Chapter 1; "Hi."

He wasn't a bad guy. I mean, sure he was a bit weird sometimes, and he had this extremely annoying habit of hitting you when he's high from sugar rush or when he's happy for no goddamn reason. 

I can't find the exact words to describe him. He was always in a very good mood and he acted like one of those irritating princesses as if everything was so goddamn pretty. 

That really pissed me off about him.

I don't know. I mean, I know I'm an emotional wreck — so freaking unstable, so freaking self-destructive — and I'm so drowned in my own problems that I often forget to turn around and take a moment to look at the people around me. I'm not the best person. I'm lost and confuse and I don't know if I'm going to end up like one of those hobos down the streets. 

What I'm trying to get across is... we were friends, weren't we? I'm not exactly sure. I mean, our relationship was kind of messed up. Like, when you suddenly have this spike of motivation to learn Latin or something but you end up losing interest and then you have this one random revelation that you're going to commit yourself again and then you lose interest and the cycle just keeps going on and on and on.

It was somewhere in autumn, the first time we met. I'm not exactly good with dates.

It was your typical autumn season. It was semi-cold and everywhere you looked the ground was full of these ugly red and orange leaves that kept getting in your face. 

I was just sitting on the bench, you know? Contemplating about my purpose in life and beating myself up for failing that exam when it was my choice to procrastinate and do nothing in the first place. He just kind of showed up out of nowhere and sat next me, humming this overrated song from this overrated celebrity. 

I kind of stared at him for a minute. I don't know. He was pretty. Not as in girly pretty, but pretty as in he was physically attractive. He was well-kept and he dressed nicely, and his hair was dyed with this brownish-copper colour that complimented his features very well. My first thought was to initially yell out 'damn' in the loudest voice I could, but then I realised just how incredibly stupid and random that was so I settled with pretending that I didn't see him and started brooding about how my parents were going to kill me once they found out that I've flunked my last year of schooling. 

"Hi." 

That was the first thing he said to me. An old, mainstream greeting that sounded so pathetically awkward as if he had no idea why he was saying hi to some random stranger in the first place. I probably scared him or something, and he probably only did it out of politeness or friendliness or whatever. I couldn't really blame him. I looked as if I'd just been run over by a train and crawled through hell and back.

I glanced at him wearily — ignoring the weird feeling I always got whenever I was a few centimetres away from the opposite gender — and forced out a smile. I didn't want to be rude to him by saying nothing, so I greeted him back with the most resplendent and awe-inspiring reply ever made in human history.

"Hi."

Which was a big mistake on my part, really — because I made things a little more awkward and it was just so silent and ridiculously suffocating. I really wanted to ditch that place. I don't do well with people, especially strangers within a one metre radius regardless of how insanely pretty they were. But whenever I'm feeling particularly scared, I become a statue that can't run away to save her life. That's how much of a pathetic coward I am.

"Do you like ice cream?"

You should've seen him — all flustered and red; cursing under his breath and struggling to find the next words to say. There wasn't anything wrong with his question, really. I just kind of made a face at him. That really threw him off. 

"O-Of course everybody likes ice cream. Haha, don't mind me — pretend I didn't say that. Uh, what I meant to say was, do you like Cookies 'n Cream? I bought this for a friend but, uh, something came up so he couldn't come and I thought it'd be a waste to just leave it and I saw you here so..."

I shrugged and took it. I don't know. I wasn't really thinking straight and I'd felt really hungry that morning because I had forgotten to eat breakfast again. In the first place, I'm the type of person who easily falls for other people's lies. I'm not perceptive, to say the least. I can never really tell what other people's intentions are. 

We just kind of sat there eating our ice cream peacefully. Sometimes, he'd talk about really random stuff, such as, the migration of certain bird species, and then he'd move on to some really boring historical crap about some dead person who changed the country. I mostly tuned him out. If he had noticed, he didn't say anything about it. He was just that nice. 

I really should've listened to him a bit more. I don't know. It hurts just thinking about it.

Jongup always berated me for it, for not listening I mean. He's that type of guy who looks really chill and nice when you look at him from a far. Frankly, he's really pushy and obstinate and thinks he's some sort of Samaritan with his altruistic ideals. He's alright, though. We get along well enough. We'd watch some decent movie here and there and often times we'd spit out some crap about the things that we didn't like about each other.

One time, he took me to this café and bought me tea and some of my favourite bread, which I was really grateful for because it was free food, and the fact that he knew that I really like red bean buns and that I didn't like coffee unless it was the sweet cold ones you got from the grocery store. 

He's always busy. I mean, he's really into singing and dancing so he spends most of his time practising and studying. He's even renowned for all the work that he does. Heck, he'd been accepted as a trainee by this company just a couple of days ago. Seriously, I don't even know why he still bothers to stick around.

"What about you?" 

I really shouldn't have zoned out on him. He sounded incredibly pissed.

"What about me?" I droned; as I thought about that stupid chemistry question and how stupid I was for not reading that stupid question properly. 

"Come on." Now he sounded really pissed. "You like drawing, don't you? Why not go to an art institute?"

"Jongup, you know I can't."

"You know fully well that you can."

I felt my stomach drop as he retrieved several papers from his bag and slid them towards me. I really couldn't describe what I was feeling. I felt sad. I always did whenever he did something like this. He was reasonably good at making me feel like crap. I really couldn't understand why he was suddenly so interested in getting into my business when he had his own life to worry about. I never asked him for help. It wasn't worth it. I mean, for crying out loud, they were papers you had to personally obtain from their respective universities! I suddenly felt so pissed at him. I felt so pissed at myself, so goddamn infuriated with everyone and everything around me.

"Look, nothing and no one is stopping you from doing what you like. You said it yourself that your parents are willing to support you regardless of your decision. I really can't comprehend why you'd do somethings that you have no interest in. You don't have to go to some prestigious university. You hate both science and mathematics, anyway."

I just sat there and didn't say anything as he went on and on and on. I hadn't realise I'd started crying until he gave me this look that people always gave me whenever I did. I hated it — I still hate it. 

I shut him out then because I was sick of hearing the same goddamn words over and over again. They probably sounded so goddamn inspirational to him just like everybody else did. I wanted to hit something. I wanted to scream and shout at everyone and everything. I wanted to scream and shout out all these words that I just couldn't say because I couldn't get the right words to come out of my mouth. And when some stranger came to ask if everything was alright, I broke and hid my face under my arms. I'm strange that way. My head's always screaming at everyone to reach out or something. But when someone actually does, everybody just all of a sudden pisses the hell out of me and my head starts screaming itself hoarse for all of them to go away and disappear.

Youngjae was something else, you know? One of those incredibly nice and rare people you'll ever meet in your entire life.

We kind of got into a routine. Of course, the next day, I was surprise to find him sitting on that bench again. He kept coming back again and again and I inevitably got pissed because that bench was my bench and I've been sitting there for who knows how long and I don't like people barging and intruding on my 'alone' time. But I got used to him after while. I mean, he brought free food with him whenever he came around and he somehow always knew what I really like. I asked him about this once and apparently — and coincidentally — his friend and I have similar tastes whenever it came to food. It was silly, really, because how would he know? But when I look back and think about it, it really wasn't that silly, because he always seemed to know more about myself than I do. He always did. He's psychic, I think.

What I really like about him was that he never pried or forced me into something that I really didn't like. More often than not, I wasn't in the mood to talk, but he would continue to be himself and talk about random stuff and sometimes really interesting things and then he'd reach out and hold our hands together. I didn't really mind it. I find it annoying though when he'd start swinging our arms back and forth, especially when he'd start whistling some really annoying song. I'm always sleep deprived and tired, and most of the time I feel incredibly lethargic. I really have no idea where he gets all the energy from. 

I was walking around the park when he decided to follow me around. I stood idly in the background, watching him play hopscotch with the little kids and buy a balloon for this one who was whinging really loudly for no goddamn reason. I wanted to cry then. I don't know why. It just seemed like the right moment to. The pretty bastard just laughed at me when my eyes started their stupid water works. Then he jabbed me by the shoulder and grabbed my arm and made me jump on to a pile of those really ugly leaves. I felt sorry for the person who had to clean it all up again. I yelled at him for it, but he continued laughing as if he'd suddenly gone deaf.

The first snow came, and I watched him sing and dance about some Christmassy song when it wasn't even Christmas yet. I really thought he was an idiot. Because he was just so happy, so goddamn happy as if there was nothing wrong with the world. It was just freaking snow, damn it. I really thought he was some privileged kid who has never experienced any difficulty in his life. But when I looked at his face, so freaking genuine, just being him — I thought that maybe it wasn't so bad after all. And so I let him hold onto my hands and spin us around. Around and around until he ran out of Christmas carols to sing and the annoying little brats laughed at us as we both fell to the ground.