he can almost see the tremble in the younger’s body; voice fluctuating, almost squeaking at certain points. the bark of laughter that escapes his lips is a far cry from humorous or of goodwill— it’s not hard to tell that jeongguk’s beyond frightened now, words stumbled upon, stuttered almost incoherently as his thoughts overlap each other. kade’s surprised he’s not crying.
“you’re right, but that’s such a textbook answer”, he’s staring the younger down now, although their gazes do not meet. “so practiced, lacking any creativity. like you’re trying to suck up to me so that i’d let this slide.” he pauses here, allowing his words to sink in. fingers find jeongguk’s chin and kade’s tipping his head backwards, forcing the latter to stare back at him. “am i not right?”, it’s almost mocking– the way he tilts his head slightly as he says this. “you lost track of what you were doing?” he lets out a disappointed sigh, sarcastic. “i thought i had taught you better. but well, we can’t have everything we want, can we?”
walking back to his seat now, he lets his hand slip down to jeongguk’s wrist, tugging him closer to the desk and towards him. “since you’re so eager to have your phone confiscated and handed to me to be kept, i’ll grant your wish.” there’s a dangerous look in his eye as he continues, knowing full well that the worst was yet to come. jimin and jeongguk had always been too close, and it was opportune time to rock the boat a little. kade found humour in stirring up a mess. “to make sure that you’ll never forget again— ah, since you’re so close to jimin, i’m sure he won’t mind taking the rep this time, don’t you think? although he has been telling me that he aches too much to dance properly, i’m sure that once i mention your name, he’ll be on it.”
the thing is, jeongguk is almost never a troublemaker-- ever. he doesn’t have a smart mouth when addressing the staff or his managers at all, the poster boy of respect. sure, he’s been punished when the company felt he had to work harder (and it wasn’t that he wasn’t working hard enough, but a machine cannot rest even after ten hours straight of practicing), but never for fucking up. he learned his lesson quickly when he watched another trainee try to bark back at one of her managers and wound up bruises larger than baseballs all along her arms and thighs. he didn’t see her again after that. it was jimin who was always getting reprimanded when they were trainees, and while that’s lessoned since they debuted, that doesn’t change the fact that jeongguk simply didn’t know what to do in this situation-- he’d never had to deal with it firsthand before.
he winces at the laugh, fingers tightening around each other until his skin is a pasty white, matching the way he felt. he’s seen kade yell at jimin before, and his anger is not something to be contended with by any means, he knows that. “it’s not practiced--” he protested, before shutting up, trying to bite down the urge to defend himself. it’s not. it’s true that he doesn’t want to be punished, but maybe he’s too polite-- he’s never been good with his words, so he resorts to politeness to get through his conversations. but that’s failed him here.
“i’ll do better,” jeongguk mumbles, crestfallen. he listens to the elder’s words, accepting it, taking it to heart, expecting that to be the end of it.
his head snaps up when jimin is mentioned, and something dark lodges itself in his stomach-- anger, regret, guilt, protectiveness. jimin has done enough, jeongguk doesn’t want to add to that. “i--” and he sucks in a sharp, shaky breath, before his expression solidifies, and he tries not to think about the fact that he’s only digging himself a deeper hole. “no, i-- i’ll just get lazy if i let him do it for me, right? you’re right, jimin hyung would hop on it in an instant, but what would i l-learn if i don’t learn the hard way? i-i don’t want anyone else... fixing my mistakes for me, kade. i-i--” swallow. “i’ll do anything that you tell me to, you know that, and we don’t need jimin hyung suffering more in practice anyways. that’d give everyone a headache.” (he hates being moderately rude about his best friend, even dismissive, but at least jeongguk isn’t lying. he doesn’t want jimin to ache more, and that’s the truth.)
