I suppress a smile, feeling almost giddy with anticipation. Finally, I want to sing. Only an hour has passed since I fled from Jake’s dorm room and finished packing for school, but it seems like an entire lifetime ago, with every moment in between spent waiting for the scheduled email to come through.
“Now what’s this?” Mr. Chen muses out loud, his eyebrows raised.
Jake blinks. “I didn’t...”
But the rest of his sentence is drowned out when Mr. Chen clicks onto the attached video. Immediately, a BLACKPINK song blasts through the speakers at full volume, so loud that half the class jump in their seats.
Then the Jake in the video comes into view on the screen. His gelled hair is shorter than it is now, his skin still burnt a dark gold from the summer break, and he’s clearly intoxicated, his cheeks so red they practically glow. His eyes are half-shut as he sings along to the song, flailing his arms about and stamping his feet in an uneven rhythm as if trying to do the choreography as well. Judging from the family portraits and giant porcelain vases in the background, it looks like he’s at someone’s house, but the place has been redecorated to resemble a nightclub. Flashing colored lights dot Jake’s low V-neck top and sweat-coated forehead, and more teenagers hoot and clap and cackle like wild witches in the background.
Someone in the video screams over the music, their words slurring together so they’re just barely comprehensible, “Who d’you reckon’s the hottest girl in the year level?”
Jake yells back some name I can’t quite catch, and shoves his flushed face into the camera. Then, raising his voice, he adds, “She’s so—she’s so-oo fucking hot.” His lips stretch into a sloppy smile. “Like, dude. Have you seen her ass? She could sit on my face and I’d—”
Mr. Chen quickly shuts his laptop, but the damage is already done.
“Jake,” Mr. Chen says after a long pause. He stands up, the screech of his chair cutting through the silence—and even then, I don’t think I’ve ever heard the class this quiet before. “A word outside, please?”
Jake’s face looks almost as red as it did in the video. Stuffing his hands in his pockets, his head bowed at an angle, he shuffles after the teacher into the corridor.
The door has barely closed behind them when the class erupts into chaos. Loud whispers and notes of laughter swirl around the room, friends leaning far over their desks and jumping out of their seats with wide eyes to discuss what they just saw:
“Oh my god.”
“I can’t believe...”
“What the hell was he thinking? Did someone hack his phone?”
“The secondhand embarrassment is real. Like, I’m literally cringing so hard right now—”
“Did you see Mr. Chen’s face? He looked like he was ready to resign—”
“I always knew Jake Nguyen was a fuckboy. You can just tell by the hair—”
“No wonder Rainie dumped his sorry ass. Seriously.”