“That’s all, you may come back to your rooms. You will meet your partners in a few hours, familiarize yourself with them. Learn their names. Introduce yourselves.”

     Students start murmuring, and I slowly look ahead. Kim Jongin is staring at me. I can see the others walking towards the door already, so I quickly turn around, and dash away. I outrun everyone to get to the room, and grab my contact lenses container. I run to the bathroom, and lock myself in one of the stalls. With trembling hands, I attempt to wear my black colored contact lenses. I won’t go to sleep again after this anyway.

     I blink a few times, and relax my muscles. My friends will be in the room, what should I say to them?

     I walk out from the bathroom, and a few people are still walking in the corridor to reach their rooms. I try to go unnoticed, and go back to my room. All of my roommates are there, and they instantly turn their heads to my direction. No, don’t look at me… Please. Don’t.

     Dahye meets eyes with me first, and her expression is rather confused. She looks at me—no, at my eyes, like she’s trying to know something.

     “Aria… What was the committee talking about?” Ahn Heejin opens first. Everyone fixes their sight as me as I walk to my bed. I turn my head to face Heejin, and smile a bit.

     “That was nothing.” I say. So they didn’t know? But they seem to know it was me, or at least that there’s something about me.

     “Well! Who did you get? I got Ji Hansol, the one who danced in the orientation! He seems like a nice kid.” Dahye changes the topic. Each of us sit on our respective beds, and form a talking circle.

     “I just stood behind the closest I was from, and apparently it was a foreigner! His name is Takada Kenta. I thought he couldn’t speak Korean, but he could speak it well when we introduced ourselves. He’s so cute, too!”

     After Heejin, the others take turn to mention their partners, and finally it’s my turn. I hesitate a bit before saying. “It’s… Kim Jongin. I didn’t really know him.”

     “Whoah!” Haneul exclaims. “That Kim Jongin? The one that the girls often talk about? He looks quite icy, though. You were brave, Aria.”

     Brave… Like I had any choice. I stare at my bed. I had no idea it was the mean-looking guy. Now I’m trapped with him… What should I do?

    In the morning, we’re assembled in the dining hall, and we’re told to eat with our partners. The girls get to pick the seat first, so I need to look for that guy and call him here. The boys enter the dining hall and get their food, and they head to their partners. I look around to find Kim Jongin, but he’s nowhere to be seen. I focus on the queue for the food, maybe he’s still lining up… But then I heard the sound of tray put on the table. I look to my front, and there he is. I get taken aback to look right at him… His eyes are something else.

     We exchange no words, and I let down my head to start eating. He lifts his spoon too, but his movements are slow. “Where’s your nametag?”

     I quickly reach to my left chest, but the nametag wasn’t there. I grab my bag in an instant, and fortunately find it inside. I put it on, and continue eating again tensely.

     “Be careful, you can get scolded.”

     I don’t respond. Not only his eyes, but his voice also makes me nervous. I can never get used with this guy.

     The others seem to spend the eating time leisurely, with talking and such. The people next to me are even laughing. But here I am, being in a cold war with this Jongin guy. I want to go home.

     “What class are you?”

     “B.” I answer without looking up.

     “I’m sorry about before.”

     I stop chewing. Quick, answer… Find an answer… “Me too. I’m sorry.”

     I think again about what happened earlier this day. Both our actions were unnecessary, but thankfully not making matters worse. This is right, we should get it over with since we’re going to work together today.

     After breakfast and a two-hour class about leadership and usual motivational thingy, we relocate to the basketball field, and I just notice that this lodging is surrounded by some kind of pine forest. Even at this time, it looks so dark and cold. I shouldn’t stare at the forest for too long, I don’t know what might appear.

     We’re waiting for further instruction, when a guy turn around to see me then pokes his partner, whispering something. The girl turns around to see me too, and they continue talking. Oh man. I guess they know.

     “You know…” Jongin says beside me, and my thought bubble pops.

     “What?”

     “Never mind. Later.”

     He looks away, and I’m left confused. I look to his side, and silently sneer because of his height. My eye level is only at his shoulder.

     Announcement is heard and apparently we’re really going to enter the forest. There will be colored lines to warn us of the limited area we can go through, and the time limit is an hour. Pairs are called one by one with two minutes interval, and when it gets to our turn, the committee gave us an envelope. "Find what's inside! You'll need to solve them."

     Jongin opens the envelope and find a folded paper. He brings it to our sight and the paper is printed with three envelopes' pictures, with different patterns each. He groans, and gives the paper to me. "Let's go."

     We start walking on the left side of the forest where there are less people, and our heads are busy turning to search for the envelopes. After some time of silence, I hear Jongin taking some breath. "So they're really blue?"

     I quietly sigh, and look at the damp ground. "Yeah."

     “Is one of your parents a foreigner?”

     “Nah. Fully Korean.”

     “So it’s… I think I’ve heard about it before… A syndrome?”

     “Yeah. Waardenburg.”

     "And you've been using contacts to cover them."

     "Uh-huh."

     "To avoid questions, like what I'm doing?"

     "Well, one person won't hurt."

     Jongin scoffs slowly. "Fascinating, that's all I'm going to say."

     I look around, then up to the sky, where my eyes copied the color from. Fascinating, he said... I guess when I get older, people got softer with their words for my condition. As my mind wanders, my eyes spot something on a tree branch, three meters from the ground. "Hey, isn't it the green one?"

     Jongin looks up, and his eyebrows raise. Without any hesitation he starts climbing the tree with his long legs, and I actually need to take a few steps back because of the surprise. He easily reaches for the envelope, and jumps down to the ground. He notices me having my hands united in front of my collarbone, and frowns. "What?"

     "Just... Be careful." I mumble. He diverts his eyes to the envelope, and rips it.

     "The campus anthem with missing words." he shows it to me. "Well, it's quite doable."

     We change our exploration area to the opposite side we walked through, and apparently the land there is not as flat as before. There are a lot of rocky steps, and going further leads downhill. I slow down, being extra careful, but Jongin speeds up in front.

     There’s a steep slope, but not very high, probably only half my height. I catch up to Jongin, and he’s emptily looking at the area below. “Let’s go down.” I say, preparing to jump.

     “Wait, don’t.”

     “What?” I turn to see him, and he faces me and takes my wrist to walk away from there. “Wait wha—“

     He drags me away from there and when he slows down on a flat area I yank off my wrist from his grip. He doesn’t even look at me, and keep walking.

     “We just needed to jump, what was so hard?” I screech.

     “Why make things hard when we can go another way?” Jongin answers grimly. “Let’s go.”

     I look at his back in confusion. Why is he like that? Was he afraid to jump? No way.

     Amidst the newly cold atmosphere, we found the remaining envelopes, and try to find our way to the entrance. I notice that only few pairs are heading there... Are we early? Or the opposite? The pair in front of us look dejected after they went to the committee, I wonder why? The questions are super easy, there's no way they got it wrong. We hand the envelopes and answer the questions, and the committee looks at us expressionlessly.

     "Nice. But you guys are late, so you'd wear handcuffs for two hours. Go to the building entrance, they'll put them to you."

     "What?" Jongin and I say in unison. The committee just sways his hand to the building direction, and we drop our shoulders. We walk to see the previous pair I saw wearing their handcuffs with sour faces. So that was why.

     The committee on the door is the total opposite of the last one, it's a bright woman with sparkly eyes, a little bit too happy for someone who puts handcuffs on people. "It'll be over in a couple of hours!" she chirps. Jongin immediately steps inside once the handcuffs are locked, making me stumble a bit. He stops, and lets me get on my feet properly. "Sorry." he mutters. He adjusts his walking speed, and scratches his head. "This ."

     You don't say, I think. The next activity is lunch, and we get in line in front of the dining hall. The free students giggle at our situation, and I stare emptily at the handcuffs to see our hands. That's when I realize something. "Ah!"

     "Why?" Jongin says.

     I'm on Jongin's left side, and my right hand is connected to his left one with the cuffs. "How am I going to eat?"

     Jongin's lips part a bit, and he closes his eyes.