Hyekyung can’t shake the feeling that something is wrong when she steps into school the next day.

Making her way over to her locker, Hyekyung is surprised to see a large crowd of people surrounding it. She pushes her way through the throng and plants herself directly in front of her locker.

What she sees isn’t a pretty sight.

The word ‘’ is scrawled in bold crimson spray paint across the greenish metal surface of her locker in ugly capitals. This isn’t a common occurrence in school, no wonder everybody’s staring.

Hyekyung clenches her fists, trying to calm herself down. Maybe this is just some stupid prank by one of her idiotic classmates. Maybe… they didn’t mean it.

Yet, she knows that she’s just deluding herself. There is only one person who could have done this.

As she scans the crowd of people, she realises that the perpetrator isn’t there, confirming her suspicions even more.

Gritting her teeth, she walks away from her locker, her books forgotten, pushing her way past the crowd of bystanders who are still busily snapping pictures and gossiping amongst themselves.

She is so dazed that she doesn’t even notice when she bumps into a sturdy chest. She feels someone place his hands on her shoulders and that is when she looks up.

“Hyekyung-ah,” a gentle voice says.

At the sound of Jungkook’s voice, Hyekyung finally allows her eyes to fill slightly with tears.

Jungkook raises his thumb to the corner of her eye and wipes the moisture away, before cupping her cheeks with his hands. “Don’t cry, you idiot.”

Hyekyung hastily wipes her tears away with the corner of her jacket sleeve and forces on a smile. “I’m fine. I’ll just ask the janitor to help me clean it off later.”

Then she grabs Jungkook’s hand and together they walk away.

Little does Jungkook know that Hyekyung’s tears weren’t tears of sadness or humiliation.

Rather, they were tears of rage.

Hidden in the entrance of the girls’ bathroom merely metres away from Hyekyung’s locker, the real perpetrator smirks, a can of red spray paint sitting snugly in her backpack.

~

V sits in his desk, tapping away listlessly on his phone screen while waiting for class to start. For some reason, Mina isn’t here yet, which is strange considering she’s always earlier than him. She’s unusually late today.

Looking around him, it seems like the other students are buzzing with gossip. He usually doesn’t care much for such meaningless chatter but when he hears a certain name, his ears begin to perk up.

“Did you hear? Apparently a girl from tenth grade, Im Hyekyung, got her locker vandalized this morning.”

“Yeah, I saw it. I managed to get a picture of it just now, when I went to check it out. Wanna have a look?”

V leans unconsciously towards Kim Doeun, who’s pulling up a picture on her phone. He sees Hyekyung’s locker, the same locker which he used to corner her, the exact loaction where he forced his lips on her the previous day. Except that today there’s a large, uncouth word sprayed across it in what appears to be red spray paint. V’s eyebrow quirks upwards in surprise.

“Someone spray painted the word ‘’ all over her locker. I wonder who did it.”

“, I actually feel sorry for that tenth grader. I wonder what she did to deserve that.”

V wonders the same thing. Hyekyung doesn’t seem like the type to fool around.

Suddenly, he hears the sound of a chair being scraped back. He turns his head and sees Mina sliding into the seat next to him, a huge grin on her face.

“Morning, Tae!”

She seems to be in an abnormally chipper mood today, which puts V’s senses on high alert.

His eyes wander down her body, wondering if she put on anything special today