CHAPTER 2
♚ you aren't a stranger...♚
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“You were pretty harsh back in middle school and elementary. I’m surprised you have friends now that you’re in high school.”

I stared wearily at Dongjin who was eating his breakfast. “That’s the first thing you say to me in the morning?”

“Morning, nuuna!”

“… Live and prosper, Dongjinnie,” I said, taking out the carton of eggs from the refrigerator. “How goes the one-sided crush?”

He narrowed his eyes suspiciously at me. “… Good. Why are you asking?”

“I’m not allowed to inquire about my little brother’s life?”

“Yes… You found a guy, haven’t you?!” he suddenly said with wide eyes. “Is that why you’ve been coming home late all the time last week?”

“Why are you making assumptions all of a sudden?” I asked instead, more shocked at that than his actual question.

“I’m related to you, aren’t I?”

“But you constantly deny that I’m your sister when I go to your school!”

“Someone’s in a bad mood today,” Yooyoung said as she took her seat next to me.

I glared at her. “This is my face everyday.” My little brother kept bugging me this morning regarding the “poor guy” that had made my acquaintance.

“It’s the waking up early thing, isn’t it? It’s finally getting to you.”

“Shut up and finish your breakfast.”

Yooyoung just grinned and took the half-eaten sandwich in her bag that was clearly not seen. “How do you do that?” she asked. I shrugged.

“Oh, I heard about that.” I looked briefly to face the girl seated in front of me, Yujin. “Ren-oppa is threatening you with a week of detention if you hit eighty lates, right?” Her eyes twinkled. “That’s the student council for you! Always fixing problem students!”

“I wasn’t broken.”

Yooyoung stared blankly at me. “You should take offence to the 'problem' word, not the 'fixing' one.”

It was a small break between classes. While we were waiting for the next teacher to arrive, I quickly went towards the back of the classroom. I bent down in front of Ren’s desk and rested my arms on it, narrowing my eyes at him. The hustle of the classroom and my innate lack of presence didn’t catch anyone’s attention, other than his single seatmate, since Ren was seated in the very back corner.

I clearly saw the amusement in his eyes when he saw me. “Your hair isn’t tied up today. You had a long morning to take care of it, didn’t need to tie it up in a rush or anything.”

“I was in a rush so I couldn’t tie it up.”

“Lies! An awesome hairdo like that does not come from being in a rush!”

“Yes… I believe it can,” he said proudly with that small perfect smile of his that makes my brain melt. Damn. Maybe that was why I was wrong. Too much brain melting.

I pursed my lips and groaned before standing up straight. “Just because great hair comes natural to you…” I muttered under my breath as I went back to my seat.

As he entered the classroom after lunch, I quickly went up to him and leaned in towards him. Luckily, there were very few people in the classroom at the moment. I noticed how he quickly took a step back. “Your homemade lunch had-“

“Wrong,” he said with a smirk. Stop doing that! My mind can’t handle thinking and admiring that upturn of lips at the same time! “Before you go on a long tangent, I bought cafeteria food today. Didn’t bring any homemade food.”

I clicked my tongue and glared at him. “You’re shooting me down before I even start!”

He raised his hand to form a gun and shot me with it.

I clenched my chest and groaned in pain.

“It would be that you-“

“Wrong.” He said, looking back at his book. We were in another of our many detention meetings, and I was again trying to get something on him right for once. It wasn’t happening though.

“I didn’t even say anything yet!” I recalled the boxed lunch incident a few days ago. “I didn’t say anything substantial yet!”

“You don’t need to. Since when have you been right?” he said, not bothering to look up, but the arrogant tone was so obvious.

“Before I met you!” I said dramatically, dropping my head onto my desk. “Why are you messing with my life?”

He took the effort to glance at me. “You’re very amusing.”

“Oh, so I’m just some entertainment when you’re bored?”

“Relax, you’re doing fine.”

“Boo!”

“Argh!”

I grinned smugly. “You’re easily shocked. Paranoid-?“

Ren let out a deep breath. “No, I just saw your face. Anyone would run screaming.”

“… Boo~” I said in a creepier voice.

“The nightmares,” he muttered, rubbing his arms and dramatically shivering.

I couldn’t help but laugh… and notice how he joined in.

“Why do you keep your hair long?” I asked, walking alongside him as we headed to the gym for PE. If all my assumptions on him were wrong, it’s best I start gathering some factual information.

Yes, I was getting desperate.

“My mom and sister are stylists – clothes, hair-dos, all those beautician stuff,” Ren said with a shrug. “I don’t like long hair. They do.”

That was quite an answer. I had expected him to be humorous and joke about it, not to answer me so personally… Damn it. Even without voicing it out, my expected responses from him were still wrong. “So you’re doing it just to please them?”

He paused for a moment before nodding. “Pleasing them is something I like doing.”

“Why can’t I have a younger brother like you?” I said wearily.

“… I’m certainly glad you aren’t my older sister,” he countered.

“Oh come on! I’m the best nuuna any little brother can have!”

“… says no brother ever.”

I really wanted to hit him. But even I wouldn’t forgive myself for harming, even playfully, his gorgeous self. I narrowed my eyes at him – he smiled back. It seemed he was also well aware of how a great defense his looks were. He could say anything he wanted and get away with it.

Is this a special privilege of good looking people?!... Wait. Wasn’t I a (self-proclaimed) good looking person as well?

“In my defense-“ Or actually, in attack. “-you don’t seem like a very ‘oppa’ kind of guy. You act too spoil-!” A ball suddenly whizzed by, just a few inches away from my face. We had already arrived at the gymnasium without me noticing.

“Did I hear you right?” Yujin said, a bright smile on her face… and another ball in her hand.

“No!” I quickly said. I may be smart, but my physical capabilities were pathetic. I turned to Ren… who had that picture-perfect smile on his face.

He was mocking me.

“I know I’m not as good looking as you to have privileges like this! Stop rubbing it in!” I mean, to have someone else defend you without even requesting? The power!

“I don’t believe I said anything,” he merely said, bemused.

“I can read it on your face!”

“… Since when have you been right in reading me?”

I turned to Yujin. “Hit me before I strangle him.”

The pile of books I was carrying suddenly decreased by three-fourths. I turned to my left to see Ren walking alongside me, the other books in his arms.

“… I don’t have any money,” I said curtly.

“I need to get paid to help my classmate out?” he asked with a chuckle. “Besides, I think Ms. Shin’s scolding was enough. Doing this extra work is a little out of line, even for her.”

I looked away. “Yeah.”

He stared at me with a frown. “… You talked back to her even during the scolding, didn’t you?” How did he know? I could never get anything on him right, and here he was, assuming things he hadn’t seen me do and getting it right! “You did take a little longer in the classroom,” he mused aloud.

Ms. Shin’s class was held before recess, which usually meant whatever ‘scolding’ I got from her after class ate up a lot of my break time. I didn’t mind though, since it also wasted hers. Yooyoung knew this and always bought me food form the cafeteria to give me when she came back to class…

But Ren… “Did you wait for me?” I asked, a grin beginning to spread across my face.

He quickly averted his gaze. “Don’t get smug now.”

“You enjoy my company?”

“Your ego – it’s getting too big.”

“Oh my God…”

He gave up on trying to control my arrogance. “… Well, you did spend most of the last few weeks waiting for and approaching me.”

We arrived at the faculty room, despite him holding more of the load, he was the one to open the door. He let me go in first.

“I don’t see why I can’t do the same,” he continued.

... Did my heart just begin to beat faster?

“I am never wrong!” I said in exasperation as I was walking home with Yooyoung. It just so happened that her basketball practice ended earlier than expected, so I was able to join her after my detention with Ren.

“Maybe you’re just blinded by his good looks,” she said with a shrug.

“It’s been two weeks already, Yooyoung. I can’t have gone permanently blind.” I pushed up my glasses… well, figuratively blind.

“Maybe… you want to be wrong.”

“Who wants to be wrong?”

“Somebody who’s always been right!” She stopped walking and took hold of my shoulders. “You can’t read him like you do everyone else and you enjoy the challenge. He constantly shoots your ideas down, and that’s make him different from everyone else. You’ve finally met a guy that interests you for more than two seconds and you love it! That and he’s a complete pretty boy to boot.”

“I only agree on the handsome part.”

“Anyway, on to the more important topic: Now you have to find a way to make him interested in you.” She said, letting go of me so we could continue walking.

I stared at her with a raised brow. “Are you high, woman? Disregarding everything you’ve said about how I think about him, you can’t honestly think you could get him interested in me? He’s Ren, one of the members of the student council. You want to know why his fan girls don’t insult or threaten me when I approach him during breaks?”

“Come to think of it, why?”

“Because I’m clearly not a threat. They know it. I know it. Ren definitely knows it. The fan girls only hate me when I badmouth him.”

“Yeah, well I know otherwise. And forgive me for stealing your catchphrase but: I am always right.” She hooked her arm with mine and there was a little skip to her step. Oh dear God she was excited – not a good sign for me.

“It’s against my principles and self-identity,” I said. We were in the girls’ bathroom ten minutes before classes began.

Yooyoung rolled her eyes and loosened the tie once more. Before I could fix it, she placed her hands on mine. “Stop, Jinah. It’s just for one day. If at the end you don’t get the attention you want from Ren-“

“I do not want attention from Ren!”

“-then you can go back to being all prim and proper tomorrow. But for today,” she pointed at my skirt that was two inches below the knee. “Fold it up and untuck that blouse, hun.” I groaned and obeyed, folding it at the top so it would end an inch above my knees and untucking my blouse.

I feel so .

She then ed my blazer and then the first few buttons of my blouse. The door to the girls’ bathroom suddenly opened. A first year stared at Yooyoung’s hands on me. She flushed red. “Sorry!” Then she quickly closed the door.

“I think we were mistaken as lesbians,” I noted aloud.

She just shrugged. “You like Ren, don’t you? So I guess you’re not completely straight.”

“What? I don’t see how that connects with me being a lesbian.”

She regarded me wearily, but then her eyes suddenly lit up. “Oh… right.” I stared at her in question. I could tell when this girl woke up at six-thirty or six-thirty-five, but I can never tell what’s going on in her mind. “Whenever you talk about Ren’s looks, you say he’s gorgeous and handsome.”

“Um, because he is.”

“But you never call him pretty.”

“… Why? Isn’t that term for females? He certainly looks like a guy to me.”

Yooyoung was smiling brightly. “Oh, I love these moments.”

“What moments?”

“The moments when your thinking is as simple as a little kid’s-OW!”

As I entered the detention classroom, Ren suddenly stood up from his seat. I put my bag down at the usual spot on the seat by door, but before I took take a seat, Ren took hold of my arm. I frowned and faced him, “What-?”

He suddenly took hold of the top buttons of my blouse and began buttoning it. He loosened my tie then began fixing it properly. “You are one of the very few girls in this school that wears the uniform properly and looks good in it. Keep it that way… okay? Whatever your friends are telling you is in fashion, ignore it and keep on being you. Unfold your skirt and tuck in your blouse.”

I nodded and obeyed… “You said I look good in the uniform.”

Ren finished fixing my tie, but his hands didn’t leave my collar. “Was that the only thing you heard me say?”

“It was the only thing I found surprising.”

He stared at me for a moment. I stared back… I could literally just look at him during the entire two-hour detention if he’d let me. “You…” he said in a soft and low voice.

I gulped, now aware of how close he was.

He let go of my collar and took a step back. He grinned childishly. “You aren’t that much of a looker, so you have to do your best.”

“Damn you,” I said as I took my seat.

“I’m kidding. You’re very pretty without even trying to be. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise,” he said as he too sat down.

My jaw dropped and I stared at him with wide eyes.

“What? Did I just steal your heart?” he said with a smirk.

I clenched onto my chest. “Ugh… my body feels weak… nothing is pumping my blood…”

He laughed.

The past few weeks at detention have been nothing but heaven for both my eyes and heart. He was cold and distant at first, but once Ren began opening up, he was so childish! And his smile! His laugh! Now I totally understand his fan girls’ sentiments.

As I laughed alongside him, I couldn’t help but hope that my detention days never come to an end.

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END CHAPTER 2
♚ ... you're just a friend I haven't made yet ♚

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PREVIEW

Chapter 3

“Last day of detention today.”

“Yup!... I have seventy-nine lates at the moment. One more and I get more detention.”

“Yes, that’s what we agreed on.”

“Can I be late tomorrow?”

I was asking him if he wanted to continue seeing me. I was hoping that he enjoyed my company as much as I enjoyed his. He was smart – he knew what I was asking for.

“… No.”

… Well, that .

A/N: I’m basing Ren’s character out of my impression of him on their L.O.V.E. story episodes. He’s a nice, funny and proud guy (they practically all are haha). He’s pretty energetic and he seems like a fun person. But what I found really interesting were when the other members kept teasing/bullying him as if it was perfectly normal and how whenever they do some skinship with him, he pulls away at times. I’m only midway in season 2, but I have never seen him be the one to initiate the skinship.

The closest term I could think for that is tsundere! His ‘tsun’ isn’t that extreme, but it’s there. He’s a polite guy, but a bit distant at first… though if you keep barging into his life, he’ll come to like you sooner or later, haha~ Ren seems like a total nice and friendly guy, but for the other members to get really close to him beyond just polite friendship, they practically have to force themselves on him and just… well, grow on him. Which is what I made Jinah do.

Way long explanation up there, haha. Did anyone even read it?

Anyway, I hoped you enjoyed this chapter. Much love to anyone who wants to suscribe or comment!