Chapter Three
                  {Trouble

Just like that, Sandara Park left me in a daze.

In a snap of a finger, she was in my arms, and in another snap, she dissolves like a deceitful, yet alluring illusion. I was brutally knocked right off cloud nine and landed on the cold hard ground by nobody but Sandara Park's best friend, Park Bom. A long, dejected frown masked my once animated visage. I sighed. She always disappears. Even whens she's firmly caught between my fingers, she always finds a loophole to slip away. 

I pushed through the thick crowd, taking regular sips from the random red cup some stranger had offered to me. The liquor's bitter taste burned down my throat and allowed my troubled psyche placidity, though it is very minimal. 

I spotted Bom chatting with Choi Siwon, my friend Seunghyun's older brother. I instantly paled, seeing Dara was no longer in her midst. 

.

Knowing Park Bom's meager attention span, she might have taken her eyes off of Dara for five minutes and left her all alone and confused. With her alone, it gives many of these bastards the opportunity to drag her away and take advantage of her naïvety. I furrowed my eyebrows as my neck craned in many directions as I searched for her in panic. 

Where is she?

Where could she possibly be?

She was nowhere to be found. 

But all of a sudden, a too familiar voice was heard whimpering nearby.

My lungs constricted and my stomach churned.

Oh no.

My shoulders erected and I darted towards the direction of the heart-wrenching, yet almost inaudibe cries. I froze in fear. Indeed, it was her.

She was trapped between some bastard's arms. The bastard being Jang Wooyoung, the douchebag she was dancing with earlier. His disgusting lips were staining her pure skin, with one arm s around her waist and a hand groping forbidden places. My blood started to boil and my fist clenched.

I strode closer and raised my fist to land a punch on the bastard's face with my jaw clenced. But before I even laid a finger on him, in a blink of an eye, he was already on the ground with a bleeding lip.

"Get...your...filthy...hands...off...of...her...you...bastard!"

A low menacing growl threatened Wooyoung, pausing between every word to intimidate. Wooyoung got up by himself and muttered a short apology before bowing quickly and running away with a whimper. What a wuss. 

"Are you okay?" A concerned voice asked Dara, who was clearly horrified. She was already choking up hysterically, yet she encircled her arms around him and buried her beautiful face, strewn with tears and mascara against his chest, sobbing several shaky "Thank you's". But all did was I just stand there and blinked, dumbfounded. I studied the face of the man who was one step ahead, making the corner of my lips curl up into  a deep frown. He did not look like he went to our school, nor like anyone who lived in this neighborhood at all. I had to admit, he was handsome. Too handsome. But then, the look on his face was all too familiar. 

He had that face. 

That same face that spread through almost every guy's features whenever they looked at her. 

He was