I know I still have a long way until my life is pretty normal.

Since Jongin and I had missed the first week of school because of my adaptation to their lifestyle, the notes, that Kyungsoo gave me, were a lot in my opinion although Jongin said that it’s not so much compared to what it would come in the rest of the year. Jongin reassured me at the sight of my frightened expression by saying that Kyungsoo's notes were so many because they were of several subjects.

I didn’t even know the school insists in teaching so much to the students.

After copying the math notes, I understood what Kyungsoo meant by slow. I needed two hours to copy the numbers and the letters that Minseok explained to me were formulas and two more hours for Jongin to explain what he knew because several things he would only study this year. He said he saw in a television series a good study method for me and so he and Kyungsoo would know my problems. He went to get thick pens that he called markers of three colours - red, yellow, green - and he explained that each color would have a meaning. Green for what I’ve understood, yellow in case I had some doubts and red for what I did not understand.

The leaves with the notes of history and geography, a subject I had no idea existed, were filled with red because I simply knew almost nothing about these two subjects. Minseok concentrated on teaching me languages, mathematics, and science and I knew almost nothing about the history of mankind and I only knew that the world was divided into several continents that were separated by the ocean.

The subject that I understood the most was English because I lived since I was a child with people of different nationalities and the English language was the only resource we had to communicate with everyone.

I noticed that over time I copied everything, I started to write slowly more quickly and that was the purpose of it all.

The color of the science notes, which I underlined, varied between the three colors, and I had no idea what the notes of music and art were talking about.

What helped me a lot to study Kyungsoo's notes was Jongin's laptop because I could find an easy explanation for unknown words on the Internet and next to Kyungsoo's notes were mine that were always easier to understand.

Anyone who would see my notes of the Korean language, would see only red because they just didn’t make sense to me and even the Internet couldn’t help me to understand them.

Altogether I needed ten hours to copy Kyungsoo's notes and to understand some of the content, but I knew I would need Kyungsoo's help to understand everything. Although I did not understand everything as it was to be expected, I was proud of myself for at least trying to learn something by myself and having understood a good part by myself and with  Jongin’s help because I really wanted to use the opportunity they gave me. I know I went from one prison to another, but this prison was easier to deal with and gave me more freedom.

I put away my school supplies and lay down in bed exhausted and with a certain pain in my hand. I know I'd have to get up in half an hour, but I just needed to rest my body. Doyeon said that I had to sleep well at night to wake up fresh as a flower- I have no idea what she meant by that- the next day, but I'm used to sleep at most five hours a day or even even staying awake for over 36 hours because sleeping for seven or eight hours, as she claimed was advised, was a luxury we couldn’t afford.

Sleep was seen by us as a luxury and a weakness at the same time because we could escape from that hell for a few hours, but we also lowered our guards and increased the risk of making a mistake worthy of punishment.

“Jin.” Jongin called me from the other side of the door before opening it and entering my room quietly waiting to find me sleeping.

I opened my eyes and stretched out my right hand to turn on the light from the lamp beside my bed.

“Did you go to sleep late? You're still in the same outfit as yesterday." he asked and I shook my head. "Were you too tired to change clothes?" I nodded and he smiled.

“It's already 7:00. Take a quick shower and get dressed." I nodded and stood up.

After I'd taken a shower and put on my school uniform, I went downstairs and went into the kitchen where I found the whole family eating. With my eyes on the ground, I approached and sat next to Jongin who as always was eating cereals.

"Here." Jongin set a sandwich in front of me and I began to eat slowly.

I could feel the look of Jongin's father on me and I just wanted to go to school to stay away from him for a few hours. I almost jumped of joy when Doyeon warned us that we had to go to school and tried not to walk too fast so as not to imply that I wanted to leave.

"Last night while you were showering, I put your sports uniform in your bag. You have physical education today." Doyeon told me while doing a ponytail with my hair and Jongin was looping my shoes again.

I don’t remember copying notes from that subject. And why do I have to wear a different uniform for that class?

When we were both ready, Doyeon kissed the forehead of both and wished us a good day at school. Jongin took my hand and we both left the house without waiting for her. I squeezed his hand to get his attention and pointed to Doyeon who was watching us from the door of the house.

"From now on, we're going to take the bus to school. Dad and mom have to go to work and they don’t have time to drop us off at school." he explained.

What is a bus?

We stopped near a place where other students from our school were and I noticed that those who weren’t talking to their friends were in the little device that Jongin calls a mobile phone.

"We'll also get one for you so we can talk through messages and get to know each other better." Jongin said with a smile on his lips.

What are messages?

A huge yellow box with wheels stopped in front of us and a door opened. The students began to get on the bus and Jongin followed them by pulling me with him so that he would also come up.

Is this a bus?

Inside the yellow box were seats that unfortunately were taken and I almost fell on top of two girls on the first curve the bus made, but Jongin held me on time. For the rest of the ride, Jongin had his right arm around my waist while the other hand held an iron bar so we both had a hold. Some students would look at us and start talking very low about us, but I did not pay much attention to them since my attention was mainly on the woman's voice coming from something called headphones. The last time I heard someone sing was when I was eleven and the woman who sang so that we, the children, would fall asleep was punished for it. I still remember perfectly her sweet voice that tried to soften the situation and make us forget the fear that was constant, but I can only remember a part of the song.

"We're here, HyeJin." Jongin called me back to reality and I got off the bus with him behind me. As soon as my feet touched solid ground, Jongin withdrew his arm from my waist and intertwined our hands together. As we walked toward the school across the street, I listened intently as Jongin spoke of a dance academy to which he goes and who was excited to begin the rehearsals that would be tomorrow. As we passed the gates, I spotted Kyungsoo a few feet away and he waved at us as our gazes crossed.

"I know it's hard to make friends when you don’t know much about the real world and your condition keeps you from socializing with people, but it's important for you to try to communicate with the people around you, even by gestures. I know that you’re already doing your best and that you try to improve slowly, but you won’t be able to do it by yourself. I can see that you try to communicate a lot with your brother, but you have to try to do it with other people because throughout your life you will meet more people and Jongin won’t be always by your side to face the difficult moments. You have to learn to deal with the problems that will show up in your life and by letting people come into your life you will find people of various personalities. I can’t promise that you will have good memories with all of them, but we will be there to help you in whatever you need. Try to communicate more with your colleagues, even if it's only two.”

I waved back to try to follow Doyeon's advice and Kyungsoo looked happy with my small gesture. Doyeon has helped me a lot in adapting to my new life and I will try to follow her advice strictly.

"Hi, hyung." Jongin bowed slightly and I imitated him.

“Hello, Jongin-ah, noona.” Kyungsoo smiled and I frowned at the word noona. Jongin had already said it once when we met, but so far I still don’t know the meaning of that word.

"I have to call you noona because you're older than me and Jongin is our dongsaeng because he's younger.” Kyungsoo explained as he saw the confusion in my eyes. If a dongsaeng is a younger person than me, then why did Jongin tell his parents that I would be his dongsaeng.

Does he also not know the meaning of 'dongsaeng' either?

"I'm going because I still have to talk to Taemin about the academy. See you in the lunch break, HyeJin. Goodbye, hyung." Jongin kissed my forehead and nodded to Kyungsoo before leaving.

"Let's get going, too. So I can explain things to you from the notes you've already copied." Kyungsoo suggested and I nodded.

He started walking and I followed him with my eyes on his hand.

Why doesn’t he want to hold my hand?

Jongin told me that he would always hold my hand to show others that I was important to him and that he would protect me from everything, so why isn’t Kyungsoo holding my hand too? He said yesterday that he would do Jongin's job while he wasn’t around. I bit my lower lip and small tears began to form in the corner of my eyes as I felt unprotected from the eyes of the students around me. I was so submerged in my thoughts that I haven’t noticed when Kyungsoo stopped walking and I ended up bumping into him. I closed my eyes waiting for a slap that never came and slowly opened my eyes to find Kyungsoo looking at me with concern in his eyes.

"What’s wrong, HyeJin? Why are you with tears in your eyes?" I acted on impulse and took his hand.

"Do you feel safer by holding my hand?" Kyungsoo asked after a few seconds of silence and I nodded. "I did not know." He smiled sweetly. "You can take my hand whenever you want." he said and I smiled slightly to thank him.

Hand in hand, we stepped into our classroom and sat down in our seats. However a boy, who was sitting two benches behind us, caught my attention because he had something that covered his ears. I caught Kyungsoo's attention and pointed to the strange thing in the boy's head so he could understand my question.

“What he has in his ears are headphones and he can listen to music through them.” Still curious because these headphones have a different form of Jongin's headphones, I got up and walked to the boy who hadn’t noticed my presence for being entertained on his phone. Without warning or asking, I took those headphones out of his ears and he raised his head startled.

"What the ..." I didn’t pay attention to the rest of the sentence because I was intrigued by the object in my hands. Kyungsoo said he could hear music through it, but I can’t hear anything.

"Sorry, Chanyeol." Kyungsoo appeared beside me. "She was curious about your headphones and she doesn’t know that she has to ask for permission before picking it up." That sounded like a reprimand to me and I lowered my head as I stretched out my hand to return the headphones to the boy named Chanyeol.

"That's okay, Kyungsoo. She only startled me a little." The voice of the boy in my class was very deep and I felt a shiver run down my spine. "Do you want me to show you how it works, HyeJin?" I lifted my head and nodded without hesitation, though I asked myself how he knows my name.

He got up and I had to lift my head to look into his face. I took a step back as my big men's alarm started ringing in my head warning me of danger.

"He's not going to do anything to you, HyeJin." Kyungsoo assured me and I remained quiet as the boy by the name of Chanyeol came closer and closer. He stopped in front of me and I felt something cover my ears. I was startled when a male voice singing echoed in my head and I realized that the voice came from the headphones in my ears. Fascinated by this device I raised my head to look into the dark eyes of Chanyeol and smiled as a thank-you for letting me use them.

“PARK CHANYEOL.” A person shouted just as the song ended and I was so scared that I hid behind Chanyeol. I pulled my head out of my hiding place and I could see Jongdae in front of us.

"What was that scream for, Jongdae?" Chanyeol asked.

"Firstly you don’t wait for me as I asked you to and then you try to steal my future friend. What kind of friend are you?" He made the same gesture with the lips as Jongin when his father didn’t give him money to buy something called a CD.

Is he sad because of me?

A feeling of guilt grew inside me and I left behind Chanyeol to pick up one of my candies in my bag. Jongin said that sometimes a candy can brighten a person's day. With a lemon candy in hand I approached Jongdae and held out my open hand showing him the candy.

“For me?” he asked and I nodded. “Thank you.” he took the candy and showed me a smile as big as Jongin’s when I do something right the first time. “”Does this mean that I am your friend now?” he asked hopeful and I nodded being soon surrounded by two arms. From what I saw on tv, what Jongdae is doing, is hugging me and not to hurt his feelings I have to involve his waist with my arms.

“Now that we're friends, we're going to eat together every day. You can even bring your brother if he studies here and you're invited too, Kyungsoo.” he said as he let me go and smiled as much for me as for Kyungsoo. "I know how you can communicate with us. As you can't talk, you can write in this notebook I bought for you as a welcome gift.” he put his bag on the desk next to him and pulled out a blue notebook ot his bag. “It’s divided into two parts so that you can write your stuff in one of the parts.” he explained.

“I'm your best friend and you never give me anything unless it’s my birthday or Christmas.” I heard Chanyeol grumble. “Let me just Luhan hyung hear that.”

“Stop whining, Chanyeol. HyeJin is a special case.” I looked at Kyungsoo asking for an explanation because their conversation was confusing me.

What is the difference between a 'friend' and a 'best friend'?

What does Jongdae mean ‘special case’?

“Guys, you're confusing her.” Kyungsoo said catching their attention. “Chanyeol and Jongdae know each other since childhood so they have a very special friendship relationship compared to their other friends so they are best friends. Jongdae said that you are a special case because of your condition.” Kyungsoo’s explanation didn't help me to understand the situation and I titled a bit my head to show my confusion.

“Jongdae mean that as you are very shy and you get confused easily, he has to act in some other way for you to feel at ease close to him. I am Jongdae’s best friend because whenever I have a problem, he will always be by my side and because he knows almost everything of me.” Chanyeol explained and I nodded.

"What do you mean by almost everything, Park Chanyeol? I know everything about you.” Jongdae said sure and Chanyeol smiled mysteriously.

“Who says?”

“You, me and everyone we know.”

“But we all know that's not going to happen.” he simply ignored Jongdae and continued to talk about the previous topic. “We're talking about Kim Jong Dae. No one can escape his comments.” His comment confused me again, but it seemed that Kyungsoo understood what Chanyeol wanted to say because he nodded.

“Don't be mean to me.” Jongdae did that gesture with his lips again and I approached him. I saw on tv that making circular movements on the back of someone cheer them up and it worked because Jongdae smiled at me.

“We've lost her.” I heard Chanyeol whisper to Kyungsoo who nodded.

“I promised her brother to protect her from the troublemakers and she’s already friends with the worst of all.”

“I'm not deaf and see it from this angle, Kyungsoo. She might as well be my friend so I can explain to her how to distinguish the real troublemakers like Jackson or Jaebum and false problematic as me or Hoseok.”

“Just this time I have to agree with you, hyung.” Chanyeol admitted and I was surprised to hear him call Jongdae hyung.I know that normally the appearance doesn’t reveal your age, but I really thought Chanyeol was the oldest among us. He was at least half a head bigger than the three of us and his skin tone was slightly lighter than mine, but it was almost the same. He was wearing the same uniform as Kyungsoo and Jongdae so I couldn't see how his body was built, but that's not important right now. He noticed that I was staring at him  and smiled at me, showing their aligned white teeth. My eyes quit his dark and very deep eyes in my opinion and I analyzed briefly his smooth black hair that covers his eyebrows before his ears have caught my attention. I walked away from Jongdae and approached him again the giant in front of me to get on tiptoe and touch his relatively large, but also very cute ears.

“Kyungsoo, take her away from him. The ears are enchanting her just like the other girls.” Jongdae said and Kyungsoo obeyed while laughing.

“How can those elephant ears have so much effect on the girls?”

“I'm sure HyeJin did it out of curiosity than charm.” Chanyeol guaranteed and passed his hand through my fringe messing it.

“What have I told you about stealing my friend?" Jongdae grunted and Chanyeol laughed lightly.

“We both know that my mother asked me to get close to her and I'm just doing it.” Chanyeol retaliated and Jongdae snorted.

“It’s nice talking with you, but I have to fulfill my duty as her guardian.” Kyungsoo took my hand and I waved at them despite being in the same room. Doyeon told me that I have to say goodbye to people when I go somewhere else.

“I'm proud of you. You've done your first friends. I hope to be among them.” Kyungsoo said as soon as we sat down and I nodded. “Your brother will be very happy.” I smiled.

Kyungsoo is my first friend out of that prison.

Jongin is my brother so he's automatically my friend and if I add Jongdae to my list, I have a total of three friends and Doyeon was right. Having friends fills even a little of the emptiness in my heart. I still don't consider Chanyeol as my friend because I’ve just met him, but I know that he will be in the list soon because he is Jongdae’s best friend.

I took the camera Doyeon gave me a few days after my arrival to make a photo of Kyungsoo. After explaining to me how that gadget, which at the time was a complete mystery to me, works, she told me to make pictures of moments or people who are important to me, so the memories, that I supposedly forgot, could be replaced with new ones.

“Do you want to take a picture of me?” he asked and I nodded. “I don't really like to take pictures.”

I made the same gesture with the lips as Jongdae and Jongin because I realized that they got what they wanted after doing it.

"You’ve just became friends a few minutes ago and Jongdae is already a bad influence on you.” he complained and Jongdae looked curious at us as he heard his name. “Alright, HyeJin.” I smiled glad that it worked.

Observing people's behavior can be beneficial sometimes.