Sojin's POV

 

Mom just looked at me when I stepped through the door. Her eyes lingered on the wet traces on my face but she stayed silent. I was thankful. The last thing I felt like doing was to talk about Minhyuk and the fact that he now was gone. In fact, I almost felt like never speaking again.

 

The only time I spoke during the whole weekend was when Minhyuk called. I tried to sound happy when he told me that their new house wasbigger than the last one, or that he loved the view. When I actually felt like falling apart. I heard that he thrived in his new home, that he was doing fine. And since he had accepted the situation, so should I. But it was really hard to process the fact that he wasn't going to walk with me to school anymore. He wasn't going to come up to me when I was getting something from my locker or smile at me when I felt insecure about something. I had to deal with everything alone. 

 

When I stepped inside the school doors that monday, I was greeted by pitiful looks. I bent my head down and pressed my bag closer to me, as I hurried towards my locker. But before I reached it, I ran into something hard that made me lose balance. But before I could fall and hit the floor, someone catched me. I stared up at Peniel and felt my face grow hot. He also looked uncomfortable and let me go once he was sure I had regained my balance. He cleared his throat and scratched the back of his neck awkwardly.

 

"Are you okay?" he asked, looking behind me.

 

"Yes. Sorry for walking into you", I replied quietly.

 

I tried to walk past him, but he stepped in the way. I stared at his shoes and blinked in confusion.

 

"You do realize that we're not going to leave you alone, don't you?" he asked. 

 

"U-uh-I..." was the only thing I got out before I trailed off.

 

"Great. Now that that's cleared up, let's go to class."

 

And I didn't really have anything else to say about it. So that led to an awkward walk to my classroom before Peniel headed to his class. But even though the two of us were as awkward as could be, it still felt nice. He wasn't anywhere near filling the emptiness of Minhyuk, but he managed to make me feel a little less alone.

 

Minhyuk's POV

 

"Watch it, new kid."

 

The push was hard enough to make me hit the wall behind me. Even though tears built up in my eyes, I just clenched my jaw and straigtened up. All day had been like that. No one seemed to want to talk to me, since I was the new kid. And I hadn't really been that great at taking contact either, I'd been worrying over Sojin every second of the day, which had resulted in me being too unfocused to actually make contact with any other student. But it was the first time I felt unaccepted at a new school. They looked at me as if I was scum.