Prologue

“Where have you been?” Jongin asked in a voice barely above a whisper as soon as his friend sat down beside him.

“Helping out a friend,” the other guy informed. His statement had Jongin raising one of his eyebrows, questioning internally whether he had heard it right or maybe his mind was just playing with him.

“You? Helping? A friend? Who?” Jongin asked, looking at the other guy’s every movement with scrutinizing eyes, still not believing his friend’s words at the very least.

“Jung Soojung,” His friend whose name was Oh Sehun simply replied.

The wheel of Jongin’s mind started moving at the mention of the name, not one face came to mind after a good minute of processing. “Who’s that?” he finally asked, a genuine curiousity plastered across his face as he blinked. Sehun however looked at him with incredulity in a brief second before he turned his attention back to the large screen before them.

“Let’s just concentrate on the slides,” Sehun replied instead and Jongin just dropped the subject then.

“So,” Jongin started as soon as they stepped out of their first class of the day “Since when did you like helping people?” he questioned, earning a low groan from Sehun, which fell on deaf ears. “I don’t recall you ever helping people or even animals. You practically ignored a crying puppy that was begging for your help the other day,” he finished with an exaggerated flail of arms.

Sehun shot him an annoyed look in return. “Can you not talk about puppies for at least a day?” the guy asked in irritation. “And I just happened to see Soojung at the hallway on my way to class.”

“Remind me again who this Soojung girl is.”

“Jung Soojung. We went to the same schools since elementary,” Sehun supplied in which Jongin thought was a little absurd considering that he knew most of the people in his old schools and Soojung was certainly not in that list of people.

“Really? And why don’t I know her?” Jongin asked, eyebrow rose questioningly as he turned to look at the other guy.

Sehun then rolled his eyes in annoyance. “I don’t know. Maybe because you only know the popular kids or you’re just simply dumb.”

“That’s not nice of you to say,” Jongin scowled.

“Well, I tried,” his friend shrugged his shoulders.

***

“Where is this guy? Disappearing without telling me,” Jongin grumbled when he couldn’t find his best friend. They had just ended their soccer friendly match minutes ago but Sehun had already disappeared without even telling him where he had gone off to. Always disappearing, he grumbled again but in his head this time. Downing a bottle of water, Jongin went to search for the guy.

After a few minutes of searching and muttering words to himself, Jongin finally found the person he was looking for, standing near the wired fence that separated the soccer field and the outside world.

He vaguely saw a figure who he assumed to be a girl since the person had a long hair and he was more than certain that the body belongs to a girl (unless a guy he did not know of decided to have a body resembling a girl), disappeared from his line of sight just as he jogged his way to Oh Sehun’s side, jersey stuck as sweats covered every inch of his body courtesy of soccer.

Jongin turned his head to look at his friend who was smiling ear to ear. One of his eyebrows perched at the sight. It was a rare occasion for Sehun to smile a happy smile, eyes turning crescents as his eyes fixed in a certain direction. It was difficult to witness such sight especially when Sehun had turned to someone with mood swings – like a girl in her PMS, he had described once.

 “What the hell are you smiling about?” Jongin asked in curiousity. He followed Sehun’s eyes, looking curiously at the direction where Sehun’s eyes were fixed but was met with nothing but the sight of their university’s building. His question however was met with silence and he couldn’t help but wonder if there was something wrong with his friend.

If only he knew the person that disappeared even before he could even land his eyes on will play a big role in his life in the later days.