The first time he saw her was in the first day of freshmen orientation.

While Sehun himself was not a first year, his older friend Joonmyun had bullied their entire group into serving as orientation counselors for the week. The counselors stood at the front of the auditorium as the new students piled into the space, filling the air with chatter and squeaks from the unfolding of chairs. There was nothing about her that should have attracted his attention, but maybe that was the exact reason she stood out. Others wore bright colored sundresses or skirts, chatting eagerly with those around them to make friends and find those in the same dorms or majors. She wore a long sleeved grey hoodie over black shorts. An outfit far more common in the depths of exam season than on the first day. Her lowered hood revealed long black hair tied back into a French braid and a face with minimal, if any, makeup. Sehun didn't think she needed any though. Her features, though plain, were well spaced and symmetrical which anyone would call pretty though perhaps not gorgeous.

As the college Dean welcomed all the new students, the freshmen counselors whispered on the stage.

“Do you see any pretty girls?” Jongin leaned over to ask Sehun.

A quick knock to the other side of his head and a “Be mature, dude” from Chanyeol hushed Jongin briefly. But it didn't last very long. “The blonde wearing purple in the second row is totally hot and she is eyeing me. I hope she is in my group.”

This time, Jongin’s head was tapped by Joonmyun who reached around Chanyeol to do so. His warning glare actually made the younger quiet down.

Sehun sighed but didn't bother responding to his same aged friend. He found his attention focused back onto the girl in the hoodie. Nothing stood out about her but as he watched her, he noticed her eyes shifting around the room. If he wasn't watching closely it would have been totally unnoticeable. She seemed to shift into herself when she looked onto the stage and then jumped slightly. Sehun felt himself tense in response to her alarm, but then calmed when she saw her pull out her cell phone.

The noise of shifting bodies shocked Sehun’s attention off of the hoodie girl and back to the room at large. The Dean had dismissed the room to go to their assigned locations to meet their orientation counselors. As he stood and began to make his way off the stage, two thoughts remained in Sehun's mind: one, how much he wanted to pull the hoodie girl's lip out from between her teeth when she bit it looking at her phone; and two, how much he was like Jongin, hoping that a girl who caught his attention would be in his orientation group.

Unfortunately for him, she wasn't.

-----

The first time he heard her was three weeks into term.

That particular Thursday, he was running late for his afternoon lecture  after having a lunchtime blind date. His friends that set it up were well intentioned, but the girl he met was not. He quickly realized she was social climbing by trying to date someone of his caliber on campus. Not that he was rich or famous, but his friend group contained some of the brightest and wealthiest kids on campus, thereby elevating his own status in the eyes of his peers. While disinterested in the company, Sehun was still too polite to escape the date in time for his lecture.

Arriving via the rear door and sliding into one of the open seats on the back row, Sehun kept his head down and his steps as silent as possible to avoid attracting attention, especially that of the professor who had a reputation for calling out his students. As he sat down a whisper came from his right, “The answer will be ‘wages are determined by supply and demand.’”

He looked over to see that girl. The hoodie girl who attracted his attention on the first day of orientation.

“Mr. Oh,” Sehun’s attention was redirected to the professor at the front of the class, “thanks for joining us. Since you decided to skip the first ten minutes of lecture, could you remind us all of the Market Theory of Wage Determination?”

A slow blink later, Sehun replied, “The theory that wages are determined by supply and demand.”

“Very well Mr. Oh. Continue to complete the pre-readings, but also try not to be late for class again. Now pull out your notes and let's continue.” The professor replied tersely.

The rest of the Advanced Business Negotiation lecture passed with no further interruption to distract the students, but Sehun found himself unable to focus as he silently contemplated the girl seated next to him. Finally the clock struck 2:30pm and the students were dismissed. While placing his notebook back in his backpack, Sehun looked over to the girl on his right and asked, “How did you know what the professor was going to ask?”

She glanced up at him before returning to packing her own bag giving him a second to contemplate the warm brown of her eyes. “Professor Kim always asks tardy students for the last definition he gave in lecture before the student arrived.”

“Wow. I didn’t notice that.”

“Most probably wouldn’t.”

“How did you notice?”

“My old part-time job taught me to take in all of the details.”

Sehun could hear the reluctance to continue on that particular topic in the girl’s voice so he tried a new topic to keep the conversation going with this mysterious girl. “So, why are you in this class as a freshmen? Most people can’t place in until their third year?”

A soft chuckle precluded the girl’s next words, “So how did you notice I am a first year?”

“I saw you at freshmen orientation. I was a counselor.”

“Makes sense. I placed into the class because I took some college level classes in high school.”

“And they just happened to be Business classes.”

“I knew what I was going to be doing for the rest of my life from an early age.”

Something about the way the girl said that made Sehun want to question it, but he had already trailed her out of the classroom and across the building to another lecture hall.

“Well, I have Law for Business Majors now so goodbye Mr. Oh.”

“Sehun.”

“I know, Oh Sehun.”

The hoodie girl, now wearing a pair of blue jean shorts and a long sleeve black t-shirt pulled open the door to the room stepping across the threshold.

“Wait, what’s your name?”

“Mari. Lee Mari.”

-----

The first time he touched her was right before midterms.

It turned out that Advanced Business Negotiation was not the only lecture Mari and Sehun had together. There was also Marketing Strategies in the Technological Era. Not a core class, for sure. More of a guest lecture from a visiting professor on sabbatical, but it was interesting enough to keep the lecture hall full, even just for the elective credit. Sehun normally sat with Mari in the third row during class, but that Tuesday he had been working on a group project in the library with Jongin and Baekhyun so he was again running late to a lecture and had to slide into the back row.

After the lecture concluded, he packed up quickly and trailed the girl out of the room. Though he could have called her name to get her attention, that somehow didn’t register in his mind. By the time he caught up to her, they were out of the building and halfway across the lawn. Sehun felt his backpack bouncing against his hip and the sun beating down on his head as he reached a hand out for Mari’s shoulder. He felt her thin bones under his palm, and then, Sehun felt the hard ground come in contact with his back.

“Oh my gosh, Sehun are you okay? Don’t sneak up on me like that.” Mari dropped down on her knees next to the boy now flat on the ground. “Thank goodness we are on grass or that would have been worse. Are you hurt anywhere?”

“I think it is just my ego that is bruised.” he groaned as he sat up with the girl’s help. “Did you just flip me over your shoulder?”

She squeaked out, “Yeah. Sorry. It is instinct.”

Brushing himself off, Sehun missed her blush as he asked, “Where did you get that kind of instincts? I definitely didn't get those.”

“Uhm. I have been doing martial arts since I was three, so, uhm, yeah…” Mari’s bottom lip made its way between her teeth until it’s motion was stopped by Sehun’s thumb. Her eyes flickered up to his face where a soft smile was growing.

“Don’t bite your lips. It is a bad habit.” He dropped his hand and Mari was stunned into silence for a moment allowing him to ask his next question. “So you must have a black belt then?”

Her response was enough to stun Sehun into silence this time, “I actually have four.”

“Uh, okay. Do I want to know why you did so much martial arts?”

“Probably not, but my dad thought it was necessary.”

“Well okay then. Are you doing anything this afternoon? Want to grab coffee and study with me for the Negotiation midterm?” Sehun asked the questions rapidly wanting to get it out before he lost the courage to ask Mari, the mysterious hoodie girl to hang out with him.

“Sure, I was going to study anyway.”

Sehun cracked a smile at that and lifted his arm before freezing. “Say Mari, if I put my arm around your shoulders, you are not going to flip me again, right?”

Mari’s laugh was enough reply for Sehun as he rested his arm over her shoulders and pulled her in the direction of the campus coffeehouse. His laughter joined his own on the walk.

-----

The first time he kissed her was just before Christmas break.

Snow lay heavily on the ground outside, but the unusual pair were warm inside the library heated by the radiators and the stress of several hundred of their peers cramming for finals. The freshmen and the junior were seated in a pair of armchairs tucked away in the back of the stacks. The small table between them was covered in textbooks, print outs, and empty take-away coffee cups.

Sehun glanced up at the girl sitting across from him only to see her staring blankly at the table.

“Mari, you are spacing out again.” He said with a grin. After a semester of working with the girl, he learned how incredibly bright she was but how little patience she had with revision.

The girl looked up at him with a blank stare. “Wouldn’t it be better for the coffeehouse to have reusable ceramic mugs instead of paper take-away ones? Think of all the waste that could be prevented so it would be better for the environment.”

Sehun tilted his head to the side in contemplation as he reached for his most recent Americano purchase, taking a sip before he realized it had gone cold. Pulling a face at his drink, he replied, “Maybe. It would be better for the environment overall, but I can also imagine the poor student worker who would have to run around the facility collecting all the mugs so they could be washed.”

“Well, you aren’t the one who would be doing the collecting or the washing so do you think they should switch?”

“Yeah. I guess it makes sense. Investment cost would be high to purchase ceramic mugs and a washing machine, but savings from not needing so many take-away cups as well as the environmental benefit would probably help pay it off.” Sehun grinned, “Thinking of leaving a comment card?”

“No,” Mari replied. “Well, I mean, I could, but that wasn’t what I was thinking of.”

Sehun noticed her formerly blank stare shift as her eyebrows creased together in concern. “Mari, what is up? You know you can tell me anything.”

The girl heaved a sigh as she looked into his eyes. “Sehun, if you can do something that would help a lot of other people but would place a burden on yourself, would you?”

Sehun held her stare for a moment before placing his laptop on the table and reaching across for her hands. “I don’t know if I would, Mari. Ultimately, I tend to be selfish. I make the friends I have and keep them for my own comfort. I tend to take the path of least resistance to keep professors happy even if it doesn’t give me perfect grades. I make a call on the first date of whether to have any more dates even if someone may be better understood with time. I judge quickly and stick to my decisions since they benefit me the most. But I know you and you are different. You do things to help others even if you don’t want to stand out yourself. Just like the first day I met you. You helped me with Professor Kim’s tardy student question without even knowing me.” As he spoke he drew comforting circles on the back of her hands. Sehun came across as not a big touch person, but among his friends, touch was the strongest way he felt he could interact with them. Mari had quickly joined the group of people that he had no second thoughts about touching so she didn’t shy away from his hands on hers.

“I am plenty selfish, Sehun. You just are not in a position to see how selfish I can be.” She looked down at their joined hands and her eyebrows began to shift together again with worry. “I have a decision to make and it will be incredibly selfish for me to go through with, but ultimately it could help a lot of people, and even me too if I play it right, but it will be hard to keep everyone safe…” she trailed off and Sehun could see her gaze glaze over again as her mind tried to keep pace with all of her thoughts.

“Mari, I know you. You are so smart and clever, I am sure you will decide the right thing to do. But for now, get your mind off of it.” He shifted closer to her, sitting on the low table between them, placing a hand on her cheek to turn her head out the window next to them. “Look at how the Christmas tree lights make the snow sparkle. And the seniors’ snowmen across the lawn. You can see the one Jongdae built from here since it is dressed like a stripper. I am surprised the administration hasn’t pulled it down yet.” He kept blabbering on until he saw Mari’s lips quirk up on the sides and the corners of her eyes compress a bit.

“Mari,” he said her name gently, caressing the syllables as he spoke. The girl turned her head to look at his eyes, mere inches away. “Mari, you look better when you smile. Can you keep that smile for me? I know you are stressed, but I am here for you whenever you need me.”

Her smile grew wider as she nodded until is was covered by Sehun’s lips. He didn’t even realize he moved into kiss the girl, but when he felt her lips against his, he couldn’t help but press his more firmly even as they widened into a grin. Sehun pulled back with a grin to see Mari’s wide eyes and tinted cheeks. He brushed his thumb across her lips before shifting back to his own chair and placing his laptop back in his lap.

“Now, get back to studying Mari. You have an paper tomorrow.” Even as he kept his eyes firmly on his laptop, he couldn’t help the grin across his face as he recalled the feeling of Mari’s lips on his.

-----

There you go. Here is the "first" half of the story. Be sure to stay tuned for the "last" half.

<3 Sisi