Jonghyun had never been happy when the holiday break ended.

Yet, he was standing in front of the school building, his hands deep in his pants' pockets and eyes scanning everyone passing him by intensively. It was his last year of middle school and still, he didn’t have many friends in his class. His best friends, Taemin and Minho were in the other class together and Jonghyun had been jealous at first, but he just had to accept the reality.

“Don’t be so tensed up, Jjongie!” a wide, warm smile appeared on Taemin’s pretty face when he was patting Jonghyun’s shoulder reassuringly. The other only nodded, grimacing more than smiling.

“It’s the last year, I’m sure that in high school we will be in the same class” Minho said in a wise tone and Taemin nodded eagerly, always agreeing with the tallest of the boys.

“Anyway... I think we have to go…” Taemin looked at Minho with a sad smile, then glanced at Jonghyun worriedly.

“Sure, go on, I’ll see you at the lunch break” the shortest one showed them a small smile and turned in the opposite direction in the hallway, heading towards his class. When he entered the room, not many of the students noticed him, so he just passed by some desks and sat at his one at the end of the class. His bag landed on the chair next to him, which was free, because he sat at his desk alone, due to the uneven number of students in his class. New pencils and notebooks had been placed neatly on the desktop (no matter how much Jonghyun didn’t like the first day of school, he had always enjoyed the fact that his mother bought him new stuff every year) and the boy looked around the class with his chin laying on his palm. Deep inside, he hoped that the year would pass in a trice. He didn’t like the idea of spending the next months sitting alone during the lessons. It was no fun.

He opened one of his notebooks on the first page, studied carefully one of his new pencils (Spiderman one – he liked Spiderman more than Batman and he would always got in argument with Taemin about which character was better), and after a while started scribbling his name on the paper with a concentrated gaze.

A long, thick line appeared on his first page when his left hand moved to the right side without his approval. His eyes searched for the cause of that unwilling movement and they landed on his bag thrown onto the desk. His eyes widened a bit and he straightened himself to turn to his left fully, where the first thing he saw was fair, nice-styled hair. The blond next to him just sat there and started unpacking things from his own, red bag (Jonghyun was really shocked – his own bag was grey with some white parts, but red?). Jonghyun was taken aback too much to even form a coherent sentence and his new desk-friend seemed to not even notice him sitting just beside. But Jonghyun, being the curious boy, laid himself on the desk to look at the stranger’s face and he just stayed like that, his mouth agape and his cheek flat on the top on his notebook.

Jonghyun assumed that the person in front of his eyes was the prettiest he had ever seen in his short life, even prettier than Taemin. The boy seemed to be a little bit chubby, but his cheekbones were visible anyway, high and placed just perfectly. His lips were puckered when he rummaged through the bag and when raised his gaze and met with Jonghyun’s eyes, the other thought that he must have been ill because he felt suddenly hot on his face and his ears started tingling. He straightened himself and sat properly on his chair after hearing the blond chuckling softly and shaking his head.

The brown-haired couldn’t help but glance to the left with the corner of his eye, curiosity taking over him. He then felt the piercing gaze on himself, the boy’s eyes narrowed and lips forming a thin line. Jonghyun just coughed awkwardly and sat straight, continuing to scribble on the first page of his notebook.

And when he realized that there was no way he would talk to the boy, he decided to write. He flipped all of the pages and stopped on the last one, then wrote quickly a simple “hi, what’s your name? :)” on the paper, then passed the notebook on the desk towards the fair-haired boy. He waited for the respond impatiently, pretending to be listening to the voice of the teacher. A notebook landed in front of him with a quiet clatter and Jonghyun opened it on the last page almost too eagerly, emitting a silent whimper when he found his own sentence erased, the page blank and clean just like before.

Jonghyun was growing more and more curious about the secretive boy. He was definitely too silent, on the contrary to his screaming, colorful clothes and original hair color. He found nothing strange in the fact that he wanted to know his new friend better, it seemed that they would be sitting together the whole year.

“This year, we also have a new student in our class” the teacher’s voice brought Jonghyun back to reality and he glanced carefully towards the blond. “Please, treat him well. Kim Kibum, can you stand up for a second please?”

Kibum stood up obediently and looked around the room carefully with his cat-like eyes. Jonghyun found out that the boy was definitely taller than him (which was no difficult, at the first place), but his arms didn’t look as skinny as he had imagined them. Yet, Kibum still wasn’t ‘fat’.

All pairs of eyes stopped on the stranger and Jonghyun felt a little uncomfortable when some of them moved later to him, then the owners started whispering something to each other. He was very grateful when the bell rang and the teacher let them free. Jonghyun packed his things quickly into his bag, his pencils landing on the bottom of it carelessly, but he couldn’t care about it then. He needed to tell Minho and Taemin about Kibum.

“Blond hair?” Taemin’s eyes widened in pure curiosity, when he talked with his mouth full of sandwich and Minho had to wipe the corner of his lips with a tissue.

“Yes, and his clothes are so colorful! He’s like from outer space!” Minho cocked his eyebrow hearing Jonghyun’s words. He continued to carefully clean Taemin’s chin when he ate his food carelessly, too much into Jonghyun’s story to pay attention to him getting dirty. Jonghyun looked around himself, but there was no sign of Kibum sitting in front of the school where they were.

“I think it’s good that you don’t have to sit alone the next year, yes?” Minho finally glanced at Jonghyun, when Taemin started eating properly again. The shortest one just shrugged.

“It’s no difference, he doesn’t talk to me anyway”

“He needs some time Jjongie!” Taemin chirped in his sweet voice, and Jonghyun scrunched up his nose at the nickname. It was no use to remember Taemin about it, he was just too stubborn and when he wanted to call Jonghyun like that, he would just do it. “You will see, I’m sure Kibum is a nice person!”

Days passed and no matter how many times Jonghyun tried to bring Kibum’s attention, he would either carefully listen to the teacher or make neat notes in his notebook. Even writing small letters didn’t help, because Kibum kept throwing them into his bag and Jonghyun never got any respond. He tried offering his pencils to Kibum, started the topic about Spiderman (at that, Kibum only chuckled and Jonghyun had that feeling, that Kibum thought about him as a childish), even asked him to show the school building around, but Kibum kept silent all the time and it was driving Jonghyun crazy.

“He told me I was pretty”

Jonghyun hang upside down on the playground and looked at Taemin with round eyes.

“Who?” he jumped off of the small ladder, landing on the ground gracefully.

“That new boy, Kibum” Taemin smiled softly and started playing with his shoulder-long hair. Jonghyun opened his mouth and just stared at the feminine boy.

“When? Why? How?” he showered him with the rain of questions and Taemin only shrugged in response.

“He just caught me and told that I was pretty, that’s all” he felt rather uncomfortable when Jonghyun’s eyes almost drew a hole through his head. The boy sighed and leaned his back against the ladder.

“But still, he called you that”

Both Taemin and Jonghyun turned towards the tallest of them, who played with his fingers, standing under the tree. Jonghyun raised his eyebrows with a smirk on his lips.

“What, you’re jealous?” Taemin’s cheeks turned brick red and he looked away from Minho, whose face changed color only into slight pink. Still, Jonghyun felt satisfied with that “Oh guys, you’re so obvious…”

After the lunch break, Jonghyun sat at his desk faster than ever, waiting for Kibum to come and join him. When the chair next to him creaked against the floor, he ripped a piece of paper from his notebook and started writing on it quickly, a lopsided “that pretty boy is my friend :D” passed to Kibum. Jonghyun bit his lower lip in anticipation, trying to pay any attention to the teacher’s words. A piece of paper appeared on his part of the desk instead of the bottom of Kibum’s bag and Jonghyun felt happy and nervous at the same time. He looked at the note and small smile bowed his lips when he read a neat, curved handwriting, saying simply “cool”. Jonghyun reached for his pencil to write something more, but the note disappeared from his sight and he saw Kibum writing something again. He folded it carefully and threw onto the desktop in front of the other, who eagerly unfolded it and read the message “what is his name?”. Jonghyun really liked Kibum’s handwriting, even if it could have been considered as girlish. He turned his head towards Kibum only a bit, just to see what he was doing, and to his surprise, he was staring at his hands, waiting for the answer.

So Jonghyun wrote Taemin’s name on the paper quickly and threw it back to Kibum. The other nodded to himself and hid the note in the front pocket of his bag. Jonghyun couldn’t really find the answer why all of their (well, Jonghyun’s) small letters were hidden in his bag. But he just shrugged it off and smiled to himself, happy that even on paper he got some words from the blond boy.

Winter came faster than Jonghyun could have imagined. The weather got cooler immediately and Jonghyun was really unpleased to wear all those sweaters and warm jumpers. It was uncomfortable and prickled the skin on his neck. Still, he obediently wore all of the clothes his mother took out from the bottom of the wardrobe.

There was no snow yet, but the sky was grey and cloudy and it looked that it could start snowing any minute. Jonghyun was happy to see it because he had been waiting for the snow for a long time. He liked the way Taemin squealed when he put the snow behind his collar.

Jonghyun sat at his desk and looked out the window to his right, hoping to see the first snowflakes. But instead of the snow, the rain was pouring heavily and he was really grateful that his mother had predicted it to happen and given him an umbrella. His clothes were perfectly dry and he observed  other students rushing into the building with their hands covering their heads, with a small smile on his lips. Was his mother a clairvoyant to predict this?

He turned quickly to his left when his desk-friend appeared, completely soaked, water dripping down his hair and clothes. Jonghyun cocked his head to the side, something different in Kibum than in anybody else found by him. The blond looked furious, breath heavy and eyes narrowed, as if rain was his biggest enemy.

Kibum reminded Jonghyun of a cat, wet, angry cat. He kept running his long fingers through his hair and Jonghyun could swear that he was hissing. That made him curious about that boy even more.

“You don’t like rain, huh?” his voice seemed too small, but he managed to talk anyway. Kibum turned his gaze to him and Jonghyun gulped when he saw how dark Kibum’s eyes were at the moment.

“You’re stupid”

Jonghyun wrinkled his nose. Kibum had finally said something and when he had actually done, Jonghyun couldn’t understand a half of it.

“What?” he tilted his head even more.

“I said you’re stupid” Kibum repeated, trying hard to dry his hair with the hoodie. But repeating the sentence didn’t help Jonghyun even in the slightest. Kibum noticed it and cleared his throat, before continuing to speak in his voice hoarse a little “It’s in English” he rolled his eyes and sighed, slightly annoyed. Jonghyun opened his eyes wider and his notebook was on its last page in a trice. Kibum glanced at him, trying to not look curious.

“What was it again?” Kibum chuckled when heard Jonghyun’s eager tone.

“Stupid. I’m sure you don’t even know how to write it”

Jonghyun felt really humiliated by Kibum’s words and his proud took over him quickly, when his pencil tapped on the page. He had no idea how to write that, this was true. Out of all possible subjects, Kibum had to touch upon English, which was his Achilles’ heel. He truly knew nothing about English, nothing at all. So he just wrote the word like he supposed it should have been written, with the other hand hiding it from Kibum’s curious eyes. The blond boy just shrugged and continued drying his always neatly combed hair.

After the lessons were over, Jonghyun came back home and as soon as he entered the house and kicked off his shoes, he shouted towards the kitchen, where his mother usually was.

“Mum, do we have an English dictionary?” he peeked into the room and his mother glanced at him truly surprised.

“English? Sweetie, you hate English” she furrowed her eyebrows and started rubbing her hands into the dishcloth. Jonghyun rolled his eyes, too much excited about finding out the meaning of the word to chat with his mother instead.

“Mum, just tell me if we have it” he pleaded and she continued with washing the dishes.

“Sure, it’s in the bedroom, the second shelf” she barely finished the line and Jonghyun was already on the stairs, heading towards his mother’s bedroom. He entered it and quickly grabbed the dictionary, then rushed to his own room and placed the book with his bag on the desk of his. The notebook was opened on the last page and Jonghyun tried hard to remember how English alphabet went on. He then finally found the “s” letter and continued searching with a “t”. There he was, but he could never really find the word “stupit” like he wrote in the notebook. At first he was sure that Kibum had made some joke and it wasn’t really in English (because who used English in normal, every-day conversation?), but then, he came across the meaning of the word “stupid”. Which only proved that he really had no idea about English. He carefully read the definition, his expression getting more and more confused with every next time. The dictionary was closed quickly and he erased his own “stupit” from the notebook almost furiously, not really knowing what to think about the whole thing.

“I’m not stupid!” he shouted when he reached his desk later than Kibum, who looked up at him and chuckled at his pouty expression and strange accent. Jonghyun’s fists were clenched, but he had no bad intensions at all – he wasn’t that type of a boy.

“Think what you want. It’s my personal impression” Kibum waved his hand and looked down at the book again, making Jonghyun only more angry with ignoring him like that.

“I want you to apologize!” he stomped his foot stubbornly and Kibum raised his gaze to look at him again, this time amused.

“Apologize? Are you serious?” his eyebrows were knitted almost together and Jonghyun nodded with his head vigorously, his expression still angry and indignant. Kibum stood up from his place and the corner of Jonghyun’s lips twitched nervously, but he kept his posture, even if the other boy was taller than him almost a head. “I don’t feel the need to apologize for something I think” he looked down at the shorter.

“Well, it’s good until it’s not hurting others…” Jonghyun stated wisely and Kibum snorted with a smirk on his lips. Both of them froze on their place when the teacher entered the class and they took their seats nicely, but sitting as far away from each other as it was possible.

The winter was nearing to its end and Jonghyun’s first adoration towards Kibum turned into ignoring him. It was really beyond him how such a pretty and delicate boy could have acted like that, especially towards him, who had done his best to bring them closer. Yet, they were sitting together, but not even glancing in each other’s direction.

The day was sunny and Jonghyun whined silently when he sat at his desk, his fingers drumming on the wood and eyes wandering from one person to another. He moved his gaze to the window, taking some of the first sun beams after the cold, gloomy winter, when a wet, unpleasant sound reached his ears. His head its own towards the source of the suspicious sound.

Kibum sat next to him, his hair dripping with water, lying flat on his forehead and cheeks and Jonghyun felt like having a déjà vu. Unless, this time, Kibum wasn't making any furious noises, he was just calmly unpacking himself, not really caring about the water wetting his books.

“Are you fine?” Jonghyun spoke to him for the first after their small argument and Kibum’s head snapped upwards, his eyes vacant.

“Huh?” he stared at Jonghyun as if he had seen him for the first time in his life, then just waved his hand carelessly, mumbling something about the changeable weather. The shorter boy turned to his right to look through the window once more, but the sun was shining brightly and there were no signs of raining to be found, even the tiniest. He merely glanced at Kibum when the boy plopped down on the chair helplessly and ruffled his hair, messing it a lot. Jonghyun had learned that getting Kibum angry with his stupid questions wasn’t a good idea, but still, he couldn’t stop thinking about how the blond had gotten wet only on his hair and shoulders.

Jonghyun bent down above his notebook and tried to concentrate on the notes, thinking it’s better to not stick his nose into someone else’s business.

But when the lessons ended and Jonghyun was rummaging in his cabinet for his shoes, he was still thinking about the problem, not really understanding why he had called it like that. If this had been a problem, Kibum would have told him and asked for help. Bu he hadn’t done it. Which was simply making Jonghyun even more concerned.

After changing his shoes and placing the strap of the bag over his shoulders, Jonghyun left the building thoughtfully. His head was still full of thoughts about Kibum, but it didn’t make him miss the silenced shouts and struggles. He looked around himself, and when a ‘little blond ’ filled with poisonous tone, reached his ears, he had no doubts anymore that he knew what was going on. He ran to the side of the building, where three guys, obviously bigger than him, were laughing at somebody. Jonghyun would recognize that hair everywhere.

“M-move away!” Jonghyun was a bit ashamed, that his voice cracked, but was also proud of himself that he had found the bravery to actually shout. Three heads turned towards him, when Kibum kneelt on the grass, his back facing Jonghyun. The highest of them smirked and Jonghyun felt the sweat collecting on his forehead. “I-I will call the police!”

The group stopped and started laughing loudly, holding their stomachs and preventing themselves from crying. Jonghyun felt humiliated by their reaction, so he pulled out his phone, and the three guys went silent in a blink. They took some small steps backwards and faster than Jonghyun could even think about how bad they were going to beat him, they ran away, afraid to meet with the police.

“Stupid halfwits...” Kibum hissed silently and Jonghyun furrowed his brow, understanding only the first half of it.

“Are you insulting me again?” he came closer to Kibum and touched his shoulder to check if he was really alright, but the other boy flinched and quickly stood up.

“Go away” he gave Jonghyun a quick glance, then turned around and started walking in the other direction than the main gate of the school. Jonghyun seesawed his gaze between the two possible options of going home or following Kibum, and quickly made the decision to stalk the blond. Who turned around when hearing Jonghyun still walking after him. “What are you doing, I told you to go”

“I am going” Jonghyun shrugged innocently and Kibum heaved a deep sigh and continued heading towards his destination. Jonghyun didn’t really know where they were going, but he was cool with that, as long as he could have an eye on the blond. He was just concerned about him and didn’t want him to get bullied again.

“What did these guys wanted from you?” the question slipped from Jonghyun’s tongue and when it barely finished, it was disturbed by Kibum’s short 'don’t talk to me'.

Jonghyun was confused, if Key was still mad because of their small fight at the beginning of winter or if he was just shamefaced after the moment when Jonghyun had found him defenseless in the schoolyard.

No matter what the reason was, Kibum seemed to be pissed off and abashed at the same time. Which Jonghyun found quite adorable.

“Where are we going?” Jonghyun whined after a while of walking, and Kibum glimpsed at him above his shoulder.

“You’re still here?” his voice sounded surprised and annoyed. Jonghyun wrinkled his nose.

“Yes, I’m still here, where are we?” Jonghyun pleaded for the answer, not really recognizing the place they were at. There were some trees and bushes, but not that much like in the forest, maybe it was somewhere near. But there was no road, no traffic, no people besides them. A small shiver ran down Jonghyun’s back.

“If you have to know, we’re almost there” Kibum continued walking, not really paying bigger attention to the shorter boy. Jonghyun wasn’t quite satisfied with the answer, but after a few minutes of continuous walking, from between the trees peeked a small, abandoned building. He admitted to be curious about it, but anyway, still a bit uncomfortable when they stood in front of the house with dirty, grey walls and doors painted with green, peeling paint. The shorter boy raised himself on his toes to peer from above Kibum’s shoulder at what he was doing. The blond’s hands were busy with the padlock, pushing the slide into the place for the key. After a second or so, the padlock clicked and opened and Jonghyun widened his eyes amazed.

“How did you do that?!” he asked, carrying the padlock in his hand when they entered the house, looking much more friendly in the inside, than the outside “You just have to teach me!”

“You’re really annoying…” Kibum sighed and plopped down onto the old, dusted couch, coughing a bit when the dust flew into the air. Jonghyun jumped onto it happily, causing the dust to completely leave the couch in the process. “What are you doing?!” Kibum nagged, but Jonghyun only laughed carelessly and then looked around the interior. The walls were painted dirty beige, spider webs creeping in the corners and every little dark furniture covered in a thin layer of dust.

“How did you find this place?” Jonghyun moved his gaze from the walls and turned to the blond boy, tilting his head curiously. Kibum looked like thinking deeply for a while, then sighed and decided to talk with him.

“One day after school I was running away from that group and found myself here. They are too of a cowards to come here” he shrugged and took the padlock from Jonghyun, spinning it in his fingers “I can open many locks since I remember, I can’t even place how I learnt it, I would call it a skill”

“Cool…” Jonghyun's eyes were sparkling while he was listening to Kibum’s voice carefully and nodding his head eagerly. “But… What this group wants from you?” his brow frowned and Kibum locked the padlock, then opened it again with a slide, concentrating himself on the action, so he didn’t have to look at Jonghyun.

“They just… They don’t like my hair color. It’s too original, you know, I stick out from the crowd of dark haired people here” Kibum shrugged again nonchalantly, making Jonghyun to shake his head.

“I find your hair great” he admitted straightforwardly. Kibum’s head snapped upward with his cheeks just bit pinker.

“Thanks” his voice was small and he didn’t even smile, but anyway, Jonghyun felt proud to finally carry some normal conversation with the other boy. He still wanted to know more and more about him, many questions clouding his head.

“How did you get your hair dyed like that? Because I suppose it’s not your natural color…” Jonghyun’s eyes narrowed when he moved closer to Kibum and studied his hair carefully. The other chuckled and stopped him from coming too close with his hand on his forehead.

“Stop yourself dino, what’s with the questions?” he removed his hand to see Jonghyun pouting. He wasn’t fully happy with the nickname, but at least he hadn’t been called stupid again. Kibum let out yet another sigh and propped himself more comfortably on the couch, which creaked dangerously. “I dyed them when I was in America, it’s not that strange there for an Asian boy to have blond hair”

Jonghyun’s eyes doubled their size and shone in the dim lit space.

“You were in America?! Now I understand why you speak English so well!” Jonghyun was more than surprised, he seemed impressed by the boy’s multiple skills. “Say something in English please!”

Kibum looked around the room as if thinking what he could possibly say.

“You should go home” his eyes landed on Jonghyun’s shocked face.

“I hope you didn’t offend me…” Jonghyun’s eyes squinted a little bit and Kibum stood up from the couch.

“No, I told you to go home” he gestured towards the door and they went out quickly. Kibum locked the padlock on the door back and threw the slide into the air triumphantly.

“I have no idea how to get home from there”

The blond let out a sigh, one of a bit frustrated, when he saw the other looking around helplessly. He decided to walk Jonghyun to one of the main streets, so he could find the way to his home easily. Kibum didn’t even reply to Jonghyun’s farewells before turning back and walking away, but Jonghyun wasn’t mad, on the contrary, he felt happy, truly happy.

“Hello Key!”

Kibum raised his eyes to see Jonghyun’s face lit up with a wide smile.

“What did you say?” he continued adjusting his uniform, when Jonghyun sing-songed happily once more.

“Hello Key~” his smile didn’t vanish even in the slightest.

“What’s with that, you learned an English word and now you’re going to repeat it all day?” Kibum scrunched up his nose, never finding Jonghyun any less annoying throughout their acquaintanceship. Jonghyun took his seat next to the blond and hit his shoulder playfully.

“It’s not that! Since it’s our last day of school, I thought I should give you a nickname! So I took my dictionary and found something fitting you the best! Since you can open almost all of the locks, it’s Key, you’re a key!”

Kibum, Key from that moment, couldn’t help but smile softly for the first time in front of Jonghyun and cleared his throat to make it vanish. Jonghyun only laughed and hit his upper arm once more. He passed the pink, small post-it note to Key, who looked at it questionably.

“What’s with that?” he glanced up at Jonghyun, wondering how he could still hold up that wide smile.

“Write me your phone number. Mum promised to buy me a mobile this holiday, so we can talk or maybe even meet during it!”

Jonghyun sounded definitely too cheerful for Key’s liking, but he pulled out his pen and wrote the number anyway, then gave the piece of paper back to him.

“Here you are. Call me when you get the mobile” he smiled again, not able to stop it when Jonghyun was acting so happy and excited all of the time.

They spent their last day of school in the small house in the deep woods, with Jonghyun repeating the new nickname like a mantra and driving Kibum insane with his childish behavior, but it couldn’t make him go away from that boy still, cause he was his first, and very only friend after moving to the new town.

And Jonghyun himself knew, that he would call Key the very second he got his phone.

Hi there~ *waves*

Well, here it is. Due to my health problems and other (my computer is a slow ) it's far, far later than it should be. But anyway, it's a monster, it's the first time I wrote something so long! D: There it is, my first, almost 5000 words chapter.

The second one will probably as long as this one, yep.

Hope you enjoyed and please, wait for the second part~

Bye~ ♥