It was the 21^st of March, the day that Chungang University allows affection to be shown to people you care for, well, at least not the excessive showy type. Yoo-jin roams around the campus not knowing what to do exactly. She’s hugged her friends all over and over again, she’s getting bored with it already. She walks in the Arrow Building, the only place she knows she won’t get tired of. She walks, looking at artworks that her seniors made, all out of love for the same thing: love. They say Arrow Building is named that way because they believe Cupid sometimes drops by for a rest and an overnight stay. Theory says and proves that if you allow two people to accompany each other, even in silence, they’ll eventually fall in love. But then she doesn’t believe that, and that Cupid only belongs in mythology. It is Yoo-jin’s last year in this institution and this place just leaves her nostalgic. She walks and stops every now and then, and looks to her left and then her right.

“Jeez. It’s the first time that this place is giving me the creeps,” she says, trying to tuck out her short sleeves to cover the chills she’s been feeling for a few minutes now. She walks again, faster this time. She runs to the rooftop of the Arrow Building and she concludes no one can creep at her there. She waits for minutes, no feeling of discomfort present. I guess I’m alright now, she thought. She sets her hand on the railings, looks afar and allows the wind to make her hair a mess.

“My last year, yet still scared. What am I going to do with my life? Argh, I’m going crazy!” She lets out a heavy sigh and takes a step back and almost trip when her legs got sort of twisted and when someone grabs her by the arm.

“Aah…” she squeaks as she falls into his arms. Her eyes were closed, afraid to open them. Afraid of what she’ll see.
“Yoo-jin, hey, Yoo-jin. Open your eyes,” Kai says, too shocked how overly she reacted.

She opens her eyes and just froze.
“Kai,” that’s all she can whisper. She blinks her eyes and it only registered in her head that he’s still holding her. She pushes Kai away and she falls to the ground, feeling melting in front of him and actually forgetting she has no support.
“Yoo-jin, what the?” He suppresses a laugh and walks to her and offers his hand. She shoves it away and stands up on her own, brushing off particles of dirt that may be on her skirt.
“What are you doing here?” she asks, appearing snob.
“Me? Finding you,” he says, too honestly.
“Finding me? Okay,” she takes a quick glance back at him, “You’re trying to find me?”
“Well, yeah,” he says coolly. Every butterfly in her flatters their wings too fast that she just wants to scream, even if in front of him. Stop yourself Yoo-jin, stop it. Oh my God, I just can’t, she thought to herself.
“Why?”
“Well, the school allows this for only a day, so I’m taking chances to show people that I care about them. Well, even if it’s not obvious.”
“Uhm, am I one of them?” she asks, her eyes aglow with anticipation and wanting.
“Yes. So, yeah, thank you for existing,” he says, smiling. She froze again, even held her breath back. Her eyes were big, too shocked from what she heard. Heart failure.

He walks to her and she’s still scatterbrained, standing still, staring into space. He embraces her; her peripheral vision is a shadow of him, standing too close and then his chin is above her shoulder. He rubs her back as if comforting. Yoo-jin hesitates to hug him back, her hand slowly going up to hug his body and then doubting if she should, when he just slips away and break free. He smiles at her, waves his hand in a way she can’t put through if it’s a hello or a goodbye. He walks away and disappears to the stairs.

Yoo-jin holds back her squeal. “You lost your chance! You lost your chance!” she mumbles to herself. She runs her fingers through her hair and sinks her teeth on her lower lip. She pinches her cheeks and hopes she’s just dreaming and that she’ll have another chance, but no, she doesn’t. She squeals again, like a child trying to catch attention.

“Three years. Wasn’t that an enough time to muster courage? What a coward! Oh my god, what a coward!” she tells herself, diminishing her being.
“Yoo-jin, are you okay? Maybe I should take you down,” the familiar voice says. She turns around and sees Kai walking to her. “Why were you screaming? Are you alright? Did something happen?”
“Nothing happened and why would I scream? I’m okay, don’t worry, just continue on with your day,” she says smiling, and pushing him away.
“Please tell me if you’re not okay. Even if I was oftentimes mean to you doesn’t mean you can’t trust me. Yoo-jin, that, I have to say sorry for being mean and annoying and sorry that it’s all I ever did.”
“If you only know what your being mean to me means. I won’t really even care, because I like you,” she says in her head, all in her head. She can’t say it, though she wanted to.
“Or maybe you’re just confused that I’m suddenly nice to you. I can be mean to you again if you want, even if that seems childish.”
“I…aahh…uhm… I’m talking gibberish right now, right? Haha… I’m fine, really fine. I didn’t scream. Maybe you just thought it was me. You can go on your way, there’s probably a lot more people that you want to do the same thing you did to me. And you choose the way how you’ll treat me, I won’t care that much.”
“Hmm, I guess you’re right,” he walks away, “Just keep in mind what I said that you can talk to me, okay?” He continues to walk and she lets him disappear into the stairs, again. Minutes and minutes. And minutes and minutes. “Oh, who am I kidding?” she thought.

She runs down as fast as she can, trying to catch up on him. When she spots him, she calls out his name and he stops. She runs to him and stops in front of him to catch her breath. She sets her right hand on his arm for support.
“Kai, I’m sorry,” she stands up and looks at him. “You see, I’ve been keeping this in for years and I’m really, really tired staring and thinking and dreaming. I’m so confused that I just allowed myself to bear the aching and all.” She looks down again, inhales then exhales, “So, what I’m saying is that…”
“I …” she looks up at him and her eyes meets his. He was looking intently at her, eyes big with questioning what she’ll say next. Everything in her world blacks out, opens in panic and then she follows, passing out herself.

Taken aback, Kai kneels down and calls out her names repeatedly. Hopeless that she’ll wake up without medical help, he lifts her up, carrying her on his back. He runs her to the school clinic. He enters the room and the nurses’ stands up in alarm to help Yoo-jin. They open a curtain and lets Kai put Yoo-jin on the bed. The nurses ushers him out of the room and checks on Yoo-jin. He waits outside the clinic, jumping to peek through the high window on his left.

“What’s taking them so long? What happened to her?” he asks himself, now walking to sit down on the bench in front of the room. After three minutes, the school doctor opens the door and Kai stands up.
“Are you the one who brought Yoo-jin here?” the doctor asks him.
“Uhm, yes. What happened to her?” he asks, concerned.
“Well, it’s the fifth time she’s been brought to the school clinic. She keeps on passing out since January.”
“What will happen to her?”
“Nothing. She’ll be fine; she just needs rest and sleep. We figured out she’s been stressed out, so she has fatigue.”
“So, is she awake?”
“No, but she’ll be. I will leave you now and you may watch over her if you’re feeling anxious about her condition. But in totality, she’s fine.”
“Thank you.” Then the doctor leaves him.

Kai enters the school clinic and sits on the chair beside the bed she’s lying on. He’s been there for 20 minutes now. He’s waiting for her to wake up. He now thinks he’s wasting his time waiting for her to wake up, but then she wasn’t able to continue it.

“I probably should’ve done this a minute ago. You’re sleeping too long,” he stands up, moves closer to her and smirks. “Such a bedbug.” He grasps the collar of her shirt, ready to shake her awake when she suddenly smiles. A smile he never saw, ever. He’s seen her smile; well he does, mostly in an awkward way.
“That’s just weird,” he releases her collar and sits back on the chair. He probably would have appreciated if that smile was for him. He smiles at the thought and frowns again. “But you weren’t able to continue what you will say a while ago. What a lame duck to faint in front of me!” He pauses and regards her intently, “What sentence will you tell with ‘I…?”

He pulls his chair nearer to the bed, put his hand on it and cups his chin. He looks at her, smiling every now and then.
“Ms. Button-nose, please wake up. I want to know what you will say,” he says, almost begging. He pouts, now getting bored.
“Please wake up now,” he says again, poking Yoo-jin’s cheeks lightly.
As if on cue, Yoo-jin yawns, stretching her right arm, almost punching Kai on the face. She slowly sits up, Kai helping her to do so by supporting her back.
“Hmm?” she mutters. She flickers her eyes open, absentmindedly searching the room, until her sight lands on Kai.
“Hey, Yoo-jin, you’re awake,” he says all smiles.
“What am I doing here?” she asks.
“You fainted and I carried you here. You shouldn’t have run if this will happen to you. You could have said what you will say to me at the rooftop.”
“You…you carried me here…An-and you want me to actually tell you want I want to tell you?” she says, her words interspersed.
“Well, yeah. Your last word was ‘I...’ then you fainted. Please continue it.”
She looks at him, searches any sign of joke, but there’s none. He’s dead serious and curious of what she’ll say.
“I… I can’t. I forgot what it is,” she says, now clumsily trying to go down the bed and hurriedly run out of the door.
 She stops a few meters away from the clinic and covers her face with her hand saying, “What have I done? He’s asking me to say it to him and the courage have collapsed the moment I fainted. Darn!” she says, finishing it with snuffles.
“Hey, Yoo-jin,” Kai says, grabbing her arm and turning her around to face him. “Are you crying?”
“No, I’m not. I lost everything.”
“No, you didn’t. I’m giving you another chance to tell me whatever you should.”
Yoo-jin puts down her hand down on her sides. “You will?”
“Yes.”
“But I can’t. I lost the courage.”
Kai looks down and takes a deep breath. “Okay. What I said to you at the rooftop was just an excuse. There is something else.”
“Excuse? Something else? What do you mean?”
He shakes his feet and clutching his fists. He’s biting his lower lip and appearing not sure of what’s he’s going to do.
“Yoo-jin,” he says her name breathy, “I… I like you. Grr… There! I said it! Your turn,” he says, unable to look at her.
She sighs, not believing what she heard. She knots her fingers as if hoping.
“I’m not going to waste the chance you gave me. It’s been already three years and I… I still like you. Yeah, still like you. Even if you are mean to me at times, I like you. I don’t know why, I just do. I don’t what you’ll do about that if I confess to you. I know rejection is inevitable but I still kept it all in… And I guess you’re just joking.”
“Joking?”
“Yeah, joking with what you just said. It’s something hard to believe. So I’ll just pretend I didn’t heard it.”
“Joking? So you call this joking?”

Kai grabs Yoo-jin’s hand goes to the school square.
“Excuse me, everyone. I have something to announce.”
“What are you doing?” Yoo-jin asks, retrieving her hand from Kai. He frowns and holds it again, tighter this time.
“I am Kim Kai and with me is Ms. Seo Yoo-jin. She thinks I’m joking that I said I like her. And now, I am letting everyone know that I like her and it’s no joke.”
Kai moves his head towards Yoo-jin and whispers, “And I never joke when I like someone. And if I do like her, I have my ways to let her know that it’s real.”
Yoo-jin stares at Kai’s lips, her brows creasing with question, trying to read what sentences he’s saying. She breathes in and then breathes out, “I’m sorry. Not that I’m questioning you, but, it’s unbelievable and highly impossible. I’m sorry.”

He smiles and moves away. He looks at everyone with a smile and he sees that each and every one of them is staring at them, waiting what will happen next.
“That’s pretty much it, folks. Please continue on with your day,” he says. People cheers and Yoo-jin’s best friend, Jeah, appears and says, “Yoo-jin, you didn’t tell me about this.”
“Sorry, I have no idea.”
Jeah smiles and says, “Anyway, smile for the school paper!” She lifts up her camera and presses the shutter and captures a picture of Kai kissing Yoo-jin, who is all smiles, on the cheeks.

Later that night, Yoo-jin is lying on her bed; her smiles brimmed, recalling what just happened earlier. Her cell phone rings and it is an unregistered number.
“Hello? Who’s this?”
“Hi Yoo-jin!”
“How did you know my name and who’s this?”
“Yoo-jin, it is Kai. I just confessed to you a while ago and you forgot me already.”
“Kai, it is Kai. Kai’s calling me!” she thought. She bites the edge of her pillow to stifle her screaming.
“Why did you call?”
“I don’t know. I guess I changed my mind. I think I don’t like you,” he says coolly as if everything he felt went gone with the wind.
“You…you… You don’t like me anymore? You don’t want me?” Yoo-jin asks, broken.
“I guess so. I’m sorry,” he says impassively.
“That fast?” she gulps and shakes her head in disbelief. “Okay, have it your way. Goodbye.” She hangs up on him, throws her phone, almost falling the edge of her bed. She sighs, clench her teeth together, hold her hand in a fist, looks at the wall and injured too suddenly, she wants to punch the wall. As she is, her cell phone rings and it’s Kai.
“What now? You gave me your heart and took it away, all in one day, what do you want now?”
“Yoo-jin, you didn’t let me finish. Please give me a chance to continue.”
“Fine, fifteen seconds,” she says, dictatorially.
“What?”
“One, two, three.”
“Hey, that’s unfair.
“I don’t care. You broke me. Six, seven.”
“You’re making it hard for both of us,” he says, panicking.
“Nine, ten, eleven.”
“Fine, you know why?”
“Why? Thirteen.”
“Because I love you now. That is what changed. I love you now. Please don’t get mad. Why did you suddenly lose faith in how I ‘like’ you,” he says, emphasizing ‘like.’ She stares blankly, letting his words sink in her head.
“I was mistaken when how you changed your mind that fast. And I thought you don’t like me anymore.”
“Because I don’t, because I love you now.” She remains silent, pushes her cell away from her ears and stares at it. She presses ‘loudspeaker’ on.
“Yoo-jin, why are you silent? Do I have to repeat it? I love you. So much. I’m sorry that you got it all wrong. I’m sorry and I love you. Won’t you reciprocate that?”
“I guess I will. Good night.”
“Huh?”
“Bye.”
“Okay, bye Yoo-jin.”
“Bye, Kai, good night.” He won’t hang up, waiting for her to say the three words back at him.
“Kai, aren’t you going to hung up?”
“Fine, goodnight. Aren’t you really going to…”
“I love you,” she finally says and before he hangs up, he replies “I love you too. Sweet dreams, Yoo-jin. You go to sleep okay? And one more thing, please dream of me.”

  Yoo-jin puts her phone down, stares at it and smiles, even weirdly. It’s as if she’s fangirling. She remembers that she too needs sleep and as she drifts into darkness, the memories of that day flashes like a movie. She will see him the next day and it’ll be different. She will be his, he will be hers.