I've updated a lot in the past day so go back & make sure you read everything!!!

And throughout the course of dinner, several more people come up to our table, including Yoon Bomi, Choi Junhong, and Shin Jimin. Fei walks past our table and subtly gives my shoulder a little squeeze; I look up at her and she flashes me a subtle wink. JB looks quite relieved at this, whispering in my ear, “Told you so.”

It’s weird because everyone who comes to sit with us is nothing like I expected. Hyuna’s a lot louder than she ever let on, and Bomi- who I previously pegged as a freshman wannabe- is actually quite smart. Jimin, Hoseok, Junhong, who I didn’t even know were into rapping, have a really enthusiastic conversation the underground music scene. I realize that oddly enough, this seems to be the first time that they have exposed these aspects of their personality to other people- especially people in other cliques. Everyone in the cafeteria is gawking at our table.

A breath of satisfaction escapes my lips.

This is a slap in the face to everything that Andong stands for. This is something new. Something that I never thought would happen.

This is freaking great.

I am walking back to my room after dinner- my new lunch table has made plans to grab frozen yogurt over the weekend- when someone grabs my wrist.

“We need to talk,” Sehun says in a cold voice.

On another day, his frigid, arrogant tone would make my stomach boil with resentment. But it all seems so silly now. I honestly couldn’t care less for Sehun’s childish pretenses. Because that’s what they are: childish. He’s hiding behind this mask of superiority and condescension for no reason.

“What do you want, Sehun?” I simply say.

His eyes widen slightly- no doubt because of the lack of characteristic malice in my voice- but his expression quickly settles back into its usual sneer.

“What are you doing?” he asks. “What happened to all the, I’m going to take you down, Sehun, I’m going to show you that I’m better than you, Sehun?”

“Like I said,” I tell him, yanking my hand out of his grip. “I don’t care about that anymore.”

“Really?” Sehun lets out a harsh bark of laughter. “I thought you hate me as much as Mark does.”

I sigh. “I hated you because you made me confused as hell. Because no matter how much I tried, you were still always above me. I could never reach you.”

He studies me with an unreadable expression. “And?”

“And I don’t care about that anymore. I got in the middle of a feud between you and Mark, and I’m the one who got screwed over on both sides. I really can’t read you, Sehun. This all started when I tried to apologize to you, and you just treated me like crap. One moment you’re supporting me, the next moment, you’re kicking me to the ground. I’m tired of it. I just... I don’t want anything to do with you anymore. So don’t worry: I won’t be bugging you anymore.”

For a moment, Sehun’s glower utterly cracks, revealing hurt in his eyes. He stares down at me, stunned.

“I have to go, Sehun,” I say softly. “Goodbye.”

    No matter how much I try to prevent it, there is sadness welling up in my stomach. My chest feels tight and my throat burns but I know this had to be done. It couldn’t go on like this for any longer: this push-and-pull, this hot-and-cold.

    I have to move on from Oh Sehun.

    I turn, starting to walk away, when he suddenly says, “Do you want to know? Why Mark and I hate each other. Why I snapped at you that day, when you tried to apologize for the Autumn Ball. Who you are to me.”

    I freeze. Slowly, I pivot back towards him.

    “What are you talking about?” I warily ask.

    Sehun’s eyes are burning with some strange emotion. He pulls his phone out of his pocket and taps on the screen. A few moments later, he has pulled up a picture.

    I narrow my eyes, peering at the image.

    And then my jaw drops.

    It is a selfie of Sehun and I lying on the grass near the lake, goofy grins on our faces. I am holding up a peace sign to the camera as Sehun puts up bunny ears behind my head.

    This is not even the most shocking part.

    Judging by my round cheeks and Sehun’s messy black hair, I must have been in freshman year when this was taken.

    My eyes dart up to Sehun’s face. He is watching me impassively, his lips a thin line.

    “What the hell is this?” I whisper.

    “You don’t remember. Of course.” Sehun takes a deep breath. “This was taken during the first week of our freshman year. About an hour before this, Mark and I had gotten into a fistfight at a party. He had walked in on his girlfriend, Krystal, and me, his best friend, kissing each other. What he didn’t know is that Krystal had thrown herself at me in an attempt to make him jealous. Why? Because she could tell that Mark was falling for the new girl: Bae Suzy.”

    Holy crap.

    “Regardless, Mark was furious. He blamed everything on me and dumped Krystal. The next day, he was dating Suzy.” Sehun swallows. “Anyway, there I was, just walking along the banks of the lake. It was midnight and I had just lost my best friend: the person who knew everything about me, from my love of astronomy to my resentment of my parents. I didn’t know what the hell I was going to do. I was perfectly alone.”

    “And suddenly, I heard someone scream from the other side of the lake. I sprinted over and saw you. You were clearly drunk- from what I could gather, you had been at the same party as me. Unfortunately, you had unknowingly had several glasses of the vodka-spiked punch there.”

    “What?!” I gasp. “Wait- oh my god. I know what you’re talking about. It was the first party I had ever gone to.”

    And the last party (or I thought at the time). It was absolutely terrible. I, a naive freshman, had thought that I could make a lot of friends at Andong and have a great high school career. That party was the place where I realized that I was just a scholarship student, and thus, would systematically be looked down upon by every single person in the school. After desperately milling around the room, attempting to make conversation with at least 20 different people and getting rebuffed every time, I simply resigned myself to the sofa in the corner and drank glasses of fruit punch.

    That is the only thing I remember about that night. The next thing I knew, I was waking up in my bed with a massive headache.

    What the hell happened with Oh Sehun?

    “You were crying,” Sehun says quietly. “You were talking about how no one would talk to you, and how you felt so out of place here. I sat down next to you and we just talked about everything, from our problem to things that annoyed us to what we wanted to do when we grew up. I actually told you I wanted to go into astronomy that day. I felt so much better. That night, I didn’t feel lonely at all.”

    “Oh my god.”

    “That’s not all.”

    My eyes widen. “Wh... what else happened?”

    Sehun twists his lips. “Well. It was about 2 in the morning. You were completely wasted, and I was completely fed up with the world. So... I suggested we do something a little... interesting.”

    Oh no. Oh no. Please don’t tell me we-

    “We didn’t have or anything,” Sehun quickly adds, seeing the look on my face. “We did something a little more... illegal.”

    “Oh my god,” I say in a small voice. “What did we do?”

    “Uh... you know how the Fluck Building replaced that old building that someone spray painted a bunch of cuss words on?”

    My stomach sinks all the way down to hell.

    “Please don’t tell me-,”

    “That was us,” Sehun says grimly. “We took a few bottles of spray paint and went ham. Unfortunately, they figured out that I was involved, because I put a few... choice words about Krystal and Mark that made it pretty clear it was me. That’s why my family paid for the construction of the new Fluck Building to replace the building we graffitied, in exchange for keeping my involvement on the down low.”

    I literally have to put my hands on the wall to steady myself.

    No.

No way.

This is not-

This can’t be real.

“Do you want to see pictures of the building we vandalized?” Sehun asks, holding up his phone.

I look at his screen, praying that this will be some kind of misunderstanding, another one of Sehun’s lies-

Nope. That’s definitely my handwriting.

.

“Why don’t I remember any of this?” I whisper.

“You were blackout drunk, Mihi. I had to literally carry you back to your room. I’m pretty sure you threw up about three times.”

I bury my head in my hands. “Oh, no.”

“Yeah. Anyway, the next morning, I saw you, but you obviously didn’t remember a thing. You seemed pretty disillusioned- just looking at you, I could tell that you just wanted to be left alone. So I just kept it to myself.”

“What the ? You should’ve told me about it!”

“I didn’t want to burden you with any information about what we did that night- especially how we vandalized a building. You would’ve freaked. And I think you had enough on your plate at that time.”

“That... this is crazy. This is so ing crazy, Sehun.”

He lets out a small laugh. “I know. It sounds unbelievable even to myself. But... I’ve always seen you from afar. That night, we had sworn to each other that we wouldn’t care about what anyone else thought of us- we would just do whatever we wanted, and live life how we wanted to. You were the only one who actually did that, though. You went through life as yourself. And I seriously admired you for that.”

“So then... why were you so rude to me when I came to apologize to you for ditching you at the Autumn Ball?”

Sehun reddens. He awkwardly coughs.

“Uh... to be honest... I may or may not have arranged for us to be partnered with each other.”

I look at him with a deadpan expression.

“I just- I just wanted to talk to you,” he says, covering his face. “After all this time, you know? And I was going to bring up that night. Then you ditched me, and I was pissed. I snapped at you because I was mad at you. But I never expected you would take it that far.”

We stand in silence for a good two minutes. I am at a complete loss for words. The events of the last few months flash past me. I try to put things in perspective with the new knowledge I have about my relationship with Oh Sehun.

“That day after my first party,” I suddenly say. “When you told me that you thought I was above all this, and that this ‘wasn’t me’. Did you know?”

“I was just taken aback, I guess. After observing you do your own thing for two years, the sight of you trying to change yourself to become more popular was kind of... weird. I know I came off as condescending-,”

“You always do,” I mutter.

“-but yeah, I was referring back to the person I thought you were, I guess. I don’t know. It’s all complicated and strange.”

“That’s an understatement.” I look at Sehun. He is watching me, waiting to see what my reaction to all this is.

“So what now?” I ask him.

“I don’t know,” he says. “I just- I had to get it all out. I’m sorry for being such a . And also for not explaining everything to you earlier.”

“It’s... it’s fine, I guess.”

“Are you okay now, Mihi?” he questions softly.

“What do you mean?”

“Are you happy, I mean, now that you’re doing your own thing?”

“Yeah. I am. Much happier.”

A small smile curves up his lip.

“Good. That’s what really matter.”

And then he turns and walks away.

A/N: LMAOOO YA I WAS PLANNING THIS FROM DAY 1, like theres a reason the astronomyc club and stuff was in the fluck building and ya all thsis stuff