It was Myungsoo’s very first day at his new high school. He had recently moved from Seoul into Gwangju.

   Normally, someone his age would have been excited to be in a new environment. Myungsoo, however, had the mentality of a kindergartener. He wanted to go home, to stay away from new people, and to stay in his own personal space. These immature thoughts hadn’t come out of nowhere, though. Myungsoo hated school. He especially hated the idea of moving to a new one, and the idea of interacting with new, if any, people. If he could, he would have taken an online high school course. He had begged his parents during the summer, but they had never granted his request. They were old-fashioned, and thought of physical school as the only form of education for their children.

  Myungsoo had mixed feelings about Gwangju. The Gwangju environment wasn’t all that different from Seoul; it was just less like a crowded city. The vulgarity and dirt he saw on the walls of Seoul high schools were now replaced with old, chipped paint. It looked homely to him.

 Seoul on the other hand, had never looked homely to Myungsoo. For him, it was a treacherous place, filled with regrets and bad memories. Seoul was the place where his life had gotten muddled up forever.

--

  The last bell of the morning rang loudly, making it known to all that the first class of the day was about to start.

Myungsoo walked leisurely into the room, which in turn, caused him to receive a dirty look from the professor.

   “Do it again, and I’ll just mark you absent next time,” scolded the professor.

 Myungsoo smirked at his comment. His eyes scanned the classroom. Most of the seats are full, he noticed. There was only one seat left, next to a girl.

Fair enough. She won’t bother me. Girls are usually quiet around me… he thought.

Until they see my face.

He approached the seat cautiously and sat down, simply because he had no other choice.

When he sat down, he immediately felt how old and rickety the desk was. If he hadn’t sat down as slowly as he had, the chair would have tumbled over.

Myungsoo easily became bored of the lesson being taught at the front of room. He noticed that the legs of his chair were uneven, so it wobbled if he shifted his weight.

  This newfound knowledge caused excitement to stir within him. He smiled as he shifted his weight back and forth on the chair, causing it to creak each time. He closed his eyes and swung on the chair, ignoring the teacher’s lesson.

 Myungsoo heard an angry, hushed hiss come from his side. “Can you stop that?”

 Hmm. Hasn’t even been five minutes yet and I’m causing trouble.  

  He smirked in return, and kept swinging the chair.

After a full minute of his repeated swinging, he suddenly felt a sharp pain on his shoulder. He had been smacked by someone.

“I’ve already told you to stop swinging on that chair. Can you stop it now?” asked the voice again.

 Myungsoo thought about it. He had swung his chair obnoxiously enough to receive curious looks from his new classmates. They started to whisper to each other. He knew that they were whispering about him. A few of the girls in his row giggled from a distance.

  The girl who had hit Myungsoo was definitely not in the mood to giggle, however. She had hit him with a lot of force. The sound that had come from her smack caused even more people to stare at the scene. The diligent note-taking students glowered at him for causing a disturbance.

 He didn’t want to make any new friends today, and he knew that if he if he kept swinging, he probably would. People were always attracted to troublemakers.

 He stopped.

   “Sorry.”

  He stopped swinging the chair. He still didn’t pay attention to the lesson however, because when he looked at the board, he couldn’t see a thing. His seat was placed all the way in the back.

 Obviously, he thought. I was so late to class.

  The chalkboard simply looked like a green rectangle in his eyes.

 He had given up on taking notes. It was impossible. He checked his phone for the time. Only five minutes had passed. He sighed, and quickly drifted off to sleep.

When he woke up, his body was sprawled on the floor, limbs tangled up in awkward positions. He blinked in confusion.

Did I fall on the floor while sleeping? Why didn’t anyone wake me up?, he wondered.

He looked up. He saw a silhouette of a pale girl taking notes above him.

Was that the voice who told me to shut up earlier? She hasn’t woken me up either.

What a rude girl.... Whatever.

Still on the floor, he pulled out his phone and checked the time.

8:30 A.M., it read.

Class still isn’t over! Ugh.

 He groaned, and grudgingly worked his way back into his seat. Myungsoo still couldn’t see the board, so he lost interest in the lesson.

Again.

 He decided that scolding the rude girl wasn’t a bad idea.

   “Why didn’t you wake me up?” he asked, giving her a slight poke on her arm.

 There was a sharp, irritated intake of breath that came from her. He realized now, that this was definitely the person who had smacked him earlier. This person exuded the same type of anger. She turned her head to look at him.

Myungsoo looked at her with disinterest. Bangs, pale, skinny face. So unoriginal. This was the majority of girls in Korea, let alone Gwangju.

    Nothing special.

He also noted that she looked very tired and aggravated.

   Not a morning person, huh? he mused.

Her bangs were long enough to protrude into her face, and they covered her eyes.

   Can she even see me through her bangs right now?

 As if to answer that question, she briskly blew them out of her face. Myungsoo felt cold shivers go down his spine after she had done that. He shivered because he felt her cold breath against his skin, but there was also one other thing that had shocked him enough to the point of shivering.

Now that her hair was not covering her face, Myungsoo could see it in detail. It was also long, but also round and wide. It was also pale, to the point of looking sickly. Her thick, jet-black hair framed her pale white face in wavy locks. The black and white effect from her skin and hair reminded him of the yin and yang symbol. Within this yin and yang symbol, surprisingly, there was a streak of yellow.

 Her eyes.

 Myungsoo gazed into them, and was shocked at the fact that they were a dull golden-emerald, just like his own.

He couldn’t believe it. He had never previously met someone of his own age who had his eyes. Golden-emerald was such a strange color for an Asian. The girl was not a foreigner either, she had native Korean looks.

This could only mean one thing. He had finally met someone that was similar to him.

A vampire.

Myungsoo wondered about it further.

Was she a vampire, or was she genetically mutated… to capture him?

He let out a gasp.

The pale girl blinked in response to his gasp, bringing Myungsoo out of his stupor.

He took note of her facial expression. Her eyebrows were furrowed in slight anger, and a hint of curiosity. She had a faint frown on her face.

   “I didn’t want to wake you up. You looked kinda peaceful, I guess.” the girl began.

   “And anyways, I don’t know you.” 

    “… Do you want to know me?” blurted Myungsoo, in spite of himself.

Myungsoo was shocked at his own words. How could he have said something like that? Wasn’t he the same person who had decided earlier, that he wouldn’t interact with anyone?

He started to feel ridiculous.

He didn’t even know her! He hadn’t meant to flirt with her either. It was just her eyes ...

He had been caught off guard. He was genuinely curious about her. He put on a calm expression and waited for her answer.

  “No.” 

With that short answer, the girl gave him an indifferent look, and turned her gaze back down to her notebook.

Myungsoo blinked in confusion.

Even if he hadn’t flirted with anyone in a while, he still thought that he had quite a bit of charm. No girl had ever refused him when he flirted with them previously. He couldn’t understand her actions.

Myungsoo felt as if he had been wronged.

   Even if I wasn’t being so creepy with my flirting, and just plain being friendly, she's being rude.

   “Why not?”, he asked.

The girl looked back at him again. Her golden eyes scanned his profile. She noticed how messed up his hair was, how his tie was loosened, his collar ed.

He had the look of a stray dog.

She raised her eyebrows, as if to judge him. She looked away again.

Myungsoo’s face scrunched up with frustration.

   Why does she keep rejecting me!?!

He tapped her shoulder. “Hey! I asked you a question…Miss--”

His voice trailed off. He was trying to get a good look at her nametag. He extended his body over in front of her so that he could see it.

Her name tag was placed on the front of her coat’s pocket. It was a dark shade of navy blue. 배 수지, it read, in block letters.

   ”Suzy?” he asked.

 She didn’t reply. Her gaze switched from her notebook to the board.

Myungsoo watched her as she lazily gazed up at it, while propping her hand under her face. Still without giving him a glance, he noted.

  After a long pause, she finally responded.

   “Let’s use honorifics… Myungsoo-nim.”

   “How do you know my name?!!?” asked Myungsoo.

   “When you were asleep, your name tag was out there in the open, for me to see.” she smirked.

Her gaze was still fixed on the board. Myungsoo felt disturbed by her lack of interest in the conversation.

   “Oh. Right. Okay. Well, why haven’t you answered my other question?” he asked.

   “You still haven’t applied honorifics to your speech.” she replied, sticking out her tongue.

Myungsoo realized she was right. He didn’t end any of his questions with “yo”, and he had called her Suzy without any honorifics earlier. He had been speaking to her as if she was a friend. Myungsoo was surprised yet again by his actions. Even if he hated interacting with people, he usually had manners when he did.

This girl was causing him to do all kinds of things he didn’t normally do.

    “Oh. Fine. Suzy-ssi….” he began.

   “Why--?” He stopped. He realized that he had forgotten the question that he wanted to ask.

   “Wait. What was I going to ask again?” he wondered out loud.

She gave him a side glance. Myungsoo’s body froze again at the sight of her yellow eyes.

   “How am I supposed to know?” she replied.

With that statement, her eyes left him, and she turned to look at the board again.

He tried to remember what he was going to ask. His thoughts were interrupted by the professor’s voice.  His announcement rang throughout the classroom.

   “These seats are your permanent seats after today. It’s annoying to take attendance everyday otherwise, so deal with it.”

Myungsoo heard an obvious sigh come out of Suzy’s mouth, after the professor had finished speaking. He felt hurt.

   She doesn’t want to sit next to me?