“Wah~ Noona!” Haechan's eyes lit up when he saw Yujin enter the practice room. “You came to see us practice?”

She now looked more presentable as the last time they saw her. Now, she was wearing a clean, green shirt, her hair was down, and her glasses were put on properly.

The other members who were currently resting on the floor, panting heavily after their continuous dance practices, shot their heads up towards the door to see their new stylist enter the room quietly.

Yujin didn’t know why but seeing all of their expectant faces overwhelmed her. “Hello,” she greeted them as normally as she could but she still sounded awkward.

“Ah, yeah,” Taeyong said, wiping his sweat using his collar’s shirt. “Hyein noona told us you were coming today.”

“Yes,” she confirmed. “I’m in charge with performance outfits,” she told them. “I want to know how the dance will be so that I’ll know what outfits to dress you in while still being able to dance comfortably,” she explained, glancing around the spacious room.

“Oh, cool!” Mark smiled at her. “I wonder what outfits you’ll dress me in!” he exclaimed excitedly. “Hey, noona, can you dress me the coolest?” he asked her, raising his seagull eyebrows playfully in the process.

“Yah, I think Yujin gets to decide on that,”Jaehyun hit the younger’s arm playfully. “Right, Yujin?” Yujin gave him a thumbs up as a reply. “Ah~ I trust my friend to make me look the coolest,” he said, giving her a knowing look.

“Oh, Yujin,” Taeil called out to her, noticing that she didn’t move an inch after entering the room. “You can sit on the couch if you want to,” he told her, motioning his hand to the couch on the corner of the room.

Yujin followed his hand and nodded. “Thanks, oppa,” she said and walked towards the couch while she felt their eyes follow her. Yujin sat on the couch and stared back at them.

Taeyong’s eye twitched when she called Taeil ‘oppa,’ again. He is a man who is passionate to get something what he wants, and right now, he wants Yujin to call him oppa too. “Yujin, is it okay that we rest for a few minutes?” he asked. “We’ve been practicing non-stop for almost two hours now.”

The members knew Taeyong well enough to know that he was up to something when they heard the tone of his voice. They rolled their eyes at him but was still eager to know what Yujin’s answer will be.

Yujin looked at him and nodded. “Go ahead,” she answered. “Take your time.”

“Th-thanks,” he chuckled in embarrassment as it was the only thing he could do now.

The members snickered when they saw Taeyong’s dejected face when he failed his mission to get her to call him oppa.

Taeyong glared at s as he stood up. “I’m going to the washroom,” he announced and discreetly stomped his way out of the room.

“Oh, hey wait for me, hyung!” Haechan called out and followed Taeyong out.

“I’m coming too,” Mark said, standing up. “Winwin hyung?” he gestured to the door and asked the Chinese member.

“Okay.” Winwin stood up and wiped his hands on his sweats. “How about you, Yuta hyung?” he asked the Japanese boy who was still sitting on the wooden floor looking like his thoughts took him somewhere a million miles away.

Yuta snapped out of his trance when he heard Winwin call him and he got a confused look from him in return. He didn’t know that he was currently spacing out. “A-ah, yeah. I think I’m good,” he said, smiling at him.

Jaehyun snorted at his friend who was and rolled his eyes before standing up himself. ‘Why is he so obvious?’ “I’m getting some fresh air,” he said to no one in particular and left the room with Winwin and Mark.

Yujin and Yuta were now left in the room with complete silence surrounding them and Yujin didn’t even notice it.

Yuta laid down on the floor and groaned when he stretched his body. In the corner of his eyes, he watched Yujin on the couch who was busy typing on her phone. ‘I want to talk to her but I don’t know what to say…’ he thought. ‘Ah, will it be okay to ask her that?’ he asked himself as he thought about the conversation they had with Hyein earlier that day.

☆*:.｡.make you smile.｡.:*☆

2 hours earlier…

“Hyein noona! What brings you here?” Taeyong approached the stylist who was already in their practice room while the other boys followed him in and greeted her.

Hyein motioned them to come near her and they did so as they sat in a circle in front of her.

“Hello, boys,” she greeted them. “I just wanted to talk to you guys about Yujin.”

When they heard Yujin’s name, everyone’s eyes lit up as they were obviously interested about what she had to say.

“Ah, what about my new friend, noona?” Jaehyun asked her.

Hyein met Jaehyun’s eyes and smiled warmly at him. “Wah, you’re friends with her already?” she asked in a hopeful tone. “That’s great!”

Jaehyun’s smile cracked a little, thinking that she understood him in a wrong way. “Um, I called her my friend because she and I, and also Winwin, are the same age with her,” he explained. “But I really do want to become friends with her, noona.”

“Yeah, I want to be closer to Yujin noona too,” Mark joined in the conversation. “I think that Yujin noona is a very cool person. I like how she’s so chic and kind of clumsy at the same time!” he laughed. “I mean, I was kind of shocked the first time I saw her enter the meeting room with her oversized shirt stained in something green, her hair sticking out to different directions, how she didn’t notice that her glasses were already falling off, and that she couldn’t remove her scarf!”

Hyein and the other boys laughed at how Mark animatedly described her.

“Yes, Yujin is a really clumsy girl,” she confirmed while still laughing.

“But noona,” Haechan called her attention. “How come Yujin noona is so.. expressionless?” he asked her as politely as he could. “I mean no offense to her but, I think she’s someone who picks out the people she wants to be friends with.”

Everyone was surprised with what the youngest member said but deep inside, they somewhat agreed with him.

Taeil, being the oldest out of them wanted to put some sense into him. “Don’t you think she’s just shy?” he defended but that was the farthest he could go because he still didn’t know her well enough.

Hyein noticed that the boys became silent after hearing what Haechan said. She wasn’t mad at him for feeling that way about her. In fact, she was glad that he wasn’t afraid to tell her how he feels.

“I completely understand you,” she told him and that got the boys’ attention. “That’s the reason why I wanted to talk to you guys about her,” she said. “I didn’t want you guys to misunderstand Yujin.”

Haechan ducked his head in shame for saying what he said. He felt someone touch him by the shoulder and when he looked up, he saw Taeyong smiling warmly at him and that immediately lifted his mood up.

“Yujin is like a child...” she started, not exactly sure how to explain what kind of a person Yujin is. “She’s the kid you’d keep doting on because it feels rewarding to see what kind of expression she'll give you,” she said but it was obvious that none of them understood what that meant. “This is harder than I thought,” she muttered under her breath.

“Okay, let me try this again,” she told them, regaining some of her confidence back. “Yujin is not the most expressive person in the world, but that doesn’t mean she’s incapable of feeling emotions.”

Yuta, who was sitting quietly at the back, unconsciously nodded his head. ‘Yeah, I believe you. I mean I saw her pout a few times at noona and she actually even smiled at me.’

Hyein studied each of their faces and all of them had that same confused look. She took a deep breath and started again. ‘If describing what type of person she is won’t work, then maybe I could just tell them my story of how I got to know her,’ she thought, regaining her confidence back.

“I’ve known Yujin ever since she was still a child,” she started her story. “But even if I did know her, I wasn’t close to her,” she said. “Yejin, her older sister, was one of my very best friends. Our families were really close too because we were neighbors when Yejin and I were still kids. The two of us grew up together and even went to the same school. By the time Yujin was to be born, their family had to move away because their dad got transferred to another part of Seoul. Even so, Yejin and I was still able to communicate with each other through e-mail.”

“Around seven years later, they came back to live near our area and that was the first time I got to meet Yujin,” she smiled in delight. “Yujin looked very unique when she was a kid. She was like a walking doll because her mom would dress her up in very pretty clothes and put cute accessories on her,” she described to them animatedly. “Whenever I’d come over to their house after school with Yejin, Yujin would come running to us and would excitedly show us a new artwork she did and explain what they meant,” she laughed. “Ah~ she was a really silly kid,” she said, rolling her eyes in the process. “She was a people pleaser.”

“Really?” Mark asked in awe. “Yujin noona had that kind of side to her?”

“Yes,” Hyein nodded, “Because she was the baby of the family, they adored her so much and spoiled her like a princess,” she said.

“Ah, it’s good to be the maknae of the family,” Taeil said with a hint of jealousy in his voice.

“But even though she’s a ‘princess’,” she air quoted with her fingers, “she was really clumsy,” she laughed and rolled her eyes. “She’d always bump into things, trip on her own two feet, and spill food on her clothes.”

“Oh, she was already clumsy back then, huh?” Jaehyun stated, feeling a small smile form on his lips.

“Yeah,” Hyein confirmed. “Even though she was a little helpless without them, she did the best she could to support herself,” she told them proudly. “Those were the only few things that didn’t change in her; being creative, hardworking, and clumsy.”

“If Yujin was like that before, then what made her change, noona?” Taeyong asked curiously. “Personality wise, that is.”

Hyein’s face and voice started to turn serious, “Because of the incredible between us, I didn’t exactly made an effort to be close to her,” she sighed sadly. “Whenever I would visit their house with Yejin after school, I would always see her either working on arts and crafts or drawing quietly because she enjoyed doing creative things like those and I didn’t bother her whenever she did,” she explained. “I heard from Yejin that in the middle of her third grade in elementary school, she got bullied by the whole class,” she told them sadly. “I didn’t understand why she was being bullied. Even though I’m not really close with her, I knew that Yujin was a very likeable kid because she was very kind and friendly.”

“She was bullied for what?” Yuta asked as he spoke for the first time, feeling his blood boil all of a sudden.

Hyein was startled by his tone but didn’t dwell on it and just continued her story. “Yujin was liked by her teachers because she was very active in school activities and was also a smart kid. Her teachers would boast Yujin to the other students to follow her example but that only made all the other students dislike her because they thought that she was just getting to her teacher’s good side and that was when the bullying started.”

“She was bullied just because of that?” Yuta muttered quietly. “That’s stupid,” he said, lowering his head in between his legs, in front of his crossed arms, to hide his growing irritation.

Jaehyun secretly glanced at Yuta when he heard what he said but decided to leave him be since the older boy was obviously pissed.

“Her parents decided to transfer her to a different school because they were worried about her well-being and didn’t want her to stay in such a negative environment. But because she was traumatized from the bullying from her previous school, she didn’t make any efforts on making friends anymore,” she told them regretfully. “I think that was the time she started talking less. Even to her own family.”

“But not all people are like those horrible kids!” Haechan whined. “Ah, this is making me angry,” he huffed and crossed his arms.

Winwin watched the younger boy and patted his back comfortingly.

“You’re right,” Hyein agreed with him. “But you really can’t blame her for being like that because she was just so young,” she told them regretfully. “Even though Yujin became a loner, she didn’t fall into depression, thankfully,” she sighed in relief. “In fact, I heard from Yejin that as time passed by, Yujin started to return back to the bubbly kid that she is,” she said, being able to smile a little.

“Ah, that’s good,” Taeil sighed in relief and smiled but something in the back of his head still made him feel uneasy.

Hyein in her breath as she felt tears well up in her eyes. She tried her best not to show it to the boys but failed when she choked on a sob which alerted everyone.

“Noona! What’s wrong?!” Taeyong jolted up and went to Hyein’s side. The boys were starting to panic when