It could be said that Byunghun was, in a sense, the Grinch of Valentines Day. (Excluding the whole "stealing everyone's gifts" thing, of course. He wasn't that heartless.) Nobody really knew why he hated this day so much. He didn't really know how it started either. He presumed that he was born with it. Besides, who would enjoy the show that Byunghun was prone to see taking place near his locker every morning of the 14th of February? 

He strolled into the school building holding no high expectations. His hand was prepared to shield his eyes as he approached the hall where his locker was. He turned the corner, slightly wincing in preparation, and took slow steps to his destination. Let's get this over with, he sighed to himself. His eyes finally settled on his locker and this year's couple of choice. The shy smiles of the two told of a innocent confession. Oh great, he groaned internally. Confessions. To be fair, the innocence of the whole affair made it a smidgen more tolerable. At least it was better than the repulsive act that the couple last year put on...

 

This time, Byunghun decided to try to be polite and let the guy finish his confession without an interruption courtesy of him. He stayed pretty far away as to not interrupt, but he unconsciously looked on in curiosity. With every word that spilled out of the boy's mouth, the girl's smile grew. Byunghun let out a breath he didn't know he was holding. Eh, this is no fun. Rejections are always the funniest. Disinterest washed over him, and he began picking at his nails in boredom.

 

"Sungjae, I think it's really sweet of you, but..."

 

Byunghun's head snapped up. But?

 

"I really just can't stand anything having to do with the thought of you," she shrugged and stalked off, leaving Sungjae with his jaw on the ground and his pride severely bruised. The boy quickly got to his feet, obviously flustered and trying to retain whatever pride he had left. Sungjae gave Byunghun a hard glare when he heard his unmistakable laughter echoing off the walls.

Byunghun held up his hand in apology, uttering with a breathy laugh, "Sorry, man."

 

"Yeah, right," he muttered before violently kneeing Byunghun in the gut and walking away.

 

"Ow! I said I was sorry!" He called out in defense from his hunched position. What a way to start off the day...

 

He slid into his seat just as the late bell rung, and looked up to find his teacher with a stack of papers in her hands. "I'm handing back the test you took last week," she announced with a static voice and began to hand out the papers. Byunghun became increasingly anxious waiting for his test. Her heels clicked as she moved from desk to desk, dishing out joy or misery to each student. A paper slid onto Byunghun's desk face down, and he cringed in anticipation.

 

He hesitantly flipped the paper over and gasped when he was greeted with a large, red, menacing F. See me after class was also hastily scribbled over the top in scrawly handwriting. All he could do was gape at the paper. But...I studied! The voice inside of his head whined. Wait...did I? As he flipped through the problems on the exam, he realized that whatever he had studied had gone to waste: he'd studied the wrong chapter. No wonder none of the problems made sense, he thought, the cloud of misery over his head growing bigger by the second. His mother would surely not be thrilled with the news of another bad grade. And furthermore, what on earth is "See me after class" supposed to mean? Ugh, I'm so screwed, he thought to himseld as he let his head hit the wooden table under him.

 

Soon after class had ended, his teacher called him over to her desk, and he collected his things quickly before rushing over.

 

"Lee Byunghun." She started.

 

"Yes, ma'am?"

 

"You know that your grades have dropped recently, right?"

 

"Yes, ma'am," he replied with no enthusiasm.

 

"If you keep this up, it may be looking like summer school for you."

 

"Yes, ma--wait, WHAT?" He looked at her in shock and she nodded gravely. 

 

 

Classes passed by, one after another, with nothing good to report. In most of Byunghun's classes, there were wads of paper flying everywhere, a good majority of them hitting his head or back before falling to the ground. Today, though, there was a small decrease in rowdiness, which upped Byunghun's mood a tad. Instead of crinkled paper landing near his desk, though, it was bodies. Like those two can't separate or something, he thought, looking at a new, popular couple with disgust. It's not like they'll be together next week... It was all he could do not to fall over from the amount of shoving he got. Needless to say, his irritation rose little by little with every period. When the lunch bell rang, he was almost thankful to get out of the classroom until he realized things would be even worse in the cafeteria. Should I skip lunch today? He wondered to himself. Well, let's check out how bad it is in the cafeteria, he decided and poked his head in the door.

 

One trip to his locker later, he had resorted to eating in a stall in the bathroom. What was he eating, you ask? A bag of potato chips from his emergency snack stash in his locker.

Can't this day just be over, he wanted to scream.

"Hey, honey. How's your day been?"

 

"y," he answered bluntly.

"Well, hate to tell you this, but I can't pick you up."

 

"What?!" Seriously? He wanted to shout. "The one day I don't drive to school!"

 

"I'm sorry, Byunghun," she said. "Maybe you can walk home if you can't find a ride. I'm really sorry."

 

"Yeah, I guess I will." He mumbled before they said their goodbyes and he hung up, dejection littering his features. Without meaning to, he thought of all the bad things that had happened to him today, and his dejection quickly shifted to irritation. 

 

The sudden appearance of a girl's face above him brought his anger to a halt.

 

"Need a hand?"

 

He brought his hand up, looked at it, squinted up at her, and said, "It's kind of dirty."

 

The girl, clad in a band t-shirt, gray jeans, and black glasses, just wordlessly grabbed his muddy fingers and helped him up. 

"How do you even know who I am?"

 

Byunghun and his new acquaintance had taken adjacent seats in a covered bus stop to shield themselves from the rain. Byunghun saw no reason to rush home, and it seemed that the girl didn't either.

 

"There are a ton of comical nicknames floating around about you, especially around this time of year," she quipped with a small smile.

Now he was curious. How bad could it be? "Please elaborate."

 

"Hm, try Loveless Lee Byunghun?"

 

"Ouch," he remarked, cringing.

 

"Boring Byunghun?"

 

"Alright, I may be loveless, but I am far from boring!"

 

"Blank Slate Byunghun?"

 

"Wow, are you seriou--"

 

"Oh! Bummer Byunghun!"

 

"Aw, that's low." He let his head fall into his now sanitized hands. "It's not my fault I hate Valentines Day...I mean, maybe it is, but still. It's like, why can't someone change it for me? To make this day not worth cursing at?" He turned to look at her for a sign of agreement, and his eyes shifted to her lap, where her hands were alternating between firmly gripping the novel she was reading and playing with her fingers. For reasons he couldn't explain, his eyes wouldn't leave her fingers. Maybe it was because he strangely found them elegant, and thin, and he suddenly had an overwhelming desire to run his fingertips over every crevice of her delicate hands...Do I have a finger now or something? He questioned himself, trying his very hardest to tear his gaze away from her fidgeting hands to no avail.

 

She broke the silence with a small, breathy laugh. "Uh, thanks, I think."

 

Startled, he snapped his head back up to look at her. "Did I say something?"

 

"You told me that my fingers were pretty." By the ghost of an amused smile on her face, he could tell she was enjoying every awkward blunder he made. He felt his face flush, and he silently cursed at himself for losing his cool. (A part of him wondered if he had any to begin with, which didn't do anything to boost his self esteem.)

 

"Crap," he muttered for only himself to hear and sunk a bit further into the bus stop bench before remembering his disadvantage in the height area and straightened up. She was still an inch taller than him. "What I, uh, meant to say, was...Nice book. You're a fan of Harry Potter?"

She scoffed. "Who isn't?"

 

"Hard to believe, but my little sister hates the series."

 

"How old is your sister?"

 

"12."

 

"She's missing out," she laughed. "When'd you start reading it?"

 

"Uh," he finally brought up the courage to look at her again, this time directly at her deep brown eyes. "When I was 14, maybe? I'm not too sure. How about you?"

 

Her lips parted slightly to let out a small chuckle. "Actually, I just started reading the series last month. Don't kill me. I never found it worth reading until now, strangely enough."

 

In return, his jaw dropped. "No way. What kind of a childhood did you have?"

 

"Apparently, a very bleak one." They shared a laugh, and Byunghun thought that her laugh was pretty too. Come to think of it, he snuck another glance at her, she's really gorgeous. In a nerdy-chic type of way. But I like nerds.

 

"Any particular reason you're staring at my face?"

 

His eyes widened and he quickly averted his eyes back to the concrete below him. "Uh, nah, not really."

 

"Okay, then." The corners of her lips twitched upwards, and she began to actually read her book. He started to take the job of fidgeting with his fingers, though he was sure he didn't pull it off as well as she did. They stayed like that for a while, trapped in a bubble of awkwardly comfortable silence, before Byunghun's voice rang as sharp as a needle and popped the bubble. 

 

"I never got your name."

 

"Mihyun."

 

"Mihyun. Okay. Mihyun," he pulled out his cell phone and handed it to her. "Wanna exchange numbers?" He asked her simply because he wanted to talk to her more, and maybe look at her fingers more, and she didn't look like the type of person who would say no. Unfortunately, he found out a couple seconds later that he was wrong about the latter.

 

"Wait, pretty please? We could be friends," he tried, giving her a questioning smile. She stared at him and his faltering smile for a few seconds before her shoulders lost their strength and she grabbed his phone back, quickly typing in several characters. He silently cheered to himself. Way to go, this year's 14th wasn't completely y.

 

"So, would you mind if I walked you home?"

 

Her silence brought fear that he was being rejected again. His eyebrows raised at her next words, though. "Any other girl would tell you that she wouldn't be caught dead with a guy that looked as hopeless as you do," she said to him with a straight face. It was sorta true, and he shrugged in agreement. "But, seeing as how both of our reputations have been flattened and run over countless times, there's no harm done." With that, she walked out of the bus stop. As he jogged out to meet her, he realized that the rain had slowed to a drizzle. A tiny smile spread across his lips, and his head tilted back to look at the sky. It was still bleak and gray, but there was a lone streak of sunlight breaking through the clouds. He let his gaze stay fixed on the sky above him before a sharp voice rang in his ears.

 

"You coming or what?"

 

And with that, he immediately scrambled to her side.

 

--

IDK WHAT I WAS WRITING PLS DONT ASK QUESTIONS I LITERALLY HAVE NO IDEA

as I was reading this I realized how many words there were in this that started with the letter "s" and I wanted to change them for variety but I was too lazy so CX

comments and all that are appreciated!

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY, or for us single pringles, S.A.D! (Single Awareness Day) I like to listen to this song, it gets me in a nice mood haha.