15: Courage and Honesty

“You want me to…teach you how to smile?”

I nodded with a serious look on my face. Sungjong, on the other hand, looked mortified. He probably finds it hard to believe that I summoned him to my house for this petty reason. I can’t believe it myself. But still, I have no choice. When it comes to this thing, he’s the only one whom I could turn to.

“Well…it’s because you always walk around with a smile on your face,”

“Uhh…yeah…but…hyungnim…why? This is such a weird request coming from you…”

I scratched my head awkwardly. “Yeah, I know. But there’s a reason why I asked you for this. I can’t tell you what, but it’s really important.”

#3: For the whole day, smile to everyone who comes across you at school.

I can’t believe that woman had the nerve to make me do this sort of thing. I mean, sure, smiling is simple. Everyone knows how to do it. It’s a very basic thing. But for me to smile towards anyone I come across with on campus is ridiculous! Heck, I don’t even smile that much! I’m famous for my trademark, cool, poker-face. I don’t just show my beautiful dimples to anyone!

She definitely wants me to embarrass myself! I tried so hard to fulfill these tasks just so I could escape the humiliation that I would feel once my diary entries get exposed, but now I’m about to humiliate myself by randomly smiling at random people! And for no apparent reason! Surely everyone would find me weird!

What am I doing this for? She was right. I could have just taken my journal back when I had the chance. It was already in my hands but I just let it slip away! What was wrong with me?!

Anyway, there’s no turning back now. She has my journal again, so I have to work hard to retrieve it again. I’ll somehow find a way to make this task less embarrassing.

“Hyung…what kind of smile do you want to learn? And I’m pretty sure you know how to smile so this is a bit…pointless.”

I looked at Sungjong and hesitated for a moment, but I just closed my eyes and gathered my courage to answer. “Let’s just say I want to look more…approachable?”

The look on Sungjong’s face made me want to hide under a rock. I, the amazing hyung whom he looks up to, just asked him to teach me how to smile in order to be more approachable. I bet his respect for me would fade to dust after this.

“Aish. Yah, Lee Sungjong,” I exclaimed when he remained frozen and silent. “It wasn’t easy for me to ask this kind of favor from you. You have no idea how embarrassing this is. I just have no choice because my pride is on the line!”

“Hyungnim…”

“Do you know what’s worse?” I continued to rant. “I have to do this in front of the students at school! I have to smile for the whole day!”

Sungjong gasped. “Hyungnim, why exactly are you doing this? You seem forced. Like, you don’t really want to look approachable.”

“I…I know…” I sighed. “But I won’t be able to move on if I don’t do this!”

“I don’t really get it, but…” Sungjong looked alarmed as he walked towards me and placed a hand on my shoulder. “Hyungnim, could it be that someone is blackmailing you?”

I took a step back when Sungjong asked that question. Could it be that he has figured out what’s going on? What if he investigates into it further and finds out that the Witch has my journal and she’s making me do all these things so I could retrieve it?

“Ahahaha. What are you saying?” I said after a while. “I really just wanna have an image change. I mean, it’s my senior year in high school so I might as well try it out.”

Sungjong continued to eye me suspiciously for a few seconds, but afterwards, he flashed his signature smile and gave me a thumbs-up. “Alright! I guess it’s a great idea. I’d be willing to help!”

I heaved a sigh of relief. Thank goodness he wasn’t able to catch on.

“If we really want to do this right, first of all, you need to show me a smile. Then I’d be able to judge whether it makes you look approachable or not.”

I raised an eyebrow at him. “Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

“Tch. Fine,” Smiling should be easy. I’m pretty sure I’ve done it a ton of times before. Without further ado, I flashed him a smile, with my perfect teeth and dimples showing. “How’s this?”

“Ugh. Forced. Blank. Boring.” Sungjong said sternly. This was actually the first time I’ve seen his strict expression. “You don’t look sincere at all. Like, you’re not even happy.”

“But I really am not happy.”

“Are you kidding me?!” Sungjong suddenly slammed his palm on the wall, which almost made me jump in shock. Who is this dude? “What’s the point of smiling if you’re not happy? If you want to practice your smile, then you must think of happy thoughts! Try to picture your happiest moment. Afterwards, the smile would just come out naturally!”

God, this kid suddenly became scary. Where’s the Lee Sungjong who looked up to me and never dared to talk back at me?!

“T-Then…” I decided to just do what he said and thought about my happiest moment. When the memory flashed inside my mind, I slowly curved my lips upward. “…how about this?”

Sungjong looked as if he really wanted to kill me. “You’ve got to be kidding me, hyungnim! That’s a smirk! And that’s the kind of smile you always flash whenever we fight against other gangs!”

“But my happiest moments are during those times when we fought with other gangs!” I reasoned out. I was honestly thinking of those times and how glorious I felt when we won.

“Those aren’t the kind of happy thoughts I was talking about! Let’s do this again!”

. This is harder than I thought. It’s gonna be a long- day.

~~~~★★★★★★★~~~~

-Jieun’s POV-

“And their one-week suspension will end tomorrow so he’ll be back to school again and he’ll probably be doing the 3rd task and I’ll probably go crazy again! I seriously don’t know what to do!”

“Hmm…things will definitely get more complicated for you.”

I gave Hakyeon a defeated look as I banged my head against the table. I was doing my Sunday shopping when I came across GR8U, the café where Hakyeon worked. I’ve been coming here more often these days. Last week, I was only supposed to drink coffee (because their cappuccino is seriously delicious) and leave right away but I saw Hakyeon and ended up talking to him about a bunch of stuff.