Soojung doesn’t know when Myungsoo starts to hang with Jinri and her. He’s not always there, but he’s there. Sometimes he would join them during break, sometimes he would sit with them during chemistry and biology, and sometimes he would just appear out of nowhere. Soojung’s no longer asking him why he’s always there wherever they go because she knows his answer would always be ‘I’m a magician, what do you expect?’ and she stops because she thinks that he’s just so full of himself.

Besides, Jinri likes him too. So she lets him be.

“Jinri’s not here. So, can you sit at somewhere else?” Soojung says one day when they’re in literature class. She arrives first and seconds later Myungsoo arrives too, and he sees her. She wishes that Myungsoo won’t be sitting beside her but Myungsoo is a magician, not a mind reader. He sits beside her and she groans.

“I like this seat, so no.” Myungsoo replies.

It’s still early and the class would start at 8. Myungsoo does nothing, like seriously, nothing, but it annoys her. Probably it’s because Myungsoo likes to puff his cheeks and lets out the breath he’s holding very loudly and Soojung dislikes noise. Probably it’s because Myungsoo has the habit of tapping his pencil on her journal when he’s bored and he doesn’t stop even when she asks him to. Probably it’s because Myungsoo likes to steal glances at her. Probably it’s because Myungsoo being Myungsoo.

The class starts and Soojung sits straight, her ears listening to whatever the teacher’s saying, but her eyes keeps looking at his hand that’s doodling at the corner of her journal. She doesn’t know what he’s trying to draw, but it looks cute. And she doesn’t even know why she doesn’t stop him.

“You like reading?” he asks out of a sudden, tilting his head towards her and it catches her off guard.

She blinks. “Reading?” nodding her head, she answers. “Yes, very much.”

He smiles, already expecting that answer from her. “Which author that you like?”

“I like John Green. Haruki Murakami’s good too. Lang Leav. It’s a lot.”

“What kind of books do you like?”

She stares into the mid-air as she looks for the answer, and Myungsoo waits, his eyes never leave her every reaction when she’s thinking.

“I don’t know,” she says. “I like books that don’t have happy endings. Tragedy, life, depression, self-harm, I don’t know. Stuffs like that. Books that tell actuality instead of fantasy.”

Myungsoo seems to be taken aback by her answer and he doesn’t even know why. Carefully, he asks, “And why is that?”

She shrugs, opening to answer but is cut off by the teacher.

“Miss Jung, mind to tell me what great literatures have in common?”

Soojung freezes before she breaks into a smile. She’s always waiting for someone to ask her that, and she even prepares the answer. Looking at the waiting Myungsoo by the corner of her eye before she looks at her teacher, she answers confidently.

“They’re all ended in tragedy.”

The teacher leaves them with worksheets and Soojung’s busy working on it that she doesn’t even realise what Myungsoo’s doing beside her. The class ends 25 minutes later and Myungsoo leaves to his next class without saying anything to her. She’s very thankful somehow.

She keeps her things inside her bag but stops when her journal comes into her eyes. She reaches for it and turns to the page where Myungsoo doodled just now, and it’s on the exact same page where she pasted the daisy that he gave to her the other day. She touches the dying daisy as her eyes travel downward, until they reach at the very end of the page.

She closes the journal again, puts it into her bag and walks to her next class.

And she’s smiling.

She doesn’t know that such words could affect her very much.

You’re interesting.

It isn’t her handwriting, it’s his’—Myungsoo’s.

+++

Soojung meets Jinri later in Language class. The class is filled with noise since the teacher’s not coming and it annoys Soojung so much. Now that she thinks of it, everything seems to be really annoying to her. She doesn’t know whether it’s just her or other teenager feel the same way like she does, but she knows it’s a lie if nobody feels like what she feels.

Myungsoo’s in the class too, but he doesn’t sit with them, and Soojung notices that Jinri keeps looking at his direction and she chuckles.

“Jin, you’re being too obvious.” she says.

Jinri hides her face with her palms when she hears that. She sighs. “Am I?”

“Do you really like him that way?”

Jinri’s now seating facing to Soojung. “Is it wrong?”

Soojung shrugs, sending her a reassuring smile. “It’s n