“Hyejin, is that your mother?” Chanyeol asked curiously as a family photo slipped from her notebook when she looked for her water bottle. “Uh, yeah,” she mumbled, briefly glancing at the photo before taking a big sip of water. The boys looked at the photo with curious faces. The photo consisted of Mrs. Park, and Ara and Hyejin as children. The young Hyejin was grinning widely, showing a victory sign, while Ara smiled a bit, and their mother had her arms around her daughters' shoulders.

Sehun stole a quick glance at the photo as he closed his locker door. He and his friends, Hyejin too, were just standing at his and Kai's lockers, waiting for the two males to get their stuff and go to the schoolyard. Ara was currently helping that girl she once became acquaintances with, Kim Minah, understand something in their English textbook. As for Minah; she and Ara were only talking about school stuff, however their talks were comfortable and the two could be considered good acquaintances.

The male wrapped the scarf he'd just taken out of his locker around his neck – the weather was getting colder as November was soon going to end – and turned around, catching a glimpse of the photo before Hyejin packed it away. Now that he saw it a second time, he realized there were only three people. What about the father? His thoughts drifted off to the one day he'd been looking at the photos in Ara's flat. There had been many photos, and … none of them had shown a single male.

Their father, he thought once the group of adolescents was sauntering to the schoolyard. Had he ever heard Ara talk about him? Once in a while, the girl would drop comments about her mother, but other than that Ara barely talked about her family. In fact, Ara wasn’t often talking about herself. She told him her childhood wasn’t very exciting, but she enjoyed the normality of it. More did she not say.

But hadn't Hyejin said something that day, in their flat?

She's gone through a lot, he recalled the words. His pace unknowingly slowed down and soon there was quite a gap between his friends and him. When he looked up, he noticed that Kai and Hyejin were walking the closest to him. He walked up to them and tapped Hyejin on her shoulder. “Can I ask you something?”

Both Kai and Hyejin looked at him surprised, but the girl nodded anyway. “Sure. Just ask.”

“Alone,” Sehun added, glancing at his friend who was staring at him confusedly. “I'll be going ahead,” Kai mumbled before he fastened his pace, leaving Hyejin and Sehun alone.

“I wanted to … um … ask about your father. If that's alright,” he reluctantly asked, immediately noticing how Hyejin lightly flinched at the mention of the word 'father'. “Uh,” she mumbled. She fastened her pace a bit and took a deep breath. “He left us,” she stated. “It's a long story … let's not talk about it during the break. After classes are over, I can tell you.” She then smiled a bit.

The male nodded at what he heard and watched as the younger girl skipped forward to Kai. He left us. Somehow he had already expected something along those lines, but hearing it from Hyejin with such a serious tone was still … unusual. He'd usually hear her talking to Kai very cheerfully.

“Hmm,” he mumbled, fastening his pace as well.

When the break was over and he entered the classroom again, he saw Ara just going back to her seat. “Next time you'll spend the time with us again, won't you?” He gave her smile as he sat down, taking off his scarf and stuffing it into his bag. The girl bit back a smile, but tilted her head slightly, as if to ponder about what to do. “It's fun, isn’t it?” Sehun asked.

“Yeah, it is, and yeah, I'll do that,” Ara replied, a little smile gracing her lips. All of a sudden, a sneeze escaped her, surprising the male, but he didn’t think about it further.

The school day passed as usual, only that Ara left earlier for her part-time job today. When the girl walked out of the classroom, he accompanied her like always. “Something came up, so I won't go to your part-time job,” he easily lied. Sehun didn’t feel like there was a need to tell the girl he was asking her sister about their father. He somehow wanted to keep it to himself first.

When Ara looked up at him, he swore to have seen a flash of disappointment in the girl's eyes, but it disappeared as fast as it came. Somehow, he felt excited assuming that she wanted him to come with her. “Alright.” They bade each other goodbye and Sehun stood at the door and watched as the girl left the school building.

It had been long since he last didn’t leave school together with her. Watching her leave felt … weird. His thoughts were interrupted when he heard yet another sneeze. Shaking his head, he immediately began running after the girl. Whilst doing that, he rummaged through his bag.

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