poster by misurozu

I remember clearly the day when I first saw him.

He had a bright smile; thick lips stretched so widely, showing his white pearly set of teeth while his eyes slid into crescent moon shapes to show just how much he was enjoying himself at that moment. I couldn’t stop myself from staring at him as he was the first person to have caught my attention ever since I stepped into my new university a few hours prior, and when I saw him smiling like that, I could feel my face heating up and my heart beating fast in my chest. He was physically different from the rest of the guys he was with too because unlike them, he had a slightly tanned shade on his skin but he matched their heights and slightly built bodies just fine.

I found out he was a new intake like me as well later that day, although I didn’t get to see him around the huge hall during our orientation. There were at least 200 new students that day, and I knew none of them, so I kept to myself and mostly kept my head down throughout the briefings. We had also been separated into groups and I was lowkey disappointed when I realized we weren’t placed in the same team. I had to interact with my peers eventually for the activities that has been prepared for us, and for a moment, I forgot about the tanned boy with the breathtaking smile and focused on the activities like ice-breaking, team building activities, etc.

On the second half of the day during our schedule allocations, all the new students were led to the computer labs so we could determine our schedules before class started, and that’s when I saw him again. Like before, he was with his group of friends but this time, there was someone in the crowd I knew.

Park Chanyeol.

He had large eyes, a goofy grin, a wide toothy smile, and even when he’s sitting, it was painstakingly obvious that he was a very tall person. We weren’t close or anything so I was quite surprised when he caught my eyes and started waving at me to come over and take the empty seat on his left – which was right next to last computer where he was sitting.

“Krystal, come here!” Chanyeol called me over with a large – and a little creepy – grin.

I hesitated, although I wasn’t sure why. Chanyeol and I had met when we were in middle school. We both attended a private middle school and were classmates for two years before we got into different high schools, but we met again at the academy we attended after school hours. Coincidentally, our mothers were friends from their younger days which resulted into us meeting each other outside from school or the academy as well, but I was never the type to mingle well with others back then so I mostly kept to myself while Chanyeol went around making friends. Still, we considered ourselves acquaintances so we never failed to acknowledge each other.

Which was why I wasn’t surprised to see him beckoning me over.

When he kept waving at me and began to attract unwanted attention on us due to his deep, loud voice, I sighed and made my way over to him although I had hoped that he would move seats and take the computer on his friend’s right side instead. But Chanyeol was dumb to a certain level; he failed to understand the meaning behind my gaze and kept gesturing for me to take the empty seat, and I would’ve voiced it out if a man hadn’t announced that he was about to start teaching us on how to allocate our class schedules.

I groaned inwardly and finally took the seat, and only then I realized that the tanned guy had yet to turn to me despite the ruckus Chanyeol made. I even caught his other friends sitting on different rows around us glancing at me in curiosity, but not once did he do so. For some reason, I felt offended and I huffed as I settled into my seat.

“I didn’t know you’d be enrolling here,” Chanyeol slightly whispered to me with a delighted look on his face. I smiled a little and shrugged. “Same here. What are you majoring in?” I asked as I logged onto my computer.

“Business,” he replied. “You?”

“Same. Course?”

“Accounting.”

I made a face at that. I knew Chanyeol had always been a bright child, excelling well in his studies since middle school despite his habit of coming in late to class and sleeping during lessons. I also knew that Chanyeol loved challenging himself, and numbers excite him. If I recalled correctly, he had chosen Maths as his favourite subject back in middle school while I choose English and art, so I wasn’t really surprised that he chose to do accounting instead of anything ‘tamer’.

“I’m in management,” I told him. Chanyeol nodded to himself before glancing around the room and turning back to me. “Anybody else we know from our previous schools here?”

I shrugged. “I saw some from my high school earlier but I doubt you’d know them.” Chanyeol smirked a little at that. “Wanna bet?”

“No thanks.”

He laughed before turning his attention back to the computer, and I took the moment to study the subjects I’d have to take for the semester, mentally debating whether I would survive the semester at all. I groaned as I scanned through the subjects, already dreading the four-hour classes I have to endure for each subject before quickly arranging my schedule with my own time preferences. Just then, a movement caught my eyes and I was surprised to find the tanned guy slightly leaning closer to my side with his eyes trained on my computer screen, studying my new schedule for the semester. I raised a brow at this just as he turned to look at me.

“Can I help you?” I asked.

If he was offended by my accusatory tone, he didn’t show but instead, he flashed me a smile and I fought hard not to look away and blush madly. Seeing him smile from afar was enough to make me feel weird and seeing his smile upclose was doing bad things for my head and heart. I did my best to mask my real emotions and raised another brow when he sheepishly rubbed his nape.

“We have all the same classes together,” he suddenly said, pointing at his own computer screen. I blinked in surprised and glance back and forth at both our screens before pressing my lips into a thin line. “Apparently so,” was all I could say. “So you’re a management student too?”

He nodded. “Yeah. My name’s Kai, by the way,” he said, holding his hand out for me to take. I knew that ‘Kai’ wasn’t his birthname and when I realized he wasn’t about to spell out his real name to me, I took his hand and smiled a little. “I’m Krystal.” I said as I pulled away.

“I know.” I frowned at his response. Kai chuckled and jerked his chin a little to the tall giant sitting on my other side who was absorbed with his own phone. “I heard Chanyeol calling your name earlier.”

I scoffed at that. “Right.”

“And I’ve heard about you from a… friend.”

I looked up at him in confusion, wondering who our mutual friend was and noted the slight redness of his ears. Kai was suddenly acting shy, and it made me really curious on who he meant.

“Aren’t you going to tell me your friend’s name?”

“Uh, it’s Suzy. From your school.”

I blinked at that. “Oh, Bae Suzy? She’s not just from my school, actually; we were classmates. I didn’t know you’re friends with–” Then, it clicked. “Suzy’s your girlfriend, isn’t she?” I asked, slightly grinning when his face suddenly turned red, making me laugh at the adorable sight. “Ah, so I am right. I’m not close with Suzy to be talking about her boyfriend though, but I’ve heard of you from her other friends. How’d she ended up talking about me, I wonder.”

“Ah… you just came up in our conversation once. Or a few times after that,” he admitted, looking away briefly to click something on his computer before turning to me again. “I’ve seen your photos in your school book too.”

“Oh my god,” I groaned, immediately forgetting that Kai and Suzy had mentioned me in their past conversations more than once. “I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that.” Kai chuckled at that. “You two have been together for quite a while though, right?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he nodded, smiling shyly. “It’s been three years.”

“Wow,” I mouthed before chuckling a little. “It’s nice to meet you then, Kai. Do tell Suzy I said hi the next time you talk to her.”

He grinned. “Sure thing, Krystal.”

I smiled and turned back to my computer screen, pretending to be absorbed in whatever I was supposed to be doing as instructed when I was actually lowkey disappointed over the fact that Kai was taken. Granted, I got to learn his name and spoke more than just one sentence to him which somehow seemed more than sufficient with me, and I honestly didn’t expect for anything to happen with him despite the slight attraction I felt. I wasn’t ready for another relationship and I had just started a new chapter in my life after all. I figured that it was best that I remained focus on enjoying my new freedom as a university student instead of looking for a potential relationship which I wasn’t ready for.

*

Few weeks has passed and I was still trying to adjust to my new university life. I managed to make friends on my first day of the semester, which was quite an accomplishment for myself. I came a bit too early for my first class and saw two girls already waiting outside the door (I wasn’t the only one overly excited for a new experience) and awkwardly lingered out at the hallway with the two of them whom I originally thought were twins. When I felt like it’s been ages since we’ve been waiting outside the door with no other students and a no-show lecturer, I decided to throw my hesitance out the window and turned to them.

“We did come to the right room, right?”

And just like that, we started talking. I found out that the slightly taller of the two sisters was actually the younger sister while the shorter one was the eldest, and I smiled in amusement when I realized it was the same with me and my own older sister, Jessica. The older sister was Kim Jae-in, who is a year older, while the younger one was Jinkyung, a same-aged friend. As we shared most of our classes together, we became close friends in a short span of time. We had a lot of common interests as well so we ended up sticking together like the three musketeers – or in our case, the three troublemakers. We were often late to class and tended to procrastinate on our assignments as well, much to our lecturers’ dismay.

Meanwhile, Kai and I have been sharing the same classes like he had said back at the computer lab. No matter how late I would be to a class, Kai would always show up after me; he was never early nor on time which somewhat amused me. In every of the classes we share together, he would always be sitting at the back with his friends too while I’d sit somewhere in the middle with Jae-in and Jinkyung, and sometimes alone if it was a class I didn’t share with them.

But one day, things changed when one of our lecturers had had enough of the boys talking and not paying attention at the back seats and began arranging them to different seats, preferably to ones that were at the front of the class. I smiled to myself when I saw two of Chanyeol’s friends, Baekhyun and Jongdae, were called to sit right at the front row where Kyungsoo was with long faces, while the rest were scattered around the room.

“From now onwards, every time you walk into my class, you will be seated at the places I’ve assigned you,” the lecturer said which made the boys groan aloud.

Jae-in giggled from beside me while I smiled in amusement with the rest of the class. I wasn’t surprised when Kai was called out to sit elsewhere as well, but I didn’t expect for the lecturer to place him on the other side of me. I turned my head to him as he sat down with a heavy sigh, glaring at the projection screen at the front of the class.

“You’re going to burn holes into the wall,” I whispered teasingly, making him turn to me with a look that seemed to say he was surprised that I was talking to him. He then grinned and whispered back, “I’d rather burn holes into the old man’s head.”

I chuckled at that.

Having Kai so close to me bothered me a little since being close to him makes me feel all weird. I refused to believe that I had a crush on my friend’s boyfriend and simply settled with me being slightly attracted to a boy who looked like he could be a model. Since Kai was now chained to the table, I figured that it’s best if I look around for different seats so I could sit as far away from him as I could in the next class. As if reading my thoughts, Kai leaned closer to my side again and whispered,

“Next time we’re in this class, make sure you’re the one sitting beside me, okay?”

I blinked owlishly and turned to him. “Wh–What? Why?”

“Because… you’re the only girl I know in this class,” he said. “I doubt the old man is going to let one of the guys sit with me after going through all the trouble of separating us.”

“But why me?”

He looked at me like I had grown three heads and chuckled. “Like I said, you’re the only girl I know here. Plus, you’re comfortable to be around with.” I had to look away to hide my blush, but I made a mistake of turning to Jinkyung while doing so and caught the smirk on her face. I rolled my eyes and turned back to the front when Kai whispered again, “Is that okay?” I turned to him. “You don’t have to if you don’t want to.”

I swallowed hard, but nodded in the end. “Sure. No problem.”

*

No problem my foot.

When next week came, I was surprised to find Kai already seated at his newly assigned seat with his legs crossed, effortlessly looking like a model in a simple black baggy T-shirt with tight jeans and sneakers while playing with his phone. I wasn’t the only one surprised to see him being on-time for class; I could see the lecturer occasionally glancing at Kai like as if he’s having a hard time believing that the boy was there before the class had even started and a few students kept glancing at him as well.

A tug on my blouse made me look away from him, and I flushed red when I thought I was caught staring at the guy. But it was just Jinkyung trying to pull me to seat a few rows away from where Kai was, and I suddenly recalled the promise I made to him just the week before.

He won’t remember, right?

But I was proven wrong when he looked up from his device, immediately spotting me. “Krystal!” he called and waved me over. I bit my lip and turned to Jinkyung, seeing the smirk on her face. “You’re not going to join us?” she asked teasingly, making me roll my eyes.

“Zip it, Jinkyung. There’s nothing going on,” I said, knowing the real meaning behind her smirk. “Uh–huh… sure there isn’t,” she scoffed and glanced at Kai from over my shoulder. “Pretty boy looks really confused right now. Are you going to keep him waiting for long?”

I lightly punched her on the arm for that teasing and huffed when she laughed. “Get Jae-in and come and join us there, okay?” Jinkyung raised a brow at that. “You don’t want to be alone with Kai? This could be your chance to seduce him, you know.”

I groaned. “Oh my god, Jinkyung! He’s dating my friend,” I said and quickly cut her off when she opened . “Don’t. Say nothing else. Just get Jae-in here and sit with us. I will kill you in your sleep if you leave me alone with him.”

Jinkyung snorted but turned to get Jae-in who had already seated herself at one of the tables at the back. “Krystal!” Kai called the second time and I rolled my eyes before turning to walk over to him. “I heard you the first time, stupid.” I said as I sat down, making him grin. “I know, but you were too slow. Did you guys had a meeting over there as to where to sit? I told you that you could just seat someplace else if you don’t want to.” he said.

“Don’t worry about it,” I said as I gave him a brief glance. “I’ll move someplace else if you annoy me.” Just then, Jinkyung and Jae-in appeared, giving Kai curt smiles before taking the empty seats on my other side. I gave them a brief glance as well before raising a brow at Kai when he chuckled. “So that was what the meeting was all about. You didn’t want to be left alone with me, right?” I rolled my eyes at him although I couldn’t find my words to deny his claim. “Why? Did you think I was going to eat you?”

“Shut up, stupid.” I said to him, rolling my eyes yet again. Kai grinned. “Be careful now; if you keep doing that, your eyes might never roll back to its original place.”

I sighed and shook my head, feeling so done with him already, but I couldn’t help the small smile on my lips at his lame joke. He caught this and smiled widely, looking he had just accomplished something, before turning away when the lecturer called for our attention. I bit my bottom lip and glanced at the girls to see them immersed on something on Jae-in’s phone, then absentmindedly turned my head to the back of the class and accidentally catching Chanyeol’s eyes. He was grinning at me, and at first I thought he was going to tease me with Kai when his eyes suddenly trailed to someone beside him, making me look over as well. He grinned wider when our eyes meet again, making me chuckle before giving him a thumb up.

“What are you doing?” Kai asked quickly and I turned to him. “Nothing, just Chanyeol being silly.” Kai glanced back as well and caught sight of his friend chatting lightly with the girl sitting beside him. “He looks like he’s enjoying his company.”

“Yeah, that’s Sandara. She was from my former high school and Chanyeol had been eyeing her since orientation week. It was creepy when I saw him staring at her with the sick grin of his.”

“You seemed to know Chanyeol very well,” Kai commented instead. “Let’s just say I grew up with him.” I paused to raise a curious brow at the sisters who were giggling to themselves and snorted when they showed me the selfie they just took before turning to him again. “We met in middle school,” I continued. “And then attended the same academy after school.”

“I see.”

“Psst,” I leaned towards Jinkyung when she nudged me and narrowed my eyes at the grin on her face. “Sorry to bother your moment with the bae, but the lecturer told us to answer the questions on the screen.” I scowled at her but said nothing as I quickly took out a paper and wrote down the questions from the screen, noting that Ka