All the students looked dishevelled in their comfortable clothes. They had been too excited the night before, and they didn’t sleep much even after curfew. They played games instead, and had fun telling scary ghost stories.

Eunhye had been an innocent target of the excited students, and ended up having a lack of sleep due to the volume of her classmate’s voices. She felt extra grumpy, and it annoyed her when she saw Howon.

“You stayed up playing games and telling stories too?” Howon hesitantly asked as he cringed. Eunhye had always had large and dark eyebags, but it was currently a lot worse.

“Why must you always ask questions?!” Eunhye complained.

“Sorry.” He apologized quietly as he walked with her to the cafeteria.

Eunhye sighed as she sat down at a random table, not caring about where it was located in the room. “I’m sorry, I’m just not used to running on less than five hours of sleep.”

“Is that why you always have such prominent eyebags?”

“Sleep doesn’t like me.” She shrugged as she slumped over onto the table, lying her head on her arms.

Howon frowned and said nothing else, leaving her to nap peacefully. The cafeteria was eerily quiet for a place full of teenagers, and even the teachers entered the room looking exhausted. The whole scene was hilarious for him to observe, especially since he didn’t need sleep.

“Breakfast is here,” Howon announced as he gently shook Eunhye’s shoulder. He realized after a moment that she was in a deep sleep, and that she wouldn’t wake up for a while.

He chuckled quietly to himself and leaned back in his chair.

“Hey, she’s asleep.” A girl sitting across the table whispered to her friend.

“…And we have whipped cream.” The friend grinned mischievously, leaning over the table and grabbing the can of whipped cream.

Howon glared at the two, his brain trying to figure out a solution before the girls could get up and walk over to Eunhye.

“Hold her hand as I put cream in it, okay?” The first girl whispered unnecessarily as she got out of her chair and approached Eunhye.

“Thanks for personally giving the whipped cream to me.” Howon said as he took the can out of the girl’s hand and put cream on the waffle he was holding. Sure, he received a few unhappy stares from the girls and the person he had stolen the waffle from, but he personally thought that it was worth it.

He blinked and looked up at the disappointed girls, tilting his head to the side innocently as he questioned them. “Did you need something?”

They shook their heads and quickly went back to their seats.

“This is stupid,” Eunhye grumbled while whacking a mosquito away. “It’s not as if we find something worth keeping on these stupid hunts.”

“Winner gets a prize, though!” Howon chuckled as he glanced behind a bush. “We get to bond at the same time, so why not?”

Eunhye rolled her eyes and said nothing as she followed Howon through the woods, uninterested in searching for the object they had been told to find. She saw it as a waste of effort and time; the one thing she wanted at that moment was sleep. If she was allowed to, she would be sleeping on the floor of the woods.

“What’s Joon to you?” Howon asked out of nowhere as his expression brightened at the sight of a red ribbon. “I think we’re on a roll; we have five ribbons so far.”

“What a stupid scavenger hunt; who searches for coloured ribbons in a place full of greenery?” Eunhye pretend that she didn’t hear Howon’s question.

“Was he your boyfriend in the past?”

Eunhye absentmindedly stared at the shrubs that grew on the side of the path. “I find it weird how you always like to inquire about my life’s history.”

“He was, wasn’t he?” Howon said in a quiet voice as he rolled up the red ribbon and placed it in the box they were given.

“Joon was basically a gangster since a young age, because he had a bad role model in his family.” Eunhye began digging into her memories. “Our story was basically like a drama you see on TV; Joon was the bad boy who caused trouble at school, and I was that smart goody-two-shoes who was disciplined. He wasn’t much of a bully, but there were times when he’d beat up people.”

“Usually dramas end well.” He raised an eyebrow at her, curious about what had caused the two to break up.

“If I look at it now, our relationship was just me nagging and yelling at Joon to stop his gangster acts. Somewhere along the way, I guess I just stopped liking him.” She tilted her head slightly as she observed a ladybug crawling on a leaf. “He was a real when my parents passed away, and I even thought he was the involved with their death since he was acting suspiciously. I ended up exploding in his face and then I left.”

Howon gave her a knowing look as he patted her on the shoulder. “But… How did your parents pass away?”

“Remember the project you did weeks ago?”

“Yeah, you mean the one where you refused to do it on mythical creatures, and then ended up dumping the whole thing onto my shoulders and leaving it all for me to do? I’m pretty sure I won’t forget that I helped you get 99% for a project you didn’t do.” He scoffed.

“You eagerly wanted to research about mythical creatures, and I didn’t want to read about something fake. I didn’t want to believe that they’re real.” Eunhye laughed softly at herself, mentally teasing her brain for believing that something like a vampire could’ve killed her parents. Vampires were only a fragment of people's wild imagination. “I didn’t want to get paranoid and believe that my parents were murdered by thousand-year-old monsters.”

Howon held his breath nervously as he eagerly tried to find another subject to converse about. “What have you been staring at so intently the whole time?” He leaned in and stared at the green ferns, only to realize that there was a green ribbon casually blending in with the leaves.

“Oh.” Eunhye blinked as she watched him unlace the ribbon from the shrubs, not realizing that it had been hanging there the whole time.

“You should’ve taken it, or at least said something! What if we left it, and someone else took it?” Howon grinned as he folded the green ribbon. “Now all we need is the yellow ribbon, and then we’ll be done! Hopefully we’ll be first.”

Eunhye grumbled something about ‘finally, it’s going to be over’ before she trudged onwards through the woods. Her footsteps were heavy as they left prints on the dirt path.

Eunhye glared up at the yellow ribbon, sending mental death threats towards her teachers. Sure, they had taught them how to survive in the wild the day before, but there was no way in hell that she was going to climb up a tree to get a damned ribbon.

“I’m sure they did this so that no one would win the prize,” Howon laughed hysterically when he saw her expression.

“Look at how high they placed it! If you fall down, you’re going to die or get paralyzed!” Eunhye scoffed and her heel, completely giving up. “This scavenger hunt is a waste of time anyways.”

“I’m sure they made it so that people could have fun and create memories together.”

“Yeah, memories of their partner falling to their death.” Eunhye darkly muttered. “Let’s go back.”

“I’m good at climbing trees, just come help me.” Howon winked and ran over to the tree. He waved at her to follow him.

He’s too into this game, Eunhye exhaled and walked over to him. She steadied herself and put out her hands, scrunching up her face when his shoes left dirt on her palms.

By the time Howon reached the top with Eunhye’s help, they had spent ten minutes due to her constant whines and complaints of "there are too many bugs", "it's too much work", "it's getting dangerously high", and "it's not worth it".

Howon ignored them all and smiled brightly as he continued climbing. He finally reached the yellow ribbon and easily untied it from the thick branch, a triumphant look in his eyes as he turned around to wave at Eunhye.

“I get it, now can we please get down?” She began sliding down from checkmark to checkmark, an uneasy look on her face as she had to jump onto a small landing space.

Howon grinned and twisted around to go down the tree, only to lose his footing and fall off. He let out a surprised yelp, which was followed by a thump after he landed on the ground.

Eunhye heard his groans and quickly climbed down the tree, ignoring the scratches and cuts she got as she carelessly jumped down. She ran over to Howon, but she stopped and stood still when he began sitting up.

Howon froze and returned Eunhye's horrified stare, immediately shutting his mouth that had been open while he was groaning about the pain. He tried to will himself to appear normal, but he knew it wouldn't work. Maybe he should've listened to her and left the yellow ribbon alone; if he did, then he wouldn't have been put into this situation.

If he had given up halfway and decided to return back to the ground safely, then Eunhye wouldn't be seeing him with his unnaturally bright blue eyes.

Do u hear that

That's the sound of my heart crying

Edited: 130923

Author's Note: I g i v e u p OTL