You weren’t the type of girl who were interested in guys—please, not that you were gay for your girl friends or anything—but come on, you were, like, a sophomore in high school and you weren’t anything close to Wengie, the beauty blogger. Simply, you could be anyone and anyone could be you, and this was your high school where something like a first love story of your very own would begin.

    Not that you were thrilled, or anything.

   So there you were, shoving and being shoved back by all types of students alike inside this stupid hall that could only house no more than a few hundreds—there were around a thousand students in your school. Okay, so the thing was, the principal of the damn school called each and every student to meet at the Great Hall, which has never been that great to begin with.

    Self-explanatory, right?

    “Good morning, everyone!” bellowed the lovely principal.

    From the left, you heard this sweaty boy, who was still wearing gym clothes, sniffled as if he did not find the morning good at all. Well, you did not either, because, dude, boy germs weren’t the problem here, but you could practically feel his sweat seeping into your uniform. Ugh.

    You twisted your head sideways to give him a beating with your words, but the moment you turned was the same moment he turned to stare at you and the proximity was so close that you had to swallow down your words, afraid it would do more harm than good.

    “Uh…” you said eloquently.

   The boy with his honey brown hair and slant eyes kept his gaze steady at you, his fox-like brows raising only momentarily. Slowly, he gave you this sheepish smile that knocked all the air out of your lungs and all you could do was blink back at him like a smartass that you were.

    “I’m sor–” the boy started saying quietly, but suddenly, you were so sure that you, at some point in time, must’ve wronged the universe so bad that it was now punishing you.

    With some immense force of a colossal joke, you were shoved harshly from the right and ended up plastering yourself against the boy, further knocking even more breath out of your lungs and all you could do was gulp for air against his damp gym shirt and ugh just help–

    Two calloused hands grabbed your shoulders and steadied you on your feet and gods you could feel the heat flushing to your neck and cheeks which you would never admit was from the contact, never. Not at all.

    The boy cleared his throat and mumbled, averting his eyes almost shyly, “I mean, uh, I didn’t get to shower after morning practice.”

    And all you could do was blink weirdly at him.

    “Uh huh,” you said flatly, before turning back to the front. 

    But no matter what you do, his presence was still there and looming beside you. He wasn’t that tall, but the way his shoulder kept brushing against yours, you could tell that he was well-muscled and was probably some school jock. 

    But jocks wouldn’t apologise, would they? Especially not for something that wasn’t entirely their fault.

    “Really,” the boy continued where he’d left off a few minutes later, eyes fixed onto the principal who was leisurely taking his time with his damn speech. “Sorry, I know it’s gross.”

    You almost snorted, because duh, of course it’s gross! And you were about to turn to him to say just that when you caught him side-eyeing you. His expression looked like a landfill between shy and apologetic and you immediately swallowed back your words.

    Because gods you weren’t a rude person, okay.

    “It’s not so bad,” Of course it’s bad! “Don’t worry about it.” No, worry about it!

    Ten minutes later, you all were released from the drones of principal and were now being shoved back into the hallway in order to get to your classes. Along the way, you could still feel the boy at your side, because there still wasn’t anywhere else to go.

    “I can’t believe we have to hand in our phones at the beginning of every class now,” the boy was talking to you.

    You raised your eyebrows questioningly while turning to look at him. “What?”

    He turned back to stare at you, his half-moon eyes glistening under the hallway lights.

    “You weren’t listening?” the boy asked incredulously, his thin lips curving into an amused smile.

    You blinked at him. “Um…”

    “You didn’t.”

    “No, I–”

    “You weren’t.”

    “Well, I–”

    “Really?” 

    “Stop it,” you yelped, suddenly flustered.

    The boy started chuckling good-naturedly before patting you lightly on the shoulder.

    “I’m just messing with you,” said the stupid sweaty dude. “See you around.”

    And then he was gone, with you blinking after his shadow.

    “What the hell?” you asked the air in front of you, belatedly.

    After morning break, you contemplated stashing your phone in your locker because there was no way you would ever throw it into the stupid basket with everybody else’s phone before class again. It had taken you so long to retrieve it after your morning class.

    But then your idiot of a best friend was running towards you and grabbing you into a headlock with a, “Hey, stupid!”

    “Daehyun!” you shrieked, punching the guy in the gut. He immediately let go of you to cradle at his stomach with a pathetic whimper. You grumbled, “You’re the stupid one.”

    Daehyun twisted his lips wryly, straightening up. “What a smart comeback.”

    You practically flipped him the finger before stalking off to your next class without as much as a second glance. You pretended not to know him or hear him hollering after you, “I’m uninviting you to dinner!”

    You knew he would never ‘uninvite’ you to dinner—it was your mum who would be cooking the damn food and feeding his big loud mouth.

    You let out an internal groan as you threw your phone into the classroom basket at the teacher’s table before stomping your way boyishly into algebra class.

    Now you couldn’t even google up your answers. What a bad day with a promise of more bad days, you thought.

    Your movements halted when you were about to dump your school bag on the desk by the window when your gaze caught another student on the other side of the room.

    It was the boy from this morning.

    He was now wearing his school uniform. His hair was neatly styled and he was no longer sweaty. As if he could feel somebody’s stare upon him, he shifted in his seat and glanced up from his lazy doodles, but not fast enough to catch you. You’ve already turned away and sat down by then. He wasn’t that bad looking, you thought with a shrug.

    The moment when class ended, you practically rushed out of the room, almost forgetting to fish out your phone from the teacher’s basket. You roughly stashed the phone into your skirt pocket before making a run towards the school gate.

    Your brother was coming back to visit from abroad today.

    Not that you wanted to see your brother, of course. Like every good little sister of the house, you just wanted to see what he bought you.

    You hope it would be chocolate.

    You probably going to have to find a way to hide it from Daehyun.

    On the way home, your phone kept on making noises and ringing in your pocket but you ignored it because you knew that nobody would ever call you and it was probably some stupid spam mails.

    The moment you got home, your phone was still receiving messages, so you groaned and turned it off before throwing it onto your bed with the rest of your school things. Your mum then called you down to help her with dinner, and subconsciously, you thought of Daehyun and how stupid he was to think he could just come into your home only after the food was done to gobble it all up while you had to spend time cooking for him.

    But of course he could. Your mother loved your stupid neighbour.

    “Darling? Your brother said he tried calling you but you didn’t pick up?” your mum said from the kitchen as you stepped in. “He’s on his way here from the airport right now.”

    “Oh.” So it was him bombarding your phone. 

    You dashed back upstairs to turn on your phone. The passcode screen came up and you typed it in with ease. The screen unlocked and…

    It wasn’t your phone.

    What.

    The background of the phone wasn’t what you once remembered. It was a picture of a couple—a self taken picture of a boy kissing a pretty girl on the cheek at the moment of capture.

    You eyed the picture strangely.

    But the passcode…it had to be your phone. How else could the passcode be right?

    There must only be one in a million chance that your phone would have the same passcode as a stranger’s phone you accidentally picked up. Right?

    Still with that thought in mind, the phone beeped and a message from someone you didn’t know came up.

    anjae: I HATE U

    You frowned at the message and tapped it open. Wow, rude, you thought. 

    And okay, whoever this Anjae was, she wasn’t being very nice to the owner of the phone and yeah, you would have considered things like ‘violation of privacy’ but this Anjae didn’t seem to be considering it when she decided to violate this person’s phone with her words either.

    So, angrily, you typed back.

    Uppie: hate u too

    Uppie? This phone belonged to Uppie? Who the hell was Uppie?

    No, scratch that. Who the heck named themselves, Uppie?

    You shrugged and ran back downstairs, while shoving the phone into your back pocket after changing out of your uniform.

    You would have to check with your algebra teacher tomorrow.