“What do you mean you’re not applying for medicine?” Soul asked, halting her motion, with her eyes wide as she stared at him and her chest was rising and falling heavily.

Both of them stood in the school corridor, holding their university application each in their hands.

Chanyeol shrugged, “Just.”

“I thought you want to be a doctor!” her usually hushed voice had turned high and loud as she spoke to him, clearly shocked at his choice. He was also shocked too, since he had never heard her speak at a voice loud as this and her face as livid as this.

He shrugged again, “I can still apply for it as a second degree after my first one.”

“But!” her voice was shrill. A few students were watching the sight that the two top students of the school were having an open argument in the school corridor. “Why does it have to be Literature & Languages like me?!”

Chanyeol didn’t reply anything and started walking to the teacher’s office, where they had to turn in their university application form, leaving Soul alone in the corridor. Mr.Kim paused to look at Chanyeol as he was scanning through the high school boy’s choice of university course on the form. “Chanyeol, are you sure that you’re applying to Literature & Languages at SNU?”

Chanyeol nodded.

Mr.Kim continued, “I thought you wanted to study medicine.”

“I changed my mind at the last minute,” his reply was short.

“Mr.Kim!” Soul burst into the office so suddenly and rushed towards the table, “can you please change Chanyeol’s university choice to Medicine at SNU?”

Chanyeol stared at the girl, whose act was out of norm, and then again at Mr.Kim, who shook his head, “So Eul, it is very cute that you want to change your friend’s choices but our school’s policy-“

“But that’s not what Chanyeol wants!” Soul cried out, her face red and the tip of her nose was flaring, “Chanyeol wants to study medicine!”

All of the teachers were now looking at the commotion happening at Mr.Kim’s cubicle. “So Eul,” their school’s P.E teacher, Mr.Shim, came to her side, “calm down.” He squatted down and patted her back, “Chanyeol definitely knows what he’s doing..”

“No, he does not. Mr.Shim,” Soul’s voice started to crack as tears rolled down her face, tears of frustration, “he’s not doing what he wants!”

“Soul-ah,” Chanyeol had started to drag Soul’s arm, wanting to run away from all the commotion since the teachers have started to murmur at each other as they saw the scene unfolded. “Come on, let’s go.”

Soul shrugged his hold off and glared at him, daunting him to change his decision. “I have to submit my application, Park Chanyeol,” she replied shortly and submitted her application to Mr.Kim with a bow.

“You know,” Mr.Kim’s voice stopped the two of them at the entrance of the teacher’s room, “it is still okay to change your mind. The deadline is not until the end of next week.” Soul turned her head and bowed to Mr.Kim before she her heels and went back to her classroom.

Chanyeol felt guilty.

He felt very, very guilty.

He was not supposed to do this. After Mrs.Kang asked him for help, Chanyeol tried so many ways to persuade Soul from applying Literature and to join him in Medicine. Whenever Chanyeol tried, Soul smiled gently and shook his head, while she softly said, “Chanyeol-ssi, that is not what I want.”

Personally, he wants Soul to pursue what she wanted to, however, his mother and Mrs.Kang left him no choice. They would look at him with huge puppy eyes, as if seeking for sympathy, whenever both him and Soul stepped into the restaurant after school everyday. He tried to avoid it, but he couldn’t. He hates those puppy eyes.

He knew that he couldn’t ask Soul to change her application form so he decided to change his and make sure she changed hers, with high hopes that she would change her mind and join him in Medicine, just like how her parents wished for her.

He did, and the guilt was eating him alive, the guilt that stemmed from the knowledge that he had started to push a helpless soul into doing what she does not want to do. It just had to be done.

Soul didn’t speak him for a few days after the form submission. She stopped going to school with him and coming back from school with him. Baekhyun and Jongdae were the surprised people at this shift in the two friends.

“It's a lovers quarrel,” Jongdae concluded, earning a light kick at his calves from Chanyeol. He sniggered as he jumped away from the kick, “It’s true! It’s a lovers quarrel. She doesn’t even look at you now.”

Chanyeol sighed and rolled his eyes. Soul had not been speaking to him for a few days and he thought he would be okay with it since he had other friends to talk to and he hoped that Soul would start speaking to him since she never really spoke to any of the students.

However, he was wrong.

Somehow, a group of students from a year below took a liking to her, very much to his surprise, and started to gather around her during lunchtimes, asking her for tips on studying and lessons. The group was led by no one other than Krystal, Sehun, and Jongin.

At first, Soul was clearly uncomfortable at the sudden change of atmosphere during her lunchtime but after a few days it seemed like she had settled into the new atmosphere. She replied politely to the younger kids, acting like an older sister, as she helped them out with their school lesson concerns. In addition, she also gained a friend who went back home with her – Krystal Jung, the girl who lives in their neighbourhood but slightly closer to the school than both of them.

Chanyeol, who did not dare walk beside Soul, followed the two girls from a safe distance behind them. Krystal kept glancing at him and whispered to Soul on the first day that she started following the quiet girl. All Soul did was looked back calmly, bat her eyes a few times, and then went back to face front. She must have said something because Krystal giggled afterwards. Of course, he was curious to know what she had said.

Soul only spoke to him after a week had passed, only because they had a family dinner that Sunday. The Park household visited the Kang household for an invited dinner – for no apparent reason since the two mothers love the idea of two families having dinners together. Chanyeol never minded them until the two mothers started making Soul and him run errands together, like washing dishes, and setting tables.

“Park Chanyeol-ssi,” Soul spoke first while they were setting cutlery around the dinner table. She was not looking at him, “are you absolutely sure that you are going to be okay with Literature & Languages in university?”

Chanyeol hesitated as he was about to put a pair of knife and fork beside a plate, “I think so… I like reading.”

A faint sigh was heard, “Chanyeol-ssi, why are you doing this?”

“What am I doing?”

She paused and stared at him straight in the eyes, “This, all of this. It’s so apparent. No one wakes up one day thinking ‘I’m going to apply Literature & Languages’ You just don’t. Medicine is different from it. Far from it.”

“What if I just want to?”

“Chanyeol-ssi,” she closed her eyes, as if she was trying to rein her anger in, “your strength lies in sciences and maths. Not languages.”

Chanyeol was about to protest but was interrupted by the two pairs of couples.

“Oh,” his mother exclaimed, “why are they not speaking?”

“Soul-ah, are you blushing?” Mr.Kang peered at his daughter. Soul cast her eyelids down, did a 90 degrees bow and left the dining room to enter the kitchen.

“Always the spoiled princess,” his mother mumbled as she followed her daughter.

The dinner was lively – thanks to the two mothers, who were busy planning a vacation to the beach after their final exams. The two fathers were bonding over their love for food. The two children were silent, sitting across each other, with Chanyeol studying Soul’s expression, which remained unchanging.

Another week started and four days has passed. It was the Friday, the deadline day of the university application and Chanyeol had started to feel antsy. Clearly, his strategy was not working since Soul had not changed her decision to switch her major from Literature & Languages to Medicine. She still had not spoken to him nor made eye contact with him even if she sat beside him in class. He tried to do so by pretending that he had forgotten one of the textbooks at home but she blatantly pulled her textbook towards her, showing her signs of not wanting to share it with him, which ended up with him standing outside the classroom with his arms raised over his shoulders for one hour during Advanced Mathematics period.

“Chanyeol-ssi,” Soul was waiting for him at the entrance of the classroom after one short break, “can you please come with me?”

Chanyeol exchanged looks with Baekhyun and Jongdae. Then, he looked at Soul, not sure about what she wanted to do. He nodded and followed her before realizing that she was heading towards the teachers’ common room.

“I would like to see Mr.Kim please,” she stood and bowed at the entrance, asking for permission to enter the common room.

“Mr.Kim,” she stood by the pale teacher’s desk, “is it still okay to change our decision for the university application?”

Kim Joonmyun looked up and at his two students’ faces, one – determined and the other confused, “Certainly. I’ll get a new application for you.” He bent down to pull out his drawer.

“Can we get two?” she asked, “for my friend here.”

Chanyeol frowned. Mr.Kim, too, was frowning but no one said a thing.

“Here,” she handed him her extra paper, “fill this in. And I’ll exactly follow what you’re applying.”

Guilt had already eaten him up alive as he witnessed Soul’s action towards him. He just wanted to drop on his knees and ask for forgiveness since he had no choices but to do this. “Soul-ah,” his lips trembled, “I…”

“Please fill this up fast before I change my mind. Quick.”

Chanyeol swiftly filled out his form, putting his first choice of university course at Medicine in SNU. When he finished filling out, he looked at Soul’s form, which was exactly the same as him, except for the personal details.

“Good luck, children,” Mr.Kim smiled and wished them well after receiving the papers from them.

Soul and him walked back to their classroom slowly. He felt like his feet now had a ton weight on each leg and his heart felt uneasy.

“Soul-ah,” Chanyeol only dared to speak to her on their way back home from school. Soul was, once again, back on the passenger seat behind his bike, her hands on the seat. She hummed to tell him that she was listening. “Are you sure you want to do medicine?”

There was a soft sigh. “I’m very sure. At least three people will be happy about my choice.”

“Three people?”

“Appa, Omma, and you.”

“Me?”

“Chanyeol-ssi,” her head leaned sideway onto his back and he could feel her taking a deep breath, “I know med school means a world to you. It’s a long battle and I don’t want you to feel like you didn’t get to achieve your dreams.”

“What about you?” he asked as he turned the corner to pedal through the park they always had.

“There’s always a chance for the second degree,” she replied with her voice sounding so casually.

At that moment, Chanyeol was very sure that he was going to live with an enormous guilt sitting on his back all his life, and that Soul was going to be sitting on top of that guilt.