Yebin considers herself lucky to witness the outcome of her actions during lunchtime the next day because it turns out to be quite an entertaining spectacle.

She was just enjoying her gimbap when she spots Minkyung entering the cafeteria and stomping right up to the group of rowdy boys sitting a few tables away from her.

"Hey!" her voice nearly reverberates, catching the attention of several surrounding tables. Yebin straightens in her seat as she too looks on in curiosity. 

Minkyung stands tall at the end of the table, glaring down at the very boy Yebin just saw her smiling with yesterday. "You lied to me! All this time?!” she exclaims, "You told me it was you, but it wasn’t. What the hell is wrong with you?!”

Minkyung scoffs and Yebin drops her gimbap when she sees her note held tightly in one of Minkyung’s clenched fists. All the boys at the table halt their conversations immediately as they glance at each other, wide-eyed like a couple of terrified tarsiers. Yebin thinks it's slightly amusing, actually. 

Suddenly, Seokmin, the uneasiest of them all, jumps up to his feet and grabs Minkyung by the wrist as he looks around cautiously. “Can we not do this here right now? Come with me...”

But Minkyung promptly pulls away from his grasp. Her virulent glare turns into a look of pity that has the tall Seokmin feeling humiliatingly small.

“You should put all the time you spend deceiving girls into studying instead. You need to anyway, if you think you even have a chance of passing the entrance exams and getting into any university with your current grades,” she spits, poison rolling off her tongue. Yebin watches in awe. “Don’t contact me. I don't want to see you anymore.”

Minkyung stomps out of the cafeteria. The tense aura leaves with her and the attention she had garnered with her show only lasts momentarily, the hushed whispers dissipating soon after. The students continue their eating and chatting, as if nothing happened, but surely, the whole spectacle will garner some new gossip around the school. Yebin sees Seokmin running after her. He's got a lot of damage control to do.

And then just like that, a bubble bursts. Yebin stares at her gimbap. She doesn’t know if she did the right thing or not. Besides, Minkyung did look genuinely happy with him, even if Yebin wouldn’t like to admit it. And perhaps he was even a nice guy, aside from the fac-

No, of course I did the right thing…he was lying to her the entire time! It wasn’t right. 

...

Out of curiosity, Yebin drops by the music room after the last bell rings. She prayed she wouldn’t find Minkyung crying her eyes out.

Luckily for her, she doesn’t. (Or maybe Minkyung’s just crying elsewhere…Yebin shakes her head from the thoughts. It saddens her to think about it.)

Instead, Yebin finds a new note that Minkyung has left for her.

‘I’m sorry for asking this, but it’ll be the last time. Will you tell me who you are?’

Yebin frowns. She turns the note over and pulls out a pen from her backpack.

‘Sorry’ is all she scrawls. Yebin leaves the note where she had found it and scurries out of the room.

...

Those were the last notes they left for each other.

Or so Minkyung thought.

But the mysterious note-writer remains mysterious.

It's been weeks since they last wrote to each other. This was the longest they had gone without leaving notes, so Minkyung had already accepted the fact that that was it. They were over.

Her mind has already been occupied by other things; namely, her screening the next day. The big audition she has been preparing for for months is finally on the horizon. The next years of her life rest on it; if she doesn’t pass her audition and get into university, then Minkyung doesn’t know what she’ll do. She doesn’t prepare to fail. No pressure... She takes a deep breath.

With jitters and a thumping heart, rehearsing lyrics and running guitar chords in her head over and over again, the last thing Minkyung had been expecting to see when she entered the music room to grab her guitar was a new note.

And more than a piece of paper too. She also finds a small bottle of honey water and a ginseng drink.

‘Good luck. You will do amazing on your audition, I know it. You’ve worked hard. Take care of your throat,’  it reads, in the handwriting Minkyung has grown so familiar to. 

Minkyung’s heartbeat remains unsteady, but for an entirely different reason. She feels the worries leave her body like escaping steam from a boiling kettle.

She saves the note and tucks it in her guitar case.

...

“Stop calling me, I have three assignments left to mark.”

“God, Minkyung, it’s been weeks since your audition and it’s almost Christmas! Are you gonna work until you drop dead?” Kyungwon tells her over the phone.

“Weren’t you the one who told me that as seniors, we’re supposed to work hard until we drop dead?” Minkyung muses.

There’s a short silence from the other end. “…Well, everybody needs a break.”

Minkyung chuckles. “I’ll call you later. I promise you we’ll do karaoke sometime this week, okay? Now bye! Don’t call me again!” She hangs up before Kyungwon could even say a word.

She resumes her marking. Minkyung had volunteered to help the music teacher for some extra credit in hopes that it would better her chances of getting into her university of choice. Marking assignments is a hassle, but if it will help, then Minkyung won’t hesitate to spare a few hours reading through the messy scrawls of second years.

Just as her eyes are about to drop close in tiredness, a certain assignment catches her full attention immediately and jolts her awake.

Minkyung flips through the pages, scanning the handwriting in haste. It looks awfully familiar. As if a lightbulb had switched on in her head, she reaches down to where her guitar sits and grabs the note she had tacked on in the inside of her case.

She looks at the last good luck note she had received and then back at the assignment. Her eyes jump back and forth. The letters are nearly identical. Could it be…?

When she flips to the last page of the assignment and reads the first line, Minkyung’s suspicions are confirmed.

‘Another song of relevance is a favourite of mine. “Lost Stars” by Americ...’

Minkyung quietly gasps. She hurriedly turns back to the front page, her eyes shooting to the top of the paper to see who the assignment belongs to.

And there she sees it; scrawled hastily with black pen, the name jumps out in clarity amidst the sea of letters written in pencil.

In a hushed voice, Minkyung murmurs the name to herself.

“Kang Yebin.”

...

The door to her homeroom slides open and the class quiets at the entrance of a visitor. When Yebin sees who it is, she immediately freezes.

“Hello sir!" Minkyung greets the music teacher with a bright grin. "Here are the assignments. They were so well done, I was wondering if I could return them to the students personally?”

Yebin sinks further into her seat as her eyes widen in realization.

She was the one who marked our assignments?! She panics for a second, trying to remember if she possibly wrote anything embarrassing about herself. But just as Minkyung starts calling out the names of her classmates, the real worry hits Yebin like a train.

…She couldn’t have possibly recognized my handwriting, could she? Yebin begins tapping her pencil in nervousness as she watches Minkyung at the front of the class hand back papers one by one. No, it’s been weeks, maybe she forgot about it…there’s no way she can recognize my terrible chicken scratch…relax Yebin, relax…everything will be fine, don't freak ou-

“Kang Yebin?” 

Yebin whips her head to the front of the class at her name being called and sees Minkyung scanning the room. She gives herself a swift kick in the pants before cautiously standing from her desk and scurrying to the front of the room.

...

Minkyung gets to the final assignment in her stack. She had saved it for last.

“Kang Yebin?” she calls out amongst the murmur of the students.

And finally, after months, she sees the note writer.

Finally, she has a face to match all the sweet words she has received, the compliments and the gifts that were often the only bright parts of her busy day; the source of her energizing motivation and innocent happiness.

The (much shorter) girl keeps her head down the entire time. Yebin receives her assignment with both hands.

“Good job,” Minkyung tells her as she looks intently at the girl in front of her.

Yebin simply bows her thanks and immediately scurries back to her desk like a mouse. It was such a short interaction, over in the blink of an eye, that Minkyung could barely register that it happened before the music teacher's voice ushers her out of the room. 

She throws back one last glance before leaving. 

So it’s you, huh?

...

“So it’s you.”

Yebin feels her knees going weak when she whips her head around and sees who is talking to her.

“You’re the note writer,” Minkyung says.

She towers over Yebin, who has to lift her chin just to look her in the eyes. Luckily, Yebin would much rather stare at everything but Minkyung anyways. The girl's even prettier up close; Yebin doesn't believe she'd be able to think straight if she looked at Minkyung directly. 

 “W-what? I…I'm sorry? I don’t know- I'm not sure what you’re talking about,” Yebin stammers as she stares at the ground.

“It was you left me all the notes, wasn’t it?”

“Um, I think you’re mistaking me for someone else, sunbaeni-“

“It is you,” Minkyung cuts her off, “You’re rubbing your arm. You do that when you lie.”

Yebin freezes. She looks at her arms and lo and behold, there’s her left hand, rubbing her right arm without her even realizing. She shuts her eyes.

Goddamnit, Kang Yebin! You’re an idiot! A whole dummy! 

But she'd admit that a part of her swells too and a butterfly flutters its wings in her stomach at the thought of Minkyung remembering such a detail about her. Yebin's lips quirk a bit and she ducks her head when Minkyung tries to look her in the eyes.

Yebin stares at their feet, eyes trained on Minkyung’s white sneakers as if she’d just magically walk away if Yebin stared long enough.

Instead, Minkyung stays put. “You’re a lot bolder in the notes, you know,” she says. If Yebin could muster up the courage to look at her in the face, she’d see the amusement painted on Minkyung’s pretty features.

Yebin shuffles on her feet. “Well, they were…anonymous, s-so…”

When Minkyung doesn’t say anything, Yebin lifts her chin a bit to catch a glance at the older girl. Unfortunately for Yebin, that was a mistake.

Because she finds Minkyung looking at her with such a painfully unreadable expression that makes the question she asks all the more ambiguous: “…Did you mean everything you said in those notes?”

Yebin looks away immediately, fiddling with the cuffs of her uniform blazer instead. A thousand worries flash in her mind. Is she disgusted? Angry? Disappointed? She must be disappointed...

Before she could make up another lame and completely unconvincing excuse, a ringing sound cuts them off – saved by the bell.

Yebin breathes a sigh of relief and takes this as the opportunity to escape. Bowing her goodbye, she quickly scurries off to save herself from further embarrassment.

Minkyung doesn’t even bother calling after her.

...

"Has Seokmin stopped bothering you?"

"Who?"

Kyungwon snickers at Minkyung's reply. "That's what I like to hear. I know you're probably not interested, but I just think this is funny. He's been rejected by someone at another school. Seems like word of what happened to you spread to other schools too. Poor guy...nah, I don't really feel sorry for him."

"He's getting the brunt of it, but I'm embarrassed I ever fell for it in the first place," Minkyung says with a sigh, "Whatever." 

“Still nothing on your audition results yet?”

Minkyung shakes her head. “It usually takes them a while. I think I did pretty well though.” She smiles at the note on her guitar case.

Suddenly, she straightens her back. “Oh yeah…she’s a girl.”

“Huh? Who?”

Minkyung grabs the note and holds it up to Kyungwon. “The note writer.”

Kyungwon blinks for a few seconds, eyes shifting from the note to Minkyung, before suddenly bursting into laughter. “Wait, really?! Oh my god. I don’t know why we never considered that…” She looks down to see Minkyung staring wordlessly at the note. “So? How do you feel?”

Minkyung only gives her an unsure shrug. “I don’t know…dumbfounded? It kind of left me in a daze when I found out. But then I saw her and…she’s kind of cute?” She shakes her head and shrugs again. “I don’t know.”

Her friend raises an eyebrow. “You like girls?”

In a second, Minkyung snaps her head up. “What? No!” she exclaims before her eye catches the good luck message Yebin had written for her. “I mean…I don’t think so. But I don’t think I’d take back anything I said to…her in those notes either…”

“Hm. Then maybe you do like girls.”

“But I’ve always liked boys!”

“You can like both. It’s called being biual,” Kyungwon rolls her eyes like it’s obvious. “Or maybe you just like one girl?” A wink this time and Minkyung feels like hitting her in the back of the head.

Instead, she just shrugs for the umpteenth time and resumes to staring at the note.

It’s her that ends up getting hit by a hand. Minkyung winces when Kyungwon slaps her on the back.

“Why do you look like you’re glitching out? Relax. It’s not a crime to be a girl and like a girl,” Kyungwon says with an amused snort. "Don't seem so scared."

"I'm not!"

Imagining her future, Minkyung has never pictured herself with a girl. It’s a situation she has barely entertained, but never pursued any further. Minkyung would think of herself as a dreamer too – but they were always realistic ambitions and reachable goals, not castles in the air nor pipe dreams.

A nice suite in a high rise in Seoul. Children. A stable job, perhaps teaching music. Married. But who says she can’t imagine herself with a girl?

Kyungwon pulls her out of her reverie. “Figure out your feelings. Now come on, there’s a new meal deal at the chicken place and I’m starving, I could eat a horse.”

She grabs Minkyung by the arm and pulls her out of her seat. Minkyung’s eyes don’t stray away from her guitar case until it leaves her sight completely.

...

There are three open textbooks in front of her and six pencils sprawled all over the desk. Yebin is supposed to be studying, but instead, she sits resting her head on the back of her seat, staring at the textured finish on the ceiling.

Her mind races. Is it possible for the earth to swallow me right now? What are the chances of a sinkhole opening up right beneath me? What is the furthest country from South Korea that I can move to? How much is a plane ticket to Jeju-

“There you are!”

The sudden interruption of her thoughts has Yebin lifting her head. She finds a tall girl marching towards her table in the far corner of the library. Yebin looks around with bewildered wide eyes.

Wait, is she talking to me? Was she looking for me? Wh-

Minkyung arrives at her table far sooner than Yebin had expected. The shorter girl straightens up her posture immediately in surprise. 

“Are you hungry? Let’s go to the café across the school.”

Yebin swallows when she gapes at the taller girl standing over her. Minkyung’s impossibly pretty; Yebin already knows this, but the older girl never fails to leave her with nothing to say. Moreover, her gaze towards Yebin has her squirming in her seat to draw attention away from her flushing cheeks.

“W-why?” Yebin stammers. Minkyung had caught her completely off-guard.

Minkyung just her head. “Don’t you know you shouldn’t decline if an upperclassman offers you food? Besides, we all need a break from this studying.”

Yebin’s stomach decides to betray her right at that moment with a rumbling growl that surely echoed in the library. She flinches. Is this what it feels like to be checkmated and backed into a corner?

...

Yebin keeps shut the entire way there. She’s not usually so shy and quiet around people, but here she was, trailing behind Minkyung’s footsteps in the snow in utter silence. 

Minkyung orders for her (leaving Yebin too astonished at the fact that Minkyung remembers her favourite on the menu) and finds them a table. The entire time, Yebin just follows after her like some obedient puppy.

Needless to say, what’s happening– whatever it is– hasn’t really hit Yebin yet. She had her daydreams, but this is the closest she’s ever gotten to them coming true. Yebin never really prepared herself because what were the chances? They were pipe dreams after all. 

“I’ve never tried the Americano here, but it’s nice to drink in the winter.”

Minkyung starts conversing with her as if they’re old friends. Yebin tries her best to keep up and despite it being challenging at first, Minkyung has an amazing knack of getting her to loosen up.

"Are you always in the library?"

“The study room is always filled up so I stay in the library,” Yebin admits. "And I guess being surrounded by books helps."

“You’re free to join me in the music room if you’d like,” Minkyung tells her with a soft smile. When Yebin lets a dumb giggle slip out of , she shuts herself up with a sip of her drink.  

Yebin doesn’t even realize the ease of their conversation until Minkyung hits her with the topic they had been dancing around ever since they sat down.

“You like me. And you’re a girl. Is that why you didn’t want to admit who you were?”

Yebin’s smile disappears as she looks down at her drink. It had already gotten cold. She shifts uneasily in her seat.

“I’m sorry. I would've, but it seems like you like boys and truthfully, I didn't want to end what we had going on... I know you must’ve been surprised…” she admits bashfully. When she spares a quick glance at the girl in front of her, Yebin finds that Minkyung’s easygoing smile has been replaced by an unreadable expression.

She nervously takes a sip because Minkyung doesn’t look mad, but she doesn’t look ecstatic either and Yebin doesn’t know how to feel, but she doesn’t feel too good about where this is going.

“I was. I've never liked girls,” Minkyung finally says and Yebin hopes her wince wasn’t too obvious. Ouch…alright, that one stung…

Yebin just nods and takes another sip, wondering what on earth she’s even doing here and why she ever agreed to this in the first place. What is Minkyung trying to achieve by dragging her out here if she doesn’t feel the same way? If it’s a friendship, Yebin would readily pass; she already knows she can’t just be friends with the girl she likes. Isn’t it even worse if Minkyung knows it too?

"Aren't you worried about what other people think?"

Yebin blinks. She's never thought of it because no one knows anyways. "No, not really," she decides with a slight shrug. "I don't care. It's not their business. I like who I like."

"But you seemed worried about what I thought."

Yebin opens before closing it again. Minkyung doesn't waver once with her ambiguous gaze.

"I...t-that's because I like you," Yebin murmurs.

Minkyung just hums in reply, breaking her gaze and concentrating on the falling snow outside. Yebin concludes in her head that she needs to cut ties and she needs to do it quick before she falls any deeper than she already has. Perhaps Minkyung isn't meant to be the girl in her daydreams after all. 

“Um, this was fun, sunbaenim, thank you for the drink. But I need to go back to the school...”

“Okay.”

Minkyung lets her go too easily and Yebin would be lying if she admitted that she wasn’t surprised. She tries to ignore the knot in her stomach as she stands up and bows a goodbye.

...

Minkyung offers to walk her back and Yebin wants to decline, if only she had the will to do so. But a heavy heart is too tiring to budge.

It especially doesn’t help when Minkyung asks her if she’s cold and offers her a heat pack; when Minkyung’s gentle hand pulls her away from the curb she had been standing too close to, muttering a “be careful” when a car zooms by; when Minkyung walks with her instead of ahead of her.

Yebin feels like she’s dreaming.

How can she be so perfect? No…stop it Yebin, you’re not supposed to like her anymore! She doesn’t like you! She doesn’t-

Again, Minkyung unknowingly halts Yebin’s train of thought like a massive boulder falling right on the tracks.

“So will you let me take you out again? When are you free?” Minkyung asks her.

Yebin abruptly comes to a stop. “Huh? But why?”

Minkyung blinks as if Yebin’s question had caught her off guard. “Um, well, I want to get to know you more. It’s weird because I feel like we already know everything about each other,” Minkyung chuckles and Yebin thinks she might pass out right then and there, “but at the same time…I feel like we don’t.”

It’s tempting, of course it’s tempting. Yebin wants to jump on the opportunity immediately, just yell yes! Take me wherever your heart desires! But she holds herself back and shuffles on her feet hesitantly. Yebin’s aware of the slippery slope she’s on.

But she’s awfully transparent and Minkyung doesn’t miss Yebin’s uncertain bite on her own bottom lip. So she says what's been brewing on her mind in separate pieces, only coalescing now, ever since she saw Yebin.

“I think I like you.”

Yebin’s head shoots up to look at her so quick, she almost gets whiplash. “W-what?”

The look on Minkyung’s face is a new one; it’s more earnest this time, a tad bit curious, as if there were twinkling stars in her eyes. It’s the most discernible she’s been all day and Yebin really can’t believe this is even happening. Did Minkyung just confess to her?

“But…” Yebin murmurs, “you don’t even like girls.”

“I didn’t think so, but,” Minkyung pauses and then she chuckles, “you’re a girl. And I realized I wouldn’t take back anything I wrote in my notes to you, right down to the confessions. That’s got to mean something, right? All your notes were heartwarming, but your good luck note just before my screening…it helped me tremendously during the audition.”

This time, it’s Minkyung who’s looking down at the floor, fingers fiddling with one another. It's a bashful sight Yebin never expected to see.

“I’d like to think you were my lucky charm,” Minkyung admits.

And then the tips of her lips turn up in a sweet smile as she finds Yebin’s eyes.

The shorter girl just blinks at her, speechless (Yebin’s currently malfunctioning, you see), so Minkyung takes in her silence and keeps talking, hoping Yebin is processing everything she’s saying.

“I know that I shouldn’t be afraid and hold back. I like finding out new things about myself and truthfully, this might just be my favourite one yet. Because I got to meet you. I guess the heart wants what it wants,” she says with a cheeky smile and, as if on cue, Yebin begins blushing madly. Minkyung chuckles at her reddening ears. “The universe has a funny way of working itself out, doesn’t it?”

“Of course…" Yebin can only mutter in half a daze, "it keeps life interesting."

“Yeah, that’s right,” Minkyung grins before an apologetic look sweeps over her face, “Um, I’m sorry if I was a bit ambiguous today–“ (‘a bit’ is an understatement… Yebin thinks), “–I was just trying to figure out my feelings. I hope you can forgive me for that.”

I’ll forgive you in a heartbeat.

Yebin pinches herself, but doesn’t find herself jolting awake in a classroom. It feels like she’s walking on clouds, but she looks down and sees the pavement beneath the thin layer of snow, feels the ground beneath her boots.

"You're pretty cool, Kang Yebin. You're thoughtful and sweet and the way you write your bieup is cute. You have the best taste in music. What can I say? You know the way to a girl's heart."

Minkyung quirks an eyebrow as the tip of her lips lift in a small smirk.

Quite belatedly, Yebin suddenly realizes that she can’t just stand there with open and looking like a fish out of the water when the prettiest girl in school is looking at her expectantly. She has to say something, anything. This is her chance.

“You know how I feel about you. I like you too.”

Unexpectedly, her voiced out confession has Minkyung smiling the brightest Yebin has ever seen. Even though she already knew, she bites her lip to hold back a grin as if she had been waiting for it. And just seeing that has Yebin’s heart swelling ten times bigger.

“So yes, you’ll let me take you out again?” Minkyung asks and Yebin thinks the tinge of hopefulness in her voice is just about the cutest thing in the universe.

“Of course," Yebin chews on her bottom lip, "but aren’t you busy?”

“I’ll make time for you.”

Yebin swoons. She feels her mind spin, air knocked out of her, and hears the ringing bells in her head, the sound of slot machines reverberating between her ears like ‘Jackpot! Jackpot!’. But she keeps from staggering and collects herself.

She can’t embarrass herself in front of the girl she would hike mountains for. That'd be uncool. Minkyung called her cool after all. So instead, Yebin raises her shoulders daringly.

“Then whenever you call for me, I’ll come running. Wherever you are. For real. Even if I'm in Ilsan.”

Minkyung lets out a chuckle and Yebin thinks she can even see a tinge of pink on the older girl’s already rosy cheeks too.

“I’ll be waiting,” Minkyung tells her.

...

Yebin’s castle in the air has floated close enough to the ground for her to reach. The path is of radiant golden rays, leading her right up to the grand entrance where Minkyung stands with an outstretched arm. It’s theatrical, as are all of her fantasies, but that’s because that’s all they were: unattainable pipe dreams. And Yebin constructed them as so.

But the pretty songbird that had her eyes turning into hearts all those months ago now stands in front of her, smiling for her and her only. Yebin knows this is just the beginning; she shouldn’t get ahead of herself.

But at least she now knows that perhaps, reality doesn’t have to be so disenchanting after all.

a/n: oh young first love..i have yet to experience lol