You spent the weekend just staring at the hundreds of RAW files just waiting for you to develop them. In the end, Sunday disappeared before you decided to do anything with them.

School arrived once again. Monday, boring class. Bis. The worst would be the morning, because you were forced to talk to him. At least once. Just to make sure you weren’t finding the same solution. You didn’t want to talk to him, though, so you simply threw your sketchbook in his face and took it back once he took a look at it. Since you didn’t want to talk to him, or even hear his voice for that matter, he simply put his sketchbook next to you, silently, his dark eyes filled with sadness. His heart crying out so loud that you could hear it even without him saying a word.

You took a look at the sketchbook. Well, he was quite good, you had to admit. The solution he was working on was original, well made even as a sketch. Pretty cool. It would totally suit Super Junior’s cheesiness. And dorkiness. And everything that made them who they were.

But what caught your attention, really, more than the sketches, was a little something in a corner. Far from concerning the logo, more like Eli needing to express his sadness, and only finding this, in this place, in this form, to do it.

His sadness, but also something he had told you a long, long time ago.

“I go and kiss whoever I want.”

“No you don’t, you !”

“Whoever I want that I love.”

You shook your head a little, still staring at the corner. It was a quick drawing of an apple. An apple shaped like a heart. With something written next to it. ‘I’ve read this somewhere. ‘Chaque pomme est une fleur qui a connu l’amour.’ Be my flower. Let me help you become an apple.’

You hissed and pushed the sketchbook away. Each apple is a flower that knew love, uh? Well, whatever. It was poetic, but you didn’t plan on turning into an apple anytime soon. Especially not for him. You were allergic to apples anyway.

Way to break the poetry of the little sketch.

He took his sketchbook back and kept on working, head low, eyes sad, until he got up, at some point, and left the class for a few minutes. When he came back, he put an Arizona green tea next to you, along with one of those chocolate pastries you really liked, and he sat back where he was before leaving, working silently. You stared at the offerings, but decided to ignore them. He couldn’t buy you with food. Accepting these equaled forgiving him, for his words of so long ago and the other day, and for the kiss. Right,  – es. Not kiss. Kisses.

The kisses had been quite enjoyable, actually… he had such wonderful lips… but he was a jerk. A retarded jerk, but a jerk. He was probably not even serious about that whole love thing. How could he love a – you had to admit that – like you? You were so mean to him, so hurtful, so… not worth him. Even with him being a jerk, you weren’t worth him. You knew you didn’t have a very high self-esteem, but that was just obvious, wasn’t it?

You sighed.

Those offerings were very tempting. Especially since you were very hungry, because you were always hungry around this time. Eli knew your habits, obviously; he had done that on purpose. There was no other explanation. You decided to ignore them for a bit longer, and to check your usual websites just to see if anything was new, to get your mind off your hunger.

DeviantART, to start with. Nothing new there, except a little random favorite on a three years old bad photograph of a sunset. You had stopped thanking people for the faves a long time ago. Out of laziness. One more reason for you to feel like a . An ungrateful at that.

Asianfanfics, next. You had started writing, hiding behind a username that was far from looking like your name. Just in case Eli would stumble upon these. Oh gawd, you sure hoped he wouldn’t. Nothing new there either, except a friend’s post about a band you kind~ of hated. You sighed and removed that person from your friend list. You had clearly said, in a blog post, that you’d do that if someone said anything about that band in their blog posts. You’d probably end up accepting them again if they asked you to be their friend again, because you couldn’t remember the hundred-something people who had asked that to you. One more reason for you to feel like a . A heartless .

Outlook, now. Nothing new at all there. Much like usual.

A RPG forum you liked. Nothing new there either.

Twitter, just because you were an anti-Facebook person, thinking it was completely useless, but you still liked having some kind of news about, well, stuff. You didn’t have an account, but you knew how to check who had said what recently. You were also curious to see what Eli was telling people about his life here in Montreal. And so you took a look at u_kisseli, to make sure he wasn’t telling stupid stuff about you to his now 562 094 followers. You noticed a few new tweets, and you started from the oldest tweet you hadn’t read. It had been posted on Saturday. Probably after you had stormed back home.

‘kissmes pls tell me how 2 stop being a jerk… i did smthg stupid again…’

There was another one from that day.

‘shes the prettiest flower but i made her sad… i think she wont talk 2 me again on monday… bcuz i was a jerk…’

And yet another one.

‘how can i make her forgive me? kissmes pls help me, im at loss…’

There was also a tweet that had been posted on Sunday.

‘i know u wont read dis… but id liek to talk 2u again… bcuz i no i was a jerk… and im sry… saranghae…’

You frowned. You hadn’t been into Kpop for long, but… just about everybody who was into Kpop knew what ‘saranghae’ meant. And you were also one of them. You weren’t sure if you should hate him more for saying that on his Twitter account, or if you should kind of forgive him because he did sound really sincere. But then, at the same time, what celebrity was sincere? All of them were cheating at some point. And you were pretty sure he was like that too. Were his eyes fake? What about his nose? Maybe his personality was just him trying to have all of the girls at his feet, you included. Well, whatever, you didn’t plan on making him succeed. Celebrities were overrated anyway, so yeah. One month and he’d be gone, after all. You just had to hate him for one more month and you’d never need to see him ever again.

But then, his sad eyes, staring blankly at his sketchbook as you closed the page, were making your heart waver. He was not that much of a jerk. A real jerk wouldn’t admit it. A real jerk wouldn’t bring you food at the exact time when hunger kicked in on Monday mornings. A real jerk wouldn’t have noticed that you took chocolate pastries less often than other pastries simply because you didn’t really like allowing yourself to eat chocolate so often. A real jerk wouldn’t have noticed the time when you were getting hungry anyway. A real jerk wouldn’t have suggested being your model for a day just for you to have fun taking photos of someone. A real jerk wouldn’t have made public apologies on Twitter and he wouldn’t have asked for advice to stop being stupid with you. He had still kissed you for no good reason, but he was not that much of a jerk.

Well no matter what they’d say he’d probably still be completely retarded, though. But that was part of him. Part of his charm, whether you’d like to admit it or not. Part of why you couldn’t completely hate him. Part of why you wrote something on a piece of paper, folded it as a paper plane and made it fly right up in his face. He jumped in surprise, almost falling down his chair, but he somehow managed to catch the plane. He took a look at the words on it.

The look he gave you after that would’ve been worth much more than those simple words. Happy, full of hope, and something you didn’t know.

‘Thank you for the pastry and the Arizona.’

Just that. Just those words.

And his eyes full of happiness, hope and love made little butterflies flutter in your stomach. Not a lot.

Just enough.