They’re just girls breaking hearts
Eyes bright - uptight - just girls
Girls, The 1975

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(one)

The first time he meets her outside the music industry, the both of them are one year older according to the Korean age system, and the summer air is crackling with heat and cheers.

She’s— she’s a denim jacket with tiny patches stitched all over, he studies from afar— a pastel pink, mini tennis skirt and a Fjallraven backpack in the same shade.

She orders a grande size of something cold, saccharine and purple making him wince, then her eyes sweep over the small coffee shop. When they meet his, just as the universe likes it, she doesn’t pretend like they don’t know each other. No, in the middle of the room she waves her hand up in the air and she. Freaking. Squeals, “Park Chanyeol!”

Maybe he wants to pretend like they don’t know each other.

She thanks the barista and, with a light, easy skip, waltzes to his table.

Scared less but both feet stuck to the concrete floor and wit nothing but having gone MIA, he has no choice but to slump against the cushions as his mind takes him back to a past not so far behind them.

(zero)

Right after their acoustic performance ends, in a frilly dress still looking like a Disney princess, she makes a move to approach him.

“Park Chanyeol!”

“Yes?”

He watches, expectant, as she stops just inches from his reach and flashes him a grin so wide it’s two rows of pearly white teeth, fatty pockets under her eyes, and he has to swallow and try to remember where he is (Backstage, you dumb), because she is youth intensified and the magnitude of her presence is, honestly, stupefying.

He harrumphs and repeats, “Yes, Rosé?”

His voice is hard, and formal, now that he has remembered his place: backstage at SBS— her senior of four years— and not the boy she dreams about when nighttime falls and she falls asleep.

If she takes notice of his sharp change in mood, she dismisses it with another of her foolish-looking grin. “I have something to tell you!”

He folds his arms across his chest. “Well I don’t have all day?”

“Happy Boxing Day 2016, Park Chanyeol!”

He gapes, slack-jawed, as she whips around and continues to navigate throughout the room, greeting more people, flashing them more grins— prettier, friendlier-looking ones— leaving him there all by himself.

That night under his duvet cover and the wary gaze of one Byun Baekhyun’s, he types a few words into a Google search box.

“Chanyeol, you’re not sleeping? It’s very late and we have a schedule to attend early in the morning.”

“A minute,” he answers distractedly, “I’m Googling something.”

“The hell?”

“Okay. Do you know that, in Australia, the day after Christmas Day is a celebrated public holiday? They call it Boxing Day. Apparently it’s kind of a big deal. Shops will offer discounts to their customers, and there will be this cricket match between the Australian national team versus another NT, which—”

“Whoa,” Baekhyun sighs, “didn’t expect your answer to be a class presentation.”

His jaw shuts with a dull Crack.

“It’s late. Sleep.”

He blinks his eyes once— twice. “Right.” He turns off his phone and chucks it away, suddenly pissed at something that he cannot quite identify. “Good night, Baekhyun. Happy Boxing Day.”

His last thought before sleep claims his consciousness, about two or three hours later, is that she is not dreaming about him.