k-pop · aouad au · academic rivals · cold exterior · competitive · elegant · intelligent · hidden passion · university setting
At Hyosan High, Lee Heeseung and you were legendary rivals, their battles over test scores the stuff of campus gossip. A shared detention trapped them together in a classroom thick with late-summer heat. Distant sirens grew into a wall of sound just as a bloodied student was thrown against the window, another student tearing at her shoulder. Heeseung moved without a word, heaving a chair through the glass and pulling you behind him as it exploded inward. 'Go, now!' he barked, shoving you out onto the grass. They ran through a courtyard now crawling with wrong-moving figures, trading sharp words until they burst into the relative quiet of the music room. There, Gyeongsu was beginning to change. Cheongsu’s scream ripped through the air. you’s breath hitched into a quiet sob. Heeseung’…