Their first meeting was when he went to study English in Los Angelas. It was a simple meeting the two would’ve easily forgotten if they hadn’t ran into each other again. They were both 11 at the time. He was the new kid from the exchange program who was going to be studying with them for the next 3 months. She was quiet and the smartest one in the class.

On his first day, the teacher made him introduce himself to the class.

“M-my name is Ki Bum,” he said in his broken English. His cheeks flushed when some of the kids laughed at him.

“No laughing. Be nice to Ki and make him feel welcomed. You can go sit beside… Daniel. Daniel stand up.” A small Asian kid with glasses stood up and waved happily. Kibum scowled as everyone in the class watched him make his way over to his seat.

“Hi! I’m Daniel.” Kibum was a bit shocked this boy spoke Korean too.

“I thought everyone here had blonde hair and blue eyes.” Kibum glanced around the classroom and saw that half the class were different races.

“Haha! It’s just this school that has less white kids than others. You’ll probably get the hang of this place real quick.” Kibum smiled feeling less out of place, knowing he won’t be a loner after all.

After a couple of days, he’d become friends with everyone with in the class except for her. Everyone in the class would try and talk to him whenever they could. Even if his English wasn’t perfect, they understood him most of the time and laughed at his jokes. Everyone except for her. She sat at the other side of the room, often with a book open in front of her. It didn’t matter to him though, she wasn’t anyone important. It wasn’t until after two weeks that he had spoken to her. The teacher had paired up the two of them in science class for a small assignment.

He sat watching her as she did the assignment by herself without saying a word. He didn’t even know her name. Cocking his head, he tried to read the her name.

“Nee-Coal?” he pronounced.

“Nicole,” she corrected him. “Yeah?”

“Don’t you want me to do something?”

“Oh no it’s okay. I’m almost done anyways,” she shot him a small smile and then went back to work. She ended up finishing all the work while he talked to Daniel. When the assignment was handed back, they got 97%.

“Wow! You are genius!” Kibum flipped through the scrapbook she had put together all by herself about the solar system.

“My mom’s going to be so proud of me when she sees this! High five!” she took his hand and gave herself a high five. His heart skipped a beat as he saw her laugh for the first time. After the assignment, Ki Bum had gotten more curious about her and tried to make eye contact with her. When it wasn’t working, he gave up and went back to being the popular new kid. Neither of them had talked again.

Before he went back to Korea, the class made a card for him. Skimming over the messages, he read hers quickly without thinking anything of it. ‘Hope you had fun in L.A. Maybe we’ll see each other again in the future!- Nicole’