“Good afternoon. Welcome to Viva Polo!” Junmyeon smiled as soon as he heard the chiming voices from the restaurant. He loves Viva Polo. Junmyeon was originally from Seoul but he applied to teach in this smaller town as a mean to escape from the hectic city life. In the quiet town, he found Viva Polo – a family restaurant with warm greetings and meals.

“Oh! Mr.Kim, how nice of you to drop by! The usual?” Mrs.Park greeted him merrily as soon as he walked across the cashier podium. Junmyeon smiled and nodded gently. Mrs.Park always reminds him of Chanyeol, the star student. He has always wondered how Chanyeol could turn out to be such a cheerful kid with a bright smile; albeit slightly attention-seeking, and loud in class at times but Junmyeon couldn’t blame the kid since Chanyeol has the wits. Mrs.Park is just like Chanyeol; a milder version.

“Good afternoon, Mrs.Park,” he greeted warmly. “Where is Chanyeol?” He looked around to see any sign of one of his many favourite students in the class. 

Mrs.Park twinkled with laughter, “He got promoted this summer holiday,” her chin jerked in one direction. Junmyeon looked into that direction and saw Chanyeol towering beside a shorter, pale girl, whom he recognized to be Kang So Eul. The said girl was folding cloth napkins with intense concentration etched on her face.

Junmyeon laughed slightly at the scene. So Eul had always been like this since day 1 of starting school. Her expressions were always vacant on her face, yet sometimes she would look intimidating. For most of the time, So Eul has a few default expressions; intense focus when she is studying, vacant when she is doing other things, and the look of being pained whenever she swallowed her handful of pills discreetly after meals at the lunch table.

“Soul-ah, this is not right,” Chanyeol whined, “how many times do I have to tell you to fold them until the seams are overlapping each other exactly.”

Soul pursed her lips slightly and looked at Chanyeol in despair, “I’m trying.”

“Not enough!” Chanyeol’s finger pushed her forehead jokingly to make her head fall back slightly, “Here. Look at what I do.”

“Hello kids,” Junmyeon approached them in curiosity.

“Junmyeon-saem!” Chanyeol greeted out loud in enthusiasm, “good afternoon!” So Eul muttered the same thing and gave him a 90-degrees bow.

“What are you two doing?”

“Soul’s mom said she should work during summer holiday to get experience with talking to people and I brought her here,” he explained with a bright smile.

“So Eul-ah, do you like it?” he asked the abnormally quiet girl, who doesn’t speak unless she is asked or the situation calls for it. The girl smiled and nodded.

“It’s a good experience,” she mumbled, “Omma said it will build character.”

“It certainly does,” Junmyeon replied with a smile and an encouraging pat on the shoulder, “keep up the good work. I’ll leave you two to do whatever you two are doing.”

The two teenagers smiled and bowed again as they continued folding cloth napkins. Junmyeon sat at a table to enjoy his lunch and the two teenagers could be seen from the corner of his eyes. Chanyeol and So Eul, standing at a table to fold napkins, bickering – more like Chanyeol constantly nagging at her while So Eul looked distressed and seriously focused.

It was a very amusing sight for Junmyeon to see So Eul having so much reaction like that in that moment. So Eul is a generally quiet kid, who prefers books over human companion. He noticed that trait as soon as he saw her on the first day of school. Even though it would be okay for her to be like that in high school, she would suffer a lot in university, where group work matters. It worried Junmyeon a lot. He wants all of his students to do well wherever they are and not suffer in silence. He wanted to help So Eul to become a more sociable person. Immediately, Park Chanyeol came to his mind.

Chanyeol is a star student who excels at a lot of things, except being one of the noisiest and mischievous students in his year. One of his wonderful traits is that he could coax anyone out of their shells to become friends with him, which could turn out to be annoying. While he did not seem like the type due to his hyperactive nature, Chanyeol is a very patient and caring boy in the school. Naturally, Junmyeon decided to pair Chanyeol up with So Eul, with the hopes that he would somehow help her cope with high school and progress into university seamlessly without much difficulty.

It seemed like his instincts were correct because he could see So Eul slowly being coaxed out of her comfort zone by Chanyeol, as he kept seeing him around her, dragging her into his beagle trio, speaking to her even though it never seemed like she spoke much to him.

While one could not consider that it was major progress, it was an improvement to see a quiet person who lacked friends getting roped into a small community; in Chanyeol’s case, a small and noisy community.

[Authors monologue:] Thank you for reading. Comments are always welcomed and appreciated, so are positive criticism because they all help me grow. 

See you around!