Turning heads has always been a part of his life, and it did much to boost his self-purported ego. It is not like the twenty-three year old permits such individual imaging to overtake his perspectives, but it remains something that he can be smug about. No one likes a proud person, but then again, Lee Seungri is one of the few who is able to walk along that thin line rather nimbly before going too far. Besides, the world can be subjectively lenient to the pretty and handsome and the rich, if one chooses to be sombrely honest.

 

His smart bold sneakers skilfully meander down the hallway, good mornings and other general greetings filling the place most easily amongst the people. Bright eyes scan across the place rapidly for familiar faces, and they are many for he is a most gregarious man. Yet when it is the one girl he sees, the feet adjust to a different speed entirely and the bounce in his steps alter. “Good morning, sunshine-“ expresses Seungri sonorously with a well-meaning arm around her shoulder, yet within seconds his hands are used to protect himself from a threatening punch. Her innocent eyes widen then, and a guilty pang sears the male’s heart. The anatomical barriers of defence are simultaneously lowered as the boy speaks in a deliberate motion.

 

“My most humble apologies,” he muses solemnly despite the natural wicked glint in his eyes. “I have much forgotten that you are unable to hear me.” And the crowd that witnessed the occasion merely peters out in due time, indeed.

 

He remembers how the first meet eventuated, a coincidence to be smiled at as he would not have it any other way. It is the kind of quietness that had grabbed his attention accidentally, the girl who sat by the lunch benches alone in the education institution. Bizarre, uncanny, if he had to be frank, because while he may be a newbie in this place, he was convicted that she had no acquaintances. Not only did she seem to be rather fair, she had an admirable expression too. Now, he is not one to judge based on first impression, but he could not help it.

 

The feet, they had ventured towards her until they nearly touched the rough end of the bench’s leg and unfiltered words tumbled before they could be halted. “Why is it that a gorgeous girl like you alone all the time-“ he had uttered, and though he is a player of words and perfect in the area of charm, no reaction had been visibly noticed. It both interested and irked. With a slight ego he had presumed most sourly that it is just too bad that she had no response, when the loose wrapper that escaped her grasp caused the turning of her body, and the immediate jerk of unadulterated surprise.

 

Lee Seungri had been stunned at the temporary display of openness and vulnerability. This girl could not be the one that had ignored his incipient greeting at all a few moments ago. In his deep musings he had not noticed the slender fingers that entangled a pen and a notebook, to which a quick message is written in simple ink.

 

“I’m sorry if you tried to speak to me earlier. I did not hear you, because I am unable to.”

 

Eyes had lifted with unmasked astonishment as she wore the smallest of grins. “That can’t be,” he had finally articulated back then. “You spoke before, I know you did.” Naivety had proved to be his great undoing. She took out a handheld mirror, looking at the reflection with apparent vanity. With a gentle and almost scheming smile, she then said most innocently in return, “And who says that the deaf cannot speak?” and it messes with his brain for the rest of that particular day.

 

Every day afterwards, any momentary passing has been acknowledged with the quick quirk of the lips, the twinkle in the eyes by the male while she remains considerably cold. “You are a little too forward in your friendliness,” she remarks one day with brief glances at the handheld mirror. Seungri takes that comment rather naturally. “Well, my dear,” he replies most cheerfully. “You are much too conscious for a pretty girl.” Saccharine words are his trade and albeit the voluminous supply, they are never dilute in veracity. The gentle yet firm removal of the handheld mirror registers an unparalleled shock that ripples across her paling countenance in the sudden, still motion of skipping stones. In his eagerness and slight simplicity, it is a response unnoticed.

 

She opens to speak, but the fair maiden fails to articulate anything verbally. And so it is at a pace furious in which she pens down a bold notion.

 

“You should give it back if you wish to hear my voice in our brief conversations again.”

 

Seungri raises a brow at that in spite of her unamused glare. His mouth parts into an almost mocking and exiguous smile. The pen busies itself again.

 

“You are most unkind. I am absolutely serious about my request.”

 

Glancing at the object of supposed affection, his eyes flickers to hers with a trace of slyness. In exasperation she lunges forward for it, a move unexpected and their fingers end up clumsily intertwined. While there might be a hint of rubescent colouring her defiant face, the boy almost seems unmoved. He does not let the object go. The lids of his eyes droop with chaste affection as his words launch into mid-air.

 

It starts with a mild, “Hey,” and a sombre query follows after along the line of, “Why do you need it so badly?” Though their incipient opinions that clashed had caused their miniature dispute laced with tension to rise, the underlying care smoothens the wrinkles in their current interaction. The fingers continue to hold on to Seungri’s and the handheld mirror, the awkwardness no longer too evident and the other free hand scratches her nuque. She tries glancing at her reflection but to no avail – thus the use of the pen once more.

 

“I’m not confident enough to verbalise my conversations without checking with the mirror.”

 

Upon descrying those inked characters, his heart effortlessly relented. His fingers release the grip he held for those long, pedantic minutes and she takes it back. “Thank you,” she mumbles, the traces of the fierce and volatile personality disappearing in an abrupt instant, leaving no vestiges behind. And the traces of emotion dealt in the shaking of her voice prompts him to instigate the unwise.

 

With hands placing themselves neatly onto themselves, he delivers a statement. “You… haven’t always been deaf, now have you?”

 

The look that lasts for a second opens a boisterous and uncontrollable can of worms.

 

“This isn’t the time for this,” she replies laconically. He nods, quite sure that the time would never be right for such a heavy matter had he struck the right chord. It would probably never be right, in a sense, especially when their wavelengths differed so much. In his musings he did not notice her writing once more, a cryptic, “1700 A2-1” with an ironically tiny exclamation mark at the end. She takes her leave then, in the orderly and quick fashion adopted, and he is left with the note, perplexed. “If this is her backstory, I will most definitely say that I do not understand it at all,” the twenty-three year old groans in open honesty to himself. Having not a class to attend in the next hour or so, the message is imprinted in his head as he tries to turn it over and inside out in an attempt to understand it better.

 

It is perchance that he passes by a huge clue that changed his meandering course of the day after the late afternoon lesson. The block letters of “D4-1” hung flaccidly on the classroom’s entrance and in turn, an accost and a spike of encouragement assault him simultaneously. He scrambles for the watch immediately, playing timekeeper a role much required. It shows fifteen minutes past five and he welcomes a small attack of the heart. “Idiot,” he mumbles under his breath with irritation before running madly to the venue.

 

She trusts him, she trusts him, she trusts him with something weighty even if it might change situations in ways terribly undesired-

 

Quite well aware that precious minutes trickled since the revelation, the twenty-two year old had prepared himself to meet with a ghost that does not exist in the university’s designated area. After all, perhaps it is a test, and she could not help but to see if he would be able to think hard enough and care to know more. If that is so, Seungri perpetually dwells with conflicting emotions of varying degrees. It seems absolutely dangerously close to being played – something detestable indeed. Nonetheless, the shoes propel forward with a steadfast hope that beat his heart so hard that any more pressure and he would be under arrest.

 

Seungri cautiously pushes the sliding door aside, and it glides effortlessly. The male peeks in, the heart that sinks with each casual pause at the bleak recognition that it is much too late for anything now. He closes his eyes, pondering on how is he to move on from this moment of time – dramatic as it sounds, it felt like that – when she speaks. “Seung-ri,” she mentions per syllable, the wry smile of hers tickling his state of mind so easily. She was seated in a spot determined to be a blind spot, and with a hasty glance at the watch which claimed to be twenty-three minutes past five, he stares unabashedly at her.

 

“How long were you going to wait?” he whispers deliberately, the notes faltering with each unique notch albeit its great uselessness. It is like she takes a side glance at the opportune moment, looking elsewhere before the connection of glances are re-established. With arms delicately propped on the table’s clean surface, a question rises like an erratic wisp found on a still day. “Would you rather me speak or write?” she muses with the routinely checks of the handheld mirror. The voice so quiet, the porcelain image of hers that made him hold a desideratum to amplify the more unstable choice instead. He leans over to the chair opposite her table and the nonchalance masks his countenance.

 

“If it is writing you have much preferred, you would have given me your number by now,” he challenges boldly with a conniving smirk. “And so you know my answer.” The smirk, it fades quietly into the unmeasured distance, and it is raw sincerity that spills out of his expression. He watches without batting an eyelid as she hesitantly makes the first move.

 

“People say that as long as you take care, and as long you remain alert and equipped, no danger can truly harm you beyond repair,” she enunciates slowly with periodic glances. “No harm that is susceptible to the females, that is. Without elaborating, I would think you to have sense enough to imagine the sort of thing I’m talking about.” He nods in affirmation, the feeling of sickness crawling up from the inside and extending to other parts of his system. It strikes him especially at his hands, becoming the predominant reason for their change in pressure and position. They are furled.

 

“What most don’t know is that even if you take precautionary measures, if you are a victim – there’s not much you can do,” she continues with a look that twists his heart. The incident unfolds in which she was walking back to her place with her friends, and when they parted ways, the approaching footsteps of a few caused her to raise her guard immediately. They tried to hold her down, and barely failed as she executed all the manoeuvres that she could implement and broke free. She runs up to one of the narrow lanes, finding then a person she calls out to.

 

“I shouldn’t have trusted him, or believed that everything was over.”

 

He had pulled her aside roughly and the adroit mind that registers the wrongness of it all fights back, but this one somehow seemed more efficient and skilled in these sort of rude mannerism. She had been held far too close in a style inappropriate and his fingers descended tauntingly from the back of the neck. She had known that not doing anything reckless will result in even more terrible things, and she was one who would rather die trying.

 

With all of her might, she slammed the both of them against the concrete wall. She breaks free and the ears give a throbbing sensation. “The auditory nerves - smashed,” his friend says with a quivering laugh, suspiciously bright eyes that shake. “In a world that never stops talking, I have fallen to the curse of permanent silence.” Sub-consciously or not, she hums a limp tune to a song famous in their days. And Seungri is afflicted, knowing with all of his heart that it now pumped with pride that he was trusted, yet with deep pain as he learned of such injustice. Rendered stumped, as always, too.

 

It is his hovering hand that gently places itself on her head, causing her to blink in undeterred surprise. “You are a song in itself,” Seungri muses, an awkward smile worn when he feels as though it didn’t exactly make sense. However, the smile she wear afterwards with immaculate detail is something to remember – yet as if one reminded of the dangerous charm of a flickering fire, the hand returns to his side and it is his feet that rise. “I’ll see you again,” is what he mouths out to her after glancing at the watch, employing inaudibility unintentionally. As the male student leaves, he could not help but to wonder as to how long she remained transfixed in such a shattered place.

 

Tomorrow arrives, although hours are much too long when one is unable to press forward. The girl, she walks down one of the hallways before spotting the energetic one approaching in the opposite direction. She lifts her hand as a form of hello, but he whisks past her and a pang of hurt envelops.

 

Had it always been the untold sin to open up to someone?

 

She is not one for drama or unnecessary flair, but the ache that continues is one unbearable. With a slight gulp, she continues with her path, noticing the weight of the feet wearing a psychogenic increase. Yet it is the arm that hooks her by the shoulder that catches her breath, and by reflex he is inflicted with considerable injury. “Ouch,” says Seungri with mock horror, but it melts into a warm smile. “The day’s much too fine to not experience, you know.” Though arbitrary, she realises that she is being dragged along by the twenty-two year old rogue of a friend. Inexpressibly taken aback by the random change in pace, she permits it and they end up by a lush green setting beside a clear river. They are not alone – it is a seemingly popular place for people to merely come by.

 

The view is rather spectacular, if not mild on the eyes. The river shimmers and while there are many side activities going on, there is a certain peace attached to this rendezvous. She turns to look at the one who caused the skipping of classes – how rude and unethical when one considers it – and he glances beyond her, signalling that there is a show plane leaving stylised tracks in the blue sky. She turns, searching blankly for that wondrous expanse that Seungri kindly mentioned about but it is nowhere to be seen. Instead, a warm sensation greets her without warning and she is stunned. Then it is assumed to have left, and her hand instinctively touches the side of her turned cheek. That act clicks an outrageous scenario and wide-eyed, she faces the now suspiciously cheered friend. He makes no effort to run away for that sly trick of his as she stands in front of him, rubescent. He has the audacity to pretentiously lean closer with that unnerving sincerity in his eyes.

 

And while she is one anxious and uncertain about the words uttered, this time around she extends it without a doubt, adorned with a mortified expression.

 

“You idiot.”