Wiping a towel on his face after brushing his teeth and washing the sleep off his brain, he found her whistling soundlessly as she flipped each pages on a notebook while her feet is propped up on his study table. He sighed silently again before draping the towel over his shoulder and walking over to her. She looked up and broke into a grin.

“You look so fresh and cuddly, I wanna hug you,” Sandie said.

Donghae closed his eyes in exasperation, fighting the redness that he knew is coloring his face. Again.  He opened his eyes to see her grinning up at him from her seat looking relaxed.

“Can you just… please stop saying things like that.”

“Why not? I was only being honest,” Sandie said wagging her eyebrows at him.

Donghae pinched the bridge of his nose before looking at her again. “Can we just talk in the living room?”

Sandie pulled out the other chair on his study table next to where she was sitting. “Stop being so rigid. I don’t why you are so uncomfortable when we are not even gonna do anything but study. Unless… you want to do something else.” She gave him a wink. Sandie knew she is probably playing a little too hard on this, wanting him to be so aggravated that he wouldn’t want to be in the same room as Darie, but honestly, this is starting to become fun. His reaction is at par with a . Of course, she is one to say that but at least she wasn’t being too obvious about it.

Donghae sighed again for the nth time before pulling the chair to him and sitting down. Sandie put a hand under her chin as she rested her elbow on the study table and blatantly watched him without a word.

Donghae tried to ignore her obvious scrutiny and made a point of not meeting her eyes because this is really making him uncomfortable. “Let’s just get this over with, okay?” He reached out and took a notebook from the stack in front of him and flipped it open stopping on the page of the problem that he got stuck in last night. Well, he really do needed some help in Math and he was a little glad that Darie would be able to help him even if he already told her he didn’t need any.

Sandie watched as Donghae placed the notebook in front of her and she looked at it. Then she lifted her head up to smile at Donghae. It only took a second and the series of numbers is enough to make her jump out of the window. Why do people need these kinds of problems in math, anyway? It’s not like they are essential in your everyday life. “This is so easy. Like, c’mon! You really didn’t get it?”

Donghae looked a little offended by what she said. “I wouldn’t be asking for help if I did get it.”

Sandie shook her head then pointed randomly at the page. “This is practically child’s play. Even my niece who is like, only two, would be able to solve this.” She looked at what was written. “Sin X and uh… Cos….“ What the . She’s starting to get a headache just by looking at it.

“It’s Sine and Cosine,” Donghae corrected looking a little baffled at how she read the trigonometric function. Much to his surprise, Sandie started clapping as she shook her head looking proud while grinning.

“See? You passed my first test,” she said. “Sine and Cosine. Knowing how to read them is the first step in learning this.”

Donghae’s brows furrowed in bafflement as he doesn’t know if she’s just being funny. He decided to just ignore her abnormal behaviour and just continued. “I already know how to prove the indentity. What I’m actually having a difficult time on is…” He flipped on another page and tapped the problem he had written. “…when I have to find the exact value of of Cosecant X like this problem here.”

Cos (2x) = 0.6 and 2x is in quadrant I. Find the exact value of csc (x).

Donghae looked at her expectantly while Sandie glared at the paper which had the problem written on.

Sandie sighed heavily. “Do you have any other difficult math problem that I could actually fry my brain on? This is practically a basic for me. And your handwriting is awful, by the way.”

“Thanks,” Donghae said wryly. “I already know that. What I wanted to know is to how to solve it.”

Sandie picked up a pen from his pencil canister and took off its cap. “So you wanted to find the exact value of x. It should be….” She wrote the number. “12.”

“Huh?”

Sandie explained. “Because the letter X is the 24th letter of the Alphabet. You need to multiply that into two, since it says 2x so total would be 48. Quadrant comes from Quad which means quadruple which means four so you need to divide that into four and there we have the value of…” She circled the number with a flourish. “…12!”

Donghae felt his eyelid twitching. Sandie grinned at his expression before huffing. “Geez, you never laugh, do you?” She rolled her eyes as she muttered. “I can’t get why brainy people are so serious all the time.” How can I make him flunk Math? Obviously she couldn’t bull her way into making him think she is giving the correct instructions. If she succeed on this one and Donghae would get a D or possibly an F on this stupid subject, then he won’t ever forgive Darie. Sandie adopted a pouty face to stall for time to get some ideas in her head. “Did you really believe I hurt those….” Crap, she forgot the names of those girls she accidentally beat up. “…those girls yesterday?”

Donghae looked surprised at her sudden question but he answered after a moment. “No.”

His answer surprised Sandie a little. She had thought he would be so judgmental about it. But before she can supply any comments about that, Donghae continued, “I mean, deliberately, no, I don’t think you would. And… Principal Kim asked me to investigate so I watched the CCTV footage.” Donghae didn’t look at her and just took a pen from his pen canister intead. “You look… really alarmed and you probably did It as self defense for… whatever you thought is attacking you.”

“They did attacked me,” Sandie said hotly as if Donghae was accusing her that her being attacked is just her imagination. “And if I didn’t react the way I did, I would’ve been locked in a closet for who knows how many hours before somebody would be able to find me.” She’s getting pissed off again when she think about what could’ve happened. Locked in a dark place. She would really kill Jessica Jung for sure.

“I’m not saying they didn’t,” Donghae said immediately. “I’m just saying that, I don’t believe you would deliberately hurt anyone unless you were provoked.”

Sandie studied his face thinking about what he said then she grinned. “Aww… I didn’t know you had so much faith in me.”

Donghae shook his head slightly but a small smile was on his lips. “Can we just get back to studying the Trigonometric Equation?”

“I think I’ll take this,” Sandie said flipping the notebook closed. “I think I would to refresh my memory on how to do this because youi know….” She put her hand on her shaking head. “… I’m feeling a little rattled.”

“Rattled?” Donghae raised his eyebrows in puzzlement.

“Because of you.” Sandie lightly bumped his chin with her fist while wearing her devious grin. Donghae leaned back a little. “I can’t think when you’re close to me.”

Donghae reddened again as he cleared his throat. Sandie wanted to laugh. He looked so adorable blushing like a . No wonder Darie is head over heels for him. It’s just too bad that he’s gonna have his life messed up for that reason alone.

“Anyway, I was thinking on the plan of that uh… school event… the one that we had a meeting on?” Sandie could remember perfectly how Darie warned her to stay off her Vice President duties. Donghae just nodded and she continuned, “I had a better idea of why we are going to need the medics.”

“Huh?”

“Let’s have some sports games,” Sandie said. “Like… mud wrestling or… chasing a pig in the mud or… you know those… really fun things that you see on TV?”

Donghae looked amused at what she said. “Mud wrestling? Pig Chasing in the mud? What’s with you and muds?”

“I love muds,” Sandie just said. “Make sure you throw one right at my face.” She grinned but then it disappeared when a question popped into her head. “When’s this school event again?”

Eventhough he looked confused for being asked when’s the school event by the Vice President who was the one planning it to begin with, he answered, “It’s the week after this week.”

Sandie gawked at that. “Okay, maybe we should skip the mud game thing.” Sandie thought it would be by next month. It would be fun if Darie would be the receiving end of her devious schemes. Mud on Darie’s face? That would take a pint off the revenge plan she still have to cook up. Too bad they can’t postpose this whatever school event this is until next month.

And that means she would be the one to participate on these boring spelling and quiz bees and what-not games. She would definitely refuse it but having the whole school see Darie Park fail on whatever quizzes and gets everything wrong is too good to pass up.

“Sign me up on every quizzes,” Sandie told Donghae.

“Uh…Didn’t you had the talk with Principal Kim about that?.”

“About what?”

“You wanted to give way to the other students on the quizzes so you just offered to be on the committee.”

“What committee?”

Donghae scratched his head but answered, “The Fund Raising Committee.”

Fund Raising Committee? What the hell? Darie you are such a nerd. “Tell you what. Why don’t you remove me from that committee and I can just… supervise?”

“Supervise?” Donghae looked at her with a wry expression.

Crap if she’s going to be on this boring school event without a choice, then it’ll be better if she can be on something she enjoys. “Why don’t we just add some games? You know, physical games.”

“Like mud wrestling?”

Now Donghae looked like he was mocking her. Sandie gave him a glare. She’s being serious here. “Other physical games like volleyball, tennis, soccer, some… I don’t know… dance-offs in the school gym.”

“We have already proposed that to Principal Kim but the director denied it as some of the students refused to participate in games like that.”

Sandie scowled as she knew whose mother is the director. “Some of the students like Jessica Jung? Pshh. Who cares about her? We are not doing this event for her or her friends. I am definite a lot of students would participate more on physical games than those nerdy things that only a number of you can enjoy. What do the student council do during these events?”

“We supervise,” Donghae answered, again, with a wry expression.

“And I’m sure you are bored as hell,” Sandie said disregarding what she said earlier on supervising. “A lot of the staff would probably die to enter games that doesn’t involve quiz bees and spellings or maths. Let me take it up with the Principal on Monday. I’m sure she would hear me out.”

“You seem to be more fired up at this. Weren’t you one of those students who supported No to Physical Games?”

Sandie paused at that. Then she closed her eyes as she exhaled loudly. No wonder Donghae didn’t even give a damn about Darie. Her sister is such a killjoy. She opened her eyes to look at Donghae with her puppy eyes. “I thought being feminine and smart would be your thing.”

Donghae blinked rapdly at the instant change on her demeanor. “Wh…what?” He stuttered.

“I am a very sporty person. Like, you have no idea,” Sandie said returning to her competitive attitude. She is doing this for herself in the meantime so she could unwind at that school celebration. Let Darie deal with the consequences. She could rally again to No To Physical Games once she get back here. Her plans are already getting messed up in her mind but first things first.

And that is herself. “I want these volleyball games or Basketball or whatever sports you will have in mind to be on that school event.” Her mind ran back to those games she played with her gang in school. That had been serious fun. Especially when they get to kick GD’s team in relay race. “Relay Race. The fastest team to go up the hill for…something, I guess we’ll have to plan that out.” She went on lining up things she wanted to do and should be included on the list of games on the School Foundation.

Donghae just watched her talk enthusiastically, unaware that there’s a small smile crepping up on his face now. Seeing Darie Park talk animatedly about Physical Games is a little weird especially when he hasn’t seen her even drop a sweat before. He had always known her as the intellective type. Very proper, her manners impeccable and is always active when it comes to school activities. That is, school activities that he had seen her participate on are those that require brain functions. Her proposal when they were in  Sophomore Year to remove some of the Physical games was a little disappointing since he love playing sports. A lot of students were disappointed in that as well but her claims that it will lower down, if not eradicate, the rate of students getting injured and brought to the hospital and having the school answer to that, made the principal agree giving the instructions that only approved games are to be on the school activities for any school celebration.

He had always thought she hated him. She had never looked at him and whenever he asked something, she always had this stiff expression as if the answer to his question is obvious enough. He respects her as his Vice President and fellow student and he doesn’t think they had ever been anything other than schoolmates.

So he didn’t know what to make of this Darie Park now. He believed she was being this erratic and always chasing after him mainly because of her senseless fight with Jessica Jung. He had proved it one too many times. And he still believed it. He’s just getting so confused with her. It’s like she had changed overnight. Seeing her talk eagerly about Sports with that look on her face is something he haven’t seen for these 10 years they were schoolmates,

“Are you listening to me?” Donghae’s thoughts were cut off as she snapped a finger in front of him.

“Uh… yeah….” He doesn’t know which subject she was on.

Sandie narrowed her eyes at him then copied him by resting her chin on her hand, her elbow propped on the table and leaned closer to him. He didn’t moved away though but Sandie could see him stiffening again. “You have been staring at me for too long. I could bet you didn’t hear what I’m talking about.”

Contrary to what Sandie expected to do, Donghae met her teasing gaze and answered without even getting flustered. “No, I didn’t hear what you said.”

He was looking at her again like he did that time he was saying I need you in the Student Council office and Sandie could feel something blocking her air passageway. Again. She tried to so she could ignore whatever effect he had on her. “Because you were too busy looking at me. Did you change your mind about liking me?” She playfully raised her eyebrows up and down with a grin.

Donghae just kept on staring at her with his elbow resting on the table and a hand on his cheek and Sandie realized what  Donghae probably felt when she was doing it earlier. She is feeling a little uncomfortable with him blatantly staring at her.

Especially with that gaze.

Everytime he does that, she could see why Darie liked him.

“I’m thinking about it,” Donghae said in a thougtful tone and for crying out loud, it made her heart skip and she could feel her face warming up. She leaned away from him, sitting straight on the chair and Donghae let out a silent chuckle but stayed where he was. For some reason, she couldn’t bring herself to look at him as her face heat up. She could feel it creeping up from her neck to her ears up to her face.

Out of the corner of her eye, Donghae was still looking at her, now with an evident smile on her lips. Probably amused at her reaction