* this! I hate this ty class like hell*

*I wonder if mom and dad are really going to divorce this time… Seems like it though.”

*Not so fast! I don’t even have time to note it down properly…*

*Here we go again… Why am I always the one being dumped?*

“Hyunmi is not here today… seems like she skipped class once again*

Dalnim sighed for the umpteenth time today. There were days like this. Days where this strange side of her would come up more than it usually did. Unfortunately, today was one of those. She hated it. Because during these ungrateful days, she couldn’t ignore her difference anymore. She couldn’t even deny it.

But there was something which was worrying her even more. As years went by, this odd ability became increasingly present in her life. It appeared for the first time when she was 6. She was a child back then; however she still perfectly remembered how she kept answering the old lady’s questions in the bus as naturally and spontaneous as a child would be. She also recalled the look of terror that very woman gave her before she stood up and went to sit somewhere else, as long as it was as far as possible from her. That’s only a few years later, when the phenomenon reappeared, that she understood she had been answering the woman’s thoughts.

The voices of hundreds students resounded incessantly in her head. She hated how she was soiling their privacy. But sometimes, she truly felt like it was the reverse, like it was the other’s thoughts which were intruding her mind. Shaking her head, she adjusted her hoodie over her head as if it could somehow be of any help. To be honest, it was more of a reflex. It gave her the impression that she was alone, in her own world, where nothing was weird because there wasn’t any standard, any normality. There was just her. Her and…

“Dalnim… You’re spacing out again…”

 …Okay, maybe him too. This “him” being someone who had been courageous enough to be willing to approach her. It was the first week of the second semester and she still didn’t know why he did. He could easily have befriended some other way more frequentable people in this university. But no, he stuck with her since the beginning of this academic year until now. Not that she would complain. Mark was really one of the reasons she didn’t drop out of school. Well that and the fact she cared for her future.

“I’m not.” she answered, not even bothering to look up at him. Yet, she was definitely thankful that he just put an end to her inner ramblings.

“Seems like someone is grumpy”  he teased