A few months ago, little Jieun had excitedly voiced out her ideal home when her dad asked her about it. She had forgotten all about it until the day her parents told her that they were moving, to which she had been jumping around the entire morning as the movers her parents had hired loaded the boxes into the lorry.

When they reached the apartment, Jieun was astonished by the mere size of it. She was finally going to live in a big house! Running about the house, she checked out the rooms one by one while her parents and the movers busied themselves with the boxes.

“Jieun-ah, come here! Let’s introduce ourselves to the new neighbours!” She was in the midst of exploring the house when her mother hollered.

“Coming, mum!” She shouted back as she ran over to her parents. However, she soon realized there were three other people around and she quickly hid behind her father’s legs, peeking out curiously at them.

“Jieun, come and greet our neighbours, Mr and Mrs Lee with their sons.” Her mother gestured for her to go over.

Little Jieun shyly walked out from behind her father’s legs and bowed to them.

“Hello, I’m Hong Jieun.” She spoke meekly.

It was then that she noticed there were four people instead of three. Looking closer, there was someone hiding behind Mrs Lee’s legs, and he was peeking at her too. She stared back curiously as Mrs Lee introduced, “This is Lee Howon, my younger son. Howon-ah, greet our new neighbours.”

The boy slowly came out from behind his mother’s legs to bow once, before hiding back behind her legs again. “Don’t hide. They won’t bite.” Mrs Lee pushed him out from behind her legs until he’s in front of Jieun.

“Aigoo, and I thought our Jieun is shy. Looks like Howon is even more shy.” Mrs Hong joked, eliciting laughter from the adults. Meanwhile, Jieun and Howon were still staring at each other, neither of them making the first move to speak.

“Alright, it’s nice to meet you three! We’ll leave you to your unpacking now. If you need any help, please don’t hesitate to ask us.” Mr Lee offered.

And that was it for the first meeting between the two shy kids. No exchanges, and no interactions. Well, save for the eye contact.

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“I don’t think it’s a good idea to mention that we are neighbours.” Jieun suggested.

Hoya nodded in approval. “Right, even though I have confidence in our fans, but it’s still a good preventive measure to take to avoid any fans staking out at our apartment complex.”

Jieun was pleased that he understood her worries. “We could say we were elementary classmates, which is the truth anyway.”

“If I recall correctly, we didn’t speak much to each other until the fourth grade, right?” Hoya said as the memories flashed through his head.

“Yeah, we ended up being in the same class in the fourth grade.” Jieun replied, her own memories coming back. “We were also seatmates?”

“Yes, seatmates!” Hoya got a little excited, almost springing up from his seat. “I remember we had lots of fun during the fourth grade! We could share some of these memories for the show!”

Jieun stared at him, unsure of how to respond as she took in the sudden change in his attitude.

“I mean, if you don’t mind, of course.” He toned down his voice, realizing he could have gotten too ahead of himself in his excitement.

“I don’t mind. Um, I think our first day as seatmates was pretty interesting. What do you think?” She proposed hesitantly.

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The classroom was arranged into tables of two, with the teacher reading off the list of names as she assigned the students to their respective seats.

“Okay everyone, the person next to you would be your seatmate for the entire year! So please take care of each other, alright?” The teacher announced as she looked around the class.

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