeeded in remaining together as a room of just four people. One point of concern is how much shorter the new boy is compared to Taehyeon, Bada and Dongmin. It must look like there are only three of them from the other side of the sports hall. Even with Dongmin's popularity, they only look like losers. This new kid, with his Eoleunjeol dialect of not speaking aloud, is basically not here as far as anybody else is concerned. Except for Taehyeon. The only thing Taehyeon can think of is the fact that the boy standing behind him very possibly knows Woobin.
"Bada," Taehyeon whispers, "can you swap with me?"
"What, why?"
Taehyeon would rather not spell out his reasoning with the Eoleunjeol boy in earshot. "The light. It's getting in my eyes."
Bada fully turns to glare petulantly at Taehyeon. "And you want the light to get in my eyes?"
"No. You're taller than me so I don't think the light will hurt your eyes so much."
"I'm this much taller than you," Bada says, holding his thumb and index finger together.
"You don't need to be modest. You're super tall and handsome."
Bada turns to face forwards. From the back of his head, Taehyeon can tell that he's sulking. He's cute, at the best of times, but Taehyeon would prefer this wouldn't be to his own detriment. Taehyeon is suffering.
A gentle nudge against Taehyeon's back has him flinching and falling into Bada. None of the teachers seem to notice but Bada and Dongmin both turn to give Taehyeon dirty looks. He slips back to where he was standing and steels himself before turning to the boy standing behind him. Squinting at the boy's name tag, Taehyeon can only make out the fact the name is three syllables long. Not being able to see something this close is embarrassing. He might be better off actually doing his eye tests honestly instead of memorising the charts.
"Um…"
Taehyeon should get his mom to book him a hearing test too. The Eoleunjeol boy is speaking but Taehyeon can't hear a thing.
"We should listen to the teachers," Taehyeon whispers. He feels like he must be shouting because his voice is orders of magnitude louder than whatever he is responding to. "You can tell me after this."
"No," the boy says. Taehyeon wonders if he somehow fell into a different dimension because he absolutely can hear the boy now. "Do you want to try swapping with me? I'm shorter than you so it should be okay. Unless the light might get in your eyes if you stand here too."
There's nothing for it. He can't refuse without exposing his very obvious lie. The mention about being shorter is technically true but Taehyeon doubts it would make a difference in the case of real light glare. This boy isn't that short, he looks to be around the same height as Jeongwon and Minjeong but they both stand far taller than the average height of the girls in their school.
"That's kind of you, thank you," Taehyeon says quietly. He shuffles around and ends up at the back of the line.
Following whatever the teachers were saying proves to be difficult but Taehyeon can't claim to know what is actually distracting him. He simply can't focus on whatever information he is meant to be taking in. He knows it's serious because he can hear the tone of voice being used and he can see the familiar disdain his sister wears on her face when strangers ask for her help whenever she's off-duty.
Hoping that someone he's on relatively good terms with was listening, Taehyeon waits until each group has been sent off with a ream of paper. Taehyeon's aversion to listening was so great that he has no idea what is meant to happen now. He just follows Bada because he trusts his friend wouldn't steer him wrong.
Taehyeon ends up in a music practice room with Bada and the other two. When they're sitting in a loose circle on the floor, Taehyeon sees the boy sitting beside Dongmin is called Jeon Geonwoong. He looks a lot like someone who doesn't want to be here.
"I think the room leader should be Bada," Dongmin says with the sort of smile that usually gets girls to pretend to be annoyed at the fact they're letting him push into a queue. There aren't any girls around right now but Taehyeon is finding himself annoyed and he doesn't even know what is going on.
"What are we doing? We're picking a leader?"
Geonwoong nods. Taehyeon would have appreciated more context but he doesn't expect much more from an Eoleunjeol boy.
"Hurry up and vote," Dongmin prompts.
As much as Taehyeon wants to support Bada in every endeavour, Taehyeon is reluctant to give him a second vote.
"Did you even ask if Bada wants to be the leader? If it's a lot of responsibility—"
"Is there anybody else here who we'd all sacrifice ourselves for in a battle?" Dongmin asks, his hands clenched over his chest.
"That's a bit dramatic, don't you think?" Taehyeon points out.
"Are you sure you're Bada's best friend? Why aren't you supporting him to be a leader? Are you saying you wouldn't die for Bada?"
Taehyeon obviously would die for Bada. He wouldn't like to do it, but if the situation was unavoidable, Taehyeon would have to do it. There is just something about admitting that at Dongmin's behest which Taehyeon really doesn't like.
"He'd be very sad if I died," Taehyeon says. As though supporting Taehyeon's point, Bada pouts, the wrinkling of his chin enough to pluck at anybody's heartstrings.
"Doesn't the leader need to be in charge of telling people what to do?" Bada asks. "I don't want to do that. If any of you want to be in charge, I'll just listen to you."
Taehyeon pulls the stack of paper towards himself instead of getting upset about Bada not being sad about his hypothetical death. Apparently there are many more important things to see to.
"Wait, we need to sign up to the activities we all want to do as a group?" Taehyeon asks. This must have been part of what the teachers were explaining when he wasn't listening. Looking around the faces of the people he will be in a room with, it seems like this information is new to them too. Taehyeon isn't one to accuse other people of not listening, but he doesn't see things going totally smoothly if this is the level of attention they all pay to important details.
"Let's just go through all the activities we want to do and then we can decide on things like leaders or whatever," Taehyeon says. He has a pencil in his pocket and he tries to direct them all to make the decisions they need to make before handing these forms back in.