Chapter Text
Shen Yuan had been teaching biology at Cang Qiong High School for just a little over three years.
Since his arrival, he had been an immediate hit with the students. He had an amiable personality and a handsome face, earning the respect and favor (and unknowingly some heated gazes) of students and staff alike.
His classes had the highest attendance rates and highest average grades, officially giving Shen Yuan the title of the most successful teacher in the whole school district! He was the pride of their school and he basked in the glory of it.
That was… until the newest teacher, Liu Qingge began work a month ago.
Just thinking about him made Shen Yuan more frustrated than he had ever been!
Liu Qingge was the newest gym teacher - known for being a former Olympics gold medalist - hired for the purpose of training the school’s… well the school’s every sports team. Shen Yuan had no idea how the man managed to balance it, but he did, and he did it with the utmost amount of fervor! And the students inexplicably loved him!
He had an unforgiving teaching method that could drive even the most dedicated to tears, nothing at all like Shen Yuan’s own gentle approach. However, because of his pretty face and the competence of his lessons, students came to adore him, quickly forgetting their favorite Teacher Shen. The students practically ran into Liu Qingge’s arms just looking for a beating!
Sitting in the break room with his self proclaimed best friend/coworker, Shang Qinghua, he complained ceaselessly. The man simply played on his phone as he sipped his coffee and leaned against the counter in a relaxed manner. “Now you know how I feel all the time. My students always skip my class just to go to yours! Don’t you take attendance and see that there’s more than your usual amount of kids in class? Are you sure you’re not just jealous?”
Shen Yuan glared at his best friend and decided to ignore his complaints. Couldn’t he complain just for once! “Anyways, I’m not jealous of him for stealing my spot as number one!”
The look on his friend’s face said he hardly believed Shen Yuan but regardless, Shen Yuan continued on, “As an educator, I just think that his methods are wrong! You can’t work kids to the ground and then earn their admiration! Doesn’t that usually work opposite? And my attendance has been dropping since he began working!”
Shang Qinghua took another big sip. “Isn’t that because you’re getting to the most boring part of your lesson plan this semester? Your attendance always drops at this point of the year, bro.”
“Yeah but only by like one or two students! Not a whole dozen who don’t even try to hide the fact that they’re skipping. Honestly, I should write them all up if I see them in the gym again.”
“Dude, they’d still skip.” Shang Qinghua said, tired and already having accepted fate. “All the kids in this school are masochists. In the name of a pretty face, they’ll do anything.”
“...” Shen Yuan didn’t like the implication that he was also a pretty boy but he decided to ignore it and continue.
“Then, I’ll speak directly to Liu Qingge myself to try and get him to send the students back to their rightful classes. I have a reputation to uphold for Cang Qiong, after all.” Shen Yuan said while nodding.
Shang Qinghua rolled his eyes and pushed off the counter. Lunch would be over soon and they’d have to resume their lessons. “Anyways, good luck with that, bro. If he helps you out, then help me out too and start sending my students back to me.”
“What’s the point of sending your students back if they don’t listen to you?” Shen Yuan said in a way he intended to be jokingly. “Only that Mobei Jun kid stays around in your classes and he barely pays attention.”
Shang Qinghua threw his hands in the air. “It’s not my fault everyone in this school hates literature to death! But Mobei Jun writes excellent papers, so I think he does pay attention even if he doesn’t look like it!”
“He does?” Shen Yuan asked, skeptically. “All the research papers he writes in my class are bare bones and straight to the point. Whenever I ask for a six page paper, he turns in a one and a half page paper with basically a summary. I can’t imagine him writing a good paper for literature. ”
Shang Qinghua looked confused. “Really? No I’m serious, bro, like his essays are really good. Like I’ve been considering sitting him down and asking him if he’d like a letter of recommendation for that really fancy literature university in B city.”
Shang Qinghua and Shen Yuan both looked at each other with confusion painted on their faces as they tried to figure out the mystery that was Mobei Jun. Only when the bell rang did they finally conclude their pointless conversation.
“Bring me one of his papers, sometime.” Shen Yuan requested. “I’ll see if I can try and force him to write better papers in my class.”
“But my one special student! If he does well in everyone else’s classes, I won’t feel special anymore.” Shang Qinghua whined but nonetheless didn’t refuse.
And so they waved goodbye at the break room door and each made their own ways to their classes.
Shen Yuan taught biology, but he tended to skim over human biology part of the semester and get really into the animals’ biology, having more interest in it himself. Therefore, as he reached the part of the semester where it came time to teach about humans, of course his energy dulled down and so did his students’ interest.
Today was one of those days where he pointed at a model of human anatomy and tiredly spoke on the nervous system’s ‘many wonders’.
Before starting class, he had noted that his class attendance was again, down by ten students and sighed in desperation as he waited for his students to catch up taking notes off of his powerpoint.
Tomorrow. He decided. Tomorrow he would find Liu Qingge and speak to him on the matter.
Except, tomorrow never even had the chance to come before Shen Yuan ran into Liu Qingge.
After classes had ended for the day, Shen Yuan returned to his office, of which he shared with four other teachers from the science department.
He was grading homework as he always would at this time of day when a loud clunking came followed by the sounds of cursing. Someone must’ve been having trouble with the copying machines again…
Deciding he didn’t want to tell Yue Qingyuan that the machine broke again (those things were more than expensive to take care of! He felt bad every time he had to seek out the principal and politely request a repair be done!), he stood up and decided to find whoever it was messing with the machine.
When he stood up, he saw the other four teachers all sitting at their desks looking just as annoyed with the distressed copy machine sounds. So it was none of them? Who the hell was in the science department and using (breaking) their copying machine?
When Shen Yuan stepped into the room next door specifically designated for the machines, he found a man with a short ponytail tied at the base of his neck wearing a unzipped gray hoodie and sweatpants pulled halfway up his calves standing, not at the copy machine, but the simple electric hole puncher.
He was sticking as many pieces of paper as possible under the thing, waiting two seconds, and pulling them back out to observe three hole shaped dents on the paper but no actual holes. It was extremely pathetic.
This person seemed to notice Shen Yuan as soon as he walked into the room. He whipped his head around and glared pointedly at Shen Yuan.
Why in the fresh hell was Liu Qingge in the science department’s copy room and glaring at him?
Shen Yuan was still formulating what words he’d like to say for this man, but he was saving them for tomorrow! He hadn’t expected to run into him today, he was totally unprepared!
Finally, Liu Qingge spoke up and said. “You. Help me.”
Help him?
Thinking of no other things to say, Shen Yuan threw on his regular smile and walked behind Liu Qingge, peering over his shoulder at the stack of papers in his hands.
“Why does a gym teacher need papers?” he asked instead.
“Mu Qingfang said he wanted me to make physical sheets for him since the students need to have their yearly physicals soon.” Liu Qingge answered easily enough. That was good, he didn’t appear as intimidating as before. Shen Yuan could work with this.
“Hm,” hummed Shen Yuan in understanding. “And you’re having trouble…?”
“Hole punching them.” Liu Qingge gritted out, seeming to be a bit frustrated. Oh! So here comes his famous temper that Shen Yuan has heard of from his student’s who… strangely loved it? Truly, they must’ve been as masochistic as Shang Qinghua suggested.
“Well,” Shen Yuan began, deciding maybe he’d discreetly take out some of his grievances on this person by being a little more curt then usual. “You’re doing it completely wrong, which is impossible considering there’s only two buttons and a big piece of paper labeled ‘only 20 pieces at a time’ on the front of the machine.”
“So?” Liu Qingge asked, holding his stack of 150 pieces of paper.
Shen Yuan sighed heavily in his heart but keeping a pleasant smile on the surface, said. “It can’t punch through more than 20 at a time. Plus you could break the machine if you push it too far.”
Liu Qingge stiffened before mumbling out a sorry and sorting through his papers. Still not quite counting them but taking a marginally smaller part of the papers and lining them up with the machine.
Shen Yuan watched as the machine successfully punched through the paper and as Liu Qingge slowly but surely got through his entire stack of papers.
Shen Yuan hadn’t meant to supervise him but this person seemed a little meatheadish and he wouldn’t be able to forgive himself if he left and Liu Qingge then proceeded to break the machine. By the time he was done, Liu Qingge tapped his papers on the top of a nearby machine so they lined up neatly and finally turned around to face Shen Yuan fully.
“Thank you,” he said, ears a bit pink. It was kind of hot in the copying room, so Shen Yuan could understand. But what Shen Yuan understood couldn’t even begin to compare with what he didn’t expect! Who would’ve thought that this new star of the school was actually kind of humble!
Shen Yuan, feeling kind of bad now, takes on a gentler tone of voice. “How’d you get them copied? Did you find your way around the copy machine okay?”
Liu Qingge tightened his grip on the stack. Oh those poor papers.
“Mu Qingfang handed them to me. He said after the students filled them out, he’d put them in a binder.” Liu Qingge explained.
Shen Yuan nodded. “Makes sense. Well, since you’re a gym teacher, I doubt you’ll need to use the copying machine often, if ever, but if the time does come that you need it, let me know.”
Liu Qingge nodded stiffly before waving goodbye. “I’ll see you around,” he said before disappearing.
Only after he was gone did Shen Yuan realize he totally forgot to ask him to return his students to him. At first he suspected the poor guy was actively stealing them but now he would bet that the man didn’t even realize the extra students appearing in his classes.
-
The next day, before Shen Yuan could even find the time to go and seek Liu Qingge out himself, the other man already taken the liberty to find Shen Yuan.
“Hey!” he yelled across the wave of students rushing to lunch.
Shen Yuan waved.
He watched in amusement as Liu Qingge not-so-delicately pushed his way through the sea of highschoolers (not that the students minded, Shen Yuan thought somewhat bitterly. In fact, some of the students looked more than pleased to be shoved by the man) before stopping at the wall where Shen Yuan was currently playing hall monitor and watching the students, making sure no one dallied for too long on their way to lunch.
When Liu Qingge reached him, he repeated his greeting before asking, “Can you help me?”
Shen Yuan tilted his head curiously, “With what?”
Liu Qingge strangely paused, face becoming a little pink.
“...I want to print attendance sheets.” he said after a moment. Was the man embarrassed that he’d have to take up Shen Yuan’s offer of help so soon? Ah, was he a little prideful after all?
“It’s no problem,” Shen Yuan assured him as he led him to the copying room. “By the way, was there any particular reason you were in the science department’s copying room yesterday? Aren’t we on like… the other side of the school?”
“It was the only door that was unlocked.” Liu Qingge replied.
“...” Shen Yuan said in reply while thinking he would beat whoever was the last person in the copying room was.
“Anyways, it should be locked but since the literature department is much closer to the gym, next time you can ask a teacher inside of the next door offices to let you in.” Shen Yuan explained as he took out his own keys and unlocked the copying room.
“Here is fine.” Liu Qingge said without missing a beat. Shen Yuan paused in his opening of the room and straightened up.
“Is there something about the science department?” Shen Yuan asked, curious as to what was this weird teacher’s reasoning.
At once, Liu Qingge’s previously neutral face turned red and angry. “No reason! I like it here is all!” he half shouted as he pushed past Shen Yuan and opened the unlocked door to the room.
Shen Yuan could only watch his back with a confused expression before following the new teacher in.
The man was already standing at one of four machines in the small room and looking at it as if it were the world’s most confusing puzzle, and to be honest it probably was. Shen Yuan knew some teachers who had been working with these machines for longer than he’d been alive and they still had trouble with them.
Shen Yuan gently pushed Liu Qingge’s shoulder to signal him to step aside and the man moved almost too easily at his touch as he squeezed himself in.
The machines were lined up in the small room so that there were two on the longest wall and one on each of the remaining adjacent walls, leaving the corners of the room completely vacant for the teacher’s to squeeze in and do any necessary maintenance.
And so Shen Yuan pushed himself in front of the machine so that he could properly point at the buttons in a way that also allowed Liu Qingge to still see what exactly it was that he was pointing at as well.
Patiently, Shen Yuan went through all of the steps, grabbing a leftover sheet of paper from another teacher’s printing sessions to demonstrate. He allowed Liu Qingge to try it with the test sheet once before he seemed to understand the basics.
Making one sided copies of papers is the easiest thing to with the machine, consisting of scanning it, closing the top securely and making sure you input the correct amount of copies you need.
“I’ll watch you this time to make sure nothing goes wrong. If you want, I can also write down the steps for next time?” Shen Yuan suggested, watching as Liu Qingge slowly worked through the steps himself.
“It’s fine.” Liu Qingge said, focused on his work. “I remember. If anything goes wrong I’ll just come find you.”
Shen Yuan was partially flattered and partially frustrated by this man. Flattered because he was being relied on. After being the newest staff for so long, it was nice to have a junior for once. However, he was frustrated that the man seemed intent on Shen Yuan himself helping him. Didn’t he know the school offered tech support…?
“Oh by the way,” Shen Yuan said, suddenly remembering his whole purpose in wanting to interact with Liu Qingge. “It seems some of my students are skipping my class to go to yours. If you catch them- make sure you’re paying attention to what you’re doing, the machine if very picky.”
“I am!” Liu Qingge snapped back, decisively pressing the buttons on the copying machine before finally clicking the green ‘OK’.
“About your students?” Liu Qingge prompted afterwards, waiting for him to continue as the machine hummed to life and started spitting out the first few sheets.
“Yeah! So if you catch them skipping can you either send them back to class or kick them out or something? I get it, gym class is fun and you’re a very handsome guy-”
“You think I’m handsome?” Liu Qingge asked, and Shen Yuan felt his face pink.
“That’s not what I meant-! Not to say that you’re not handsome but I just meant to say the students think you’re handsome so they’re skipping for you and-!” he needed to divert the focus of the conversation somehow!
“And did you mean to print more than like… 10 copies of the attendance sheet?”
Liu Qingge quickly whipped his head to the machine where it began spitting out copies like crazy. He quickly peeked at the little window that displayed the requested amount of copies and paled. “I accidentally hit an extra zero.”
“One hundred copies isn’t something to freak out about,” Shen Yuan tried to reassure him, seeing the mild panic in his eyes. “A lot of teachers have to make that many copies. We can always-”
“Three… Three extra zeros.” Liu Qingge interrupted him looking a little lifeless in the face of the papers that began spitting themselves out even quicker, as if to mock the duo.
Shen Yuan counted his fingers, “One, zero, zero, zero, zero… 10,000 COPIES!? HOW DID YOU ACCIDENTALLY DO THAT!”
“I WAS LISTENING TO WHAT YOU WERE SAYING!” Liu Qingge yelled back, clearly influenced by Shen Yuan’s own panic. “How do we stop it!”
“I don’t know!” Shen Yuan cried, digging his hands into his hair. They both fumbled over the buttons for a second before Shen Yuan felt as though he had a brilliant idea.
“Open the tray and remove the paper! If it doesn’t have any paper it won’t print!”
Liu Qingge quickly bent down and forced open the tray and Shen Yuan ripped out the papers as quickly as possible. The machine halted in its progress as soon as the tray was opened, making half of their steps totally unnecessary.
Shen Yuan and Liu Qingge let out a heavy sigh of relief, Liu Qingge slumping against the wall since he was already down on his knees from when he opened the tray.
They stood completely still for a second when Liu Qingge suddenly said, “We could’ve pressed the power button.”
Shen Yuan slapped his own forehead. Why were they so fucking stupid?
“I’m going to put these back now,” Shen Yuan said tiredly, stepping forward to do just that when he suddenly stepped on a stray piece of paper that got loose during their panicked chaos.
Paper and tile are things that absolutely do not mix. The paper slid out from beneath Shen Yuan’s foot and he quickly stretched out the other one, trying to catch himself. He would’ve succeeded in the tray was not still pulled out. Instead, he banged his leg harshly on the plastic tray and tripped with a loud crash right on top of the slouched Liu Qingge, hitting his head on the man’s chin and bottom lip.
He ended up totally collapsed onto Liu Qingge while accepting his painful fate. Shen Yuan wanted to die out of both embarrassment of the situation and out of literal pain because ouch his leg and his head.
Not to mention that the papers that Shen Yuan was previously holding had flown out of his hands and were now falling around the room like confetti.
“I’m sorry,” Shen Yuan groaned pitifully from where his head rested on Liu Qingge’s shoulder, unwilling to move due to the throbbing.
“S’fine,” Liu Qingge said tiredly himself. After waiting a few moments more, Shen Yuan finally looked up to see Liu Qingge holding his lip in pain. God… was he going to be sued? Harming a coworker indirectly in a copy machine accident. He’ll be the dumbest man ever arrested!
Before Shen Yuan even had the chance to further pursue that train of thought, the familiar voice of one of Shen Yuan’s students came from the doorway.
“Teacher Shen…? I didn’t find you in your office but the teachers there said you might be here so I-” the voice paused.
Shen Yuan turned around the meet the student’s eyes. The student’s face flushed a violent red when the student stuttered out quickly, “I’m- You- He- I’m so sorry to disturb!”
The student slapped their palms over their eyes and ran out of the room before Shen Yuan even had the chance to question what the student thought they saw.
Shen Yuan collapsed back onto Liu Qingge in exhaustion. When he realized what he had done, he immediately stiffened and quickly sat up, accidentally straddling the man in turn.
Now it was both his and Liu Qingge’s turn to flush red as Shen Yuan pushed in the tray as quickly as possible so he could totally separate himself from the other man’s body.
“I’m so sorry,” Shen Yuan said once again. “Let’s never talk about this again?”
Liu Qingge agreed with a stiff nod. “Agreed.”
-
It didn’t take long for a rumor to reach Shen Yuan’s ears that a certain biology teacher and a certain gym teacher were having “special one on one lessons” together.
Couldn’t someone just kill him?