I started working out.

After unloading all my piled stress on Himchan that one night, he’d decided that it would be a good idea for me to work out with him. He said it would make me feel more confident about myself.

I didn’t know what the hell he was talking about.

Going to the gym with Himchan had been the worst idea ever. If anything, it made me feel more self-conscious about myself, standing between all these slim, pretty people in the world. If their face didn’t work, at least their body was something to be proud of. I had neither. I was a monster.

Despite my brother’s complaints, I went to the gym fully clothed, decked out in a pair of long, loose track pants and a jacket that covered completely up to my neck. If need be, I could just as easily duck into the collar and hide away completely.

People stared at me as I entered the gym, making me want to squirm away and fade away into nothing. I was making my brother look bad. I was ruining Himchan’s hard built reputation.

But Himchan kept his head held up. I don’t know how he did it, but he did, smiling the whole time through, an arm slung proudly around me. “We came here to work out. We didn’t come here to show off our already made bodies.” His words didn’t make feel any better though.

At the gym, we met up with my brother’s friend, Yongguk.

Apparently, Yongguk’s uncle owned the place and had graciously allowed us to use the place for free following Himchan’s pleas.

Like I said, pretty people got everything they wanted.

We started out simple. I would run for an hour and cycle for the next. Then, if Yongguk had time, he’d help me around with the other devices scattered around the gym. I don’t know why I had agreed with Himchan back then. I knew it was all bogus. No matter how many hours I invested in the gym, it wasn’t going to make me look any prettier.

Every day, after sweating buckets, Himchan would stand me in front of a mirror, forcing me to examine myself. “How do you look today?” He would ask.

And every day, the answer would be the same. “Hideous.” He’d then sigh, and tell me that we’d try again tomorrow.

He told me that he wanted, just once, to hear me say something good about myself. I just wished he would give up. But it didn’t seem that we could both get what we wanted. One of us was going to have to give.

And as much as I’d rather not admit, eventually, Himchan’s work out method began working. JB had noticed me.

It was during my eighth grade year, when I was fifteen, that Jaebum blinked curiously towards me, stopping his glaze on the loser he’d never once laid his eyes on. The smile he’d flashed at me that day was as radiant as ever. “Hey, Youngjae,” I didn’t even know he knew my name, “you look good. Have you been working out?”

That day, I practically threw myself into Himchan’s arms in tears.

Maybe my ugly wasn’t totally impossible just yet.