After getting a few paces away, Taehyeon realises that the girls following Minjun had fully latched onto Dongmin. What a relief. Minjun seems glad about it all too and he pulls Taehyeon over to a table. Taehyeon can't help but notice the two girls they end up sitting right next to. Minjun smiles like there is nothing to worry about and he reaches for Taehyeon's wrist to tap it lightly. As though he hadn't touched Taehyeon in the first place, Minjun's hands are occupied with his milk carton.
"Those girls are fine. They're my best friends. Kyungran and Nayoon."
"Hi—"
"Ignore them for now. I just want to talk to you," Minjun says.
"Wow," one of Minjun's friends says, pausing their conversation. "Rude."
"That kid is really good looking. He's tall too. Are you close? He called you a nickname so you must talk a lot. It would make more sense for you to like someone like him, right?"
"Alright," Minjun's other friend says, clearly not content to just ignore the two of them. "If you're going to be insecure like this you'll need to ask one of those weird girls from before to be your friend instead of me."
Minjun laughs bashfully and scratches the back of his head. "Am I being too weird right now?"
"Absolutely," both of the girls say. Minjun looks at Taehyeon and it's hard to tell whether this is an invitation for input. Minjun's friends take it upon themselves to answer for him. "He especially thinks you're being weird. He's probably already thinking that he should have written somebody else's name in his science book or whatever."
Taehyeon can't talk at all. This is the worst. He needs Bada to rescue him right now. Somebody arrives but not to rescue Taehyeon. Han Taeri, Taehyeon's deskmate and ex-school friend, sits next to one of Minjun's friends and is immediately fed a chunk of stir fried pork from each of them.
"What was happening with all of those girls walking around before?" Taeri chirps.
"That was me," Minjun says. "So many people wanted to sit with me today and there wasn't any room for Taehyeon. I asked somebody to move but nobody would. I decided to move so there was space for Taehyeon to sit at the table but everyone kept following me. But it all worked out well. They're gone now and I get to have lunch with Taehyeon."
"Your entire lunch is milk?" one of Minjun's friends asks. Minjun grins. The friend scoffs and climbs out of her seat to march up to the lunch queue.
"Thank you, Kyungran. I love you!" Minjun calls out. He doesn't get a response. He grins at Taehyeon and then seems to realise they literally only met today. "She's not my girlfriend or anything. We're just good friends. She was the one who said I should talk to you."
Taehyeon is never going to disagree with Bada ever again. He's right about everything.
"This idiot means that Kyungran told him to grow some balls and talk to you instead of daydreaming about you coming to talk to him some time."
This is more confusing. Taeri smiles encouragingly as though she is trustworthy. Taehyeon has no idea whether Minjun's friend herself is trustworthy. The thumbs-up she sends his way does nothing to clear things up. This is all stuff he should have avoided from the start.
"Okay," Taehyeon says, somewhere closer to trying to understand this despite himself, "what did you want to talk about?"
"What is having a boyfriend like?"
"I'm not sure I can help you out with that. I have only been in online relationships so I can't give you much information."
"Online?" Minjun asks with a grin. "How? Aren't you too young for those apps?"
Mortification stutters into a pained grimace once Taehyeon spots Bada walking around the dinner hall aimlessly. It is impossible to guess whether Taehyeon is messing this up as obviously as he thinks he is.
"Not that kind of online dating," Taehyeon wheezes. "I don't go on apps like that. I play this game called Dynasty of Destruction. I met a couple of guys on the game. We just sort of would hang out on voice chat and help each other out in the skirmish stages and things like that."
Minjun doesn't quite look like he understands but Minjun's friend has returned with his lunch and it seems a lot like Taeri and Minjun's two friends are laughing about something together.
"How did you meet on a game like that?" Minjun asks.
"I met one person when they were trying to recruit me to their guild. We just got talking and then we got on really well. We'd put each other's tags in our display names and things like that."
"Right. So what is Dynasty of Destruction? Like, how can you even think to date like that?"
"Well it's just one of those games. Just an RPG. It isn't very popular but I started playing it because I could convince my parents that I was doing history homework for about two minutes. I main as Ungnyeo because she's my favourite for the skirmishes. When you reach a certain battle XP she can transform back into a bear and unleash a frenzy—"
"Please shut up about that game," Bada says as he plonks himself down beside Taehyeon.
"Hi."
Bada smiles serenely at everyone in turn and says, "it is nice to meet you all. I am Kim Bada and I am here to look after Taehyeon."
The girls all introduce themselves including Taeri which is weird because she sits right next to Taehyeon in lessons and has met Bada many times before now. As for the others it is nice to know who is who. Kyungran is the one who fetched Minjun's lunch. Her hair is tied into a half up half down style, though there are some flyaway hairs deciding for themselves which they would rather be. There is something guarded about her smile but Taehyeon can't claim it makes her any less pretty. The other girl wearing a navy sweatband with her hair pulled into a messy side ponytail is Nayoon.
Nayoon is much freer with her smiles. Her eyes are near constantly sparkling crescents when she finds something amusing in her conversations with Taeri and Kyungran and Taehyeon feels a bit odd having the expression turned on him so soon. It is something like being assumed to be a friend but Taehyeon already feels like a disappointment. Bada did rush to sit down and tell Taehyeon to stop talking after all.
Minjun glances towards Taeri and waits for her to nod before returning a smile.
"It is nice to meet you, Bada," he says, "do you play Dynasty of Destruction too?"
"I wouldn't be seen dead," Bada snorts. Usually he humours Taehyeon and doesn't act so much like a computer game will lead to the disintegration of his dignity. The open lack of support is not entirely appreciated.
"Oh," Minjun says, at least sounding as confused as a normal person might be. "I was about to ask if you both wanted to hang out together or something and play the game. I don't want to pressure you, Taehyeon, so I guess those plans are out for today."
"You've already got plans," Nayoon points out. "Remember, something something star of every sports team needs to turn up to play in the basketball matches."
"And you sure as hell better be coming to that stupid party that you're forcing us to go to," Kyungran mutters.
"A party," Bada splutters. "On a school night?"
Minjun nods quickly. "Yes. Do you want to come? You can both come to the party together. I would love to have you both there. I mean, it's not my party but I'm kind of allowed to invite whoever I want as long as I score at least seven points."
"Oh. That wasn't a real invitation then?" Taehyeon asks. He doesn't expect Minjun to grin at him.
"It's a real invitation. I'm definitely going to score more than seven points. That's just like two two-pointers and one three-pointer, right?" Minjun asks Kyungran. She glances up from her phone and nods at Minjun. His smile stretches wider. "Easy."
Taehyeon doesn't think so but he probably doesn't know as much about basketball as someone on the team.
Lunch doesn't go on for too much longer because Bada engineers an emergency which puts them both into the same toilet stall again for the second time today.
"That was weird how he needed someone to tell him whether he had done maths right," Bada whispers.
Taehyeon can't believe this. "He wasn't asking to check if he got the maths right. He was…"
"Forget that. Anyway. Eoleunjeol boys. They know how to do mental arithmetic."
"No," Taehyeon says, not happy to be dragged along on whatever nonsense Bada is about to bring up. "You're going to explain to me why Lee Dongmin is telling me about the two of you kissing."
"No," Bada says quickly. "He told you?"
"Yes," Taehyeon says. He grips Bada's shoulders tightly and glares at him. "Why are you kissing boys with glamorous and sophisticated university girlfriends?"
"Oh my," someone outside the toilet cubicle says.
"Oh no," Taehyeon whispers. He should have thought about using some volume control three seconds ago.
"Who's in there?"
"Um," Taehyeon says whilst affecting falsetto as best he can, "it's me, uhhhh…"
"Do you not know anybody else's names?" Bada hisses. Taehyeon is panicking. He really can't think of the name of a single other boy at their school. He says the only thing he can think of.
"It's me, Noh Sujeong."
"We're so dead," Bada bleats (quietly, because he has a sense of self-preservation).
"Sujeong, when did you get such big, ugly feet? And why are you in the boys' toilets?"
"I'm in disguise because I wanted to come in here to kiss," Taehyeon says in a squeaky and unconvincing voice. The person on the other side of the cubicle door either doesn't notice or is interested to see where this is going.
"Who are you kissing?" they ask.
Bada widens his eyes and mouths, "say a boy's name."
Right. Taehyeon can do this, the thing he failed at immediately before this line of questioning. Taehyeon takes a deep breath. He says, "Kim Bada."
"Bada, you dog!" is the response.
"I hate you so much," Bada grumbles as he sags against Taehyeon's shoulder. This isn't quite going as planned. Taehyeon is going to need to do a lot to make up for this. He might even have to do the right thing and take on one of those nerds Bada seems to love so much.