“Hyemi, are you alright?”

            “Yeah,” I said, trying my best to focus on today’s math lesson rather than the fact that my boyfriend has been reported missing just this morning. It’s okay, I kept telling myself. The police are doing their job. He’ll be back before you know it.

            My best friend Jackson Wang sighs, clearly not interested in the math lesson at all. “Did your mom tell you anything else?”

            “Jackson, I’m trying to learn calculus here.”

            “Well I’m not,” Jackson replied sassily. Maybe that was why he was on the verge of failing. He started playing with his putty eraser. “It’s all just so interesting. Lee Taemin, the school’s golden boy, suddenly disappears. No one knows if he’d gone willingly, or if he’d been kidnapped. Could he possibly be involved with the mafia? Is he even alive? It’s all such a mystery.”

            Is he even alive? Of course Jackson would pop this question. He’s never liked Taemin, for reasons that I still did not know. My best friend was just judgmental like that, I suppose. I tried not to think about it as I struggled with derivatives.

            Suddenly, my phone vibrated in my pocket.

FR: Unknown

SENT: 9:35 AM

Mi 189307

            “Is that Taemin?” Jackson asked, leaning over to peer at my phone screen.

            “I-I don’t know.” I immediately raised my hand and asked if I could go to the bathroom, where I attempted to call back the unknown number to see where it’d take me.

            “I’m sorry, but the number you had dialed no longer exists.”

            What? That can’t be. I’d just read a text message from it literally a minute ago.

            Strangely enough, the message I’d just received was also no longer in my inbox. It was gone. Vanished.

            I walked out of the bathroom, confused. I knew what I’d seen. I’d gotten that text message. Jackson was there to prove it. What was going on? Was that a code he’d sent me? Some sort of cryptic message?

            I was so busy thinking about these things that I’d bumped into someone in the hallway.

            “Sorry,” I said.

            Then I realized who I’d just bumped into.

            The new kid. Kai.

           Seeing him up close now, left me breathless. His eyes were dark, mesmerizing. I felt chills just staring at them. The resemblance between him and my boyfriend entered my mind again and I sort of just stood there, entranced.

            He seemed to be studying me also as he eyed me from head to toe. “Watch where you’re going next time,” he said coldly before sliding his hands into his pockets, walking away.

            “Hmm…” Jackson put a finger to his chin, thinking. The two of us were at the library after school, trying to figure out what the hell the text message meant. Lucky for me and Jackson’s nosey , he’d written down the message before I’d dashed off to the bathroom.

            “Okay so ‘Mi’,” I said, reviewing what we had so far. “That obviously stands for me, Hyemi, which means that Taemin was addressing me, even calling me perhaps. But what the hell do the numbers mean?”

            A couple girls passed by me, giving me sympathetic looks. “…yeah she was his girlfriend,” I heard them say. “…such a shame. She must be heartbroken. I feel so bad for her.”

            It’s been going on all day, of course. News was getting around. People pitied me, felt sorry for me. I even heard some rumors saying that I had something to do with Taemin’s disappearance.

I ignored everything, too busy trying to figure out this cryptic text message. It had to do something with Taemin, I knew it. And maybe that was what kept me from going insane, from going full-on hysterical.

            “The only things I can think of with numbers are birthdays,” Jackson said now. He took out a piece of paper and began scribbling some things.

            “What are you doing?” I asked, peering over.

            “Combinations,” Jackson replied, his pencil zooming here and there. “The numbers are 189307. Hm…89…73…no that’s too old…”

            “What if we’re over thinking this?” I asked. “What if it’s hardly even scrambled? What if it’s in pairs?”

            “Pairs?” Jackson wrote down 18, 93, and 07. Then his eyes widened. “Hyemi. Remember how our math teacher was talking about rearranging numbers and all that stuff?” He pointed to a circled batch of numbers on the paper. “189307 can be rearranged to 071893. That’s a birthday date that fits.”

            “Holy .” Chills ran down my spine. “That’s…that’s Taemin’s birthday. So this means he’s…”

            Jackson nodded. “He’s alive. And Hyemi, he’s calling for your help.”

            My phone buzzed again.

            Another text message.

            “What does it say?” Jackson asked as I checked my inbox.

FR: Unknown

SENT: 3:37 PM

X 149401

            Then the message disappeared, just like last time. It seemed as if every time this person was telling me a message, they’d cut the line off right away to make sure the evidence was properly deleted. Or, so I was quickly learning.

            Jackson was already trying to figure out the code.

            “It seems to be another birthday,” he said.

            “How are you so good at this stuff and yet you’re almost failing calc?” I asked.

            Jackson shrugged. “Now let’s see…94 is the birth year, obviously. There are no monthly dates exceeding 12 so 14 is the day…which makes 01 the month of January.” He slid his piece of paper over to me. “January 14^th, 1994. Now the real question here is whose birthday is that, and what could the ‘X’ possibly mean?”

            A dark aura suddenly suffocates the library. Jackson and I looked up to see the new kid, Kai, passing by our table. He had his earphones on, with the beanie back on his head.

            “That guy is a real mystery,” Jackson said with a shiver.

            “I’ve been seeing him quite a bit today.” I was still watching him as he paused by an aisle, looking for a book.

            “I heard he got kicked out of his last school and his mother is institutionalized so he’s pretty much on his own.” Jackson pulled out his calc book and opened it, then quickly closed it. “Forget this I am so done with calc.”

            I was still observing this guy, how he resembled my boyfriend so much but so little at the same time. They may bear similar looks, but they were nothing alike personality and background wise. Taemin was from a wealthy and privileged family, so was I. Kai, on the other hand, was on his own. Taemin was also the epitome of sunshine. Kai just embodied gloominess. So seemingly similar, but yet with just a little more observation, polar opposites.