o1

I thought.

“Ah—I look weird on this uniform!” said Hana, my best friend—the only one.

She was the type that would always complain about her looks—whether about her weight, her height, her hair, basically everything—but someone that could always give you a shoulder to cry on. In short, she’s a real good friend no matter how annoying she could be.

“No. You look cute,” I replied, a little uninterested of that topic.

“I’m not,” she denied, as always. “Don’t you see every guy is staring at you?”

I just shook my head, didn’t want to talk about it.

Well, I knew I couldn’t deny the truth either. Everyone found me attractive—I didn’t understand why myself—and some said that I had a more than average face. But it wasn’t something that I proud to have. More so, it felt like a disturbance.

“Come on, we’re already a senior high school student! The perfect time to look for hot guys,” Hana blabbered, too much watching drama, I guessed.

“We must think about university,” I denied.

“You’re so boring,” she hissed, “that’s why so many people afraid to talk with you. You always give a cold aura.”

Ah, that was true. People afraid of me, afraid of my beauty—that’s what Hana always claimed.

“That’s good. I like being alone,” I smiled, just so I could make her annoyed.

“You should start open your mind and look around,” she adviced, leaning into her desk with a bright smile on her face. “When you changed your mind, you’ll see that everything is so pretty.”



Pretty?

It would be nice if I could see pretty things around me. I did enjoy my loneliness, how I could do everything I want and how I felt the comforting silence myself—but sometimes, seeing how Hana smiled upon telling me the newest gossips or jokes, made me wonder what’s so fun about school life. I became curious.

“Okay, class. I’m going to re-arrange the seats,” our formal teacher, Mr. Park, announced from behind his desk.

While all of my classmates groaned in disagreement, I was just silently packing all my books and waiting for my turn to take the random seat number. I wasn’t really care where I would end up sit on. It wasn’t a big deal at all.

“You’re number eight?!” Hana screamed in horror, after she got number twenty with her. “How can I continue my life?”

“You’re too overreacting,” I commented, but still smiled afterall. “We can still talk in break times.”

“You don’t understand! The full of tense voiceless talk that we make between the lessons is what makes school fun!” she reasoned, kicking her feet against the floor.

“Whatever, you can do that with other friends,” I chuckled, getting ready to move.

Her eyes widened, with both eyebrows perfectly bent down. “How can you talk like that—”

“Jung Hana, stop talking and move to your seat,” Mr. Park hit Hana’s head with rolled paper, and while she got into an unnecessary debate with him, I walked into my new seat near the window.

It was a perfect seat, really.

Since my left side was the window, I could see the view of our school’s field and the blue sky whenever I got bored of the lesson. I was glad to get that spot.

But then I heard a chair beside me being dragged out, causing me to turn and looked.

“Uh, it’s you,” a guy with short black hair muttered, looking a little surprise to see I was there.

I knew him.

He was Bang Yongguk, my classmate since the second grade of middle school. We never did really talk before but happened to nod our head or threw a smile whenever our eyes met out of nothing. Though, from the way I saw him, he must be a good guy.

“Whoa, you’re next to her!” a guy beside Yongguk whispered in excitement, but I still managed to hear it somehow.

“What the hell? Shut up,” Yongguk hissed. His face was looking unhappy.

“But you still can’t talk to her, right? She’s a stone,” he chuckled, with the tone that sounds irritating.

I stared at how his friend and how he got mad because of it for a moment, before turned away and looking through the window than the teacher in the front.

Finally, I got to know it.

Hana was right—everyone afraid of me.




It had been a week since I sat near the window—and still hadn’t talk with Yongguk yet.

I never felt uneasy just because didn’t talk with my seatmate but whenever I accidentally met eyes with him and couldn’t speak any words—I became mad with myself. Perhaps it was because I knew he didn’t like to seat next to me or because he never start a conversation first or something else that I wasn’t aware of that lead me to feel the anger.

I didn’t really understand.

“You sit with Yongguk, right?” Hana asked in a sudden, when we just took a seat in school’s cafetaria that afternoon.

“Yeah,” I nonchalantly replied.

“He becomes good looking lately, huh?” she giggled.

I looked at her, confused.

“Really?”

“Don’t you realize it?” she opened her chocolate bar pack. “The girls have been talking about him lately.”

I just shook my head. Didn’t have any idea at all.

Did I become like the other girls that got interested with him too? But to think of it, if I got uneasy and unhappy when he didn’t talk to me, could it called an interest?

“He used to look like a nerd guy. And a little childish too,” Hana said with mouth full of chocolate.

I frowned, slowly remember how his past look.

“Now, he becomes much stylish and manly. Then boom!” she faked an explosion with her both hands. “He is currently number one in girls’ topic.”

“I didn’t know that,” I chuckled, pretending to swirl my milkshake so I won’t look that curious.

“That’s why you should come out and talk with the other girls,” she groaned.

Since I didn’t think I could give a positive answer, I just showed a smile instead.

“Well, don’t you realize it?” Hana squinted her eyes, looking like just remember something. “You and him are the current most popular girl and guy.”




That was ridiculous.

Most popular girl and guy—it was so strange.

But as soon as Hana told me that he was the current most talked guy in our class, I became to realize that the girls were literally staring at him when the break times started. Some would just take a quick look, secretly staring at him from afar but some would straightforwardly looking at him without doubt.

Unlike what I thought, everything’s surprisingly changed.

Most of the girls were looking different lately—they became much prettier. While the guys were obviously trying to be cool.

Did it just happen as we became a senior high school students or was it just me that never realize it?

“I’m sorry,” he called, in the middle of history class.

I turned to look at him, not going to ask him why at all.

“Can we share textbook? I forget to bring it,” he said while looking straight into my eyes, without any fearness like the others did.

That’s the time I got to know that he had a really deep voice.

I pulled my textbook into the edge of my desk without saying anything, and he took it as yes with moving closer to my seat.

Instead of focus with the printed words on my textbook, I found myself staring at him—finding out his changes from middle school.

Hana was right, as always. He’s looking more mature, and good looking too. His short black hair that got styled, his confident stares, his visible jawline that shaped his face—they were definitely getting different from before. I thought it was just because of the uniform but no. Something’s changed about him, about the other classmates, about the whole colours of our class.

I never knew it before.


“Were you looking at me?”

It was the first question that he asked as soon as the history class was over, and I didn’t expect it at all.

“Yes,” I plainly replied.

I didn’t think I must hide the fact that I was looking at him. I didn’t see it as a wrong thing.

“I feel weird,” he chuckled. His eyes got smaller and the way he smile made the tip of his lips upraised. And I found it amusing.

“Weird?” I wondered.

“Not in a bad way,” he explained it quickly. “Being stared by a rose—I think it’s a kind of proudness.”

Rose?

“You don’t know about that?” he raised his eyebrows, finding out that I might get confused of his words.

I wordlessly waited for his continuation.

“People often called you ’rose’. That’s it,” he reasoned.

Then he just left right away, after received nothing as response from me. I had no idea about what to say, what to make the conversation going although I knew what I wanted to ask. My voice just won’t came out. Got stuck in the middle of my throat, painfully.

Was it because of the nickname that people made for me that causing me to feel that way?

A ’rose’?