It was five in morning. You tiptoed down the stairs, careful not to wake your parents. When you reached the front door, you took out your sneakers from the shoe cabinet and slipped your feet in. You feel sweats pooled up in your hands as you turned the door knob.

“What are you doing?” A voice almost make your heart jumped off your ribcage.

You turned to see a more frightening view; your mother with her green face mask. “Ahh! Mom!

What are you doing?! You almost scared me to death!”

You run your hand on your racing chest, trying to catch your breath from the fright. “I am the one who supposed to be scared, I was just going to wash off my face mask when I saw you creeping across the living room like a thief” Your mom crossed her arm, eyeing you with an inquiring look. “What are you doing going to school at 5 AM? Did you hit your head when you woke up?” She asked.

“Ah…  I have… umm… a school project that is due today, and I haven’t get anything started” I scratched my head, your habit when you lie.

Luckily your mother never catch that habit of yours. “You never lose this practice of yours, always worked in the last minute. That’s why you never got an A in any of your subjects! Look at Jaehyun! He got all A’s for his subjects!” Your mother never fails to compare you with Jaehyun, it’s a bit invalid, because Jaehyun is one year under you.

“No he didn’t, he got a B on Chemistry test last week” You corrected her.

Your interruption earned you a menacing glare from your mother. You looked down, cowered from her intimidating aura. After a short silent, you heard you mother sighed. “Okay, you can go now. Just be careful on your way there”

“Okay…” You nodded.

Not wanting to leave the stiff air continue, you went over to your mother and took her hand and kissed it “I would like to kiss your cheeks, but I wouldn’t because of your scary face mask” You told her.

Your mother laughed at your remark and told you to hurry leaving the house, before she hunt you down. You giggled and closed the door behind you. You must be wondering why are you leaving the house so early in the morning. You finished your school project, days ago.

You peeked outside your house front gate, making sure that it is safe. Safe from who? Jaehyun. It was 5 o’clock in the morning, you knew the chance of Jaehyun to be around is down to be zero, but you just have to make sure. You had made a lot of efforts to avoid Jaehyun for the past few days, but failed miserably every single time. Even during the weekend, when you thought it would be the easiest to conduct your one day Jaehyun-free misson, you saw him eating breakfast with your parents in the dining room.

What makes matter worse was they didn’t even wait for you to start eating. Sure you woke up late every day but they should have left some of the chicken for you but no. They give it all to Jaehyun. You start to wonder if you are the daughter of your parents. Your days of waking up late ends today! Well only for that day. In fact you are way too early to eat breakfast, your parent are still in a deep sleep.

After you are sure that you see none of Jaehyun, you stepped out of the gate and start making your way to the bus stop. You don’t know why you are so obsessed in making this mission work. You just felt it is unfair for Jaehyun, to not calling you noona. You are one year his senior. At first you didn’t care about the noona title, as you thought he does that to everyone but when you saw Jaehyun called Hana noona, it just gave you this unpleasant feeling. You don’t know how to describe it but it just felt suffocating.

The soft cool wind of the morning blew softly to your face. The fresh minty smell of wind made you feel like all of your troubles just dissolved away. You started to sing some random songs, you are less about the notes but more on the feel. You felt really good until… you saw Jaehyun jogged, right to you. Panicked, you hid yourself behind a large rectangular garbage bin. The pungent smell killed your previously fresh minty morning.

You prayed for Jaehyun to pass by but when he reaches in front of you, he started to slow down. “Did he saw me?” You whispered to yourself.