A/N: Italicized parts are flashbacks :D 

Chapter 2 ~ Knowing Her

Winter, 2014 

Today is another day that Kim Taeyeon gets to space out in class. Fortunately, today is one of those days that a long and boring lecture got cancelled due to reasons that the petite girl couldn't care less. So she sat there on her armchair, in between her noisy friends, staring outside their window with nothing but a big concrete wall at sight. 

Her mind drove to anything and nothing in particular as she tries to comfort herself with the background noises coming from chitchats and banters echoing inside the four walls of their classroom. Taeyeon never did like nuisance, but over the years of balancing her introvertness with bringing herself to at least socialize with people with ped mouths and untamed horses, she had mastered the key to serenity despite the anarchy. 

Driving her thoughts outside the planet, Taeyeon remains fully aware of her surroundings. She would occasionally steal glances over loud gossips she'll accidentally hear on the other side of the room and turn hear head to look at and answer those who calls her out for something. Being a dork as she is, even in the midst of spacing out, she would blurt out random comments and jokes to anyone who passes by her front. She loves and enjoys these small interactions with people she safely call friends. 

But despite the friendly disposition, Taeyeon is reserved, a reason for the usual first impression of being aloof and unapproachable. Taeyeon is awkward. She hates small talks and so, she is not fond of interacting with people of distant relationship with her. She has scribbled a thick line between friends and acquaintances. Only to those whom she consider as friends does she talk comfortably and fool around with. But to other kind of people, acquaintances, she barely makes the first move to try to talk to them or at least, even just greet them along hallways and corridors. It's not that she's cold, Taeyeon is just too careful with people. People are dangerous creatures, she thought, one thing that she discovered over the years of being a wallflower.

From her peripheral view, Taeyeon caught sight of someone entering the room. She turned her head to see who's coming and saw Tiffany walking with light and bouncy steps. How could she always be in a good mood? she thought as she looks at the face of the walking girl.

Fall, 2012

"Taeyeon-ah!" says the loud screams echoing the entire hallway of the campus.

Taeyeon squinted her eyes to look at the faces of two small figures running towards her. As the two are slowly coming nearer, she recognized it be her friends Yuri and Yoona. The two tackled her in a tight hug, squeezing her in the process.

"Y-yah, yah!" Taeyeon exclaimed as she finds it hard to breathe with the bear hug that the duo has given her. She tried to wriggle her way out of the two pair of arms. "L-let me g-go! I-I can't b-breathe!"

"Oops, sorry" Yuri grinned as she loosened her hold on Taeyeon.

"We missed you!" Yoona said, her arms still wrapped around Taeyeon's waist.

"We just saw each other yesterday, you babos! You don't have to strangle me like that."  Taeyeon replied as she soothed her neck and chest.

"It is still different than we were still classmates you know. We get to see you the whole day before and now we barely see each other. Is it so wrong for us to miss you?" Yoona tried to sulk and jutted down her lips.

"I agree!" Yuri chimed in with the sulking.

"Shut it you two! This whole sulking doesn't suit you." she removes the arms around her. "It makes me wanna bang your heads together." she laughed as she put her arms around their shoulders.

"Your gratefulness amuses us Kim Taeyeon, wow." Yuri shook her head.

Taeyeon just chuckled, missing this interaction with her friends. "I was just joking" she grinned. "I missed you too, you know. It's so boring without you. I will always prefer your teasing and bullying over the boringness."

"Now we feel appreciated!" Yoona grinned.

Just then, another group of girls passed beside them and the duo noticed them. 

"Hi Sica! Fany! Hara! Jihyo! Sunhye!" Yuri grinned as she loudly enumerated the girls.

"Hi girls!" Yoona gretted.

"Hi Yuri!" the girls greeted back in chorus. "Hi Yoona!"

"Oh, Taeyeon-ah, hi!" the girl named Jihyo, her classmate from high school, greeted the silent girl. 

The girls Hara and Sunhye, who became her classmates last year, also noticed Taeyeon and greeted her, "Hi Taeyeon-ah!"

"Hello" Taeyeon greeted them meekly, getting anxious with the impending introduction that she sure thinks is about to happen because of the presence of two other unfamiliar girls. They weren't exactly unfamiliar for her since she had seen them a couple of times around the campus and she is aware