Hi readers, just a quick note the everything written in this font means it is a text or a message. Thanks!

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That tap on the shoulder at the station filled my mind on the whole train trip home. Somehow, that one single tap was able to transport me back on all these memories and where all of this first started. It reminded me on all those times I spent with those I loved, those I still love and those I’ve lost. A part of this almost felt like a déjà vu – it was as if I had experienced the same thing somewhere else before. Even if memories had been forgotten, they can always be rediscovered – they’re just lying in the back of your head, waiting for something to remind you of them again. But memories – they can never be relived no matter how many times you wish to relive them.

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(flashback continues from previous chapter)

“Did you do well in the auditions?”
I heard a voice emerge amidst the silence that initiated after our short introductions. The voice was soft, with a tint of huskiness and deepness to it – a voice that sounded playful but still managed to have a slight dominance – all in all, intriguing. I began drifting off into my own thoughts before I was called back by that same voice, a hand waving in front of my face to grab my attention. I quickly snapped out of my dazed state and looked into his eyes. His face that was  originally scrunched in confusion softened into a look of amusement.

“What are you thinking about? A boy? Me?” he chuckled a little with his face slightly leaned in, his right hand pointing at himself.

“What?!” I exclaimed and instantly turned red, trying to deny his statement by laughing it off but it didn’t work. I felt a million pairs of eyes popping up into my direction. I shyly scanned the train to meet those few angry pair of eyes, but happened to stumble upon a pair of smiley eyes. I looked down nervously after realising the owner of them.

“Caught you.”

He saw that the redness in my cheeks weren’t fading away, so he hurriedly promised not to tease me about it again. Although I was relieved in the end, I stared blankly at the ceiling of the moving train, groaning in frustration out of ruining another first impression. He probably thought I was some senseless girl who was no fun. I sighed again before catching his eyes. He suddenly turned to me as if he instantly felt my eyes on him, but it turned out that he just wanted to ask a question.
“What are your plans then? You have to try again next year for the auditions, it’ll be fun!”

I appreciated so much the fact that he was able to be so cheerful about everything all the time, especially since I was so dull and boring most of the time. During the first half of the train trip while I was quietly observing him, I would see him cracking jokes at Heejin, in attempt to lighten her mood. Other times, he would try to involve others in conversations to make sure that no one felt left out. I just didn’t know how to react to his liveliness, especially since I barely talked to people I had just met.
“Yeah! I’ll definitely try out next year. Maybe I’ll just join the makeup and costuming crew this year.”
“You should! You can put makeup on me, I trust you.”

Baekhyun lighted up with excitement whilst I just stared at him with a stunned smile. For a second I mentally scolded the boy in front of me for being so trusting but his act of friendliness towards this stranger that he had only just met only made me more fascinated by his personality. I smiled at him and was about to tell him not to trust me (because my makeup skills were so atrocious) before a vibration was felt from my left pocket, signalling that I had a text to attend to. I excused myself before scooping my pink phone out, checking for the sender of the text.
Baekhyun casually complimented me on my unique phone choice and I responded with a smile but I didn’t look up from my phone. I couldn’t… because another boy had filled my mind. The text was from Kyungsoo.

I… I’m sorry.

I couldn’t take my eyes off it. The hesitation that filled his mind while he was sending this text – I could feel all of it at that moment. My fingers slid over the keypad on my phone, my head demanding me to ask him what was wrong but my fingers couldn’t execute these orders. I flipped the screen of my phone down and hurriedly slipped it back into my pocket. I felt my cheeks heat up at the sudden return of the boy whom I had lost contact with for two months before I looked outside the window at the surroundings to calm myself.
“Hey, you okay?” Baekhyun looked up at me with his hands in his pocket, his back slouched against the train doors. I simply nodded and he nodded back slowly in understanding, probably because he ‘trusted’ me to tell the truth.

Well that was one thing he got wrong, since I never told the truth when I was hit with a massive wave of feelings that would cause my brain to spiral into blank mode. The train rocked to a stop as Heejin and I grabbed our bags and threw them over our shoulders, ready to leave the train. For a second, I swore I saw Baekhyun bounce up slightly in alarm as the train doors opened, before he composed himself and looked sneakily around to see if anyone saw that slight moment of embarrassment. ‘I saw,’ I wanted to say; but still, no words came out of my mouth.

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(10 days later/after the audition day & train trip)

It only took a matter of 10 days after that train trip for my life to feel right again. On the odd (or not) day, Heejin would spam me with messages about her little (accidental) meetings with Baekhyun. She had excitedly but shyly at the same time (you see, my friend is quite bipolar) exclaimed that he told her about wanting to have a relationship talk with her after school today (apparently relationship talk meant two friends talking about how they felt about their friendship) and I urged her that it was the perfect opportunity to confess. After a while of convincing her, she complied and agreed to do it tonight. Although this idea of ‘relationship talk’ seemed quite interesting, it was surprising for me the fact that a boy would bring up having these types of talks, for I honestly did not know that boys were capable of being so deep and meaningful at times as well.

I had met Baekhyun a few times after our first meeting in these past 10 days, most of them occurring on the train. Although at times, conversation ran slightly dry, he was always the first to initiate the conversation again, listening intently to my responses and occasionally smiling and nodding in understanding.

A few nights back, after the annual Girls’ and Boys’ school quiz night had ended, a group of my friends and Baekhyun were stuck on the train due to power failure. We all somehow stumbled upon the topic of parents and family during our conversation. He asked me about my relationship with my family and I told him that I had a bad relationship with my father due to the lack of time he had spent with me during childhood. While I was telling him about my family, I saw his eyes soften up into a mix of sadness and understanding.

“It’s rare to even see my dad at home, he’s too busy. I haven’t even had a meal with him in a while.”
We all looked up at him in silence, surprised to see a more sentimental side of Baekhyun. I waited for him to continue talking. “You know, I think our parent’s generation are just too conservative,” he paused for a second in thought as he stared at a train pole, “they think that if the father works endlessly and earns the money, that they’re showing love for their children.”

He slipped his hands casually into his pockets, clearly still in deep thought as he looked up at me, his eyes more mature and serious than usual. I swallowed and took a slight breath before opening my mouth to speak.

“But they’re wrong. Once they’ve missed the timing with their children, once we pass our childhood,” I bit my lips while I tore my gaze off of him, words turning almost into a whisper, “it’s hard to go back to how it used to be.” I glanced up into his eyes, those eyes that reflected surprise and I could feel them questioning me on how I knew how he felt. At that moment, it felt almost like there were only the two of us on the train, even though our friends were standing there, eyeing our sudden intense outburst of heartfelt emotions. One side of his lips curved up into a slight smile, and he nodded in agreement to my words.

After that, the night slipped by quickly as if everything was back to normal again, that moment lost in the rush of chatter within our group of friends. However, I couldn’t stop thinking about the words that he had said. It was on this night when I realised that Baekhyun had always kept his feelings locked up inside of him, just like I had, although he was just hiding them under his bright and bubbly façade while I was simply unwilling to show my emotions. He continued joking to me that evening, pressing the open buttons and jokingly blaming me for pressing them. That only made me more heartbroken – seeing him hide his emotions under his immense amount of jokes and smiles just so that others wouldn't have their moods ruined because of his gloominess. I felt regretful for all the times that I ruined my friends' moods for being sentimental and depressed, constantly groaning but not willing to tell them about my problems. Here was a boy sitting right in front of me, hiding his emotions so that others wouldn't have to suffer for him whilst I constantly displayed my misery and self-pity, unwilling to accept the help of friends even when they offered. I tried to joke back at him but became flustered as I didn’t know how to react, but he understood that I wasn't much of a joker, so he stopped pressing buttons and blaming me for it. I had a good laugh though, when he jumped out of his seat in shock at the sudden opening of the doors (after I pressed the button to surprise him as he was blanking out) and he immediately looked over at me and squinted his eyes suspiciously. I just remember laughing at him.

That evening, I thought I felt his eyes staring at me while I wasn’t talking. I sat in the corner on the row of seats, and everyone was so enthusiastic in chatting while I sat there, playing with my fingers and looking out at the night sky. Even as I stood up and walked out at my station, I turned back to see him looking at me. Baekhyun was mysterious in his own ways, and sometimes his stares spoke of so much emotion that I couldn’t understand his feelings. Despite this, the last thing I would've thought of doing was falling for his mysterious charms, as I knew how much Heejin liked him.

As for Kyungsoo, he was still a mystery to me. Even though I had been so curious to his whereabouts for the past two months, I did not ask more into it as I believed he had his own reasons. On the night that I received the apology through the text from him, I had just casually joked to him that I wasn’t going to talk to him anymore because he had broken his promises. After he did not reply for a few minutes, I was worried that I had hurt his feelings if he had not realised it was a joke, so I just told him everything was fine and updated him on what I did in the holidays.

But… aren’t you curious as to why I left for so long? And… broke the promise?

He was right, I was curious. The Kyungsoo that I knew however wouldn’t break a promise without a good reason. I laughed though at his ‘…’ at the beginning of most of his sentences. Kyungsoo was cute after all.

What? You left? When??

I waited patiently for a response while smiling, hoping that he’ll get the cue to let it go and not be worried about it anymore. A few seconds passed and a message popped up on the screen.

Thank you.

Our conversations stayed quite the same as it had before the holidays, and I still enjoyed talking to Kyungsoo every day. I also agreed to join the Girls’ and Boys’ combined choir at his request (Heejin and Baekhyun were already in the choir), and I had met him for the first time in a few months two days ago when I attended the rehearsal. Although there were very few exchanges between the two of us that morning (we were both shy and didn’t know how to approach each other), Heejin managed to realise that there was more to our relationship than just a few words and was not hesitant to tease me about it. The boys sat in the row behind me, so I tried to turn and sneak some glances at him a few times and smiled after I turned back to face the front. I managed to feel a pair of eyes stare into the back of my head a few times that morning as well, and as I shook these thoughts out of my head and tried to study the song in front of me, a finger tapped at my shoulder. Slightly alarmed, I looked around me to see who the tapper was. It wasn’t Heejin or the other girl sitting next to me, so it had to be… one of the boys??

I turned back to look at the boys on my left side and spotted Kyungsoo sitting there, playing with his fingers. I looked at him with my head cocked to the side, with a hint of suspicion. I turned back on my other side and spotted Baekhyun sitting there, talking to his friend. He noticed my eyes on him, and quickly shifted his eyes onto me with a curious expression. I could not tell though whether his expression was curious or just amused (after all, he was quite the joker). My eyes shifted between Baekhyun and the friend that he had been talking to, and I felt awkward and sorry to have stopped their conversation. I quickly mumbled a “Hey” with a slight wave and smile at Baekhyun, and then turned back around swiftly to face the front. Feeling my face burn up at that awkward greeting, I closed my eyes and tried to erase that incident from my mind. And that morning at that moment from somewhere behind me, I heard a soft snicker.

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Hi guys!! I hope you all enjoyed this chapter, because I certainly enjoyed writing this more too.
There was much more interaction between characters and I hope you enjoy how I have portrayed Baekhyun and
Kyungsoo so far. Hope you guys can comment more and subscribe if you're a new reader and is enjoying my story!
Thanks lovelies ^o^

(I hope I can update regularly too, but now there's school and it's a bit hard... nonetheless, I will try my best!!)