You blink anxiously behind your specs, trying to differentiate reality from hallucination. You even rubbed the lenses, just to make sure nothing was fogging your vision. But no, you’re not hallucinating. This is reality. It’s him!

“Good morning. I’m Kim Joonmyun. But you can call me Suho.” He calmly introduces himself, ending with a gentle smile that could stop a girl’s heart. You should know.  “It’s nice to meet you all. I’m looking forward on spending the school year with you.” He continues.

Right beside him was the second transferee, looking all disinterested and bored. He had blonde hair, striking features and was way taller than Suho. He contrasts Suho’s prim and proper appearance just by looking at his partly ed uniform and messy hair.

 “Yo. I’m Kris Wu.” He ends with a smirk, drawing gasps from all over the room. Ugh, so annoying. You thought, rolling your eyes. But it’s better this way, they can fawn over that arrogant-looking guy as much as they want as long as they don’t touch Suho.

“So you’ve met them already. Our problem now is your seats. Hmm… where should I put you two… “ Mr. Park adjusts his glasses and scans the room, ignoring the puppy eye stares of every girl as he tried to look for vacant chairs. “… Ah! There!” He points to the two vacant seats at each of your side. “Are you two okay with being one seat apart?” He asks them. Suho nods while Kris just shrugs. “Fine then, you two sit there beside the glasses girl.”

What? Th-they’re going to sit beside me? Oh no, I’m going to die early. You try your best not to appear fidgety or happy while they proceeded to sit together at each of your side. Suho was seated comfortably at your left while Kris was slumping in his seat, his long legs almost reaching your place. You could feel the heavy tension under the glares of your female classmates and the violent pounding against your chest.

Gulping down some courage, you slowly steal a peek to the left and watched Suho look around the classroom. He momentarily stopped when he glanced at you and caught you red-handedly staring at him. He flashes you a quick smile, and you immediately look away out of embarrassment, feeling the heat rise up towards your face. You try to save yourself from further humiliation and buried your blushing face in your arms again.

“So everything’s all settled already. I hope we all get along well with each other and only encounter minimal problems along the way. Moving on, I will have to ask you to get a one-fourth sized sheet of paper…” Mr. Park carries, explaining about an activity concerning the expectations for the whole year.

You pause and gawk emptily at the blank sheet of paper before your four eyes. Expectations? You can’t think of any. Except for one.

 That this is going to be one whole heck of a year.

~~

When hearing the word “Paradise”, the next idea that pops into your mind after the boy group Infinite is library. Yes, libraries are your own mini versions of the seventh heaven. More often than not, people find you sitting at the corner of the bookshelf, your concentration totally captured by a page. It should only take a minute or two to get you completely immersed into a story.

You spend most of the time reading about world history and Greek mythology. Delving deep into both fantasy and reality was your favorite pastime. You’ve borrowed countless of books related to the genres mentioned. So much that the librarian already knows you and even calls you the “old-fashioned girl”. You take that as a compliment, though.

Anyway, so here you are in your happy place, leaning against the world history bookshelf while reading about the French Revolution.  You were just reading about Marie Antoinette’s profile when you peripherally noticed a pair of shoes pass by. You ignore it, however, and resumed reading.

“You like reading world history?”  A male voice asks out of nowhere.

You stop reading and check whose voice it belonged to before replying to the person, slowly starting from the remarkably shined shoes up to the face. Realization hit you like a speeding car, your thoughts –instead of limbs and blood –were scattered all over the place when you recognized that the boy was Suho. It took you around a minute to pull yourself together and manage to answer with a timid nod.

“Me too.” He continues, his face lighting up after your affirmation.

 “By the way, we’re seatmates, right? You probably know me from yesterday, but I’ll still introduce myself again. I’m Suho. What’s your name?” He hunches over a little and extends his flawless, porcelain-like arm to you. You glance nervously at the surroundings, worried that there’d be lurking fangirls right at the moment. Momentarily hesitating, you finally reached out and returned an awkward handshake together with your name. Oh my, he has soft hands.

“Nice. I was worried you were scared of me yesterday.” He releases from the grip.

“No! I mean, I was just not feeling well that time. I wasn’t intimidated, really.” You frantically wave your hands in front of you while you clarified. “Sorry if I gave you the wrong impression.” The familiar surge of heat builds up towards your face again.

“Oh, please don’t apologize. You did nothing wrong. And I’m actually glad that you’re not scared of me or anything .” He scratches his head and gives you an eye smile. Oh great. My heart.

“So …” He clears his throat. “What book are you reading?” He squints at cover page while you shakily hold it up. “The French Revolution? Funny, I was looking for the same topic, too. Do you mind if I read with you?”

Read with me? You gulp down the lump in your throat and barely answered properly. “Uhh, yeah… sure.”

After asking for your permission, he wastes no time and immediately sits beside you, the smell of his sweet but manly cologne dispersing towards your nose. You freeze the split second your bodies bump into contact, his warmth spreading onto yours at a snail’s pace. Thank God the book was kind of big, or else you’d die because of too much proximity. However, it was not big enough to further extend the distance between the you two and still left you nervous.

You try to relax and divert yourself from the distraction, steadily inhaling and exhaling big puffs of air as you tried to focus more on reading rather than how both of your body warmth merged. At the corner of your eye, you can’t help but notice his long eyelashes as he batted them while he read and his immaculately white skin that effortlessly glowed from up close. No woman, get back to reading and focus! You mentally slap yourself.

But for the second time, you fail to break away under his spell. Instead, you wonder if he remembers you. If he still kept your lucky charm bracelet. You really want to ask him, but you still don’t have the guts to ask him. He might’ve forgotten about it already and find you weird instead, and you don’t want to ruin the moment yet.

“Joonmyun!” Talking about ruining a moment, another male voice interrupts, causing the both of you to look up.

“Ya, did you know that I looked everywhere for you and you were just here all along? Aish.” It was Kris, with his untamed hair and piercing stare. He directs his hole-boring gaze at you, as if assessing you, and then ignores you. “Anyway, the principal is looking for us. He said he had some important stuff to say to us. Let’s go.” His stare once again lingers at you.

“Ah, is that so? “ He replies to him. He turns to you. “I have to go. It was nice meeting you, by the way. See you later!” He pats your shoulder and gets up, tailing after Kris out towards the exit. You were left sitting there, both relieved and disappointed from his departure.

“See you later.” His last sentence plays on repeat mode in your auditory cortex, leaving your mind momentarily blank. Slightly recovering, you gently the lucky shoulder, feeling the warmth from his touch that still remained. Too bad, you didn’t have the chance to have a proper conversation with him. But that’s okay, at least you’ve talked with each other again. After so many years.

You went on and continued browsing through bloody pictures of European war and revolution, imagining yourself to be actually inside those scenes. A scary thought occurs to you wherein you and Suho become the victims of war, while the soldiers are the crazy sasaeng fangirls of his, seizing and strangling you mercilessly. You shudder at the thought.

Tch, who are you kidding? As if that’ll ever happen. As if Suho will fall in love with you anyway. Those kinds of things where the popular boy falls in love with an ordinary girl only exists in movies. This is the harsh reality you are talking about.

Sighing, you close the book and placed it back where you got it, tucking it carefully between the hard-bound spines. The bell rings just after you put it back, and you grab your bag while you head for the door with a new feeling of excitement rushing within you, looking forward for class for the first time.