By definition, the Manic Pixie Dream Girl is a long-standing trope based on years of unsatisfied male writers and fantasies.

They awaken one's senses, lets them see the light of their wrongs, parting the clouds to find what “true” happiness is really all about. They’re inhumanly beautiful, quirky, strangely talented, and tons of other strange idiosyncrasies (which would definitely be unattractive to anyone but the trope’s portrayal).

Kim Sunggyu is really into foreign films, saying that they have a better grasp on human custom and culture (because duh, watching films in languages other than Korean is supposedly cool).

He wouldn’t stop raving about this one film, where a couple goes to Ikea and plays house, and they seem so perfect but they break up anyway. Typical stuff, but what really got my friend was that he couldn’t understand the meaning of love in the movie and why feelings had to just come and go.

I watched it too, unwillingly. The female lead was the Manic Pixie Dream Girl: packaged in vibrant blue eyes, dark wavy hair, and adorkable personality.

It wasn’t a movie about love, it was a movie about the male lead’s selfishness, expecting all his problems to be solved with one girl. It was his fault for investing his feelings in something so abstract, without any consideration for the girl.

And yet, Sunggyu felt sorry for the male lead. He hated the female lead for leaving him heartbroken. Despite the fact that he was trying to change her into something she wasn’t, hoping that he could keep her by smothering her in passion, instead of letting her go and enjoying the 500 days he had.

Which is why I’m convinced my interest in MPDB should remain as fluid as possible, because I don’t need him to give me a new meaning of life and convince me to take new adventures. He’s supposed to be untouchable.

But of course, he’d never do that. He’s MPDB because he’s idolized, he’s painted out as a vision of shallow happiness to girls, because through him, they can “live freely and love madly.”  

“Hey,” Sungyeol tapped my shoulder, “I told you to come to the study group.”

Multiple pairs of eyes were on us. “I am.” I replied pointedly, gesturing to our classroom.

“I need you here, physically and intelligently. No use for you sitting here and writing in your diary.”

MPDB’s head lifted in the slightest when Sungyeol spat out the word “diary” and he fixed his stare on my laptop. Pretending not to notice, I tilted the lid of my laptop halfway.

“And what are you contributing to this study group, Sungyeol?” I countered, opening my pencil case for a red pen.

“I’m contributing my ty essay for you to proofread and make it less ty.”

“At least I don’t have to worry about your lacking in creative language.”

He pouted, practically shoving his freshly printed draft onto my face. “Please?”

Of course Lee Sungyeol starts a chain, and suddenly I’m left with a two-centimeter stack of essays from other study group kids. As much as liked  them relying on me, I wasn’t about to do damage control so easily, especially with a handful of distracted students around the table. Swiping a random pencil off the table, I pushed myself out of the group. “I’ll be done in half an hour. I expect actual progress, Sungyeol.”

“I can’t progress while I’m waiting for you to judge my essay.” That earned him a whackful of essays to his big head.

I got a little round of applause and “fightings!” to my classmates as I left the room, trying to find a quiet spot. In fact, the entire library should be considered a quiet spot, so anywhere would do. I plopped to the floor in the corner of the anthology section, and weaved my thumb through the pages.

Somewhere in the middle of the stack, you, oh dear MPDB, had left me a note.

In dark pen, he wrote on a blank sheet of printer paper: You don’t have to do  this >.<

Cute, I thought, pushing the note to the back of the pile to work on another person’s.