Being a senior is so difficult. I had a steady stream of sleeping at 2am the whole week.  As if it wasn't enough, at 4 in the morning a girl scout knocked on my door and asked if I wanted to buy any cookies.  I thought it was a joke.  I slammed the door on her.

Well, maybe I exaggerated.  After that, it took me 1 hour to get back to sleep again, and at 6, I had to wake up to get ready for school.  Another day of dying and coming back to life twenty five thousand times during my history teacher's lecture.

"WAKE UP, BYUN BAEKHYUN!"  She shouted.

It wasn't my fault I slept so late.  Exo just released their Christmas album and I was determined to hail it all the way to the sky.  It was perfection, I tell you.  Plus, I always get straight A's without studying.  I can fanboy all I want.  The teacher shouldn't even be yelling.

"BYUN BAEKHYUN!!"

Aish, maybe I should really wake up from my nap.

A few hours later, I found myself in front of the weird guy in our class.  No one knows his name.  He never talks.  He just stares. Every day he brings a new set of scars on his bear-skin arms, and today, he wore a conspicuous gash near his elbow.  A strange mix of loner, loser, and bad boy.

It wasn't my fault I was paired up with him.

"These are your partners, everyone.  Since this is Creative Writing class, I made a very creative final that would account for 30% of your grade!"

THIRTY?!  I stared at the mess in the desk across from mine.  Would this guy, who looked like he came back from the dead, even help me?

"If you want an A in the class, you will have to write and plan with your partner a short story of about 7,000 words.  It should answer the prompt that I'll give you.  Due on December 21st, the last day of school."

She walked around the class, handing out papers to each group.  "This is yours.... Every paper has a different prompt... this is yours... here you go."  And then she arrived at my table and gave me a snotty grin, probably because she liked seeing me suffer with the dumbest kid in class.  "Here."

The stranger didn't even bother looking at the prompt, or flinch at the agonizing laceration on his limb.  "Don't you want to know what we're writing about?"

"No?"

Was that supposed to be a question?

"Well, why?"

"I don't do writing."

You don't simply not do writing.  I glared at his face.  Behind his scars and disheveled, brown, wavy hair, his eyes actually showed a luminous warm hazelnut brown.  Pity he didn't try to fix himself.  There wasn't anything wrong with his facial characteristics, and his face was quite proportinal.

"It doesn't matter.  You're my partner, and our grade is at stake."  This wasn't another homework assignment I could just brush off.

He didn't seem to care.  "You can do it by yourself."

Although I do have sublime intelligent genes, cheating never goes unnoticed in class.  The statement caught the teacher's attention.

 "I don't think so,"  I said, hinting at the pair of eyes staring at him.

He smirked at me.  It was an unnatural one, the way his mouth corner just slid up like a heart being stretched to the side.

"No thank you.  I'm not taking part in your writing activities.  Get another partner."

I frowned.  A hard nut to crack.

I scraped my eyes off the tanned skin and brown eyes and grabbed the paper equidistant between us two. I began to read it, very loud, making sure the a-hole could hear.

"Write about a regret-- something your character faces with bitterness.  Write about how your character overcomes that obstacle." In small print, beneath the tall, stand-out letters, says "Must be at least 7000 characters" and then, "You may not turn this into a fanfic of your oppas." 

Okay. Reading the bottom part kind of embarrased me.  Thanks, Seongsaeng-nim.

"Heard that, stranger?"  I asked, in a bothersome yet most cordial tone.

"But real people don't always overcome obstacles," he retorts in an irritatingly passive manner.  "We can live a regret our whole life, we can take it to our grave."  He paused.  "Why do we always need to write a solution?"

"That's creative writing, my friend."

"No, it's not."

"But it's the prompt," I pointed.

"Sad endings have just as much impact as happy endings."

"So that means you are going to work with me, right?"

He frowned, this time the sides of the heart were pulled down.  "I told you--"

*EHEM* "BYUN BAEKHYUN."

Or so she said, even if I wasn't the one talking.

Now, turning back to the class, picking up with a bossier forte, "Remember to use figurative language and avoid using flat characters. I want round, in-depth main characters.  Use your notes and everything you've learned this year.  Please do not give your works mature ratings.  Since you are all under 18, let it stay below pg-13. Once I had a kid write about..." 

Brown colored bangs grazing black colored eyelashes, the dingy stranger stared at the wall past me, hell-bent, like he was piercing holes with invisible lasers.  Like he was searching beyond these four corners for something that was readily coming to him.

A schizophrenic, a mysterious badboy, an irrelevant hermit-- whatever he was, my grade was at stake.