The first time Jeongguk lays his eyes on her, he’s panting hard with beads of sweat rolling mercilessly down the side of his face. His bangs are clinging to his forehead, and his shoes squeak under his weight as he jogs across the court. In a crowded gym where all attention is on him and the pressure from the decreasing time on the analogue counter is anything but straining, he really shouldn’t have had noticed her among the sea of people, but he does. With only a slight turn of his head, a second of letting his eyes wander across the crowd, he almost immediately finds her there amongst everybody else.

She looked like something that should’ve been in the sky alongside the brightest of stars, instead of being thrown in amongst a screaming collection of faceless bodies. With her long, wavy hair secured in a messy bun, eyes shining bright with anticipation and excitement, and cheeks lightly flushed with the tiniest hint of scarlet. She looked so, so beautiful. Jeongguk just has to look at her; the voice in his mind seems to think so as well. So he does. But he only gets to stare at her for half a second before he nearly misses a pass (thank God for fast reflexes).

By the time the game has ended and they’ve had won with barely two points over a score of fifty-five, Jeongguk gets swallowed in a sweaty group hug and drowns in hair ruffles. He barely manages to glance over his shoulder to where she had been during the game, only to find out she’s no longer there and the only sound echoing throughout the gym is the boisterous cheering and hooting of his teammates.

Jeongguk spends the rest of the night wondering if he’ll ever see her ever again (he does).

The second time Jeongguk finds her in a sea of bodies, she’s laughing with her friends and Jeongguk finds it so easy to just stand there and listen to her tinkling voice. It’s three-thirty in the afternoon and almost everyone’s either ready to go home or hang out with their friends, like what she’ll probably be doing (whilst Jeongguk will be stuck with practice; their team captain Yoongi-hyung is ruthless when it comes to practice).

Jeongguk watches as she walks down his way, arms linked with girls on either side, and discovers himself to be enchanted by how her eyes curl into the prettiest crescents, how her tiny nose scrunches at the bridge when she laughs, and how her cheeks are almost permanently tinged pink. He thinks she looks pretty even as her escaped flyaway hairs dance across her face. With the wind continuously blowing against her face, she barely makes an effort to tuck her hair behind her ears (Jeongguk is overwhelmed with the sudden urge to do just that).

Jeongguk’s heart skips a beat (or two) when she looks up and meets his eyes, mostly because her eyes are literally stars and partly because he’s gotten caught staring. There is a flash of recognition in her eyes, maybe she remembers him from the game a few days ago – remembers him as the player who scored two three-points in a row (almost a record as impressive as Yoongi-hyung) – but it is gone in a second.

She passes by him, along with her friends, and Jeongguk has to physically stop himself from following her with his eyes.

Later, Yoongi-hyung yells at him for about five times for not paying enough attention during practice. He would’ve been upset, because he almost always never gets yelled at – (he’s actually one of the best players of the team, if he says so himself) but it’s really hard to when he’s too busy trying to remember her face and the slow-motion curling of her lips to form a smile (only the tiniest of smiles), but a smile is a smile and Jeongguk is, without a doubt, smitten.

The third time – the third time Jeongguk doesn’t exactly see her; rather, he bumps into her. He’s on his way back from the courtyard to his homeroom to pick up his belongings after throwing the trash out, being the one assigned cleanup duty. It’s well after four; the sky is all sorts of orange, blue, and pink. It casts a pretty color on the floor as it filters through the big windows of the hallway. Jeongguk’s too busy concentrating on how his shadow grows taller by the minute that he doesn’t think to look up until there’s a pair of black shoes in his vision and it’s too late.

The collision is barely forceful, just eliciting a soft oof from Jeongguk and she barely makes a sound, only a light squeak past her lips (that Jeongguk finds so, so endearing). Jeongguk looks up with wide eyes, ready to apologize a million times when he finds that it’s her, and she looks equally surprised.

Jeongguk is more surprised when she lets out a soft laugh after a short pause, finally registering what just happened.

“I’m sorry, I wasn’t looking,” she starts; her voice is gentle and clear, and in the empty hallway, is all that Jeongguk hears.

“Nah,” Jeongguk shakes his head and smoothens down the nonexistent creases of his slacks with sweaty palms, “I wasn’t exactly even looking up, if anybody’s at fault, it’s me.”

She looks like she has more to say (the mischievous, knowing glimmer in her eyes say so), but opts not to. Her lips quirk into a thoughtful smile and with a tilt of her head, she says, “Well, I’m not going to start arguing with you now, Jeon.”

The way his name, at least – a part of it, rolls from her tongue so naturally has Jeongguk biting down on his lip, almost too afraid of what he might say (what he could say), so he answers with a small smile of his own and throws in a curve of a brow, the one that gets his hyung calling him a heartbreaker even though he doubts it’s anything but, and mimics the slight tilt of her head playfully, “I’m pretty sure there’s more to my name than Jeon.”

“I don’t think it’s on your jersey though, so unless you’re giving it to me, I’m stuck with calling you Jeon.”

Jeongguk almost laughs.

“That is, unless, you prefer me calling you Number One.”

Jeongguk finally laughs.

She could, she could really call him (her) number one.

“Jeongguk, it’s Jeon Jeongguk.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Jeon Jeongguk.” She smiles, radiant under the afternoon sun, “my name’s Yein, Jung Yein.”

The fourth time it happens, Jeongguk swears he’s only half looking out for her (he’s always half looking out for her). Throughout the week, he’s seen her in the hallways, the lunchroom, in the courtyard, and they’ve exchanged smiles and hellos over heads, but time is short and time with her always seems shorter. Jeongguk admits he’s kind of disappointed their interaction is limited to only that, but by Thursday when Taehyung asks him to drop by the music hall because he’ll be missing practice today and, apparently, has something important to give to Yoongi-hyung (it ends up being an album of a famous American rapper whose name Jeongguk can’t be bothered to pronounce correctly), he hears her before he sees her.

He passes a seemingly empty room on his way to the stairwell; only to realize it’s not really empty. He’s a few steps away from the mouth of the door when a voice floats out of the room and fills the hallway. It halts Jeongguk mid-stride.

The warm afternoon breeze that blows in from the windows kisses Jeongguk’s cheek, along with the familiar gentle voice.

(Jeongguk didn’t think it was possible to fall in love with a voice, until now.)

For thirty minutes, he sit on the floor with his back against the wall beside the door, listening to her sing, but he’s not fast enough to stand up and pretend he hasn’t when the voice abruptly stops and the door pushes open.

Yein looks down at him, quickly takes a step back in surprise with a light yelp (she seemed to be a lot of that when she’s around Jeongguk), and squints her eyes at his shrinking form, “J-Jeongguk?”

Jeongguk scrambles up, pressing his hands against the wall to steady himself; he can physically feel his cheeks heat up, “Sorry, sorry, I was, I heard somebody sing and it was, it was really good, I ended up listening to it and man, it sounds weird now but I swear I wasn’t stalking you or anything.”

Yein’s laugh reverberates in his chest, makes it feel like flowers are blooming between the spaces of his ribs. “It’s okay, I don’t mind. Ah, but I’m really not that good, though…” She tucks a lock of hair behind her ear shyly, glancing up at him through her lashes, and Jeongguk, Jeongguk almost forgets self-restraint.

He shoves his hands into his pockets before he can reach out and run his fingers down her hair (she has it down and she’s never been more beautiful than she is now and it’s so, so hard), “Nah, you’re good, pretty good, actually. You sing?”

“I try to,” she bobs her head lightly, beaming when Jeongguk asks, and looks at him attentively, “do you want to listen to me sing? I sound conceited, I mean, I really don’t like letting people hear me sing, ah, but maybe you can give me pointers? That is, if you don’t have anything to do – by all means, please feel free to say no –”

“No, I don’t have anything to do,” Jeongguk cuts her off gently with a shake of his head and a small smile, digging his fingernails into his palms in his pockets to stop himself from screaming holy , “I’d love to listen.”

Yein responds by pushing the door open, smiling a little bit wider and a little bit brighter, and guides Jeongguk in.

Jeongguk ends up being almost late for practice. But it’s all worth it because by the end of the day, Yein’s voice still rings in his head loud and clear and really, nothing’s better to sleep to than the lullaby that is her voice.

The fifth time, Jeongguk has stopped counting his encounters with Yein. Because ever since the day Yein’s let him in, he’s been spending his afternoons just listening to her sing until the sky’s just the darkest color of orange and Yoongi-hyung’s leaving angry messages on his phone (telling him that he’s getting additional laps around the track if he doesn’t get his to practice in five minutes).

It’s almost been a month and the fast beating of his heart never seemed to decrease around Yein, because she’s still so beautiful and Jeongguk’s never seen anybody shine like she does; even when her face’s covered with a light sheet of sweat when the afternoons get a little too hot and her complaints are all he hears. When her uniform clings to her tiny frame and she stops smelling like flowers and Jeongguk still finds himself completely, utterly in love with her.

It’s about how her eyes shine every day like it’s ready to see something new, like it’s always looking for something new; it’s about how she finds happiness in the littlest of things, how she manages to laugh at every lame joke he has and sound so genuine; how everything about her is hope, excitement, and cheerfulness. It’s about how she gives him hope, gives him something to wake up to – is something he wants to wake up to.

He knows it’s a little bit too soon to be thinking like this, heck, nothing’s even official between them yet (because Jeongguk can’t think of how to ask her, mostly because Jeongguk’s a little scared of asking her). But Yein is… Yein is everything Jeongguk’s never known he needed until she came.

It’s Friday and Jeongguk gets a text from Yoongi-hyung on how practice’s cancelled because of last minute arrangements for his senior graduation exercise, and Yein is peering over his shoulder because he’s stopped laughing at her silly antics (this time, it was balancing a pencil between her nose and upper lip).

“No practice today?” Yein blows air into his ear, shrieking in delight when he almost drops his phone in surprise.

He swats playfully at her, rolling his eyes lightly when she sticks her tongue out rather childishly, falling back into her seat. “Nah.”

She hums, rolls back her shoulders, toes off her shoes and lifts her legs up to swing her feet gently, drumming her fingers against her knees. “Ah, I see.”

Jeongguk props an elbow over the desk, slips his phone back into his pocket, and looks at Yein, just looks at her with nothing in mind and she stares right back, a little smile on her lips.

Jeongguk counts three beats before Yein bursts out laughing; she could never really hold his stare for more than three seconds.

“What?”

I’m hopelessly in love with you.

“Nothing.”

Yein rolls her eyes and stretches her legs so her feet reaches Jeongguk’s lap, exclaiming a soft ‘aha!’ when it does. Jeongguk snorts.

“Stop looking at me like that.”

I can’t.

“Like what?”

“Like I’ve put the stars in the sky.”

Yein says melodramatically, pressing the back of her hand over her forehead. Then she snorts.

But you did.

“You’re an idiot.”

Jeongguk shoves her feet off his lap and pretends to brush his slacks.

“No, you’re an idiot.” Yein huffs petulantly and crosses her arms over her chest. Jeongguk clicks his tongue and looks over her fondly.

I am.

“Whatever.” He makes a move to stand and grabs his backpack from the floor, swinging one strap over his shoulder, “wanna get ice cream?”

“Uh-huh,” Yein’s quick to jump out of her seat, grabbing her bag as well, and beams at him, “especially if it’s gonna be your treat!”

“When have you ever paid when it’s me you’re with?” Jeongguk is out the door when he hears Yein call out from behind, his steps slow and easy.

“Never, which is why you’re the best!” She singsongs and when she catches up to Jeongguk, she loops an arm around his, nudging his shoulder with a cheek and gives him the biggest grin she can muster. She gets an extra scoop of ice cream later on.

Jeongguk falls in love with her deeper every afternoon, when her voice is all that he hears and along with the air that he breathes is the sound of the twinkling laughter that waters the blooming flowers in his lungs. Jeongguk will have to come up with how to find a way to confess to her someday soon, but for now just hearing her voice and seeing her smile is enough. It will always be enough.