Iahn woke up to someone shouting his name and it took a few seconds to remember where he was before he heard the staircase thumping and scrambled to get down.

 

He fell trying to get down and landed on the floor in front of his closet just as his bedroom door swung open to reveal an irritated Yuen glaring down at him.

 

“The Hell are you doing on the floor?”

 

Yuen noticed Iahn was wearing the same thing as yesterday but there was white powdery stuff all over his shoulder, and dust on his knees, but he disregarded it because he honestly doesn't give a shit.

 

“If you’re not ready in 5 minutes, I’m leaving without you.” Yuen slammed the door as he left the room and Iahn stared at it, listening to his steps retreat down the hall until Iahn heard the stairs again.

 

Setting aside the fact that hearing Yuen’s steps make noise was sort of disturbing, Iahn climbed up from the ground and glanced at the time which sent him into a frenzy of trying to get ready. He had to skip a few things in his routine but by the time Yuen had opened the garage, Iahn flung himself into the passenger seat and put his shoes and jacket on in the car just as the biting cold sent a shiver down his spine and goosebumps on his arms.

 

By the time they had reached school it warmed up a bit, but the morning was always cold now and Iahn was just waiting for the day he woke up to frost on his window. It was already cold enough that going without a jacket was not an option unless you were a cold-resistant, hot-blooded person. Which he was not.

 

After reaching school, Yuen didn’t give another thought to Iahn until after lunchtime when he was leaving the cafeteria.

 

He wasn’t looking for him, he just heard Iahn’s name and glanced over automatically.

 

Normally you wouldn’t be able to find someone in these hallways, but the middle schoolers were much shorter than the high schoolers and went down a different hallway, so even though Yuen wasn’t the tallest, standing at the edge of the crowd between the two groups, it was easy to spot the slightly taller Iahn among his peers.

 

He wasn’t the tallest middle schooler, but he was distinguishable among those around him, mainly because he was near the bathroom and the other students had already moved past, aside from two, who were dragging him to the bathroom by the arms and shoulders.

 

Iahn staggered as he had been caught unaware by the two, whom Yuen assumed were his friends.

 

The three disappeared into the bathroom and Yuen turned back to his own friends, going with the tide of students heading back to their classrooms before the ending lunch bell rings.

 

The hallways weren’t packed like sardines, but they couldn’t be considered sparse either. Most people moved in small packs and stood around the hall like spots on a cow, creating a channel that had to be navigated by those who were moving faster or simply trying to get past groups who were standing still.

 

It gave Yuen a headache, but he walked at the back corner of his group, so he didn’t have to spearhead the way and just had to follow along. It was easier for their group usually because some people would notice them right away and move, but there were also a lot of people who talked to them as they passed and some bolder students who would even directly block their way to talk to them.

 

Yuen hated it.

 

He would prefer to be left alone, and he would prefer their group to be left alone as well, but that wasn’t gonna happen. Most of his friends were inexplicably extroverts and enjoyed being popular. They liked to talk to other people and had a lot of pseudo-friends outside their little core group. Allen, Casey, and Andy were helpful people so they would stop when someone wanted to talk to them which would either stop their whole group for a minute — because it was a tacit agreement that they didn’t leave each other behind — or that new person would end up walking with them while they talked, which meant there were even more people around.

 

Yuen ignored everyone but his friends, so it was bothersome when other people tagged along. He had never been a fan of people, he chose his friends carefully and was easily irritated, but that didn’t mean he would stop his friends from having other friends or deliberately get in their way. Parker liked having other friends too and would stop to talk to people sometimes, so Yuen would tolerate it and listen and occasionally say a few words.

 

To this day, he doesn’t know how he, the only introvert in the group, wound up with so many extroverted friends. Allen and Andy were ambiverts so he was closest with them and thankfully they would get tired of talking to people unlike the others, so they never stopped for too long. If the conversation would take more than a few sentences the two would usually just text the person later instead of conversing in the crowded hallway.

 

The most troublesome was when someone bold would try to talk to him. Yuen wasn’t rude enough to ignore someone who came straight up to him, he usually just relied on his leave-me-alone atmosphere to dissuade people, but if it didn’t work then it wasn’t going to. The conversations were always brief and usually, it was just someone who had to tell him something but sometimes it was someone who just wanted to talk to him or be “friends” and those were harder for him to deal with.

 

Thankfully, Parker and Andy would always stop with him and take the pressure off him by talking to the person and Yuen only had to answer when necessary.

 

Today wasn’t too bad, only three people stopped them, and their group split at the last hall to go to their own afternoon classes in pairs of two or three.

 

After school, Yuen, Shi, and Parker waited by the car a little longer than usual for Iahn. When he finally came out, they got in the car as he was walking across the parking lot.

 

When Iahn got in, instead of listening to them like he normally would, he kept his head down and leaned against the window, staring outside with his body shifted away from Shi.

 

He looked tired and it was the same behavior that Yuen did when he was tired and didn’t want to talk, so Shi and Parker easily took the hint without offense, and let the kid be for today, but Yuen glanced in the rearview and narrowed his eyes.

 

It’s not unusual for the kid to keep his head down, but throughout the car ride, Yuen grew more and more suspicious. Call it a gut feeling, but he found it very odd that Iahn wouldn’t turn his head even a little bit. He was extremely still whenever Yuen looked at him, but his eyes weren’t closed — at least the one he could see — so he wasn’t trying to fall asleep.

Yuen didn’t normally pay this much attention to what he did, but something felt… off.

 

When they got to the house, Iahn got out of the car immediately and was the first to head inside instead of lagging behind the three like he usually did.

 

Iahn’s luck was abysmal today, as he barely made it through the door out of the kitchen into the front hallway beside the staircase before Yuen’s irritated voice stopped him dead in his tracks, “Hey.”

 

The rest of Yuen’s friends passed behind him as they came in from the garage after having parked outside in their usual spots and closed the garage door behind them before piling through the kitchen, intending to go through the open dining room to the living room as usual, but hearing Yuen willingly speak to his step-brother made a few of them stop out of curiosity, though with all three rooms connected, everyone could hear from where they were; whether it was the kitchen, dining room, or living room.

 

Yuen’s eyes narrowed at Iahn’s back.

 

Iahn didn’t turn around when he was called, and if he wasn’t before, now Yuen was certain he was hiding something.

 

“Turn around.”

 

Iahn didn’t turn around right away, his hands fidgeting with his jacket sleeves, clenching, and unclenching as he tried to think but he knew Yuen would get impatient within the few seconds he had to think about it, so he convinced himself that Yuen probably just wanted to say something to him and wouldn’t care at all about what he was doing, he might not even notice.

 

With that thought, he turned around slowly, keeping his head down and eyes trained on the floor, trying not to give himself away, but as stated before, luck really wasn’t on his side today.

 

He had turned around but kept his eyes down and his head turned slightly and the attempt to not be conspicuous backfired greatly, as Yuen’s gaze was immediately drawn to the side of his head that he was trying so hard to hide.

 

Iahn had little time to react and was ultimately startled by Yuen walking towards him.

 

A pale hand plopped on top of his head and a moment later, Iahn’s head was forcibly turned with no room for resistance.

 

In a moment of panic, Iahn tried to get away from him but it was too late. Yuen had already seen it and him trying to pull away only made Yuen grab his chin with an angry scowl, tilting the side of his face into complete view.

Yuen’s eyes bore into Iahn’s face, on his jaw was a bruise the size of a fist that climbed halfway up his cheek and had swelled to the point where it looked like he had two cheeks layered on top of one another.

 

Iahn grimaced. He had done so well hiding it because he didn’t want to get in trouble, but he’s done for now.

 

Never mind the bruise on his cheek, the one on his back is much bigger and made his spine hurt. He’d managed to hide his jaw from the teacher by pretending to lean on his hand all afternoon and then fleeing class by tucking his chin. It was harder to hide it in the car, but he didn’t think he would be caught right before he could get to the stairs.

 

If Yuen tells Mr. Min that he got into a fight at school… The thought brought a cold sweat to his aching back just thinking about how much trouble he was going to be in.

 

The second the bruise came into Yuen’s line of sight, he locked onto it and his glare could only be described as furious.

 

“What the Hell happened to your face?”

---

 

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