Jaemin should've seen it coming. It comes as no surprise when Jaemin hurries over to the board displaying their grades to see that he was sixth, a whole three ranks lower than what he got the last term. Dread fills him when he sees the teacher handling his scholarship appear to his left with a frown on his face. Surely getting called into the staff room with a tight smile wasn't a bad thing, right?

"Your grades have been dropping," is the first thing his teacher, Jung Jaehyun, says, gently pulling down his glasses to stare up at Jaemin from below his bangs. It's a little intimidating, the look his teacher was giving him. His nerves were already on edge from imagining what his parents were going to say to him when he got home, seeing Mr Jung practically glare was causing his stomach to twist in multiple directions.

"It's just two ranks," he tries to reason with a faint smile, which is soon wiped off when Mr Jung places his glasses to the side. Why did he put his glasses to the side, Jaemin thinks, unnaturally hiding his hands behind his back and unconsciously crossing his fingers every time Mr Jung makes the smallest move.

"Two ranks is a lot when it comes to a scholarship student, no?" Mr Jung replies with a grin, but it isn't just a normal grin, it's the one where he has his eyes shut and his veins popping from his temples. He's about to burst soon if Jaemin says another stupid thing and he really isn't looking forward to that. It's happened once before when he refused to go on a school trip that contributed to class credits and he ended up on the verge of tears because of how terrifying Mr Jung had become. He had pulled his hair back and looked down at Jaemin with his chin up high in the air and only at that moment did Jaemin get flashbacks to the time his friend told him about how Mr Jung used to be a popular delinquent in their area until he got into a relationship and fixed his life.

"I'll try harder," Jaemin swallows the rest of his sentence when Mr Jung turns to him in annoyance.

Jaemin braces himself as his teacher opens his mouth. "You said that last time when you got fourth and the time before that when you came second." He pauses and takes a deep breath, trying to calm himself down. "Look, Jaemin. I'm just worried for you, okay? Your parents will come for my throat if you fall below our standards and I really can't handle getting shouted at by them again. It's embarrassing enough that everyone knows about how I behaved when I was in high school, but it's worse when parents come in and yell about it in corridors."

To be honest, Jaemin does feel pretty bad about that, It was his fault that his grades were falling but Mr Jung had to take the blame for it because he was his supervising teacher. Mr Jung already had dark circles from the many students he handled and Jaemin just wanted to lessen his burden.

"I asked someone to tutor you." Mr Jung's words resonate through Jaemin before he snaps out of it and looks at his teacher with a face of surprise. "Oh, don't look so surprised. The kid I spoke to was more than happy to take you on."

"Is this person in my year?" Jaemin would be lying if he said it didn't hurt his pride to be tutored by someone the same age as him. Getting told that he got something wrong by them felt embarrassing, sort of insulting. Jaemin didn't have a big ego - he didn't think he was the smartest or anything - however, it still hurt his pride.

"No," Mr Jung says and Jaemin lets out a sigh of relief. "His name is Mark Lee, he's a year older, also a scholarship student who's currently ranked number one in our school."

Now that's pretty impressive. In all honesty, Jaemin found it pretty difficult balancing his daily life with studies. He didn't have a job or anything but had three younger siblings who required a lot of his attention since his parents often left home at random times for work.

"I'll give you his contact details, so just work out something with him yourself," Mr Jung reaches for his pen and scribbles some numbers onto the paper before handing it to him. "Remember, if you don't get your grades back on track before the end of the year, we'll have no choice but to drop you from our course."

Jaemin gulps down the pressure and anxiety bubbling up within him and nod nervously at Mr Jung. He accepts the chit of paper and makes his way out of the room, his heart stuck in his throat and he catches sight of messages from his parents on his phone. They must've gotten an email about this all, right? Jaemin holds a hand to his head and presses his fingers against his temples, hoping for some relief. This Mark Lee has to be some sort of miracle worker to be able to help Jaemin get his former position as number one back.

-

"My name's Mark Lee, I'm 17 years old and I'll be in your care from now onwards."

Jaemin glances up from his book and stares at Mark with his mouth hanging open. Mark looks a lot different from what he imagined. In his mind, Mark had thick glasses, incredibly, short hair and probably coloured eyes; after all, his name was foreign. But this Mark Lee was nothing like that. He had jet black hair that went past his eyes, thin-rimmed golden glasses that fit perfectly upon his nose and red tinted cheeks. He had a pretty face, a cute and pretty face. If he brushed his hair a little more and threw on some makeup he'd look like a k-pop idol if he wanted. And on top of that, he didn't look an inch foreign.

"That's because I am Korean, just born and raised in Canada till I was 12," Mark answers shyly, bowing his head to the side a little, the blush on his cheeks a lot darker than before.

"Did I," Jaemin stops and holds his hand over his face as realisation falls upon him. "Did I say all of that out loud?"

"Yeah," Mark mumbles, fiddling with his bag straps and trying his best to hide the embarrassed look on his face. "Anyways, Mr Jung told me " he stutters over his words, the fact that he felt uneasy was written all over his awkward smile and Jaemin tried his best to hold his laugh back when Mark's voice cracks. He sighs and stops talking altogether.

"What do you wanna start with?" Jaemin asks, clutching his arm to hold back the laugh that was begging to come out when Mark looked at him with a thankful expression.

"I wanted to see the scores you got for each test," Mark finally says once he's got himself composed. "After seeing them I'll be able to offer you my help."

Jaemin reaches for his bag and pulls a couple of papers out, feeling his cheeks heat up when Mark's eyes widen at the numbers written at the top of the page in red. They're not terrible, of course, they're not, how else would he have ended up in the top ten? But they're not the scores someone like him should be achieving.

"This isn't bad," Mark says out of the blue when flipping through the pages. "To be honest the only thing you're doing wrong is going into too much detail for all your answers and then getting marks knocked off for things unacceptable in the marks scheme." Mark brushes his hair out of his way and pushes his glasses back up his nose when he leans forward to point something out to Jaemin. "You see, over here you got the answer wrong because-"

And then Jaemin loses focus. How could he not when Mark suddenly invaded his personal space? Up close he looked even cuter than before, although it looked like he hadn't slept in a while because of how dark his eye bags were. Jaemin could see them despite the bit of makeup rubbed onto them, it was a little endearing that he even tried to hide something like them and did such a terrible job at it. Mark suddenly scrunches his nose as he stutters on another word and Jaemin feels his heartbeat a little faster. He really was adorable.

Jaemin turns his eyes away from Mark's face and onto his hands instead. They had small plasters wrapped around his fingers and he frowned at the sight. Just what did he do to get hurt on his fingers? Did he study far too often and end up getting blisters, or were they remnants from other things?

Mindlessly, Jaemin reaches out and softly traces the tip of his finger across Mark's wrist, surprised at how cold he was. Maybe it was because of the lack of flesh around the area or because the library they were in had horrible heating. Jaemin was going to make sure they met somewhere else next time. Without paying much attention to how Mark had stopped talking, Jaemin slipped his fingers around Mark's and gaped at how rough they felt. The only time Jaemin had felt hands like these were when he held his mum's hands and helped her with chores. Still, in his own world, Jaemin brought their joint hands up to his face and twisted them around, examining their differences.

"Um," Mark's feeble voice made Jaemin blink right back into reality. "What're you doing?"

"Oh my god!" Jaemin abruptly lets go of Mark's hand and leans away from him. "I'm so sorry, it's just I found your hands interesting and then felt like touching them and didn't realise I was until you spoke to me."

"You found my hands interesting," Mark looks weirded out and covers his hand with his other one before pulling his sleeves up in an attempt to feel less exposed, but what he doesn't realise is that Jaemin can't help but find him cute with how his sweater paws perfectly fit the whole soft look. "Were you even listening to me?"

"Yes," Jaemin lies and quickly shifts around in his chair, heavily confused by his own actions, "Let's continue, yeah?"

Mark looks reluctant to do so but still nods along and starts to write up a list of areas he wanted to go through with Jaemin. "You obviously have your head around the basics, so there's no need in going too in-depth with that." Mark writes the last full stop and awkwardly turns to Jaemin. "I thought we could just get familiar with each other today and then start the lessons from tomorrow onwards if that's alright with you?"

Jaemin nods absentmindedly, still thinking about why he was acting out.

"I was also wondering if, um," Mark clears his throat, feeling conscious under Jaemin's heavy gaze. "If we could meet up elsewhere? It doesn't feel right talking in the library and it's a little..."

"Cold?" Jaemin offers with a smile. Mark peeks at him with wide eyes and nods his head in agreement. "We could meet up at my house?"

"No," Mark answers a little too quickly and it stabs Jaemin straight in the heart. "I mean," Mark's quick to try and clear the air when Jaemin's face drops at his reply. "I was just thinking we could stay back in school instead? Use one of the empty classes."

"Would they allow us to do that?" Jaemin asks and Mark smiles at that.

"Why would they refuse their top students from using an empty classroom to study?"