CHAPTER 6: WONDERING

I didn’t exactly jump of happiness as the lesson came to an end. Everyone else, including the teacher, left the gym to change their clothes and prepare for the next lesson. Instead of that, me and Bin stood in the gym, glaring at each other, while mopping the floor. I wanted to be quick so I wouldn’t be too late from the next lesson, but Bin didn’t seem to share the thought with me. He swiped the floor lazily and as slowly as he could, like he was trying to annoy me on purpose.

“Can’t you hurry a little bit?” I asked. “This way we’ll get super late.”

Bin glared at me. “Oops”, he said as he let his mop fall down on the floor. He took a step forwards and “accidentally” kicked the mop further away. “Oh, I’m clearly not made for cleaning.”

I sighed, grabbed the mop from the floor and pushed it against Bin’s chest. “Learn then.”

“What if I don’t want to?” he asked and raised his eyebrows at me.

I snorted. “It almost seems like you just want to spend more time with me!”

Bin flashed me a fake concerned look and leaned on the mop. “I called you pitiful, right? That might have been an underestimation… Should I take you to the doctor?”

I rolled my eyes and continued mopping. Bin followed me after a short moment, continuing his lazy, slow paced cleaning. In no time, I had mopped the whole floor almost completely by myself, while Bin had only been moving in an area of a square meter. While glaring at him I picked up the key of the storage room where the cleaning supplies, along with fitness mattresses and other stuff were kept in. Our teacher had left it to me so that he wouldn’t need to stay in the gym and wait for us.

“Get my mop in there too”, Bin said and tried to hand his mop at me.

I ignored him. “Come one, let’s finish up.”

Letting out a sigh, he got up from the floor and followed me. I turned the key in the lock once and opened the door. I, in my glorious shortness, struggled to get my mop up on the rack made for the cleaning supplies. Bin, anyhow, didn’t flinch a finger to help me after putting away his own mop. He just leaned against a wall, waiting for me.

“You’re really tiresome; do you know that?” I asked him.

Bin just nodded a few times and crossed his arms, then continued the small nodding movement. He stopped, anyhow, when we heard the door slamming shut. Bin turned around quickly and stared at the door, looking a little bit alarmed.

“Did it get locked?” he asked quietly.

“No, it didn’t”, I stated and walked to the door. “I left the key attached to the lock to prevent that.”

Bin let out a grunt and slowly pulled the keys out from his trousers’ pocket. My eyes enlarged and I rushed to the door, trying to push it open, failing my attempt. I turned around to glare at Bin, whose haughty and proud expression had changed into displeasure and frustration. He stared at the floor, curling his fingers into a fist, with the keys still in the hand.

“Why would you take the keys?” I asked him, not able to hide the panic in my voice.

“To give them back by myself”, Bin replied, glaring back at me.

“Of course”, I sighed and turned around, scratching my head and trying to come up with a solution to get out of the storage room. The only lock of the door was on the outside, so I couldn’t even try to pick the lock or anything.

“Calm down, we’re not going to die or anything”, Bin said. “Do you have your phone with you?”

“Don’t you have your own?” I asked him.

“It broke yesterday; I’m going to buy a new one today.”

I sighed and took my phone out of my pocket. I groaned in frustration. “There’s no service here!”

“What?” Bin burst out. “Give the phone to me.”

“I don’t think your hands have a magic touch. There’s no service”, I replied.

Bin grabbed the phone from me and started reaching up, trying to make even something appear on the service bar.

I felt super frustrated. This guy really was just trouble. Sensitive, arrogant and selfish. Why did he think taking the keys would be a good idea? Why did he want to give the keys back to the teacher himself if he didn’t even care about his grades and ditched lessons every now and then? Besides, my elbow was still aching like crazy because of the fall earlier. I was 100% sure a big, painful bruise would form on my elbow by tomorrow.  Letting out a groan I sat down on a fitness mattress, resting my head against the wall. Bin kicked a broomstick that had fallen down from the rack and sighing walked up to me, sitting on the mattress too.

“Looks like we’re stuck here for a while”, I said quietly.

“I don’t think we’ll be here very long”, Bin stated. “The next PE lesson starts after lunch break. And I think your friends will come and look for you if you don’t come to the lessons.” How come even his comments annoyed me? He probably wasn’t trying to annoy me on purpose. In this case he kind of reminded me of Eunwoo – he always had something snarky to say to everything.

A somewhat awkward silence settled in the storage room and we just sat there, on the mattress. I stared at the old clock on the wall and counted the minutes until the ongoing lesson would end. It would still be half an hour until the lunch break. I sighed and glanced at Bin, who leaned against the wall, resting his hands on his lap. I noticed a wound on his knuckles and my eyes grew a little bit bigger, realizing he must’ve hurt himself yesterday while protecting me.

“Your hand”, I said quietly.

Bin glanced at his hand. “It’s nothing, it’s not serious”, he said, and after a short silence, asked: “Are you alright?”

My eyes got off his hand and moved to his face instead. He looked more serious than before. With a small smile I nodded and massaged my elbow – it had really started to ache.

“I’m…” Bin started but stopped right away, looking really embarrassed. “About running away like that, I guess I’m sorry.”

Seeing him apologetic and shy like this was really new and almost amusing for me. Where did the arrogant cold city boy go? I almost chuckled.

“You guess? I guess it’s alright then”, I replied. “Let me ask you something. Why do you hate me so much?”

My question seemed to make Bin lose his speaking ability. He glanced at me, then his hands, and then just stared in front of him, clearly trying to find the right words – or the reason. I tilted my head a little bit, looking at him with a curious expression. Now that he wasn’t having his typical arrogant, frowning expression on his face, I could actually see that he was actually quite handsome. If our relationship had been a little bit better or closer, I might have told him to stop frowning all the time.

“No matter how much I think”, Bin said. “I don’t really know. I don’t have a good reason to hate you. I guess I just dislike you because everybody else does too.”

So he did really dislike me. I sighed. I didn’t want to start arguing so I stayed silent. I did understand him in some really weird way. That’s how schools were – one person becomes an outcast because some people don’t like her, and because somebody treats her badly, others start to treat her that way too. I never believed everybody in this school hated me, they just followed what others did. The same case I had in my previous school in Jeju.

“I see”, I said quietly. “Well, I won’t bother you. If you promise to behave properly from now on.”

Bin turned to look at me. “That’s a weird request.”

“So is your behaviour”, I replied and raised my eyebrows at him.

Suddenly our little conversation was cut short by shouts form the outside. I immediately recognized Eunwoo’s voice calling for me. I got up from the mattress and rushed to the door, starting to bang it.

“Eunwoo!” I shouted. “I’m in here!”

I heard footsteps running towards the door. “Minji?”

“Here!” I shouted again. “We got locked in.”

“Minhyuk, go and get someone to open this door!” Eunwoo told Minhyuk, whose voice I heard saying alright, and more footsteps.

I heard Bin snort quietly, while still sitting on the mattress. He seemed somewhat amused by the situation, which went behind my understanding. We had to wait for a couple of minutes, but when the PE teacher finally arrived to the gym with a spare key to open the door, I felt super relieved. As the door opened I rushed out straight to Eunwoo’s arms. I hadn’t expected him to stand so close to the door so the sudden intimacy surprised me. I stepped backwards and smiled at him before turning around and ordering Bin to give the keys back to the teacher.

“How did you guys manage to get locked in?” Eunwoo asked.

I sighed and nodded at Bin. “Because of this guy, he took the keys from the lock.”

Eunwoo rolled his eyes. I turned to look at Minhyuk who was standing a little bit further. I squinted my eyes at him and walked closer to him. “Why did you come here? You should be on your lesson.”

Minhyuk smiled at me. “Eunwoo texted me you’re missing so I got concerned.”

I smiled and messed his hair a little bit. “Well I’m here now so you should go back.”

“Alright then, everybody. Back to your classrooms immediately”, the teacher ordered after closing the storage room’s door again. “Off you go!”

We walked out of the gym and separated with Minhyuk who rushed back to his lesson as the rest of us walked to our classroom together – though Bin was walking ahead of me and Eunwoo, not paying attention to us. Before entering our classroom, though, he turned his head to quickly glance at us and nodded at me, then opening the classroom’s door. I tilted my head a little bit confused as I walked to my seat. What could that nod have been for?

When the school day ended, me, Youngmi and Minhyuk decided to catch something to eat together and took a bus headed to Dongdaemun. After walking around at the market for a while, we went to the first street food stall we could find and ordered some ddeokbokki. As we sat down and started to eat, I eyed my friends. They – well, mostly Youngmi – had been amazed by the fact me and Bin had actually managed to get along for the time we were stuck in the storage room, and she had been asking the weirdest and stupidest questions she could come up with. Now, fortunately for me, she seemed to just enjoy her food.

But just as I was about to let out a sigh of relief, Minhyuk decided to open his mouth.

“Are you really sure he didn’t do anything?” he asked. “Like yell at you or hit you or something?”

“Minhyuk” I sighed. “He was sitting down the whole time, he apologized for yesterday and that’s it."

“He apologized?” Youngmi asked. “Really? Wow.”

“Yes, and we kind of made a promise to not bother each other anymore”, I stated.

Youngmi nodded her head a few times and continued eating. As I stuffed my face I realized I had one person less to worry about. Now the only people messing with my life was Mikyung, and occasionally her little clique, but even she had seemed to calm down a little bit lately. Finishing my meal, I placed my chopsticks on the table and accidentally hit my elbow against the corner of the table. I let out a groan and massaged the area with my other hand. I rolled up the sleeve of my shirt and sighed – the bruise from the fall earlier had started to form. Well, luckily I’d be wearing my school uniform most of the time so nobody would see the huge violet area on my elbow.

As we were about to leave the stall, Youngmi’s phone started ringing. She got the phone out of her bag and tilting her head, looked at me.

“Are you prank calling me, Minji?” she asked with a small smile on her lips.

I blinked. “No. Why?”

“I’m getting a call from you”, Youngmi said and picked up the call. “Hello?”

I realized what was going on the moment she put the phone on her ear. In the storage room Bin had taken the phone from me while we were struggling with the service. He had never given it back. I sighed and buried my head into my hands. For some reason, this was almost embarrassing. How could I forget my phone like that?

“I see, alright”, Youngmi said and passed the phone to me.

“Hello?” I breathed out.

“You left your phone”, Bin said, and I could almost imagine him smirking while saying that.

“I didn’t leave it, you didn’t give it back to me”, I stated, closing my eyes.

“Whatever you say. Where are you?” he asked.

I sighed. “Eating ddeokbokki in Dongdaemun.”

“Alright, see me at Designer Club if you want the phone back.”

“Wait – “, Bin ended the call before I had a chance to say anything.

 I gave the phone back to Youngmi and let out a frustrated growl, almost banging my head against the table. Sighing deeply, I eyed my friends.

“I have to go and get the phone from him”, I said.

“Alone?” Minhyuk asked. “Do you trust him? What if he kept the phone on purpose and is scheming something?”

I shook my head. “I don’t think he wants any trouble. And you should be going to the academy any way. I’ll be fine by myself.”

And in no time, I found myself walking towards the shopping mall Bin told me he was at. How did he expect me to find him there without my phone? Was he stupid? As I walked through the main entrance I almost gasped at the amount of people I saw. Students were out of school, most adults were out of work, so everybody was enjoying their free time. I felt almost desperate. Finding Bin in this mall would be like finding a needle in a haystack! I sighed and started walking forward. Maybe Bin was scheming this after all – maybe he wanted to play with me by making me find him from here. Suddenly someone grabbed my wrist and I was pulled to the quieter side of the aisle.

“You’re really pitiful”, Bin sighed. “Wouldn’t it be just logical to see if I was standing outside the main entrance?”

“Well, it was you who ended the call before I could ask where exactly you were”, I exclaimed.

This time I got Bin. He blinked a few times before nodding in agreement. He took the phone out of his pocket and gave it to me. “Be more cautious in the future. What if someone actually stole it?”

I flashed him a really obvious fake smile. “Of course.”

“Why are you behaving like this?” he asked. “Are you mad at me or something?”

I stared at him. “Look who’s speaking. You’re the one who’s been acting like an idiot for the last month. Besides, I’m experiencing major pain on my elbow thanks to you.”

“Hey, I hurt my hand and broke my phone while protecting you”, Bin protested. “Besides, I already agreed to behave from now on so why are you still being like this?”

I remembered the wound I had seen on his knuckles earlier and my eyes immediately travelled down to his hand, which was buried in his trousers’ pocket. I realized his phone had probably dropped to the ground while he was beating up the molester. I suddenly felt embarrassed. He had suffered a lot for me without even knowing who I was. Then I thought about his latter words. When had he agreed? He had only said my request of him behaving properly was weird. I tilted my head and looked at him.

“You don’t remember? Did you hurt your head too?” he sighed. “At the classroom’s door.”

The nod I had been wondering about. “How did you expect me to understand what that meant?”

Bin didn’t say anything, just shrugged his shoulders. “Anyway, I think you’d better go now. My dad is coming to get me and he might not like seeing you with me.”

I snorted a bit. I didn’t understand why president Moon would dislike me. I had eaten dinner with him yesterday and he seemed like a nice guy, even though his status gave him a somewhat superior feel. Anyhow, as Bin’s eyes seemed to find his father walking towards me, he pushed me into the crowd of people and I was out of the mall in seconds. I turned around just to see Bin and his father walk out of the building, and in that moment, he looked so humble and submissive he looked almost like an another person.

Later that evening I arrived at home, super tired of all the walking and sitting in the bus. I took off my shoes, threw my backpack into my room and walked to the kitchen to drink some water. As I walked past the living room and noticed my aunt lying on the sofa, looking a little bit uncomfortable, I got a little bit worried. Was she sick? I walked to the living room and squatted down next to the sofa.

“Aunt”, I said quietly and she opened her eyes. She looked devastated. “Are you alright?”

She quickly sat up and scratched her head. “I’m completely alright! Just a little bit tired.”

I couldn’t not notice that she had a big, noticeable bruise on her arm. Anyhow, aunt seemed so tired and uncomfortable I didn’t mention it, just left a class of water on the living room’s table and went back to my room, just to hear my phone ringing. It was Minhyuk.

“Hello”, I greeted him.

“Hi”, he said. “Are you home already?”

“Yeah, I got home a moment ago”, I replied. “What about you?”

“I got home earlier than normally”, he said. “I just made some food my dad, he’s coming home late today.”

I smiled. I had heard Minhyuk talk about cooking a lot, and he really seemed to enjoy it. “You have to make me food someday, I really want to taste your cooking!”

Minhyuk chuckled. “Alright then! But it’s late, I think you should go to sleep soon.”

“Yeah, I’ll just do my homework and go”, I replied. “See you tomorrow!”

After ending the call, I spent the next hour doing my homework and showering before finally getting to slide between my bedsheets and close my eyes. Somehow the bed seemed softer than before and I fell asleep quickly and effortlessly.