No one has ever been there for him. No one has ever considered how he felt. No one has bothered to understand his mind. No one has ever apologised or thanked him. No one has ever tried to get through him.

They say you only feel alone in a crowd but Sehun begs to differ. He felt alone, unwanted, unappreciated. Because no one has ever approached him.

Those ‘hello’s he hears in the morning; he greeted them first. The cheery welcomes at cafes; the staff were paid to do so. It was their job. Back at home, no one greeted him when he came home from school and no one really cared about how his day was either.

No one cared. Not even himself.

He had lost the reason to smile. 

He would be in a good mood and would greet all his classmates that just arrived. They would respond but some barely noticed his presence. But on other days, he would look up to watch them trickle into class. Not a soul notices him, not a being says ‘hi’.

He would smile back and nod politely at the waiter by the door. But some days, he just couldn’t bring himself to. Smiling hurt. False smiles hurt. Just like how the tides change with time, the waiter’s mannerisms varied too.

He would get an earful for not greeting his elders. Then his lips would threaten to utter, “Try greeting me first to set an example. Isn’t that what you are supposed to show me? “Or “If I did, would I get a response? Would you even care? Maybe if you cared for yourselves less, I might be more willing to greet you.” But of course he didn’t say it out load. Instead he slammed his door shut. He got another lecture for having a bad attitude and being petty. A bitter laugh, a shake of the head. They just don’t understand. He slammed the door not because of a mere scolding; he did it for the seventeen years of solitude and confinement he had faced.

Then there was her. They had barely spoken when she first entered his life through the classroom door that fateful day but as time passed, he found that she smiled a lot. At him too.

Around the campus, people didn’t like her much. She was always seen cheerful and that, in their books, was really weird. People don’t usually like weird since it was different. It was out of their comfort zone. But she had a small group of friends that accepted her with all her little idiosyncrasies and quirks. They loved her smile since it made their day. Not to his surprise, she befriended the outcasts and the shunned and even the ‘wangdda’ of her class, someone who was the object of humiliation and insult.

“Hey!” she called him at lunch one day, “Mind if I sit here? “ That smile. It was full of sincerity and innocence.

“Sure.” He nodded. It had been a while since he sat with anyone for lunch. Mentally, he braced himself for a conversation with her. Many a time, he had seen her speaking animatedly to whoever that would listen.  Surprisingly, the meal was silent. However, it wasn’t really awkward. Sehun felt at ease with the girl across him. He noticed she wasn’t smiling much unless she caught him looking at her. And even then, she would flash him a quick grin before turning her eyes back to her food. He ate faster than she did and stood up to leave.

“I’ll go back first.” He told her in his ant-like voice.

A flicker of disappointment.

She smiled slightly at him. “Sure, go ahead.” He didn’t budge.

“You know what, I ‘ll wait for you. “