Prom.

            “Naeun, do you think Taemin is going to take you to prom?”

            I snorted. “No.”

            Lizzy looked at me, puzzled. “Don’t you want him to ask you?”

            “Nope.”

            That night, I knocked on Myungsoo’s door.

            “Hey,” I said. “Can I come in?”

            Myungsoo nodded, silent. He closed the door shut and went back to his desk. I stood there in his room, pretending that I was completely intrigued with the poster of DBSK on his wall.

            “So,” Myungsoo said slowly. “What brings you here again?”

            “Myungsoo,” I said cautiously. “Are you…are you going to prom? It’s your senior year.”

            “No,” Myungsoo immediately said. “I’m not.”

            “Why?” I asked. “It’s a once in a lifetime event. You’ll never get to have prom again.”

            “No one to go with,” he said simply as he opened his closet to take out a new shirt.

            That was when I saw it.

            The red mask.

            Sitting on the top shelf.

            Myungsoo noticed my staring at something and looked in his closet to see what it was. Then his eyes widened. He saw it too.

            “So,” I said quietly. “It was you.”

            Myungsoo didn’t say anything.

            “Then that means you were the one who put the red rose in my locker on the day Taemin asked me to homecoming, right?”

            He still didn’t say anything.

“I know you were the one who popped out of nowhere during homecoming,” I said. “I’ve known it for a long time but I kept my silence about it. But we should talk about it now, shouldn’t we?”

            “It wasn’t me.”

            “Yes it was,” I pressed. “Why are you still denying it?”

            “Didn’t you hear what I just said?”

            “Why can’t you just admit it?” I asked him. “Why?” He and I both knew that we weren’t just talking about masks anymore.

            Myungsoo sighed and ran his fingers through his hair, stressed. “Because,” he said, his voice quiet, “because you and me are about to become stepbrother and stepsister, remember?”

            “If you knew that, then why did you do it in the first place? You led me on.”

            “No I didn’t.”

            “You did and you know it.”

            Myungsoo failed to say anything after my comeback. His silence frustrated me.

            “I know about the whole stepbrother and stepsister thing,” I said. “I have known. I’m not stupid. But…Myungsoo, I don’t know what you’re going to do after high school. You’re mysterious like that. I don’t know if I can wait until my junior or senior prom to go with you. If it’s in the moment, then it has to happen. I don’t want to wait. I don’t want to think about the ‘what if’s’ and the ‘what could’ve been’. If you’re worried that people would question us then you don’t have to worry because we can just say that it’s a onetime thing and they’ll just shrug us off it’ll be—

            “—I said that I’m not going to go.” And with that, I knew that the conversation was done and there was nothing else I could do or say.

            I went back to my room in a sulk. You know those moods where you’re sad, and you feel really lonely and defeated and just…really down. But not to the brink of crying. If anything, you can’t cry. The tears won’t come. And you’re just really, really sad. In a state of depression. And the only person who can make you feel better fails to do the curing.

            A senior did eventually ask me. He was on student council. Those seniors on student council always needed dates.

            His name was Choi Minhyuk. Basketball player, good looking, has abs. We took pictures together with the group and danced here and there. I slow danced with him and it’d been all very platonic.

            Taemin hadn’t even showed up to prom, strangely enough. I didn’t see him for the entire night. Rumor had it that he didn’t even ask anyone and ditched prom to head up to his parent’s beach house in Jeju Island instead. Who knows.

            When I got home from prom, the entire house was silent as I got washed up and ready for bed. I stopped in front of Myungsoo’s room, wondering if I should come in and say anything. My hand stayed on the doorknob, hesitant, but then I ended up just going back to my room anyways.

            To be honest, I’d half-expected Myungsoo to pop in out of nowhere at prom, ready to take me away and give me the best night of my life.

            But he hadn’t. He really hadn’t gone to his senior prom, even with another girl. No words can describe how disappointed I felt.

A/N: HUGE chapter coming up soon! Thank you for the patience everyone <3 not abandoning this story, don't worry!