After Daehyun had caught me once in the restroom, he continued to bother me, following me straight after lunch to make sure I didn’t do something I’d “regret” – his words.

“Did you eat something today?”

At first, it had been annoying, him shadowing me to make sure I’d eaten, but over time, I’d grown used to his silent stance behind me. Over time, Jung Daehyun had become just a second shadow to me.

A second shadow that liked to nag, but I regress.

“What are you, my mother?” Sometimes, I let him strike up a conversation with me, humoring him with the idea that I’d eaten – when in reality, I’d done nothing of the sort. “I had a sandwich this morning, are you happy? You can ask my mom if you want proof.” She’d be able to tell him I’d made a sandwich (tuna) this morning before I left for school; of course, that sandwich had gone straight to Jaebum’s stomach, but no one needed to know this.

With the way he’d squint his eyes at me, I’d always feared that Daehyun would someday call me out for my bull . But he never did. He would narrow his eyes, fat lips pursed, but in the end, he would only nod, finding consent with my words before walking off to talk to his own friends. It was only then, that I would allow myself to sigh in relief.

And for a while, for the shortest while, I thought that I had finally achieved my fairy tale ending.

I was skinny – you could see my hip bones protruding if you’d managed to lift my shirt – and the makeup lessons with Himchan in those earlier months had made my skin seemingly flawless in the ray of light. For the first time in my fifteen years of life, I could finally say that I was legitimately happy with myself.

It was what I believed.

But I should have known that this couldn’t last forever. I was naïve. And that just made my fall all the more harder.

Just a few months since Jaebum first called me over, I found him making out with that one girl from the class over. Park Jiyeon. She was tall, smart (at least, she got good grades) and, to top it off, pretty. She was everything that someone like Jaebum deserved. He deserved more than some wannabe like me.

I broke.

I didn’t want to believe it, but the proof was standing just right in front of me. I wasn’t good enough, and I would never be good enough.

It was just that I didn’t want to believe it.

I wanted to be that Park Jiyeon. I wanted it to be my lips against Jaebum’s.

I was stupid, and that just made breaking me all the more fun.