It happens the first Monday of the second half of August, when school is already on its second week and everyone’s caught up on each other’s holidays’ business.

As usual, Howon—Hoya to his friends—walks into the premises as if they belonged to him. His way of walking always attracts attention and he has never been able to understand why (his best friend, Gwangsuk, says that it’s the way his shoulders and back are always straight and never let anyone believe he’s feeling lesser than he is. Howon calls him stupid), but it always happens first thing in the morning and during the in-between classes breaks when they have to switch from one classroom to another. Though, with time he’s learned not to mind the admiring stares he receives. They’re just background scenery.

This time, however, he finds that he isn’t the main focus of attention of this particular morning. There are still a few girls who flirt his way and some dudes that have never spoken more than a word to him who give him a bro-fist and a friendly pat on the back, but most eyes are directly set on one peculiar person. And Howon isn’t sure if he should be surprised, anyways, as it is expected that the prettiest girl at school—you know, that one girl in the movies that makes protagonist’s life a living hell for no apparent reason—would receive such attention. Usually, like it is his case, they’re admiring gazes that scream nothing more than I want to be like you or I want to be in you, depending on who the owner of the eyes is.

Today everyone is looking at her like she’s some pathetic rag doll that has been thrown away by its owner. Not particularly empathetic, yet not too coldly either. Just interested enough that if someone asks what’s with the staring, you’d shrug and say I don’t know, although you do know.

Howon doesn’t, though.

“What happened?” He asks Gwangsuk the moment he sees him, standing next to his locker.

Gwangsuk looks lost for a second, probably because, unlike everyone else, he’s been staring at another girl. Hyojin has always been the apple of Gwangsuk’s eye. “What happened with what?”

“You—” Howon rolls his eyes. “With Yurae, ,”

“Oh.” Gwangsuk nods quickly. “Yeah, it’s bad. The Golden Trio is now the Golden Duo.”

“What.”

Howon is trying to assimilate this very, very hard. The Golden Trio—Yurae, Yuri and Yunseo—is the only thing that has remained constant throughout his entire school life. It stayed the same. Unlike his grades that either dropped or went up, unlike the friends he gained or lost (with the exception of loyal Gwangsuk), unlike the girls he crushed on and the girls that crushed on him, unlike the teachers he has liked and the teachers he hated; the only thing that hasn’t—hadn’t—changed, ever since he moved from Busan to Seoul when he was seven, is the Golden Trio. But not anymore, it seems.

Gwangsuk seems to be talking in riddles, it seems, because despite the patient flow of his words, everything seems foreign to Howon. He still can’t understand. So he tries even harder. And there’s something about Yurae apparently going out with this boy that she knew Yuri (or Yunseo, Howon is lost) liked for ages (probably not more than a few weeks) behind her friends’ backs, and the other two girls deciding to take revenge by humiliating her on the online school page (he’ll have to check that out later, if it doesn’t get taken down before he gets home to his, hopefully, fully charged phone) and not being friends with her anymore. That’s what Howon could gather with his all-over-the-place mind.

It seems immature to him—because it is—and he says that out loud. “How can they throw away nineteen years of friendship over one boy? It doesn’t seem realistic.”

Gwangsuk shrugs, because he gets what Howon is saying, but doesn’t know what to say. “It’s complicated, I guess. You know that friendship isn’t based on the years spent together…”

But on the years spent trusting one another, Howon completes in his mind, not with his inner voice but with the one of a friend he lost a long time ago (not tragically, like death or something, he just went away to live in Japan with his family. Howon misses Lee Sungyeol’s annoying, wise sometimes). Still, he can’t comprehend this.

“And that’s what the stares are for, because Yurae is no longer a Golden Girl?” He scoffs, but Gwangsuk shakes his head no.

“School page, man; when I said humiliation I meant Humiliation, with capital H.” Once again, he shakes his head. “No, all caps. It’s heavy.”

The bell rings before Howon can question Gwangsuk on what he means by that, so he walks dejectedly to his first class of the day—ethics—and doesn’t let his mind rest for a second.

Despite having the looks and the snappish attitude, Yurae has never been mean on purpose (the words from before were just a mere example of what he status is on the school’s Food Chain. She’s pretty high on it). She’s actually pretty quiet and he’s only seen her laughing her head off with her—ex—best friends. Yurae looks pretty with her designer clothes and organized backpack. That’s basically what Howon can remember of her, alone.

The teacher is talking about something—something he probably doesn’t care about—but Howon can’t focus. He’s never been known for his kind soul (mainly because people think he doesn’t have own) but the whole Yurae ordeal is pretty sad and worrying.

If this were a movie, Howon would describe himself as that cliché kid who doesn’t talk much because he’s too busy looking at other people and picking up what their personalities are like. But it isn’t a movie and Howon only looks at people to intimidate them because it’s kind of fun, actually. And he hasn’t seen Yurae much because she doesn’t look at him that much either, just when they brush past each other a little too close in the hallways and they apologize for the sudden intrusion to the personal bubble, but he has a feeling that Yurae isn’t a people person. If she was part of the movie Howon isn’t in, he figures she’d be that popular girl with opposite charms and a hidden self. Again, this isn’t a movie and Howon doesn’t know squat about her, but he can suppose.

He remembers Yurae is in his class—room 3-A—with the other Golden Girls when he turns his head to the front rows on the left and sees her writing down on her notebook, absentmindedly. Most likely taking notes of whatever the teacher is saying, because she is a good student. Yurae keeps up the whole ‘top student’ attitude, despite the fact that the two girls who used to sit next to her, one of each side, moved their seats a few vast centimeters away from hers and are clearly mocking her with the words they hide behind their hands, folded papers and obnoxious giggles. She’s in the middle of everything. Literally.

Something stirs up in Howon and he doesn’t know what it is. Call it sudden protectiveness for the weak or just plain stupidity, but it makes him rip one of the pages of his notebook and crumble it up in a ball. To be honest, his brain-to-mouth filter never worked properly and his coordination has always been perfect, but today his locomotion is acting by itself and it’s almost a shame that he turned down the P.E’s teacher proposal for him to join the baseball team two years ago—he would have been one hell of a pitcher.

Yunseo is startled at the sudden impact against her head. She literally doesn’t know what hit her and doesn’t know where it came from. She looks down and sees that paper ball right under her chair, and her ever-pretty eyes start looking around furiously.

“Who was it?” She asks. Everyone is minding their own business and, if anyone saw Howon, they’re keeping quiet. “I asked a question!”

The teacher is looking at her as if she just decided to grown an extra everything in the middle of his class. Howon is trying not to laugh. “Ms. Ahn, is there a problem?”

“There is, Mr. Son. Some lowlife decided to throw this—” she shows him the object of harm “—at me in the middle of your class. I was doing nothing. I was attacked.”

The whispers begin and Howon hears someone very near him saying “nice shot, man,” and he doesn’t turn around to see who it is because he doesn’t care. He’s just relishing in the look of pure rage in Yunseo’s face. It’s entertaining. Besides, there’s a glint of something positive in Yurae’s eyes as she’s looking at Yunseo—karma, they’re yelling. 

“Alright, class, calm down,” Mr. Son pleads. “Who was it, you guys? You’re no longer little kids. You can’t be this immature. And this cowardly to throw the stone—or paper ball—and then hide your hand behind your back, especially in my class. We’re in ethics, guys.”

The man has a point. Howon is a hypocrite, for doing this while the man had been talking about… about… about something ethically correct. Consider: he doesn’t care. And he also doesn’t care to live up to his reputation of a ‘bad boy’, whatever the hell that means (he likes to dance and sometimes he even pops the latest girl groups’ moves to make Gwangsuk and Hyojin laugh, he volunteers at animal shelters and his part time job is walking ten dogs at the same time the weekdays after school. He’s so bad), so he gets up on his feet and proudly sticks his hand up in the air.

“It was me, Mr. Son,” he admits, with a smile on his face. “You’re right. It wouldn’t be correct of me to not face the consequences of my wrongdoings. I did it.”

As if it was a normal morning at seven, everyone is looking at him (this, without the means of sounding narcissistic, is how it should have been from the beginning, he thinks). Mr. Son looks surprised. Howon figures it’s either because he’s such a quiet kid, never paying attention but never disturbing the class either, or simply because he didn’t know Howon existed, until today. He prefers to lean more towards the former than the latter.

“Yah, Lee Howon,” Yunseo screeches at him, pushing her chair back and marching up to him. She looks like the Greek monster with snakes instead of hair. “Who do you think you are?” Medusa. She looks like Medusa.

A defender of justice, he wants to say, but that’s a whole lot of crap because he doesn’t care about anything. It’s pretty obvious and redundant at this point. “A person,”

“You think you’re so funny—”

He intercepts her words. “Sometimes, when I crack a joke and people laugh.”

“Huh—”

One more time: “I apologize, Yunseo. It wasn’t my intention to hit you with that—”

Mr. Son puts order to the class again and tries to appease the tension growing between his two students. “See, Yunseo? Howon apologized. He didn’t mean to—”

“I must have mistaken you with the trash can.”

Long story short: Yunseo managed to scratch Howon’s face, his arms, hit him several times in the head with her skinny fists—and they hurt like a mother —and almost knocked Mr. Son out. He got detention along with Yunseo, but a part of him thinks it was worth it when he is walking towards the door to get to infirmary and catches Yurae’s lips into as she tries to hold in her laughter and nearly failing.

 

(If this were a drama, Howon would be classified as the Ice Prince who managed to get his Ice Heart melted by the Ice Princess, Han Yurae’s smile. But this isn’t a drama and Howon is just happy to have made her smile for a second).

 

 

 

 

It is lunch time and Howon is walking around the school for no reason at all. He isn’t part of the students who eat in the cafeteria—or at school altogether—because he doesn’t feel hungry at this hour, ever. And sometimes he joins Gwangsuk and Hyojin for long (sometimes meaning always) but today seemed like a bad day because Gwangsuk has been looking at Hyojin the entire day like a lovesick puppy and Howon thinks this might be the day. He’d like to be there for moral support, but then he would just end up feeling more awkward than he already is, so pass.

The school’s garden is very pretty. It’s hidden behind the big building and most likely a no-no zone for students to go to, but there are always a few who break the rules and take a nap amidst the flowerbed of pretty lilies the janitor has created and taken care of. As predicted, Howon is one of those. Thinking about it, last night he didn’t get enough sleep—he had been messaging Sungyeol for hours about dumb stuff and then had a heart-to-heart with the boy about how much their friendship meant to him. He fell asleep at 2A.M.

“Maybe this is fate,” he murmurs to himself, making his way to the less sunny part of the garden. There aren’t many flowers there, but is okay; their scent always made Howon sneeze like crazy.

“Maybe what is fate?” A voice asks him and Howon feels like his heart might have just fallen out of his . And keep in mind that he doesn’t get startled easily.

But the biggest surprise of his life is right there in front of him, with her back—it’s a she—supported against the old oak tree the janitor promised to chop down but never got around to do it. She looks pretty with her legs to her chest and the latest phone between her hands (he notices that she is using the competition’s product. Once again, the apple has defeated the android). There’s a slight blush on her cheeks and a curious look in her eyes.

Who knew Han Yurae would blend in so well with the flowers?

(Probably everyone, including Howon, but the thought had been so cheesy and he doesn’t want to keep thinking of it).

“You shouldn’t be here,” he says, and it’s foolish because he, too, should be inside with the other kids. She only laughs at him. It sounds a little empty, but it is halfway getting there—halfway to the point of I’m okay.

“I should be telling you the same thing, Mr. Lee Howon.”

He chuckles a little and finds himself sitting in front of her, mimicking her position almost perfectly. “That was a thing to say, sorry.”

“It was a thing you did back there, too.” She looks at him, this time really happy but really angry but really sad and she’s really conflicted. Howon supposes he understands. “Why did you do it?”

“Like I said, I mistook her with the garbage—” he shakes his head, deciding it’s better to say it. “Actually, I was really angry at her. And at Yuri too, but Yunseo was a cleaner shot.”

Yurae quirks an eyebrow and leans closer to him, but there’s a respectable distance between them. “Angry at them,” he nods. “Why for,”

“Because, Han Yurae. It seemed to me like it was very ty what they’re doing to you. I don’t even know what they said about you online, I just know that they broke a long friendship over some dumb boy… how does one even do that?”

There’s something off in the way Yurae looks into the distance. If this were a movie and the two main characters finally met directly, about to break the whole back-story, there would be sad instrumental music playing right now. But it isn’t, and the only soundtrack is the sound of the birds chirping around, cars zooming off to their destinations, and some dogs barking loudly.

“We’re young, so we do what seems right—what seems fitting,” she says lowly. “Yunseo thought it was fitting to stop being friends with me. Yuri, on the other hand, thought it was better to talk crap about me, I guess. They did both.”

And Howon still doesn’t understand. Yurae understands what his eyes are telling her, though. “It hurts a lot right now, and it’ll hurt even more in the future when I think back to my last year of high school and remember the theoretical loss of my friends. Seventeen years. We’ve been friends since we were two years old and our mothers exchanged advice on how to make our poop less smelly,” it’s a gross thing to say, and it looks odd coming out of those expensive lip gloss coated lips, but like Yuri’s and Yunseo’s actions, it seems fitting and brings a smile to Howon’s and Yurae’s faces.

“When we were in preschool, the three of us stuck together and held tight to each other for dear life. We’d throw these horrible tantrums if our teacher separated us, and when one managed to get stuck on the Naughty Corner, the other two would sit next to the naughty one to keep her company.” Howon tries to picture current—complete—Golden Trio doing that, and he almost gasps at the fact that he could. He could see Yurae and Yunseo naturally walking into the detention classroom if Yuri were there, and the scenario worked with every variation. “Elementary school, Yunseo begun to be more outspoken and outgoing and I followed her example, but Yuri has always been the quietest one, believe it or not—I know we all look really y and shut off from the outer world, but we just know and have each other. Or they have each other. I don’t know. I suppose I’m waiting for all of this to stop.”

Howon remembers, rather blurrily, the three girls moving the rows of seats in the classroom so they could sit together, next to each other. It had been his first day at school and he was stuck with them in one room until the teacher and his other classmates arrived. He saw the whole thing happen: Yunseo commanding, Yurae and Yuri making it happen, then Yurae was commanding and Yunseo and Yuri doing the dirty work, and Yuri commanding and Yurae and Yunseo acting on her words.

“High school is a little different, as you can see.” Her words are bitter, like she can taste them strongly all over her tongue and mouth. He imagines them to taste the same way the weird glue his orthodontist used to stick the little cubes to his teeth when he was twelve and his smile was a mess. It makes him cringe. “I don’t want to believe it was my fault, but it was.”

“No it wasn’t.”

“You don’t even know what happened, Howon. You only know half of the story.” And she is right, but still. There’s no way she can be at fault here. The childish decision was made by the other two, not her.

He gets himself comfortable. It takes the two of them by surprise when Howon takes Yurae’s calves in his hands and straightens her legs out, so he can rest his head on her thighs and close his eyes for a little as he listens to the story she may or may not tell. Howon notices she’s still gripping the phone in her hand.

“Tell me everything, then.”

And her hands are in his hair immediately, her manicured nails scratching against his scalp and everything feels peaceful despite the battlefield Yurae will be faced with when the school bell rings again, announcing that the break is over and English is their priority.

“You know there is a boy. Um, his name is Myungsoo,” she tells. Howon tries to picture a boy who fits that name. It’s common, so he imagines an average looking boy. “We met him last year, the three of us, when we went to Yuri’s little sister’s birthday at McDonald’s. It’s unbelievable, but he was one of the caretakers then. He’s just a few years older than us. He turns twenty-three in March.”

Howon can’t help the smirk. “Ah, so the girls are fighting over an older boy, interesting.”

Yurae grips tightly at his hair and pulls, not as harsh and brute as Yunseo had done in the classroom, but strong enough to make him flinch. He opens his eyes a little and sees her giving him a little smile. “Shut up or I’ll stop.”

“Will you stop telling me the story or the soft, lovely, romantic caresses, madam? I do not wish for either.” This is a side that Howon only shows to those close to him—Gwangsuk, Hyojin, Sungyeol, his brothers—he doesn’t know why he’s being like this with Yurae. But he doesn’t care.

“Both, dear gentleman, so hush and pay attention.” She replies back, and he smiles now then closes his eyes again.

“So, as I was saying, we met him then. In my eyes he was the most beautiful person I’d ever seen. Keep in mind that he was wearing that unflattering, ketchup smelling uniform that would look ten times better in a dark shade of wine red—”

He hesitates before speaking. “Sorry to interrupt but those uniforms wouldn’t look good in any other shape or color. They’re just ugly.”

“I know,” she laughs softly, “but he looks really good in the shade of red.”

Cute, he thinks. “Proceed.”

“Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who thought of him that way. It wasn’t just Yuri, but Yunseo too, so your paper-ball shot wasn’t all that bad.” It is only natural for him to smile, now. She sounds light.

“Never in our seventeen—sixteen, then—years of friendship had we ever crushed on the same boy that wasn’t a celebrity. It was really awkward once we noticed we were doing the whole twirl-your-hair-in-your-finger thing to the same person. So the three of us said to hell with this because a boy isn’t worth fighting over—yeah right,” she snorts heavily at the same time as Howon. “But we didn’t even think of what he might feel, we were just focused on getting his attention, one way or another.

“We didn’t consider that he might like one of us back when we decided to stop pining after him. And I certainly didn’t have the brain to think that it might be me—not that I have self-esteem issues, have you seen me? I just didn’t think I was his type. To be honest, he seemed a whole lot more engrossed in Yuri.”

Howon has to laugh wholeheartedly at her self-love. These days it’s weird to see girls loving themselves they way they should, and this is just another thing Howon has yet to understand. “You sure are charming, Miss Han,”

“I am, now quiet.” With one hand she covers his mouth while the other occupies itself twirling a short strand of Howon’s hair around it. “Anyways, a week after we stopped our flirting, he texted me—he had our numbers, too—and asked if there was something wrong. I didn’t know what he meant. He said that I had stopped going to visit him at work, that I no longer replied to his messages the way I used to, and I was pretty much shocked. He had asked me and specifically focused on me when the three of us had stopped paying attention to him. I’m not stupid. I knew why he was doing that.

“I guess I missed his face. Now I realize I just missed his existence. The whole avoid-Myungsoo-at-all-costs thing was heavy on me, I grow attached too soon, you see, and mix that with the little crush – you get nothing more and nothing less than a heartbroken Yurae, dreaming every day of her happy Myungsoo and waking up sad when she realized he wasn’t there. It was more dramatic than it should have been.

“I didn’t avoid him anymore and he gave me free fries with his employee discount. Mind you, I ate every single portion. I didn’t even care about my healthy diet that I’ve been following for years. I gained three kilograms because of him in just a month and I didn’t even care. I still don’t. He looks so happy whenever I eat. I want him to be happy…”

It is present. Her words are in present tense and it makes Howon so happy—probably happier than Myungsoo seeing Yurae eat, and happier than Yurae seeing just Myungsoo—it bubbles up in his chest and the pit of his stomach and bursts into a smile on his face. One more thing he doesn’t understand.

“I’m sure he’s happy because you are,” he comments, feeling the serenity of the environment. There’s a shrill sound in the distance and he recognizes it as the bell. Still, Howon doesn’t move and neither does she. “We’re not going to class now, are we?”

Yurae smile and says no. “I still have things to tell, Mr. Lee.”

“Would you look at that? Miss Han Yurae, number one student, skipping class to be with average, rumored soulless student, Mister Lee Howon. Now that’s a scandal.”

Her hands stop and he opens his eyes to find Yurae looking at him so softly. “You’re really nice, by the way.”

He blushes. Howon doesn’t do cute actions, he doesn’t do “dealing” with kids, and he most certainly doesn’t do blushing. Yet there he is. “Shut up but keep talking.”

“Okay, weirdo.” Yurae sighs, as if the memories are too close but too far for her to remember. Maybe she doesn’t want to, but maybe she does. “Honestly, Myungsoo means a lot to me and he knows that, just like he knows that if Yunseo and Yuri asked me to kill him, I would consider the idea because those girls are just two extensions of my own body.

“I told him everything, and we decided that some things were better left unsaid. What things, we didn’t know, because we weren’t doing anything at all. We could say we were friends who hung out together a lot and liked to cuddle during his lunch breaks on the shabby, little resting room for employees while eating ramyun or triangle kimbaps from the convenience store near… that’s too detailed, gosh, we were—we’re just too in deep, Howon.” There’s a shake in her voice and the happiness that had been building in Howon starts to crumble, piece by piece, because so far nothing is her fault. “We only realized how deep the hole we dug for ourselves was when everything got too dark and the only thing we could see was each other. That’s—I think this is how love feels like.

“We only had real things we considered had to be kept in silence when he kissed me. I kissed him back. And I cried because I’m a terrible friend. And he promised that that was to be kept between us. And it did, for eight months, until three days ago… Howon, we’re not even in a relationship with each other, we just know we love each other and we’ve said it before but we don’t even call each other boyfriend and girlfriend. And I don’t think we will anytime soon…”

This is how her story ends. Many lose threads that Howon wants to tie together so the story can make sense altogether, but at the same time it’s everything there is because Yurae told it from the bottom of her heart, not minding the tickles at her eyes and the punching in . That’s the whole picture that she wanted him to see, and he’s failing to see wherewherewhere her fault steps in. Nothing makes sense unless he throws a few words in to her story: jealousy, lack of trust, lack of love…

“They’re es,” he finally says and Yurae gasps. If looks could kill, Howon would be found dead in a couple of hours when the janitor came to water the lilies. Thankfully, they don’t and Howon still lives underneath Yurae’s murderous gaze. “I don’t do sweet talking, Miss Han, you should know that. I don’t see how any of this is your fault. You didn’t go to Myungsoo out of spite, you didn’t fall in love to irritate Yunseo and Yuri—I refuse to call them your friends—and you most certainly did not commit a crime for you to get this punishment. It’s immature and done out of jealousy.”

Yurae shakes her head. “You don’t understand—”

“I don’t. Han Yurae, this entire day has been filled with things I don’t understand, I even lost track of how many things they are. But I do know—, you should know too—that none of this is your fault, Yurae. I do know that your friendship with Yunseo and Yuri is—was—cute and pure and everything you want to call it, but I also know that it wasn’t real if they’re doing this just because of a boy they decided to stop paying attention to.

“Get this, it’s really philosophical and wise, not my words, but a friend once said to me that the realness of friendship can’t be measured by the time you’ve spent together, but the time you’ve spent trusting each other. Have you trusted them your whole life, Yurae?” Howon half expects her to nod vigorously and make him swallow his words, and the other part of him thinks she’ll blatantly say no and burst into a shower of tears.

He gets a shrug instead. “I don’t know. Like I said before, they’re the only thing I’ve ever known. It would be stupid of me to think that I never doubted their loyalty to me, but that’s just human instinct, is it not?”

“True,” he says, “but that wouldn’t be necessary if you knew them your whole life, am I wrong?”

Yurae lifts her shoulders again. Howon sits up. They’re looking at each other’s faces. Yurae is pouting a little. Howon is one hundred percent serious. “I’m not, Yurae, and you are aware of that. I’m not telling you to stop hoping things will revert to normal, though I would advise you to stay away from them, because this isn’t how real friendship works.”

“Then I’ll be alone, Howon.” She sighs. She’s tired. Howon knows. “Myungsoo has university, Yunseo and Yuri have no reason to miss me if they’re that heartless and detached…”

Howon hums. “Then I offer you my friendship.”

“What,”

“Miss Han Yurae,” he smiles at her and sticks his hand out. “I introduce you to your new friend, Mister Lee Howon. You may call him Hoya, if you wish. He’s really nice and funny once you get over his awkward persona, which has proven to be a tough nut to crack—I don’t even know how we’re this comfortable right now—and he promises to be your bodyguard at school, your friend whenever you need him, and your pair of ears to wear off by talking when you need to vent. Would you take him?”

Happiness sure looks good on Yurae, Howon decides at that moment. It looks even prettier than the flowers surrounding her and the eye-catching rings decorating her slender fingers. Happiness fits Yurae’s face like it had been made solely for the purpose of existing with her.

“I don’t know…” She stands up and this only serves to remind Howon just how tall she truly is. 176 centimeters tall, probably more, she’s wearing school shoes with platform. Yurae then crouches down in front of Howon. “Is your product really good? I hate glitches. And it looks cheap.”

“Excuse me, kid, but I am worth at least half of your father’s bank account.”

Yurae laughs and takes Howon’s hand in a firm handshake. “Alright, I’ll take this Mister Lee Howon you’re offering me. Only if he doesn’t call me ‘kid’ anymore, that’s what Myungsoo calls me.”

“Alright then, princess, you’ve signed your contract and now you own a very peculiar friend. No take backs or refunds, sorry.”

They’re both walking back into the building when Howon hears Yurae say she doesn’t mind. It makes Howon smile because, although there are many things he doesn’t know, at least he is sure that Han Yurae is a person who deserves the world. He hopes Myungsoo gives it to her.

 

(And, if this was a movie, a soft mellow tune would be playing right now as the credits roll down the screen. The audience would sigh at the thought that this newly formed friendship could only lead the protagonists into the romantic field later, because they don’t care about this Myungsoo guy they never got the chance to see. Howon and Yurae would be acting as the director yells cut—standing ovation.

But it’s okay to remember that this isn’t a movie, once more, and that Yurae had been texting nonstop with Myungsoo before Howon got there, because he makes her feel safe. And it’s important to know that Howon’s plans for the evening have changed: he no longer will snoop into the school’s website, since he realized he’d like to waste his phone’s battery talking with Sungyeol again, this time at a decent hour, because he misses him so much and it’s not something that would get fixed in just a couple of hours.)

 

 

The end

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And it's done:)

This was inspired by the quote "real friends don't fall through the cracks,"

I hope you enjoyed this!