I walked out of the broadcast, with Woohyun and Key, who later helped me take down last of the yearbook club’s flyers.  

    “Still at it,” Woohyun said, almost incredulously.  

    “Who started this, anyways? Does the principal know?” Key scrunched up his nose, turning off his headset.  

    “I seriously hope so,” I muttered under my breath, crumpling one of the flyers with my fist.  “And I have a keen target.” Abruptly, I turned around to continue walking, ignoring the group of freshman boys directing me with ‘hellos’ and pulling the collars of my ivory Lanvin blouse taut.  

    “What do you mean?” Key chugged his latte.  “Pinning this up on someone again, Princess?” I caught Woohyun shooting the latter an upbraiding glance.  

    “You know, the new kid,” Woohyun prompted, thinking I couldn’t hear him.  

    “It’s been around a month, how is he still new?” Key scratched his head.  

    “The label sticks with you until you have a replacement, don’t you know how it works?” 

    “Says who?” 

    “Me,” I cut in tersely, “but it’s useless now, seeing how his popularity has sky-rocketed in yes, ‘around a month’, Key.” 

    “I don’t get it.  You seem to really hate L.” 

    Woohyun and I exchanged a small hug before he silently rounded off the corner bidding us good bye.  Key inched closer.  

    “No, I don’t hate him.  Just hate the fact that he’s here.” In the distance, I saw some girls circling Chorong— clearly, they weren’t there to make friendly conversation.  As I passed them, I smirked.  

    “Is there a difference?” 

    “Yes!” I said, insistent.  “Of course!” 

    “Did you get rejected by him, or…?”

    “What.  No.  I don’t have feelings for him.” I snorted.  Ridiculous.  

    “Okay, so you’re jealous of him.” 

    “What does he have that I don’t have?” I swatted Key’s words away, like I didn’t know the answer to his questions.  If the truth deems inconvenient, keep it under wraps.  

    “I knew it! You’re jealous of him.  Before, you probably couldn’t even care less about the yearbook club gang tearing up our segment because you knew they couldn’t do it.  L joined the club, he’s pretty much the staff’s favorite, thanks to his parents and specs, why wouldn’t you feel threatened?” Key guffawed.  He then proceeded to sip his latte and pull away with a satisfied smile, like he was Hemmingway or something.  

    “I’m certainly not threatened because of one boy.  What do you take me for?” Ugh.    I stuck my chin up, crossing my arms.  

    “Not to mention, he’s not tripping over his heels to get you to be his girl.” then Key sprang into a tirade on how being a senior was so much more complicated, rattling on about how we were absolutely clueless.  

    He’s not tripping over his heels to get you to be his girl.  

    That couldn’t have been more true.  And that seemed to be the most sensitive aspect of the entire damn dilemma, which I’ve neglected all this time.  Myungsoo was definitely not like every other guy.  He thought I was a .  Fact.  (maybe not a , but some , and certainly not the ) He hated me.  Fact.  Oh, and how he fancied his ideal type; I had wavy hair, but I was sure as hell not some naive, cute little sprite in his eyes.  Fact.  Myungsoo was looking for a quiet, pretty thing that could stand behind him on display like a doll.  

    I had too much pride to left myself do so.  

    My eyes skirted the hallways to meet his.   I held his gaze for a second.  For the first time, I was the one who looked away first unknowingly.  

    He and I both knew.   

                        ~

Boredom.  

    It was my least favorite thing, next to the heels and leg warmers trend.  I’ve managed to make most of the boring events that I came across naturally in all my years of school, but here I was, twenty minutes into art class, swimming in an endless pool of deep, deep boredom.  It was the only class Hyuna, Dasom, Hara, and I had as a full group, but all we really could do at the moment was shoot each other none-too-less discreet glances, sneak in text messages, and pass Hyuna’s nail file down the aisle in turns.  Also, it really didn’t help that the teacher had put us in assigned seats this week.  

    So I sat there, with my elbow resting on the black canvas sheet, holding a chalk daintily in my other hand.  The arrangement of poppies in the center of the room was depressing, and I never enjoyed sketching still life, anyways.  

    What irked me even more was the fact that some people were openly enthusiastic about drawing faux-flowers, or totally immersed.  Quickly, I turned to look over my shoulder at Woohyun, who was sitting next to Myungsoo.  They both had their heads down working, only Myungsoo looked like he actually knew what he was doing.  That was another thing I observed ; Myungsoo was an artist.  His photographs are put on the school website’s header, Mr. Jang is always praising him in this class, and just the other day, I saw him with a guitar.  

    See, I never really was a specially talented person.  I was good at a lot of things - everything, practically.  But I never took it upon myself to excel in one aspect of something.  Like, I was the only seventh grader besides Dasom that made JV cut for field hockey, and I took figure skating lessons til I freshman year, but I don’t revolve my specialties around sports.  Sure, I was good with styling, shopping, reading up on the latest s/s trends, but was that really considered a talent? I’d never admit it to myself, but I really needed to find my own ‘get-go’.  

    Mr. Jang took a leave from the classroom, with a half-assed warning telling us to behave.  Then, I felt Hyuna, who was sitting two seats away from me, poke her french nails into my back shoulder.  Without even looking up, I felt her hands for the file and dropped the chalk on the table with a feeble sigh.  

    Small chatter started up near the back once the teacher left.  Hyuna pulled out her phone from her boots, her bottom lip once the screen lit up with flooding notifications.  

    I remember clearly what happened next.  Because it wasn’t what happened that made me ponder on it, it was what happened after. 

    The girl sitting besides me—  Cho Ahyoung.  I didn’t know or care much about her, she was just like any other girl in my grade that admired my clique from afar.  All I really knew about her was that she was dirt poor, which probably explained why she wore the same blue puff parka to school every morning.  But that was all just based on the school’s networking.  

    So, Cho Ahyoung, who had never, in the last three years attending Woollim High, spoke to me, started a major scene, right then and there.  

    I was filing my bare nails when I he