Chapter Text
Byun Baekhyun is known to run a strict program. That might be the reason why he is drawn to the English subject from the very beginning — grammar, to be exact. He likes everything structured. Organized. Planned.
He is the kind of teacher who drinks tea instead of coffee. The kind who uses a red ballpoint pen rather than a green one when grading essays because red is, in his own words, "straightforward and authoritative." The kind who reads every single word in his students' essays, never missing a single grammatically incorrect sentence. The kind who does not break rules. Boring. Predictable. Safe. Just the way Baekhyun likes it.
So when the new teacher in the English department arrives on the first day of the new school year, Baekhyun anticipates someone just like all the other nerdy English teachers he has worked with over the years. Someone quiet. Someone predictable. Someone who would blend into the background and leave him alone.
But instead, he is greeted by a tall, otherworldly tall person with a bright smile and magnetic charm that Baekhyun flatly denies could possibly be his true form. This man goes by the name Park Chanyeol. He is the kind of teacher who drinks coffee instead of tea. The kind who uses a green ballpoint pen instead of red because, as he puts it, "red ink suggests negative feedback and discourages young writers." The kind who allows his students to write free-style poetry without fixating on grammar, believing that creative freedom allows them to write without inhibitions. The kind who bends the rules in his favor. Interesting. Unpredictable. Dangerous. Just the way Baekhyun hates it.
The room instantly brightens whenever Park Chanyeol enters it. Even the most serious, stone-faced teachers find themselves initiating small talk with him because he is simply that interesting. Everybody wants to be his friend. Everybody pays him attention. Everybody, that is, except Baekhyun.
Perhaps it is his lack of hospitality that draws Chanyeol closer to Baekhyun. On the first day, the principal leads Chanyeol to the desk beside Baekhyun's — a desk that has remained unoccupied ever since Baekhyun started working at the school three years ago. Until now.
Chanyeol introduces himself in a friendly tone and offers to shake Baekhyun's hand. Baekhyun merely mumbles his name in return, offering no smile, no further greeting, and absolutely no hint of interest in extending the conversation any longer than absolutely necessary. Chanyeol notices the coldness immediately, yet he does not seem inclined to take the hint.
"What do you usually do in your free time, Mr. Byun?" Chanyeol asks randomly during the second period. Both of them have a free period at the same time — an unfortunate scheduling coincidence that Baekhyun is already beginning to resent. Baekhyun stops typing on his laptop, where he has been meticulously working on his lesson plan for the following week.
"I usually mind my own business," Baekhyun states coldly, his eyes already returning to the glowing screen of his laptop. His fingers resume typing.
Chanyeol lets out a quick chuckle — not a mocking sound, but one of genuine amusement. He seems taken aback but also oddly delighted by Baekhyun's blunt answer. Never once in his life has Chanyeol met someone who is so openly, unapologetically uninterested in him. He is used to being the life of the party, the center of attention, the person everyone wants to know. Baekhyun's indifference is, to him, something entirely new. Perhaps interesting. Intriguing, even.
Perhaps it is the one-sided conversations that draw Chanyeol even closer. By the end of the first week, Chanyeol has already memorized what tea Baekhyun likes — a specific brand of barley tea that he brews every morning in a plain ceramic mug. He has learned that Baekhyun does not drink coffee, nor has he ever once tried to take a sip of it, not even during the most exhausting exam weeks. He has learned that Baekhyun prefers simple, efficient meals — neatly packed bento boxes that he prepares on Sunday evenings and protein bars that he keeps in his desk drawer for his 3 PM snack. He has learned that Baekhyun likes things safe. He wears warm-colored cardigans and polo shirts rotated on a predictable weekly schedule. His desk is carefully organized yet barely decorated — enough items to get through the eight-hour workday and nothing more. Just the way Baekhyun likes it.
Baekhyun is used to being alone. He eats his lunch alone at his desk. He drives the same route every day — home to school, school to home. He spends his spare time reading classic novels, his annotated copies of Austen already worn soft at the spines. He is used to being the background, never anyone's center of attention, never the subject of someone else's curiosity.
That comfortable, predictable solitude lasts exactly until week two.
He is sitting silently in the empty classroom during his lunch break, deeply absorbed in his worn copy of George Orwell's Animal Farm, when a familiar voice interrupts him from the doorway.
"I don't think Snowball is a hero. Yes, he has his moments, but he is really just the lesser evil."
Baekhyun slams his book shut. He looks up and finds Chanyeol leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed, that infuriatingly bright smile playing at the corners of his lips.
"And you're saying that because — ?" Baekhyun replies sarcastically, his tone slightly annoyed.
"Because I saw you annotating the part where Snowball gets exiled," Chanyeol says with a casual shrug, pushing off from the doorframe and walking further into the room. "You wrote 'unjust' in the margin. Three times. With underlines."
Baekhyun crosses his arms tightly over his chest, his jaw tightening. Chanyeol has a talent — an infuriating, annoying talent — for getting under his skin. He manages to do it by doing nothing more than breathing the same air, and now by offering unsolicited opinions about the book Baekhyun is currently reading.
"Maybe some of us simply have empathy for others," Baekhyun replies coolly, tilting his chin up in defiance.
Chanyeol's smile widens. He pulls out the chair across from Baekhyun and sits down without waiting for an invitation, making himself entirely too comfortable.
"And that is you? Really?"
Chanyeol does not wait for an answer. He simply smiles, packs his necessities for his next class, and walks out of the classroom as casually as he entered.
Baekhyun is left alone.
He sits there for a long moment. His heart beats just a little too fast for someone who has just been having a completely normal literary disagreement with a completely annoying coworker.
Then he looks down at his copy of Animal Farm.
The book has fallen open to the page he had been annotating. And there it is, just as Chanyeol said.
Unjust.
Three times. With underlines.
Baekhyun stares at the word. He wrote it without thinking, the way he always does. He annotates every book he reads — it is a habit he developed in university and never broke.
But no one has ever read his annotations before.
No one has ever paid enough attention to him to notice the small things he leaves behind. The way he organizes his desk. The brand of tea he drinks. The word "unjust" written three times in the margin of a book he is reading alone during lunch.
Chanyeol has noticed all of it.
Baekhyun closes the book slowly. He convinces himself he is annoyed — deeply, thoroughly annoyed — that this tall, loud, coffee-drinking, rule-bending stranger has been studying him like a literary text waiting to be analyzed. He tells himself it is invasive. Unwelcome. Unprofessional. Just the way Baekhyun hates it.
But deep down, somewhere beneath, something warm and unfamiliar stirs in his chest.
No one ever notices him.
And yet here he is — Park Chanyeol, who walked into his classroom wearing that stupidly bright smile and somehow noticed something as simple and small as a margin note.
Baekhyun exhales sharply. He has spent too much time thinking about this annoying giant that he does not notice the dismissal bell. He shakes his head and packs his things. He walks out of the classroom, down the hallway, and to his car. He drives home the same way he always does. But unusual to his routine, this singular, particular person has been occupying his mind on his way back home.
Rule 1: A singular subject takes a singular verb.
Baekhyun is singular. His heart is singular. And singular things, he has learned long ago, are supposed to stay that way.