From the bedroom, she ran down the hallway towards where the music was coming from and ran down the stairs. Once she reached the main floor, she looked around for her friends and spotted them at the main entrance. She quickly ran towards them in the complete mess of a state she was in and simply ignored their worries when she heard Yongguk’s faint voice calling out to her; she grabbed onto one of her friends’ wrists and ran out of the house with the other three hastily following her, all of them confused about what was going on.

“Jieun! Yah! Jieun! Slow down! You’re hurting me!”

Hearing the complaint, she suddenly halted in her steps and froze on her spot, her eyes staring right on the road in front of her. The two other girls finally caught up to her as they were left breathless from the run and went to stand in front of Jieun.

Sudden nausea took over the pit of her stomach making her feel queasy and quickly threw up on the cement, earning a gasp from the other three. Left and right, the intimate moment she had just spent with Yongguk were coming right at her, leaving her to feel uncomfortable and disgusted with herself.

She started to cry with tears endlessly falling down her cheeks. She could still feel that glow lingering all over her skin but reality was hitting her harder, pushing away the faint moment of pleasure completely.

“Jieun! What happened? Why are you crying?”

She wasn’t capable of speaking up and only shook her head to show her friends that she didn’t want to talk about her night. Reluctantly, they finally agreed as they helped her pull herself back together; she leaned onto Hyosung with her arm around the girl’s shoulders before they started walking away again only to realize that she wasn’t wearing her shoes.

“Hmm, Jieun? Your heels… Where are they?”

“I-I forgot them.”

“Do you want to go ba-”

“No, its okay. I don’t need them.”

“Let’s take a cab back home then, it will be easier.”

Her phone kept constantly ringing breaking the silence around the streets. Jieun knew who was calling but didn’t have the energy to answer nor did she even want to talk to him. It wasn’t stopping though and it was starting to annoy her; taking it out of her pocket, she violently threw it on the ground, barely breaking it. She asked one of the girls for a shoe and started hitting harshly against the device, finally destroying it completely.

Giving back the shoe, she left the others as she walked ahead of them, with the girls glancing at each other with worry before catching up to their friend.

“It’s going to be one long weekend girls.”

The weekend passed by with Jieun finally fessing up to her friends about her fuzzy night. When she had woken up on the next morning, she could only remember glimpses of her night but its only when she took a shower to clean herself up that she knew that whatever ‘wet dream’ she had of Yongguk was just a figment of the reality she had lived.

She had lost her ity to the quarterback of her high school and it was something she regretted the most. Not the flirting or the teasing and certainly not the make out. It was the fact that she had drank to the point of being completely smashed just because she wanted to prove a point and got so carried away in the process, she could still barely believe that it was her at all.

She hated herself to have given up in whatever game he was playing with her, making her feel like she was just another one of his girls or something of the sort. Her friends tried to cheer her up by distracting her either by the play they were working on or even on their studies knowing that the mid terms would be coming up soon.

It daunted her the fact that she never saw it coming. How he grew this sudden interest in her and being gullible, she fell for it, thinking that he was really interested in her.

But that was how she saw things, not how he saw them nor how they really were.

Everything that happened that night was truthful to the desire that had been growing inside of him the moment he saw her step inside his friend’s house the night of the party. His interest into knowing Jieun blew up into a higher stage leaving him into actually liking her. She was different from the other girls he went out with and was actually better than her step-sister, something he was thankful for.

And with their night together, he didn’t regret anything at all. Yes, it was his first time too, and he had the time of his life. Just by kissing her, it was powerful enough to awake butterflies inside of him but by making love to her, he felt as if he took part in a huge roller coaster ride at the amusement park, leaving his heart to jump all over the place, overwhelming him in the process.

He spent the weekend thinking about Saturday night over and over again adding up to how she had suddenly ran away as if she had just committed a crime. Seeing her dashing off like that did break his spirit though. He tried to call her several times but was always left with the machine saying that her phone was turned off. He knew that the only way he would be able to talk to her was at school, specifically during chemistry since it was their only common class.

He was lying on his bed right now, holding onto one red high heel as he stared at it. He knew it was from her and remembered the exact moment when he took them off of her, leaving him to faintly smile at how he had called her Cinderella even though she was only wearing a costume from a popular American musical from the 70’s.

‘Cinderella…’

A sudden light bulb inside his head as he quickly sat up. He quickly got up from his bed and walked to his desk where he went straight to his computer, preparing the idea he had in mind for school tomorrow.

The Monday morning blues was present upon all the students of Seoul High as they were dreadfully walking down the hallways towards their first class of the morning.

Yongguk was at his locker as he carefully placed the red shoes inside before taking out a pile of flyers he had prepared the night before, tightly holding onto them, where the content consisted of Jieun’s red high heels with a question mark over it, giving her the chance to claim her ‘lost’ shoes. He took the minutes that were left before the first morning class was about to begin and started hanging the papers all over school from students’ lockers to the walls, to the main board announcement and even gave out a copy to the school’s radio station, wanting the announcement to be spoken out loud, in the hopes that Jieun would hear it.

“This is a call out from Danny to Sandy~ Hmm, if you’re Sandy, Danny Zucko is looking for you. Please meet him by his locker.”

He could feel his heart thump strongly against his chest, nervous about what the situation will bring to him. Luckily, they had chemistry class later, which would easily give him the chance to talk to Jieun and sort things out.

He spent the rest of the day on his toes, searching everywhere for her. Once it was time for chemistry, he crossed his fingers in hopes to see her but the hour passed by and she was no where to be found. It affected his mood, leaving him to feel depressed for the rest of the day.

This went on for the next couple of days without Yongguk having the chance to see Jieun. Now that the chemistry exam was coming up in just a few hours, he thought that maybe this time she would show up but she didn’t. It left him feeling discouraged that maybe she was skipping out on him on purpose or she may have simply fallen sick and couldn’t attend school.

Either way, he wanted to find out; he needed to find out.

By Friday, he decided to confront Sunhwa since she was the only one he ‘knew’ from Jieun’s group of friends.

Finding her by her locker after the last class of the day ended, he quickly ran up to her, catching her off guard. “Hmm, you’re Sunhwa, right? Jieun’s friend?”

“Hmm, yea…”

“Did she, by any chance, mentioned why she wasn’t at school this week?”

“I haven’t talked to her since she went back to her place last weekend.”

“Because I tried calling her and she never picked up…”

“O-oh, hmm… Well her phone kind of broke and she doesn’t have a new one yet.”

Closing the door to her locker, she was about to walk away when Yongguk stopped her, by blocking her path. “Okay then if you do talk to her… Can you tell her that I’m looking for her? I really want to speak to her…”

“Hmm, yea sure but there isn’t really a guarantee that she’s going to accept-”

“I know but please, it’s important.”

Sunhwa let out a sigh as she noticed the desperate look on Yongguk’s face. She agreed to help him letting her see a thankful smile on his face as he thanked her before letting her walk away. He was about to go on in his walk when he heard his name being called by his chemistry teacher. A slight frown across his face, he followed Mr. Kwon into the classroom as he was asked to take a seat leaving the older man to place a sheet in front of the student.

“What’s this?”

“This is your test. Turn the paper around.”

Did as he was told, Yongguk let out a sigh as he let his head fall backwards, rubbing his eyes with one hand before dropping it down on his lap and looking back down on his test.

“You failed again Mr. Bang, you know what that means, right?”

“That the test was too difficult to succeed?”

“That you’ll have to drop out from the football team.”

“What?! Oh come on Mr. Kwon! It was just one small test!”

“I warned you Mr. Bang that if you failed the next test that you would be out of the team and even your coach agreed on this-”

“But I have scouts coming to check me out! I need to get a scholarship for college!”

“And what if it doesn’t work out then, hmm? You can’t rely on those scouts Yongguk. Sports isn’t everything.” Another desperate sigh out of his mouth, Yongguk ran his fingers through his brown hair as his gaze fell back down on his grade. He couldn’t afford to lose his spot in the team since he’s been waiting for this opportunity the moment he joined the football team in freshmen year.

“Is there a way to fix this without having me quit the team? I’ve been waiting for those scouts for three years now!”

The teacher looked closely at him, feeling the genuine worry in the boy’s tone of voice, which made the man willing to give another chance at his student. “There is one thing that you can do but I don’t want to hear any complaints, understand?”

“Yes! Anything!”

“Come back here on Monday, after classes have ended. You’ll be meeting your chemistry tutor.” He hastily thanked the teacher for giving him another chance. He didn’t care about the tutoring lessons because all he wanted was to simply stay in the team.

And just like the teacher had asked him too, the weekend passed and Monday was already over with the last bell ringing. From his classroom to his locker, he made his way towards the chemistry lab and opened the door only to freeze by the entrance when his eyes landed on Jieun who was sitting at her desk, her eyes on her textbook.

His heart skipped a beat at his sight and he let out a smile, relieved to see the girl after not having any kind of contact with her since the night she ran out on him at the party.

He was reminded about the pair of shoes that were still in his locker and quietly ran out to quickly take them out and bring them back with him. Once he stood by the classroom’s door, he softly knocked earning her attention as she lifted her head up and gasped out in surprise as she froze, her eyes wide open staring straight at the boy.

“Y-Yongguk? Wh-what are you d-doing here?”

“I’m your new student.”