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“Ok class, that’s it for our lesson” Mr. Kim said, offering a pleasant, symmetrical smile to the room.
A collective, synchronized sigh of relief rippled through the classroom. The desperate rustle of loose-leaf paper, heavy textbooks sliding into backpacks, and zipped pencil cases immediately filled the air. It was the universal sound of survival.
But before the first student could even stand, Mr. Kim’s smile took on a distinctly ominous edge. He cleared his throat. “As for our history group project—”
The entire room groaned dramatically. Two boys in the back row slammed their foreheads directly onto their wooden desks with a hollow thud, mourning the loss of their weekend before it had even begun. A collective headache had just entered the chat.
While the rest of the class wallowed in academic despair, Yeon Sieun remained entirely unbothered. He arranged his mechanical pencils by lead thickness, slid them into his case, and neatly stacked his notebooks. To Sieun, a project was simply an equation with a fixed set of variables. It required logic, quiet isolation, and exactly zero human interference.
He was just about to zip his backpack when a large, warm hand slammed softly onto the center of his desk, entirely obstructing his view of his neatly packed bag.
Sieun didn’t flinch. He slowly raised his eyes, tracking up a faded school uniform sleeve until his gaze landed on Ahn Suho.
Suho was leaning over the desk, his messy hair falling into his eyes, looking entirely too bright for a Friday afternoon. And he was looking at Sieun with a grin that could easily be classified as a public nuisance.
That was the other variable in Sieun’s life now. Ahn Suho. His first real friend, his self-appointed bodyguard —as Suho said it himself—, and, as of exactly three weeks ago, his boyfriend. It was a development that Sieun’s hyper-logical brain or what Ahn Suho called him “smartass” still hadn’t fully categorized, but his heart had accepted it without a fight.
“What” Sieun said. His voice was flat, perfectly level, completely unreadable to anyone else.
To the rest of the school, Sieun was still the same terrifying, unapproachable ghost who spoke in single-syllable sentences and looked like he would murder you with a pen if you breathed too loud. But Suho knew the truth. Ever since they started dating, Sieun had developed a secret habit: when it was just the two of them, he actually became incredibly talkative. It was like he kept a strict daily quota of words, completely locked down around classmates, only to dump them all exclusively on Suho the moment they were alone, which, was so cute in Suho’s opinion by the way.
Suho let out a dramatic, wounded gasp, clutching his chest with his free hand. “Aww, not even a ‘Hi babe, I missed you, mwah mwah?’” he asked, dropping his voice into a terrible, high-pitched imitation of a romance drama protagonist, his lower lip jutting out into a pout.
Sieun blinked once. He didn’t flush, but his left eyebrow twitched slightly. “We see each other every day. Not only that, we sit in the same room for seven hours at a time. We are always together.”
“Yeah, but we weren’t talking” Suho whined, leaning in a fraction closer, entirely unbothered by the few lingering students around them. “That’s a tragedy, Yeon Sieun. An absolute deprivation of my rights.”
“You were sleeping for four of those hours” Sieun noted dryly. He reached out, calmly but firmly pushing Suho’s hand off his desk so he could finally zip his backpack. He slung the heavy bag over one shoulder and stood up. “Let’s go?”
“Yeah, let’s go!” Suho’s faux-misery vanished instantly, replaced by the boundless, chaotic energy of a golden retriever released from a cage. He threw a heavy, casual arm over Sieun’s shoulder, practically dragging the smaller boy out of the classroom door and into the bustling hallway.
As they navigated the crowded stairs toward the exit, Suho suddenly pumped his free fist in the air. “Man, thank the lords above! I can’t believe Mr. Kim let us choose our own pairs. We’re partners for the history project!”
Sieun allowed himself to be guided through the school gates, adjusting his backpack strap. He had briefly forgotten about the project pairing, mostly because he had already mentally completed 80% of the workload the moment the syllabus was handed out weeks ago.
“It is statistically safer for my GPA if we are partners,” Sieun murmured as they walked down the sidewalk, the afternoon sun warming the pavement. “If you were paired with anyone else, you would have failed, and your graduation credits would be compromised.”
Suho laughed boisterously, his arm tightening around Sieun’s neck in an affectionate, slightly suffocating headlock. “See? Look at you, looking out for my future. You really do love me”
Sieun looked straight ahead, his face an impenetrable mask of stoicism. “I am protecting an amount of my time. It would be wasteful to tutor you through summer school.”
“Sure, sure, whatever helps you sleep at night, Einstein” Suho teased, pulling Sieun closer into his side. “So, what’s the game plan? Your place or mine? My grandma bought some of those sweet rice cakes you like”
Sieun’s eyes flicked to Suho, a tiny, almost imperceptible softening around the corners of his mouth. “Your place. We need a flat surface and absolute silence. This presentation requires a precise tactical approach.”
Suho just grinned, completely unaware of the terrifying academic storm he had just signed up for.
***
Twenty-four hours later, Suho was beginning to realize that “tactical approach” was Sieun-speak for absolute blah blah psychological blah blah history department blah blah battle or something like that.
They were sitting in Suho’s small living room. Well, Suho was sitting on the floor, leaning against the base of his bed, while Sieun sat perfectly upright at a low wooden table. The table was entirely obscured. There were three different historical textbooks open, highlighted in four different colors. There was a stack of blank index cards, a perfectly aligned row of multi-colored sticky notes, and Sieun’s sleek silver laptop, which was currently humming like a jet engine.
“Sieun-ah” Suho groaned, rubbing his eyes. “It’s Saturday. It’s 2:00 PM. We’ve been at this since nine.”
“We are establishing the foundational context of the Joseon Dynasty’s diplomatic relations” Sieun said without looking up. His fingers flew across the keyboard with the speed and precision of a professional gamer. Suho starred at Sieun, frog blinking with absolute dumbness, completely processing on what Sieun just said. What? He thought, his head hurting more the longer Suho processed.
This was exactly what Suho meant about Sieun’s secret, boyfriend-only personality. In public, if a teacher or any of his classmates asked Sieun a question, he would give a precise, three-word or less answer and sit back down. But here, in the quiet safety of Suho’s room, Sieun was an absolute chatterbox. He hadn’t stopped explaining the socio-economic uhmm…intricacies…something of medieval Korea for the last three hours, his voice steady and completely animated in a way nobody else in the world ever got to see. Suho secretly loved it, even if his brain was currently melting.
“Without proper context, the mid-term conclusions will lack empirical weight” Sieun continued, completely unaware of Suho’s internal melting process.
“Bro, Mr. Kim asked for a ten-minute presentation,” Suho said, crawling over on his knees to peer over Sieun’s shoulder. His jaw dropped. “Is that… is that the slide count?”
In the bottom left corner of the presentation software, a tiny number read: Slide 114 of 140.
“Sieun. Babe. Sweetheart” Suho pleaded, resting his chin on Sieun’s shoulder, trying to use his ultimate weapon—physical affection—to break the genius’s concentration. “One hundred and forty slides? At ten seconds a slide, that’s almost twenty-four minutes. Mr. Kim will literally cut the power to the projector”
“He won’t” Sieun replied calmly, his eyes reflecting the harsh white glow of the screen. “The data is tightly packed. The information density is optimized. Which brings me to your role”
Suho blinked, a sudden sense of dread washing over him. “My role? I thought my role was to look handsome and stand next to you so the class doesn’t think you’re a robot”
Sieun finally stopped typing. He turned his head sideways, his nose nearly brushing against Suho’s cheek because of their closeness. He looked deep into Suho’s eyes with a frighteningly intense, absolute seriousness. ‘Scary’ Suho thought as he look back at his boyfriend.
He reached into his backpack and pulled out a thick, heavy block of neon yellow paper. It was a stack of index cards, bound tightly by a thick rubber band. He placed them in front of Suho with a heavy thunk.
“These are your cue cards” Sieun instructed, launching into another long, detailed explanation that he would never bother giving anyone else. “They are color-coded to match the transition triggers on the slides. Yellow means transition on the first bullet point. Green means transition on the second. Blue means a double-click for the embedded map animation”
Suho stared at the brick of paper. It looked like a lethal weapon. “Sieun… there are more words on these cards than I’ve read in my entire high school career”
“You do not need to read them” Sieun explained, his voice softening just a fraction because it was Suho. “I will handle 95% of the spoken lecture. You’re better suited for the mechanical execution of the presentation. Your sole, critical responsibility is to operate the laptop. You will press the right arrow key precisely when I cue you”
Suho stared at him with a slight distorted face, completely dumbfounded “You want me to be… the clicker guy?”
“You are the Master of Transitions,” Sieun corrected him, entirely deadpan, yet thoroughly invested in making sure Suho understood every single detail. “If your timing is off by even two seconds, the cognitive flow of the presentation will be disrupted. Can I trust you with this?”
Looking at Sieun’s fiercely dedicated face—this expressive, incredibly vocal version of Sieun that belonged only to him—Suho felt his chest tighten with overwhelming affection. He couldn’t help but laugh, reaching out to ruffle Sieun’s neatly parted hair, ignoring the small glare he received in return.
“Alright, alright. The ‘Master of Transitions’ is on the job” Suho declared, puffing out his chest. “I just press the arrow, right? Easy. I’ve got fast reflexes, remember? I punch people in the past for a living —MMA—, Sieun-ah. A keyboard is nothing”
“Do not punch the keyboard,” Sieun said seriously. “It’s expensive.” That earned a laugh at Suho.
***
Monday morning arrived that looked like a final boss fight.
The history classroom was dimly lit, the heavy curtains drawn to allow the ancient school projector to display onto the whiteboard. Mr. Kim sat at the back of the room with a clipboard, looking distinctly tired as a pair of students finished a remarkably uninspired presentation on agricultural tools.
“Thank you, Jinwoo and Minho” Mr. Kim sighed, scribbling something on his sheet. “Next up… Yeon Sieun and Ahn Suho”
A collective stir went through the room. Everyone knew Sieun was a monster when it came to grades, but seeing him pair up with the school’s most notorious slacker-fighter was like watching a cat team up with a calculated assassin.
The moment they stood up, Sieun’s entire demeanor flipped. The expressive, talkative boyfriend from the weekend vanished instantly, replaced by the icy, tight-lipped wall of stone the rest of the school knew. He didn’t say a word to anyone, carrying his laptop to put in the Podium. Suho followed closely behind, wearing his uniform jacket open over his red track hoodie, looking entirely relaxed, though he was holding the neon yellow brick of index cards with hilarious care.
Sieun plugged the laptop into the HDMI that was connected to the projector. The projector whirred, and suddenly, the whiteboard was flooded with a title slide so sharp, so mathematically balanced, it looked like it belonged in a corporate boardroom, not a high school history class.
The Strategic Geopolitical Matrix of the Mid-Joseon Era: A Comprehensive Re-evaluation. Is what the text that was shown in the projector.
Mr. Kim raised an eyebrow, suddenly looking very awake.
“Let’s begin” Sieun announced, his public voice dropping into its usual flat, economical tone. He glanced at Suho, giving him a sharp, subtle nod. Fixing his position.
Suho took his place behind the podium, his hand hovering over the laptop’s keyboard like a pianist preparing for a concerto. He gave Sieun a reassuring wink.
“The mid-Joseon era was defined by an intricate balance of domestic policy and external pressures” Sieun began, his delivery flawless, confident, and entirely devoid of filler words. He took a breath. “As seen in the primary socio-economic indicators of 1592—”
Suho struck the right arrow key with theatrical flair. Click.
Slide 2 appeared. It was a flawless transition. Sieun didn’t even look back at the board; he just kept speaking, his rhythm unbroken.
For the first three minutes, it was a masterpiece of human synchronization. Sieun would speak a complex, multi-syllabic sentence, his voice dropping slightly at the end of a clause, and click—Suho would hit the key perfectly on cue. Suho wasn’t even looking at the index cards anymore; he was just watching the subtle movement of Sieun’s shoulders, completely dialed into his boyfriend’s rhythm.
But there was a critical flaw in Sieun’s tactical calculation.
The classroom was warm. The curtains were closed, blocking out the morning air. The projector hummed a low, hypnotic, white-noise drone. And Ahn Suho had worked a grueling late-night delivery shift until 3:00 AM the previous night, followed by an early morning training session.
By slide 45, Suho’s eyelids began to feel like lead weights.
Click.
‘Man, Sieun sounds so different when he’s presenting’ Suho thought, his eyes tracking the way the light hit the back of Sieun’s neck. ‘In front of the class, he only uses the exact words he needs. Not like this weekend when he kept rambling about taxes for twenty minutes just to hear himself talk to me.’
Click.
‘Just a quick blink’ Suho told himself, his head nodding slightly. ‘Just a five-second rest.’
By slide 60, Sieun was deep into the economic impact of the tributary system. “...which directly influenced the local merchant guilds, leading to a localized inflation rate of approximately twelve percent—”
Sieun paused. He waited for the distinct click of the keyboard.
Silence.
Sieun didn’t turn around immediately, maintaining his composure. “An inflation rate,” he repeated, slightly louder, “of twelve percent.”
Still nothing.
A few students in the front row started to whisper, some in the middle sits snorts, and some in the back were quietly laughing, making it not obvious, but failed to do so. Sieun smoothly turned his head, his dark eyes zeroing in on the podium.
Suho was still standing, but his knees were slightly bent. His head had dropped completely forward, his chin resting securely against his chest. His right hand was still hovering over the keyboard, but his fingers were entirely limp. He was fast asleep, standing up, swaying gently like a tree in a light breeze.
Sieun’s expression didn’t change, but internally, his brain rapidly calculated the variables. If he walked over to wake Suho, it would take exactly 4.5 seconds, disrupting the presentation’s timing and alerting Mr. Kim to Suho’s academic negligence, which would result in a deduction of points.
He had to continue.
Sieun took a step backward, closing the distance between himself and the podium. He kept his eyes locked on Mr. Kim, his voice never faltering. “This economic stagnation can be visualized through the shifting trade routes, which—”
With absolute, terrifying precision, without looking back, Sieun reached his left hand behind his own torso. He didn’t look at Suho. Instead, he accurately judged the distance based on Suho’s height and shadow, extended his thumb and forefinger, and delivered a devastating, hyper-localized pinch straight to the meat of Suho’s inner thigh.
Suho’s eyes flew wide open. A silent, strangled gasp escaped his throat. His entire body jolted forward in pure, unadulterated shock.
In his sudden, violent spastic movement to escape the localized torture of Sieun’s fingers, Suho’s open palm came crashing straight down onto the laptop.
Not on the arrow key. On the spacebar. And the enter key. And several other keys simultaneously.
The laptop took this massive, chaotic input as a command for maximum velocity. On the whiteboard, the presentation went completely berserk. Slides began to flash past at supersonic speeds.
Slide 61, 62, 75, 90, 115, 130, 140.
In a matter of two seconds, the entire 140-slide masterpiece had fast-forwarded straight to the end, leaving only a bright white screen that read: THANK YOU. ANY QUESTIONS?
The classroom fell into a stunned, dead silence, mainly because they’re trying to hold back their laugh by putting their hands on their mouth.
Suho stared at the screen, his face pale, his thigh still throbbing. He slowly looked down at Sieun, horror dawning on him. ‘Uh ohh… ’He had just ruined his boyfriend’s perfect GPA. He had destroyed the masterpiece.
Mr. Kim blinked, his pen hovering over his clipboard. “Uh… Yeon Sieun? It appears your partner has… concluded the visual portion of your presentation.”
***
Anyone else would have panicked. Anyone else would have stuttered, apologized, or looked at their partner with absolute fury.
But Yeon Sieun was not anyone else.
Sieun didn’t even look back at the screen. He smoothly stepped back to the center of the room, drawing all eyes away from the terrified Suho and back to himself. He adjusted his collar, his face entirely unreadable, cold, and commanding.
“It was intentional” Sieun lied smoothly, his voice sharp and utterly convincing.
Suho’s jaw practically hit the floor. Intentional?! He look at Sieun then the rest of the class, awkwardly smiling, while his boyfriend finishes their presentation without the use of the PowerPoint Presentation.
“As the remaining eighty slides demonstrate” Sieun continued, gesturing vaguely to the blank white screen behind him, "The government fell apart so quickly that looking at it date-by-date doesn't show how bad it really was” That's why we chose to just talk through the facts quickly, mimicking the chaos of the actual history"
In the back of the room, Mr. Kim slowly sat up straight, his eyes widening. He looked at the white screen, then at Sieun, completely captivated by the utter audacity and sheer intellectual intensity radiating from the boy.
“Ahn Suho,” Sieun commanded, his voice sharp.
Suho stood up straight, saluting instinctively. “Yes!”
“Keep that final slide up. Having no pictures will force everyone to focus completely on how the government broke down.”
“Sir, yes, sir,” Suho mumbled, completely playing along now, trying his best to look like a stoic accomplice to a brilliant academic experiment rather than a guy who had just face-planted into a spacebar.
For the next seven minutes, Sieun delivered a terrifyingly brilliant, entirely improvised lecture from sheer memory. He didn’t look at a single note. He spoke with a cold, rhythmic cadence, breaking down treaties, military skirmishes, and economic reforms with the precision of a surgeon.
Suho watched him from behind the podium, his heart doing a violent series of backflips. Seeing Sieun like this—fierce, brilliant, entirely in control of a room full of people who usually avoided him—was the most attractive thing Suho had ever witnessed. But what made Suho grin internally was knowing that while the class was getting the short, condensed, terrifyingly efficient version of this information, Suho had gotten the long, comfortable, incredibly talkative midnight version of it all weekend.
“...and thus,” Sieun concluded, his voice dropping back down to its standard, cool equilibrium, “the transition to the late Joseon period was finalized. Thank you.”
Silence hung in the air for a beat.
Then, Mr. Kim started to clap. Slowly at first, then with genuine enthusiasm. “Brilliant! That was a really creative way to do a presentation, Yeon Sieun! Fast-forwarding the slides to match the chaos of history… absolutely fascinating. And good job staying calm and handling your part, Ahn Suho.”
The rest of the class, entirely intimidated by Sieun’s brain, joined in the applause.
Suho let out a breath he felt like he’d been holding since Saturday, wiping imaginary sweat from his forehead. He grinned, looking at Sieun, who simply turned around, unplugged his laptop with a neat, practiced motion, and walked back to his desk without a single change in his expression.
By the time the final bell rang, releasing them for the weekend, Suho was practically vibrating with adrenaline and relief.
As soon as they cleared the school gates and turned into the quiet alleyway that led toward Suho’s neighborhood, the invisible wall around Sieun instantly crumbled. The second they were out of public sight, Sieun took a deep breath and immediately turned to Suho, his face lighting up with that rare, animated energy he only kept for his boyfriend.
"Your reaction time was completely shit" Sieun started, the words tumbling out of him in a fast, breathless rush before Suho could even open his mouth. "I just pinched you to wake you up, but you jumped and mashed the keys… We almost failed because of that. I had to fix the last three sections of the speech in two seconds while the screen was completely blank—"
Suho didn't even let him finish. Laughing softly, he lunged forward, wrapping both arms around Sieun’s waist, lifting the smaller boy completely off the ground and spinning him around once to cut off the adorable, worried tirade.
“Put me down” Sieun said, ears red, though his hands instinctively gripped Suho’s shoulders for balance, his mouth still moving. "And furthermore, your sleep schedule is gonna be the death of me"
“You are a literal god” Suho cheered, setting him down but refusing to let go of his waist. He leaned his forehead against Sieun’s, a massive, bright smile on his face as he listened to Sieun keep talking. “An absolute academic gangster ’It was intentional?' Sieun-ah, I almost died. I thought you were gonna use that history textbook to break my jaw.”
“It crossed my mind,” Sieun said honestly, his doe eyes looking up into Suho’s, his voice dropping into that warm, incredibly expressive cadence he never used at school. He reached up, his small, pale fingers gently wrapping around Suho’s wrists where they rested against his waist. "But the information was solid enough that I could just talk through it. It's lucky I practiced the full story with you last night, even if I was the only one really practicising, but your presence was enough for me to finish it all"
“See? This is what I love” Suho whispered, shaking his head with a grin. "At school, you barely give Mr. Kim a 'yes' or 'no'. But the second it's just me, you talk my absolute ears off. It's the best perk of being your boyfriend"
Sieun's eyes flicked away for a second, a tiny, genuine flush coloring his cheeks. He tightened his grip on Suho's jacket "You are the only one who needs to hear it. The others do not require that level of information density"
"Yah, yah, keep using your big science words to say I'm special" Suho teased, leaning down to press a quick, warm kiss against Sieun’s lips. It was sweet, lingering just long enough to make Sieun’s breath hitch before Suho pulled back with a cheeky grin. “Because next semester, we’re doing English literature together.”
Sieun’s warm expression instantly snapped shut. His face reverted back to total, cold public stoicism.
“No” Sieun said, turning on his heel and walking away.
“Oh, come on, babe!” Suho jogged after him, throwing his arm back over Sieun’s shoulder and pulling him close. “Think about it! You can do all the talking for the reading assignments, and I can just sit there and listen to you ramble! Teamwork makes the dream work!”
‘It Doesn’t really make the dream work when I’m the only one doing the work Suho’ He replied in his thoughts.
“I am breaking up with you” Sieun said flatly, though he didn’t move away from Suho’s side, his hand secretly reaching up to firmly grip the fabric of Suho’s jacket as they walked together into the afternoon sun.
“You love talking to me too much to do that” Suho laughed, pulling him into a side-hug. “Now come on, the Master of Transitions is buying you ice cream!”