--- (i) ---

Wheein would’ve never guessed that her tendency to fall in love with non-existent beings continues even after she turned 20.

It begins with a silly hazing ceremony for freshmen – a test of courage.

‘Aahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!’

A high-pitched scream echoes throughout the campus, announcing the beginning of the night of terror. Alerted, the girls huddle together, holding a torchlight closer and not moving from their spot until the scream fades out.

“Do not leave my side,” Hyejin warns, intertwining her fingers with Wheein’s, whose bravado falters at the look of her best friend still reeling from shock at the blood-curling scream.

Wheein offers no words of comfort, knowing that Hyejin hates showing her weakness. “Where do we have to go?”

“The map says… to the left of Sculpture Room,” Hyejin answers under her breath, knowing that Wheein can hear her. The hallway is empty at night and the girls can hear nothing but their distinct, shallow breathing and a faint sound of a piano playing.

The music sounds gentle and soothing, almost enticing her to investigate it but Hyejin says no and stick to the original plan – finish the test as soon as possible and get the f out.

“It’s a trap,” Hyejin reasons, her eyes quivering at the idea. Wheein concedes to her because she knows Hyejin won’t go with her and she doesn’t want to go alone.

“What’s this?” She squints at the map in the other’s grasp, raising her hand holding the torchlight to it. The torchlight catches a blue road sign above the Sculpture Room under its glaring light.

“Detour,” Hyejin hisses. “There’s a mission in the Sculpture Room.”

“Hyejin,” Wheein coos, the corners of her lips curling upward. Her best friend quickly catches on when she sees a mischievous gleam in the other’s eyes.

“No, I can’t,” the other bleats.

She arches her eyebrow teasingly, raising her fist high as she mouths about how Hyejin forced her to complete the previous mission alone. Hyejin curses, unable to come up with a good comeback and reluctantly mirroring Wheein’s hand movements.

“Rock, paper, scissor!” “Sh--” Hyejin’s cursing ruins their impromptu harmony.

There is no such thing as pure love in their friendship.

“You can do it, Hyejin-ie,” Wheein sing-songs as she pumps her fist in the air, barely suppressing her laughter with a wide grin.

“You’re terrible.”

“Say what?” Wheein makes a tug at her hand, threatening to jerk her hand away from hers.

“You’re the best,” Hyejin retorts sarcastically as she squeezes her hand. “Wait for me at the door.”

They walk up to the Sculpture Room when Wheein catches something flashes by at the end of the corridor. She suddenly comes to a halt, causing Hyejin to lose her grip on her hand.

“Wheein!” She quickly grabs Wheein’s hand once she recovered her balance. “Don’t leave my side,” she commands sharply, her frightened look betraying her calm voice.

Wheein promptly put her free hand over Hyejin’s mouth, pulling her body towards herself. “Shhh, I think I saw something.”

What? Hyejin knits her eyebrows together in confusion, eyes widening in fear and hands grabbing Wheein’s hand by reflex. What is it?

It hurts, Hyejin-ie. Wheein bites down on the bottom of her lips, trying not to yelp when Hyejin’s long, sharp manicured nails dug deeper into her skin. Hyejin seems to understand the nuance of Wheein’s pained look, immediately loosening her grip and opting to hug the other. Sorry.

They wait in silence but nothing happens. Wheein exchanges looks with Hyejin who is visibly displeased. “Sorry,” she whispers meekly, loosening her grip on the other’s waist. “I’ll wait here.”

“Give me the torchlight.” Hyejin demands.

Unfazed when Wheein feigned a terrified look, Hyejin yanks it out of the other’s grip when she reluctantly handed it over – it is their only source of light because their upperclassmen confiscated their phones.

Wheein is afraid of the dark but Hyejin has not forgiven her. She finally enters the room not before she curses her best friend out for giving her an unnecessary panic attack, the door slamming shut in her wake.

“Hyejin-ie, you don’t have to shut the door…” No response. She’s still mad. Wheein begins to regret to invoke Hyejin’s wrath, hating being left alone in darkness.

It feels like an eternity but her analog watch shows only thirty seconds passed by.

She exhales a sharp sigh, wondering how long she’ll take to complete her mission and how far to what extent the stupid test of courage will test their friendship. The sound of the piano playing seems to become intense by seconds; the sharp transition from gentle to thunderous is beginning to sound ominous.

Wheein has expected to lose her courage easily when Hyejin isn’t by her side but she didn’t expect that she’d have the urge to betray her friend merely seconds after Hyejin entered the room.

Hyejin would forgive her if she were to ditch her in the middle of the test, would she?

She doesn’t have time to entertain her thoughts when she sees something flashes by again at the end of the corridor, followed by a shrill cry coming from the Sculpture Room.

“Hyejin?!” Wheein kicks the door open to find the room, shrouded in darkness, and panics at the absence of her friend. She fails to notice the odd sound of the door opening with a plop instead of a bang and the sound of Hyejin’s muffled breathing over her quickened breathing, and her heart beating loudly.

“Hyejin!”

She strains her eyes to find a short-haired blonde among the inanimate statues, ranging from headless sculptured bodies in various poses to unfinished sculptured head. She scans the dark room slowly, trying to breathe and focus on looking for her friend rather than imagining the sculptures watching, waiting to pounce on her.

“Hye—” Before Wheein can conclude that Hyejin is missing, she gets distracted by another shriek from the opposite of the hallway from where the girls came earlier. She instinctively turns around towards the door, immediately regretting that she did.

There is another pair of eyes glinting in the dark, its face barely concealed by a curtain of long, frizzy, black hair and its body dressed in a bloodied white dress, soaked in a pool of crimson red.

Wheein watches it slowly revealing its teeth in a sly smile, hairs on the back of her nape standing when she hears a low laugh.

I want more blood.

Horrified, she screams in shock, throwing the map at the entity. Without a moment of hesitation, she forcefully makes her way to the exit, pushing away and kicking away anything that blocks her.

She hears a whimper when she feels a hand on her left ankle.

‘Wheein.’

At that very moment, the loud music drowns Hyejin’s voice calling her when Wheein startles at the deafening thunderous music as though her heart were to jump out of her chest. She screams again, her arms flailing in all directions, and forcefully freeing her left ankle from the hand.

She makes a run for it as soon as the hand lets go of her left ankle.

‘Jung Wheein!’

She hears her name being called in the distance when she reaches the door leading to the emergency staircases but she doesn’t dare to take the risk.

She runs aimlessly, avoiding going to places where she senses blood-chilling surprises lying in wait until she reaches the rooftop, breathless from running. She slams the door shut before she leans her back against it and slides down to the ground, legs wobbling and heart slamming against her chest from all the running and her encounter with the murderous ghost.

Only when she recollects her composure did she realise that the voice sounded oddly familiar. Ahn Hyejin.

It was Hyejin in disguise.

She places her hand across her face, belatedly realising how lame she reacted towards her prank. Knowing Hyejin’s mischief-loving nature, she’d not be satisfied with pulling off a mere prank; she’d have recorded it. Wheein sighs at the prospect of her best friend taking every opportunity to embarrass her with the video.

To think that just yesterday, she barely won over Hyejin in a bet not to post her earlier video where she sang Beyonce’s Love on Top, her face reddening when she hit a high note and hitting herself in the mouth with Hyejin’s red hair brush when she got too into the song.

She suddenly doesn’t look forward to her reunion with Hyejin, not feeling pressured to find her when she remembers about the silly promise about not leaving her. If Hyejin could pull off the ghost prank, she’d be fine by herself.

The air feels stifling so she decides to get up and walk over to the edge, stopping by the wire fence restricting access to the off-limit area. She runs her fingers along the metal railing, feeling the tingling sensation of cold metal against her finger tips as she takes in the night view of the metropolitan streets beyond the campus. It is her first time on the rooftop and everything, even a loose nut lying scattered on the floor, looks fascinating to her.

Wheein soon reaches the corner, coming to a halt when she spots a girl about five feet away. Under the glaring light from the fluorescent fixture on the wall, she looks spookily beautiful; her long hair flying in the breeze, her porcelain skin glowing in her short black lace dress, her bare makeup closely resembling that of the bereaved, and a sorrowful gleam in her almond-shaped eyes.

Almost picture perfect. She wonders how beautiful the girl would look in the daylight, how bright she would look with happiness instead of sorrow.

She doesn’t care much about getting caught staring until she realises that she is standing in the off-limit area, behind the metal railing, dangerously close to death. Before she tries to warn the girl about the possible danger of falling, the girl turns to her, her eyes curving as she smiles wistfully, revealing her dimples – leaving her flabbergasted.

“Wait!”

In a split second, she jumps.

Wheein feels a lump in and looks down to her hands, dirty and full of small scratches from the old, rusty metal fence. She tried to stop her. She tried. She shakily slides against the fence, barely supporting her weight by holding onto the railing, transfixed by the empty spot where she saw her. She pulls herself up to check the ground.

No body. It takes a slap to her face to realise that she wasn’t imagining things.

Wheein feels a hand on her shoulder, failing to hear Hyejin’s voice in time when she swings her arms around.

Hyejin narrowly avoids Wheein’s flying fist, grabbing onto her long, black wig in its rightful place. “Yah, it’s me!” She cries, her hands raised in surrender.

“Hyejin, come here quickly! Use the torchlight! Here!”

“You broke the torchlight,” Hyejin grumbles, stepping closer to the overzealous girl. “What is it?”

“Did you see her?”

“Who?” Hyejin quizzes, bewildered.

“Look on the ground!” Wheein cries, on the verge of tears. “See any body? A body?”

Hyejin steps up on the platform, a frown creasing her forehead. “There’s no one down there. You’re seeing things.”

“But I really saw her jumping off!”

“There, there,” Hyejin pulls Wheein in a tight embrace, patting on her back when she finally bursts into tears. “We’re the only ones here, my dear. Joohyun sunbae confirmed that. Nobody jumped.”

Wheein considers the possibility of her best friend lying to her but she dismisses it when she sees their upperclassman behind Hyejin, visibly concerned. She tells them to come to the west courtyard before she picks up a call, counting every student aloud by names.

There is no name in her list she isn’t familiar with being mentioned. Who was that?

“I think you saw that girl,” Joohyun comments absentmindedly, her eyes glued to her phone as she types on it. “The jumping girl from the legend Seulgi told you during dinner.”

A chill shoots up her spine, making Wheein to shudder and break out in cold sweats even in her best friend’s warm embrace. Hyejin notices, trying to console her and when a mere pat on the back doesn’t work, she forcefully drags her out with the help of Joohyun, distracting her with the news about fireworks commencing soon which Wheein doesn’t bother to digest.

“Don’t leave my side,” Hyejin whispers, squeezing Wheein’s hand but she doesn’t hear her, still in a daze of disbelief. She is consumed by the image of the girl who jumped – the forlorn look in her eyes, her wistful smile, accompanied by her dimples, and her pink lips parting as though she were speaking to her.

Wheein startles at the loud boom of fireworks, the noisy chattering of new students rushing for a close picture of the display, separating her with Hyejin. Swept by the swarm of students, she finds herself close to the firework base, black smoke surrounding her and the mass of bodies sealing off her escape.

Wheein coughs, frantically looking for her best friend in the midst of the crowd. She feels a hand grasping hers, pulling her out of danger. Hyejin found her. She holds on to her hand for her dear life and utters a word of gratitude, beaming brightly despite the smoke getting in her eyes.

Hyejin’s hand feels cold, sweaty but Wheein has never been so relieved to hold her friend’s hand.

“I like you,” Wheein blurts, blinking her eyes to ease the sting in her eyes. “Me too,” she hears a soft voice, different from Hyejin’s, sending her a wave of panic. She lets go of the other’s hand, blinking hard to have a visual of the owner of the voice.

When she can see again, she sees a long haired girl in a black dress, smiling brightly before she merges with the swarm of students.

“Wheein.”

It is the real Hyejin.

Wheein tries to affirm her existence with Hyejin who happened to be right beside her when the girl disappeared but she still denies seeing her, forcing her to accept that she saw a ghost.

A pretty ghost, Wheein murmurs about not minding being spooked by a ghost as pretty as her and Hyejin catches her comment, later becoming the seed of her devious prank for her best friend.

The stunning display of fireworks finally ends with a brief announcement welcoming freshmen, ‘have a good semester ahead!’, marking the start for the duo’s university life and Wheein’s newfound obsession with a certain ghost.

Little did she know Hyejin’s wrath never ended that night as a result of many broken promises.

***

“Hyejin, can you come with me to the rooftop?”

She’s so predictable, Hyejin smiles laughingly, already fishing for her phone on the pretence of getting ready to go out. “Ok.”

--- (ii) ---

Wheein understands how normal it is to have an artist’s block and would normally accept it as a cue to take a break from the current piece and move on with a new piece.

But she doesn’t want to move on from completing the portrait of her first love.

She chews on her pencil in a daze, too absorbed into her sketching session when Hyejin went to fetch her for a pick-up.

“Wheein-ah, time to meet handsome boys.” Hyejin isn’t surprised that her first attack was not very effective on her otaku friend who prefers 2D girls.

“The latest chapter for Shokugeki no Soma just came out.” When Wheein doesn’t flinch, Hyejin begins to think that she’s finally moved on from the phase of her anime/manga obsession but she spots her lips quiver. She smirks, deciding to give one last push.

“The dish Souma is going to cook is—” Hyejin ducks when Wheein chucked a white eraser in her direction, sniggering in amusement.

“Since when you start reading Shokugeki no Soma?” Wheein questions, placing both hands on either side of her hips.

“Since you talked to me about it.” Hyejin peers over the other’s shoulder, gaping in curiosity when she sees the portrait of a long, black haired girl with a bright smile dimpling her cheeks. “Oh, who is this?”

“The ghost.”

Hyejin doesn’t let the opportunity to pass by, placing her left hand over her chest and faking a humble laugh. “I’m flattered.”

“This is not you. You’re much uglier than this,” Wheein flat-out rejects, throwing her pencil up in the air. “I need to see her again.”

“Aw, snap. I thought you’re finally in love with me.” Hyejin teasingly elbows Wheein in her stomach but she ignores it, not caring about anything but the portrait. “Who?”

“The ghost,” she repeats in a matter-of-fact tone, crossing her arms in front of her chest as she tries to figure what the portrait is lacking.

“Who?” Hyejin presses on. Wheein senses that the conversation is going nowhere again and decides to give up.

“Never mind.”

No matter how many times Wheein explains to her, Hyejin adamantly denies her existence for no reason.

If only she knows what her best friend is doing on her phone, she’d understand her true motive.

--- (iii) ---

University has been a real pain in lately, Hyejin laments as she buries her face in the thick reference book for her research, blaming the lack of her quality time with her best friends on the heavy load of assignments.

University . Wheein chimes in, complaining about university for a completely different reason. She thinks back to the unfinished portrait collecting dust in the duo’s bedroom. All she does is idealise, sketch, paint and repeat but there is no progress with the portrait of her love.

Their study session comes to an end when it is almost time to catch the last bus for evening. Hyejin tells her to go ahead without her and hold the bus for her.

Wheein doesn’t want to be alone. But she assures that she’ll be there shortly.

***

Bus 520, Wheein chants, cranking her stiff neck and stretching out her limbs. Bus 520, come before I sleep, come after Hyegi arrives, she hums, her eyes falling shut despite her attempts to stay awake. She eventually falls asleep, her head drooping for a few seconds until she feels secured when her head found a place to lean against.

“It’s here,” says the same gentle voice she’s used to hear over and over in her dream.

With a jerk, she opens her eyes to the sound of the engine of the bus droning, panicking that she might miss her bus but when she sees that it is her bus, she turns to look for her best friend – Hyejin is a few steps away from her, panting.

“Thanks for earlier, Hyejin-ah.”

Hyejin raises her eyebrow, no longer pressing Wheein for an answer after she explains that she had a good dream about the girl from the legend and that her shoulder feels incredibly warm. Instead, she grins.

This soon become a daily routine without Wheein realising that she has been mistaking her angel for her best friend the entire time.

---(iii)---

“Wheein,” Joohyun greets her with a cordial smile, looking up from her phone. “Are you up for a part-time job?”

Wheein drinks one last slurp of her soup before she responds, “What job?”

When she hears ‘dog’ and ‘babysitting’ in one sentence, she exclaims excitedly ‘oh yes!.’ Hyejin, Seulgi and Joohyun exchange furtive glances, breaking into laughter at the clueless girl’s brief dance of excitement.

Wheein is too excited to notice how stealthily Hyejin prodded Seulgi and Joohyun to have a look at her phone, showing a series of tweets.

‘The painting is almost complete!’ Seulgi gushes aloud about the painting nearing its completion before Joohyun squishes Seulgi’s cheeks as an attempt to silence her big mouth.

Wheein looks at the trio, inquiring about Seulgi’s random statement but the girls shake their head in unison, dismissing it as a trivial matter about their assignment.

***

“Hello, sunbae-nim!” Wheein greets Joohyun’s friend, garbed in a green scrub with a white surgical mask covering her face but she can see that her greeting came as a surprise by the look in her upperclassman’s eyes.

When the vet doesn’t respond, Wheein takes it as a cue to introduce herself.

“I’m your dog’s babysitter, Jung Wheein,” she introduces herself in a cheery voice. “I look forward to work with your dog, Jjing Jjing.”

“Woof!”

She looks down to find a small, silver-grey coloured dog, barking as though it is acknowledging her presence.

“Your dog looks like Snowy from The Adventures of Tintin,” she squeals, immediately squatting to let the dog know her better. “Hey, little guy!”

“O-oh, Jjing Jjing is of a different breed, Miniature Schnauzer,” the vet corrects cautiously, “Snowy is a fox terrier.”

“Oooh, I see.”

“A-aren’t you a freshman?”

Wheein only nods in response, preoccupied with getting to know Jjing Jiing better without realising that the vet is staring at her, not her pet. She looks up, ready to ask her a few questions but the vet looks away when they almost lock eyes.

The vet seems annoyed at her. She doesn’t know why and is afraid to ask.

Awkwardly, Wheein looks back to the dog and lets him to her hands for a second until she musters enough courage to look at the vet again. Again, she notices the vet averting her gaze, pretending to mind her own business in scratching the back of her nape.

She is avoiding me.

Wheein turns back to Jjing Jiing, who then starts barking impatiently as though he’s urging her to ask her. She turns to the vet again, determined not to be shaken by her unreadable actions.

“By the way, I don’t know your name.”

Her breathing hitches when she doesn’t answer her but she breathes out a sigh of relief when she finally answered her after a delay.

“My name is Kim Yongsun.”

Wheein smiles, not daring to comment on how cute the vet looks with a mole under her right brow because her mole is all she can distinguish from her face covered by a mask.

***

After Wheein tells Hyejin about her encounter with Yongsun, she gives her a painful flick on her forehead, mumbling about how dense her friend is.

Distracted by the pain, Wheein fails to catch the meaning behind her best friend’s words.

It is only when Wheein’s dreams beginning to overlap did she understand Hyejin’s hint.

***

“Hyejin!”

Hyejin is surprised to see her best friend whom she didn’t see for a week, immediately noticing that she is in a bad state. Wheein has dark circles under her eyes, emitting a faint odour, a few streaks of paints here and there but her bright smile is not deterred at all.

“What happened to you? You stink!” She nags, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Go back at this instant and take a bath.”

Wheein laughs, wheezing as she stands upright, bringing the portrait to the level of the other’s gaze. “First, look at this!”

Hyejin’s scowl turns upside-down at the complete portrait, closely resembling her crush now that she found a missing puzzle – a small black dot below her right eyebrow.

“You dense puppy,” Hyejin mocks her with a laugh, whipping her phone out to compose a tweet. “Took you forty-five days to find her.”

“What?”

Wheein drops the portrait at the revelation that her best friend knew that she is not a ghost from the beginning.

“Were you f ing with me all this time?”

To her fury, Hyejin can only smile guiltily and make a run for it after she shouts, ‘Oh, look! She’s coming this way!’ to distract Wheein.

It is super effective on a hopeless romantic who has been chasing after her love.

--- (iv) ---

Wheein spots Yongsun outside the university animal clinic, close to the bus stop where she often waits for her bus. She counts downs the number of footsteps it would take her to arrive at the bus stop, looking for the right timing to talk to her without getting too much attention. She sends a message to her best friend about her current situation.

‘Funny,’ Hyejin remarks about her ability to recognise her love when she has never seen her face properly in a series of Katalk messages. Wheein writes back defensively, trying to justify herself that she recognises her cute mole from the first time she saw her on the rooftop and another time she saw her again for a part-time job.

‘Yeah, it took you almost two weeks to figure that she’s the same person,’ she shoots back. Resigning in defeat, Wheein chooses to ignore Hyejin’s messages when she sees that Yongsun is getting closer.

Three, two, one…

“Hello, Yong—” Wheein notices that Yongsun is listening to her phone, her expression not looking good. She spins around the moment Yongsun walks by, avoiding to attract her attention.

She tries to cough when she gets caught by another male student who just witnessed her self-humiliation. The way she pretended not to wave at Yongsun by switching to brush through her hair with a poker face must’ve been funny to him because he bursts into a fit of laughter when he looks at her.

She ignores him and looks over to Yongsun who is queuing for her bus. The vet is still listening to her phone, her expression lightening up.

This is what she’s imagined her to be – Yongsun smiling cheerily, her bright beauty radiating even in daylight. Picture perfect.

“Hello, Yongsun sunbae-nim!” Wheein grins when she looks over her shoulder, surprised. “I don’t know that you also wait at this bus stop.”

“Wheein,” Yongsun greets, covering her hand to stifle her laughter as she looks back to her phone and takes her earphones off.

It is now or never. Wheein heaves a long breath before she continues.

“Before we met at the clinic, have we met somewhere before?”

Yongsun stiffens, her gaze flickering to hers. “I-I don’t know, I don’t think so.”

“Weird, you really look familiar.”

She stares at her. “Odd…” She looks around as though she is making sure that no one is eavesdropping, leaning forward to speak quietly, “Do you watch a lot of ?”

What? Wheein stares at her, dumbfounded and half-expectant that it is one of her ice-breaking jokes but she sees that the vet doesn’t smile, placing her index finger on her lips, a gesture to keep it a secret.

All her life, she’s been longing for a pure, innocent love so she never imagined that her first conversation with her first love would go in that direction. Not that she pledged not to go down that route. Her eyes widen at the prospect of watching a video with her first love or a girl resembling her in it, her cheeks becoming red and agape in shock.

Had the male student from earlier not interrupted them, she’d realise that it was indeed a joke, coached by her own best friend.

“Hey, aren’t you pupwheeinlove?”

Wheein turns to him, relieved that he interrupted them and confused that the name sounds familiar despite it is her first time hearing about it.

“You’re pupwheeinlove from twitter!”

“Twitter? You’re mistaking me for someone,” she tries to dismiss him with a laugh but the student is persistent about proving her identity by showing her a series of tweets by pupwheeinlove on his iPad.

“I-I don’t write these stuff…” Why do these tweets feel awfully similar to my story?

He stops at the latest tweet, showing a video post with Wheein’s anguish face as its thumbnail and Journey of A Puppy in Love as its title. “Is this still not you?”

“There must be a mistake…” Wheein’s constant denial seems to push him further; despite her attempts to tell him to stop by frantically waving ‘no no no’ behind Yongsun’s back, he taps on the video link, opening with Youtube.

Does Hyejin live only to embarrass her?

Wheein shrivels at the video opening with the clip of her belting out Beyonce’s Love on Top. “Ahn Hyejin,” she recognises the culprit behind the twitter incident, cursing under her breath, not long before she drops her jaw at the video showing more than her embarrassing cover.

It is from where she mistook Hyejin for a ghost, screaming in fear and scampering towards the staircases. Having through the prank itself, she knows exactly where the video is going but it doesn’t stop her from cringing at her own reaction.

When Hyejin, in her fake ghost get-up, appears on the screen with a gleeful smile and a hand sign of victory, the video cuts to the next scene where Wheein spots the jumping girl from the legend, Yongsun, a few seconds before she jumped.

“Please stop,” she hears Yongsun says. But the video fast-forwards to the scene where Wheein leaves with Hyejin out of the frame, the discreet camerawork shaking with every step towards the edge where Yongsun supposedly jumped off, and Joohyun’s voice is soon heard, “Congratulations, Yongsun. She fell for it.”

Yongsun reappears from behind the railing, gloating over the successful prank. “Thank you, thank you.”   

What?! Wheein darts a glance at Yongsun who nervously averts her gaze.

“The video is not over,” the student coughs. “Keep watching.”

It is Hyejin again, except that the setting has changed from the rooftop to the duo’s room.

“Who is this?”

“The ghost.” Wheein replies with her back facing the screen. Hyejin turns around, mouthing something. Just then a caption that read ‘a fool doesn’t know her crush’s name’ appears on the bottom.

“I’m flattered.”

“This is not you. You’re much uglier than this.” Wheein throws her pencil up in the air, groaning. “I need to see her again.”

With a grin, Hyejin beckons towards the camera to look at the portrait on which her best friend is working hard, the video cutting to a snapshot of the portrait of Yongsun.

Another caption appears, ‘a fool who only remembers her crush’s face.’

It is Yongsun’s turn to stare at her. Wheein gulps nervously, inching away from her. “I-I mean, please do not take it out of context,” she stutters but the student shushes her, pointing to his iPad.

The video is still playing, much to her horror. From a distance, a short girl in her turquoise coloured jacket sits by herself at the very bus stop where they are.

Wheein immediately recognises herself, not quite understanding why this particular clip is included. It fast-forwards to Wheein, fast asleep, subconsciously drooping her head and close to hit her head against the metal frame. Just then, someone, clearly not Hyejin, appears on the screen and reaches out to stop her drooping head in time.

The camerawork shakes again as it zooms to get a clearer image of Yongsun sitting beside the other, lending her shoulder for her to lean against.

A giggle is heard when the older girl stares at the younger girl.

“See, unnie? I knew it! I thought it was weird that Wheein mistook me for someone. Turns out it’s Yongsun unnie.”

“This is amazing. This is the first time seeing Yongsun looking at someone with so much love.”

‘Jung Pabo, this is your angel who waits for you here every night.’

What? Wheein glances at Yongsun whose face flushed in embarrassment. She hears her indignantly muttering Hyejin’s and Joohyun’s names as she slaps herself across the face.

The notion that their best friends set them up without their knowledge cements when the video shows themselves again, in the clinic. As the scene of their first official meeting unfolds, Joohyun and Hyejin can be heard again.

“Yongsun is being bashful,” Joohyun explains. “She rarely twirls her right foot and when she does, it happens because she’s shy.”

“How do you know that?”

“I’m her best friend since high school. It’s been seven years.”

“Wow, that’s when Wheein and I started junior high school… sorry unnie.”

The video turns its focus on the other who is playing with the dog, oblivious to Yongsun’s longing stare.

“What is Wheein doing?”

“At this point, Wheein is still tricked into thinking that her first love is a ghost and she doesn’t exist.” The video cuts to a black screen, a clutter of texts matching Hyejin’s reassuring commentary, “But it’s okay!”

“Everyone, have a look at Yongsun’s selfie.”

Yongsun’s selfie with Jjing Jjing appears, taking up half the screen.

“Now, back to Jung Wheein’s fantastic portrait of Kim Yongsun before she met her at the clinic.”

A snapshot of Wheein’s artwork appears adjacent to Yongsun’s selfie, two red arrows pointing out the difference, one for Yongsun’s mole under her right eyebrow, another for the missing mole in the portrait.

“See the difference? Look at the portrait after Wheein met her.”

A recent snapshot of the portrait replaces the previous version, mirroring Yongsun’s distinguishable feature.

“Everyone, please congratulate our puppy! She finally found her love!”

The video finally comes to the end once the sound effect of applause stops. The student excuses himself with a smug smirk, satisfied that he’s completed the task Hyejin gave him.

“…” “…”

Yongsun decides to break the awkward silence that engulfed them since the video ended. “So… you really didn’t know.”

Wheein nods.

“You like me?”

She nods again albeit she avoids looking at her.

“Hyejin is a good friend.”

Wheein looks up, curious as to why she comments about Hyejin being a good friend.

“I like you too,” Yongsun professes with a bright smile but Wheein is distracted by how she keeps twirling her right foot, remembering Joohyun’s explanation about her habit. “M-my bus is here. I’ll see you around.”

All’s well that ends well until she leans forward to whisper in her ear, “When you watch , look for me.”

***