“Stephanie?”

…

“Stephanie? Are you okay?”

“I found out.”

=

Jessica breaks Krystal’s journey again in the morning, this time rushing once again to open the door, leaving Krystal to sink back into her seat to finish her cereal. Donghae stands outside, a huge grin plastered on his face. “Good morning, milady.”

Jessica smiles and tousles up his hair. “Someone’s looking good today.”

He smiles. “How can I not? I’m greeted by the prettiest lady in the world.”

They hear Krystal make a vague puking noise in the background.

“Too much cheese,” Krystal complains.

Jessica shoots a brief glare at her before turning back to Donghae. She puts her arms around his neck and massages it gently. “So, you’re going to leave for school?”

“Yep! I won’t be late today. I just dropped by to say hi to you.”

“That’s very nice of you.”

“Of course. You deserve my niceness!”

They share a quick peck of the lips before Donghae pulls away, a little unwillingly and hesitantly. “Alright, now I really have to go.”

“Do you need me to bring your friends to school?”

“I don’t want to trouble my girlfriend anymore…”

“Aw, don’t be silly. It’s just a walk to school. I have to head there too, anyway.”

=

Jessica regrets it later.

The regret doesn’t kick in when Heechul is kicking up a fuss about losing sleep the previous night.

“It’s all your fault, Kim Youngwoon! You made me angry! I couldn’t sleep!”

The banter goes on. Jessica feels a migraine coming on, but the regret still doesn’t kick in yet.

“Heechul, honey, I’m sorry… What can I do to make it up to you?”

The migraine’s arrival gets harder and stronger when Kangin starts on his pitiful whining and groveling. Next strike and it’ll crack Jessica’s head apart. Still, the regret doesn’t kick in yet.

It is only when Yoona clings onto Jessica’s arm, and asks her one question, that the migraine finally splits Jessica apart, and that Jessica regrets everything.

“Jessica, say, did you know that sleeping on Donghae’s arm could be oddly satisfying?”

=

Jungsoo goes to see Taeyeon early in the morning.

“Hey, there.”

Taeyeon turns to him, and he gets the shock of his life. “Holy crap—what happened to your eyes?”

She yawns and sighs, swinging a book in his direction. “They are called dark circles.”

“What happened?”

“I haven’t been getting proper sleep lately.”

“That's what you told me yesterday.” Jungsoo starts to help Taeyeon pile her books into the locker, and Taeyeon nods in appreciation of his help.

“I know, but two nights ago I wasn’t kept up that late. Last night was a killer.”

“What happened, really?”

“I had to stick around until someone fell asleep, before I could.”

Jungsoo tousles up Taeyeon’s hair. “You silly girl. Always putting others before you.”

“I had to help a friend!”

“Who is it, Stephanie?”

The sudden silence catches him by surprise. “Woah, wait, I’m right?”

Taeyeon looks around, sees that all her books have been kept, and shuts the locker door. “Yeah,”  she deadpans, trying her best to play everything off. Now isn’t the time to get another party interested in the story.

Taeyeon walks away before Jungsoo can ask further.

=

“The results for the essays will be released at the end of the week. The top scorers can…”

The teacher’s voice drifts off and Taeyeon doesn’t manage to catch herself before she gives up, and slams herself onto the desk. Her forehead meets the wood, and a loud bang resounds throughout the classroom. Everyone stares at her.

She looks up in a hurry, snapping her neck straight up, and she gives an apologetic glance at everyone. She turns and sees Stephanie staring straight at her notebook, not even affected in the slightest of ways by Taeyeon’s dozing off.

“Fany,” Taeyeon tries. Stephanie doesn’t respond.

Taeyeon pokes her in the ribs, and Stephanie looks up slightly. “What,” Stephanie responds.

The shorter one yawns, and masks her exasperation with her exhaustion. “In all honesty, Fany, you got more sleep than I did. Why are you so dead today?”

“You heard me last night, Tae. You know what’s going on.”

Taeyeon rubs her eyes, just to keep herself awake. She leans in closer to Stephanie and looks at her notebook. Previously empty, the page is now filled with scribbles and doodles of random words and pictures, most of which involved Siwon and Kyuhyun. Taeyeon stifles a chuckle.

“Yes, I get it, Fany. You’re caught in between the two boys. And yesterday you did something stupid. You told Siwon—“

Stephanie throws her pencil onto the table, scaring Taeyeon and everyone in the vicinity who heard the impact. She gives an apologetic glance this time, and turns to Taeyeon. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to explode.”

Taeyeon smiles. “It’s just a pencil-throw, Fany. I’d do that if I didn’t get enough sleep too. Right, so I shouldn’t mention his name.”

“Or his.”

“Both their names.”

“Thank you.”

“But really, what do you plan to do now—“

A loud and booming cough from the front of class rouses Taeyeon and Stephanie awake, from their own world with their own conversation. They look up and see the teacher walking towards them.

“Have you two chatterboxes handed up your essay yet?”

The two girls share a look of confusion, before remembering what he was referring to. “Oh, the essay.”

“Or shall I assume that you two are just stupid little girls interested in your little chit-chat sessions?”

While Taeyeon turns to dig up the essay from her backpack, a chair is kicked back and a hand is slammed on the table. It is Stephanie. Taeyeon finds the essay only when Stephanie has given the teacher a menacing glare in the eyes.

“Fany,” Taeyeon whispers, trying to get Stephanie to cut it out.

Stephanie looks at the teacher, her glare growing fiercer. “Dear sir, I am aware that the two of us have been engaged in a conversation more fiercely than we are in your lesson, but do take some pity on us because your lesson is extremely boring.”

Everyone gives a gasp of disbelief, and Taeyeon tries her best not to propel herself out of her chair. The teacher leans in closer to her.

“And you think you have the right to say that because…?”

“Because you think you have the right to call us stupid little girls!”

Taeyeon tries to scramble a solution to salvage the situation. Nothing comes up, and her only resort is to lift their completed essay up for the teacher to collect. He does so, and while doing so he gestures for Stephanie to sit down.

Everyone stares, bewildered. Is the prickly old man actually letting a crazy student off?”

“Good speech, Stephanie Hwang.”

The teacher sets their essay down on the table. Stephanie sits down as he does so. Her glare doesn’t go away.

Everyone is close to giving Stephanie applause, including Taeyeon, until the teacher clears his throat, sits down and opens his mouth.

“And for that, I reward you with six hours of detention.”

=

Jungsoo sees Taeyeon on his way to lunch. She is busy talking to her English teacher, he knows because he has the same teacher, and he decides to walk up to help her out.

He doesn’t know why, but recently he feels like all he should do is help her out. Despite the fact that she hurt his toe…

Toenail, he hears her voice correcting him in his head.

“Taeyeon!”

Taeyeon stops mid-sentence, turning to find Jungsoo limping up to them. The teacher turns to see him. “Oh, good lord, another kid pestering me?”

Jungsoo is puzzled. “What do you mean, sir?”

“Your friend here is trying to get her friend out of detention.”

Jungsoo and Taeyeon share a look. “It’s Fany,” their eye contact seems to state.

“Six hours, sir. You can’t be serious. And no lunch at that, too!” Taeyeon tries again.

The teacher folds his arms. “Were you dead during my lesson? Did you not hear what she said to me?”

“She was—she was making a point!”

“Do you want detention as well?!”

Jungsoo stands in between them, cutting the fight up. “Wait, wait, we can talk this out calmly.”

Taeyeon takes a deep breath. “Sir, in all due respect, you can’t give her six hours of detention—“

“She defied me, Kim Taeyeon. Stephanie Hwang defied me, and that’s why she’s getting six hours of detention. I have justified my actions. Now shoo off for lunch before I take yours away, too.”

Taeyeon wants to try again, but Jungsoo holds her back, and they both watch as the teacher walks away. “Taeyeon! Don’t.”

She puts up a defenseless fight. “How can I?! My friend’s stuck in six hours of detention!”

“I’ll work this out for you, Taeyeon. Go for lunch.”

=

“…fine. I’ll cut it down to two hours. Only on one condition.”

“What is it?”

“Sort out all of these essays,” he says as he points to five stacks – or mountains, really, as Jungsoo saw it – of papers piled up arbitrarily in the corner of his desk. “Make sure they’re in alphabetical order, and also by class, and by level.”

“But—but there are four levels and seven classes in each level…”

“And twenty students in each class. Have fun, Park Jungsoo.”

“Wait, sir!”

=

Taeyeon sits at lunch with Hyoyeon and Yuri. The other two make comments about her dark eye circles, and she resists punching them in the eyes to give them similar circles.

Kyuhyun drops by a minute later. He refrains from making comments about Taeyeon’s eyes, but he does show a bit of confusion at them. “So, uh, Taeyeon… Where’s Fany?”

“Stuck in six hours of detention,” Taeyeon grunts.

Kyuhyun’s eyes widen, as do Hyoyeon and Yuri’s. “What? What happened?”

“ happened,” Taeyeon responds, a little too crudely.

“She’s not getting lunch?”

“Nope.”

Kyuhyun drops his lunch onto the table and turns the other way, hurriedly leaving. The girls look at him, and then turn to their own lunches.

Taeyeon’s phone rings and she sees the text from Jungsoo.

“Down to two. Thank me.”

=

Kyuhyun sneaks past multitudes of teachers during lunch and into the detention room. Stephanie is inside, trying not to fall asleep as she scribbles furiously on a notebook. Kyuhyun enters when the detention room teacher leaves for a toilet break.

“Hey,” he greets. It rouses Stephanie out from her near-sleep trance, and she looks up to find him creeping towards her.

“Kyu? What are you doing here?”

“I heard you were stuck in detention… With no lunch. So I got you some.”

He holds up a brown paper bag, and sets it down in front of her on the desk. She feels her sleepless night crawl back into her memories, and she looks at him and feels a pang in the heart.

“Kyu, I—“

“Shh, no words! Just dig in. Eat fast or you’ll be caught.”

“No, Kyuhyun, I—“

Kyuhyun shoves a French fry into before she gets to continue. “Just eat, alright? I don’t want you to starve.”

Stephanie spits it out. “Kyuhyun! Listen to me!”

Kyuhyun freezes in mute shock. He retreats a few steps, careful to maintain a safe distance between them. “Did I do something wrong?”

Stephanie takes a deep breath. She is officially losing it. “No, Kyuhyun. Look, I’m sorry for exploding—“

“I can tell, you haven’t gotten much sleep lately, have you?” He reaches out in concern, about to lay a gentle finger on her eyebags, but she pulls back and away.

“Kyuhyun, please just listen to me.”

Kyuhyun doesn’t want to know where the conversation is going.

=

Jungsoo slams his head down on the table after his first stack.

He is dying.

But then his phone buzzes, and he jumps back up. He reads the text from Taeyeon.

“What did you do?”

He looks at the essays in front of him, and purses his lips.

“Talked to the teacher. Used my charm. Got it settled.”

He goes back to the next four stacks.

=

The two are sitting side by side when the silence ends.

“Kyuhyun,” she calls out.

He doesn't look at her. “Yes?”

She looks at him. “I need you to listen to me.”

“I have been listening. To silence, for the past few minutes.”

“No, I mean… You need to listen to me now.”

Kyuhyun looks at her this time, straight in the eye. “I don’t want to listen if this conversation is going in a way I don’t want it to.”

Stephanie almost backs out when she sees the way Kyuhyun’s eyes sparkle again. This time the glint is different, as if he had tears in his eyes. She brushes it off, convinced that Kyuhyun – the Kyuhyun – would never cry. She doesn't back out.

“You have to,” she insists.

“No, I don’t,” he protests.

The truth is that he doesn’t need to hear it at all.

=

Jungsoo is halfway through his second stack when he finds an essay that catches his eye.

Written by Kim Taeyeon and Stephanie Hwang, he sees, neatly filled up in the ‘name’ section.

He reads it.

=

Written by Kim Taeyeon and Stephanie Hwang

People often told her that Romeo and Juliet was the saddest love story to have ever been told.

She stood to disagree, because how sad could that story be?

At least they loved each other. Romeo loved Juliet, and Juliet loved Romeo. They may have died, but at least they died together. They loved each other, all the way till the end.

To her, Romeo and Juliet was nothing close to the saddest love story ever.

Because, to her, the saddest love story that can ever be told was her own. Her own story of how unrequited love became part and parcel of her life.

=

Donghae drops by at the Jungs’ house later, intent on seeing his girlfriend before the day ends.

Krystal comes to the door, and with folded arms she looks at him. “What did you do?” is the greeting he receives from her.

A cold, harsh, fierce and intimidating greeting that sends him into speechlessness. “Wha—“

“You know what? Never mind. I just want to wish you good luck, because you’re going to need it.”

Jessica descends the staircase and sees Donghae at the door. She flinches and her expression darkens by just a bit.

Donghae’s eyes shift between the two girls. Gulp.