Lina’s eyes widened for a slightest of a minute before going back to their dull crescent. While walking home after another boring day spent in her classrooms stuffed with very small minded people; she was ready to remove all of the day’s stress behind her back and enjoy a cup of mocha or cold orange juice. But she was caught in a storm when the first thing she saw upon the transparent doors of the cafe was a face of a boy that her memory had blurred over.

She didn’t recognize him, yet something in her gut made her pause in front of the doors; her eyes a crumpled copy of the curiosity that’s drizzling in a yellow light behind them. She would never usually take her gut feelings seriously because they never led her straight, alway astray and deluded; but the emotion that attacked her upon her first glance at the boy had been too severe that it brought her legs into a halt. She was a very powerful girl; truly resilient; tremendously guarded, so the feeling that overtook her upon the strange scene in front of her must mean something if it made her stop in her tracks.

The boy she was seeing was with a girl. They were eating a pair of cupcakes and large cups of apparently, coffee. The boy was smiling, talking in hushed tones with the girl in whatever topic that made the shape of a heart to descend upon his mouth. He got his front to her so Lina could easily see him, whereas the girl was sitting across him, her back to Lina’s eyes so she wasn’t sure who she was. They were two normal high school students in a date. There was nothing odd about the scene. But why had her body froze upon seeing him?

He’s one of the boys that Byul is meeting with, her head whispered to her, lighting up her thoughts and digging memories of their blurred faces from the depth of her brain, making her heartbeats accelerate. Yes, she whispered to herself. He was familiar because he was one of the boys Byul is seeing and had yet to confront Lina about seeing. Lina tilted her head, squinting her eyes so she could see more of the boy. If she guessed it right, then these boys of Byul meant a whole bunch to her, whatnot with her trying to hide them from her. She thought they felt the same, but seeing one of them going on a date with a girl that definitely wasn’t Byul (she had a beautymark on the back of her neck. The girl sitting across the boy had a short bob hair and she got her neck exposed. The neck was empty) made thoughts and speculations go haywire in her head.

Without a second thought, she took out her phone, tilted it sideways so she could get the best angle, and clicked on her camera, smirking devilishly. She wasn’t the purest girls out there, so seeing some kind of ‘adultery’ in Byul’s boys gave her a single mindset. Filming for clues was the quickest way of eliminating anything that might risk Byul’s safety. Now she wasn’t the best when it came to protecting people and things she loved; but she wouldn’t want Byul to go through a relationship that wasn’t reciprocated.

“This is the perfect evidence of his shortcomings. Say bye bye to your relationship, pretty boy.” She whispered to herself, her smirk slowly shifting into a small smile of amusement. She was a girl that naturally kept to herself. Rarely did things and people interest her, whether it was for her sake or not. But when things began to threaten people close to her, she was as loyal as an unmoving mountain. She believed that people around her deserved better, especially Byul, who was considered her best friend.

She flickered her eyes from her phone towards the cafe, and her smile disappeared when she saw only the girl sitting alone, no signs of the boy she got her phone out to film. She flicked her eyes all around the cafe she could see through the large sheer doors; her eyes falling on different faces and trying to locate him. He was nowhere to be seen.

Suddenly, the ground rumbled under her, and she twisted around in time to see the boy behind her, staring at her with a pair of cool eyes, his plump lips pursed into a tight purse. Her heart began to race inside of her chest. How did he get here quickly? 

The boy raises a single perfect eyebrow up, took a step closer, and with a swift hand smacked her phone out of her hand. The slap was so strong that her galaxy phone flew out of her grip and trickled a few centimeters away on the floor. The brutal fall down caused it to separate from its battery, the glass screen quickly shattering into tiny shards.

“What the is your problem?” Lina exclaimed in both surprise at his sudden appearance, and at the ridiculous move in which he easily just pushed her phone away like it meant nothing. She rushed towards her phone, crouched down and gathered it with its shattered parts in her hands. Seeing the state her phone was in, she snapped her head upwards towards the boy, glaring. 

For a second, he looked surprised that she was glaring at him so fearlessly, having been used to people dropping to their knees at the sight of his bored face. Having a spark of rebellion in this stranger’s eyes made him strangely excited; but he wouldn’t overthrow what she wanted to do to him behind his back just because she showed a little bravery.

“Weren’t you the one who wanted to violate my rights and take a video of me?” He said cooly. His voice was low pitched, smooth, and resembling the baritone of bass and drumrolls. Her body was lit up, and shudders ran all across her skin, reacting to the surprised delightedness of his voice. 

She stood up, anger quickly every part of her body. She took the remaining steps to close her distance with the boy, and his eyes widened for a fraction of a second at her closeness, before narrowing them dangerously.

“Are you kidding me?” She scoffed, her eyes lit with fire. “What rights do you have when you’re very clearly cheating on Byul?

Whether he was surprised or not at the mention of Byul when he clearly didn’t know who Lina was to her; he didn’t show. He merely crossed his arms over his chest, and regarded her like she mattered the same as his shoes. “And why do you care about what I do outside of that stupid, fake relationship with her anyway?”

Lina’s eyes widened in disbelief, and then she laughed, sounding in hysterics. “Stupid, fake relationship?”

He tsked at her, the click of his tongue so obviously mocking that she couldn’t stop the roaring flames that are rushing to her heart at how patronizing he sounded. He loosened his arms and put his hands inside the pockets of his jeans, his heartshaped lips curling into a smirk. “She didn’t tell you anything, did she?”

“What are you talking about?”

He shrugged carelessly. “It’s not my story to tell. You’re clearly not important enough to know if she hadn’t told yet. After all, it had been close to a month since we knew each other.”

She glared at him vehemently.

He ticked one of his shoulders upwards, looking fakely apologetic. “I’m sorry about your phone. Didn’t mean for it to break, I guess I should control myself better. It was your dirty little trick of filming an innocent man that let to its demise. You should really put your priorities straight.”

He gave her a mocking wave and disappeared into the cafe again, making sure to push their shoulders together to imbalance her both in the figurative sense and the actual sense.

She curled her hands into fists. She hadn’t felt the fire in her soul this lit up before, and she’ll be damned if she admitted it was because of him.

-

Aside the very shattered screen of her phone, it was working perfectly. It didn’t look like it was violently thrown aside and if the screen wasn’t so messed up; she’d have easily been able to watch movies in it. She sat on her bed, curling her legs towards her chest and wondering about the encounter that had happened with the boy. He wasn’t anything impressive. He was short and he had eyes of steel, but something about him rumbled all of her sanity anyway. There was something strange about the calm aura that surrounded him, and she didn’t understand the words that he directed at her. She wasn’t one hundred percent sure about what his and Byul’s relationship truly was, but she always thought Byul was intimate with her boys. To see him act so carelessly in response to her best friend; it made her rethink things through. 

Maybe she was wrong. Maybe they weren’t really in a relationship?

Her phone beside her began to ring, and she ignored it for the sake of going to her vanity and collecting her bowl of manicures. She went back to her bed and began to shuffle through all of the colors. Hm, which one to use?

Her phone ringed again, and again, and again. Lina’s eyebrows furrowed in annoyance. There was only one person who’d damage her phones with a bunch of text messages at the same time. She took her phone in hand and squinted at the broken screen, trying to understand the texts that are written. It took her a bit of time, but she was able to understand them.

She decided to ignore them because frankly, she wasn’t about to press her fingers against the cracked screen of her phone. Also, she wasn’t going to entertain her friend when she clearly didn’t seem like she wanted to say anything important. The text messages didn’t stop, though, and her room rang with the irritating voices of the messages dings. 

She contemplated whether she’d paint her fingers black or white, the manicures settled in front of them. She couldn't help but frown, however, because this wasn't exactly unusual of Byul, since she texted like a madman a lot of times before, but Lina was worried. The only time Byul would text so frequently and ridiculously unnecessary was when she was getting nervous about something, and right now; Lina was sure Byul wanted to ask her about something (or tell her bad news, there was nothing in between).

She took her phone and tried to call her. After a few tries with her shattered screen protesting, she was able to make a call. Byul replied instantly.

“Hello?” Byul’s voice was clearly littered with nerves. Lina didn’t hesitate to point that out. 

“Okay, you’re nervous. You become crazy when you’re nervous. Just tell me what it is. If it’s about Jimmy or my powers, then I don’t want to hear i