The friends they may have had…

Two months into high school, a girl with chestnut hair sat behind the library desk rummaging through her schoolbag.

“Junhee!” out of nowhere, a grinning girl sprinted her way noisily to the counter. Her hands clapped onto the desk just as loud.

“Jimin, this is a library,” muttered the girl behind the counter and went back to digging through her bag.

Jimin’s black cropped hair casted down her face like choppy curtains when she leaned forward to scan the messy desk. She pouted, “What are you doing?”

“I can’t find it.” Junhee gave a hopeless whimper.

“What? Your assignments?” Jimin pursed her lips worriedly.

“No,” the counter girl looked up, “Junhong’s schedule. He put it in my bag but now it’s gone.”

Jimin snorted, “And I thought you lost your birth certificate or something.”

The counter girl stood up with a sigh. “Never mind.” She began to tidy up the mess on the counter, peering at her classmate, “Don’t you have class right now?”

“Oh, right. Hey, d’you have any book I could read?”

“Well, this is a library…” the look Junhee gave Jimin was so flat that even Christopher Columbus was sure to fall off the face of the earth.

“Exactly. That’s the problem!” the black haired girl said, aghast.

Junhee blinked. “Uh okay. Well, what do you need the book for?”

“Okay, so you know that class-bridging project thing that we have to do with the seniors?” Jimin’s cute feline eyes were red rimmed and maniacal as if she’d had too much caffeine. “Like, okay, how on earth are we supposed to know which book is set in which historical time?”

“Well, I think you can read the back cover,” suggested Junhee. She was trying to be as helpful as she could.

Jimin rolled her eyes. “I know that. My point is, there are too many books. Can’t you just pick a good one for me, please?”

“…”

“Please, Junie-dearie?”

Junhee succumbed, because really it wasn’t like she was doing anything important.

After Jimin left with a copy of ‘I Capture the Castle’, Junhee continued to wheel the cart of returned books, trudging down each section and stacking them back where they belonged.

But her thought halted when she saw a student snooping by the library checkout.

He was a boy with plump lips, distinct sharp eyes and sandy-blonde hair. He just– looked tall and tidy, unlike most of the boys here who tried for the ‘bad boy’ style. This student wore his uniform so neatly that it made him look even cooler.

Mostly, he just looked (handsome) lost. Junhee had a feeling she’d seen him somewhere before.

So, she wheeled the now empty trolley over to him.

“Can I help you?” she said.

The tall boy turned around, his eyebrows arched, and there was this light of recognition on his face as if he’d found who he had been looking for.

“Choi Junhee?” he asked, an almost a smile was hinted on the corners of his lips. “You’re the librarian?” Junhee was sure they’d talked before.

“Yes, it’s me until lunch.”

The guy nodded, shoved his hands in his pockets and glanced around the deserted library. The pause stretched into awkward silence. Junhee thought he was handsome, and she couldn’t quite recall where they’d met before.

“I don’t think Pretty Covers necessarily make good books,” she blurted out. “If you know what I mean.”

The guy blinked at her, surprised at the sudden statement.

“Was that an insult?” he asked, tilting his head to the side. “It’s a clever one.”

Junhee shrugged, eyeing him with this wary look as if he’d suddenly turn into a monster any second.

“It’s Kris. Not ‘Pretty Cover’,” the senior decided to say. “And we’ve talked before.”

“Oh, that’s nice to know. You do look familiar.”

Then her mind wandered off.

She still needed to tell Junhong she lost his schedule. And also eat, or he would, again, think she was deliberately avoiding him at school, ‘Do books fill your stomach? Junhee?’

She could hear his crestfallen voice rattle inside her mind.

“Good. Because I need your help,” said Kris.

Junhee blinked, coming back to the present. “Okay, let me put the trolley away.”

“Do you have anything in mind, then?” she asked.

Kris nodded and flicked his bangs out of his eyes.

“Set during a past event but isn’t directly affected by warfare,” Kris said thoughtfully as they walked through the isles.

“You must be doing the joint project,” Junhee commented, mind wandering off to Jimin earlier.

Kris halted in his steps and stared at her. “Yes. Are you?”

Junhee nodded and continued walking, Kris right beside her.

“So. Have you got yourself a partner?” he asked, trying to keep his voice composed.

“Um… sophomores have to do them with seniors,” she frowned worriedly. “I don’t know one.”

Kris blinked at her incredulously as she continued to walk on without him.

When he caught up with her, he said, “Meaning, you haven’t got a partner.”

“No,” she said lightly.

“Well, I’m a senior. How about we do it together?” he offered, attempting to keep the hope out of his voice.

Junhee turned to him and informed, “I already have a book and there is a war in it. More on anthropology than warfare, though.”

“So, there’s a war, but it isn’t about the war?”

“Yeah. War’s just an excuse for the story to happen,” Junhee said, nodding. Then she mumbled to herself as an afterthought, “Isn’t warfare also part of anthropology?”

“Well, wars are actually the side-effects of anthropology,” Kris offered.

“Then that’d make us the side-effects of violence, aggression and corruption,” she listed off absently, as if she was talking to herself. Kris watched her, unblinking, never quite realising how brilliant Choi Junhee, who he had been eyeing since last year, was. It made him regret not having paid more attention to her back then—if he had, by now, she would already remember his name the way she did Minseok’s.

“Pretty much,” he hummed, looking away. “We are corruption—born and bred from it.”

“That’s nice to know,” she commented lightly, knowing the senior was absolutely right. He was smart, and had not been rude to her yet (which was something she didn’t expect, since not many students in high s