5/4

10 a.m.

Chungha went down to check on their mailbox. She was waiting for a letter from her parents to send her money who were currently overseas on vacation. Opening the mailbox, she discovered two things. One, her parents did indeed send her the letter and second, there’s an unknown brown bag beside it.

She wondered who it was from as she went back inside. Chaeyeon was cooking breakfast for both of them when her roommate strolled in with a letter and a brown bag on her hand.

“What’s that unnie?” she questioned.

“A letter from my parents and a mystery brown bag. I don’t know what’s inside of it and it didn’t say who it was from too.” Chungha replied

She looked inside. “Ah it’s an Epsom Salt bath.” She saw a small sticky note attach to it and read the message out loud.

“This must be from the guy who bumped into you.” Chungha stating the obvious. Even if her unnie didn’t say it, she already knew who it was from.

“Did he leave his name?”

“Nope.”

Weird.

“I’m amaze though. How did he know where we lived by the way?” Chungha asked and Chaeyeon thought the same thing.

She grabbed the Epsom salt bath and read the instructions quietly. Chungha was beside her reading the instructions as well.

“Unnie, it says that it can help lessened the pain and swelling on my ankle. Should I try it?” She wanted to know her unnie’s opinion because she was a bit hesitant in using it and she still had her doubt whether the product will make good on its promise.

“Just try it Chaeyeon-ah. Who knows when your ankle is going to heal? Give the guy some credit. At least he went out to search for it” Chungha shrugged.

After thinking about it for a while, Chaeyeon agreed to use it and well, her ankle has never been better than before in just a couple of days.

***

For the next few days, Chaeyeon kept looking for the guy around the campus wanting to thank and apologised to him for her behaviour last time. She felt sorry that she threw a tantrum at him and yet he still made the time to find something that cure her ankle fast than she expected although, she thought, he’s probably doing it because he felt really guilty when in fact she’s also partly to blame for not being cautious enough on her surroundings.

So far, she hadn’t seen him on the building block where they last met. She went through all of the building block there were and still couldn’t find him.

However during a small concert held near the campus, she thought she saw a glimpse of brown curly hair among the crowds when she went with Sejeong unnie (who recently found her freedom from her workload assignments) yesterday. He had his back towards her and seemed to be chatting with someone a bit shorter than him. She was about to get to him but he already walked away with his friend.

This frustrated her to no end. She didn’t know who to go to without being seen like a stalker. Chungha did suggest they talked with the security guard that was on shift that night who later confirmed it was indeed the person the girls thought of. The guard described him just as Chaeyeon expected.

“He just greeted me and then told me the purpose of his coming when I asked. Then he left after putting that whatever that was he was holding on his hand. When he first came in, I thought it was someone you girls’ knew from around school because you girls sometime got male visitors. I didn’t stop him because he looked innocent enough.” The guard told.

The girls can’t refute the male visitors part. Several of the male students were brave enough to come to their apartment and asked for them. The girls were always trying to get rid of them and the security guard uncles always helped them out.

One student in particular, Junhong, who was Chaeyeon’s ex-boyfriend kept harassing her for the past several months. They had been dating since last October and then broke up because she kept hearing him playing around behind her back which he always denied of course until she caught him one day that was. To think she fell for him when he first started asking her out but then when she thought back again there’s not really that much memorable moments between them. She didn’t cry or anything when she broke up with him. Her words apparently died on him because he wanted to go back to her until one of the security guards threw him out when Junhong started to shout at her. She thought he would come again the next day but luckily for her, he stopped and she’s not going to dwell on the reason why.

“Did you ask for his name uncle?” Chaeyeon anxiously waited for the answer.

The guard smiled sheepishly almost guiltily. “Yeah about that. I forgot to ask him because I was rushing to go to the bathroom.”

The girls just sighed at each other.

***

What she didn’t know was that Jaehyun had spotted her amongst the throng of people on the concert. He purposely had his back towards when he first noticed her.

Poor Taeil who was clearly enjoying the concert had to leave early by him so she wouldn’t see him. He wasn’t ready to face her just yet.

To his relief, it looked like she had used the salt bath he gave her as an apology gift because he could see she can walk normally as usual.

Taeil did question him later on his odd behaviour and Jaehyun made up a lie of feeling tired. He saw that she’s clearly was still looking at him until she gave up.

Her cheeks had reddened a bit due to her frantically searching for him with her friend.

It didn’t surprise him at first that they both went to the same university. For the last three semesters, they rarely walked past each other because they took different courses thus different block until that day. He was helping one of his lecturers, Mr Jang carrying his borrowed books to the library downstairs. He should have asked one of his friends to carry half of the book for him because some of it was really heavy and thick. He couldn’t even see in front of him and had to rely looking at the side. He saw the wet floor board sign so he walked slowly.

He was approaching the stairs when he heard someone running up the stairs and knew it was too late. He didn’t even have the chance to warn that person before he felt the books bumped into that person and dropped.

He didn’t even know the person had slipped on the wet floor until he put the books aside. He immediately apologized and nearly froze when he saw who it was. That white pale skin, the long hair, the red lips he knew all too well and also the blazing angry eyes directed at him.

Beautiful.

“Jaehyun? Are you listening?” A voice asked interrupting his thoughts. Jaehyun turned to see his friend Ten and Taeil looking at him weirdly across the library table.

“Ah sorry hyung. I was just thinking about some things. What is it again?”

He really do need to stop thinking about her this way because it’s apparent that she’s way out of his league. He’s just going to be satisfied gazing at her from afar like he usually did since high school.