chapter two | the second chance

                  Rainy days are the worst. When it rains, the water sticks to literally everything it could touch. The skies are gloomier, as if there's a secret they're guarding behind those dark clouds. The annoying drizzle takes away Yoona's right to cycle her way to her campus, forcing her to ride the public bus instead. Public buses are never nice. There are way too many strangers and the air feels tighter, like if she doesn't concentrate on inhaling and exhaling, she might just die. Being surrounded by people she doesn’t know paralyze her. Plus, riding public vehicles increases her chance of accidentally doing something embarrassing, like stepping over her shoelaces or nodding off to an old lady’s tale of her glorious maiden days. There’s so many things that can go wrong. Paranoia swept over her like a tide.

Yoona sighed as she stepped inside the bus before her.

             She stood for a few minutes. Her eyes surveyed her surroundings. Everyone was already sitting somewhere. Well, at least that's what it seemed to her. A hand shot up, as if answering an unspoken question.

             "Over here!" Long, unruly black hair, with just as black eyes and a smile that could blind the sun. She recognized Shim Changmin—the hallway blocker. He’s noisy and too loud for her taste, but he’s also offering her a seat to cross out his past transgressions. She could rev her up pride to the next level and ignore Changmin, or she could swallow that useless pride of hers and sit down comfortably. Yoona chose the hard way.

             She’d rather hang onto a strap for dear life than plop down beside a guy who smiles like there’s no tomorrow. Who knows, he might be contagious.

             The guy named Changmin frowned. As the bus raced along the streets, passing pristine trees and blinking street lights, it halted too many times. The doors opened, allowing drenched passengers in who would bump into Yoona to squeeze their way deeper into the bus. To Changmin, it must felt like a of hell. 

             “Are you sure you don’t want to sit beside me?” He yelled.

             Yoona stared, reddened, and looked away.

             “You! The girl with curly hair and pretty eyes whose hanging off a strap! Don’t you want to sit beside me and rest? It’s still a long way to campus.” He said, louder this time. His deep voice drowned the traffic beyond the windows.

             By now, a dozen or so heads turned towards the standing girl and her fragile condition. Curious eyes scanned Yoona, others gave her an elevator look. Attention of any kind is never good, Yoona believed. Whispers began and all hell broke loose when Changmin uttered, “Look baby, I’m so sorry. Please forgive me, okay? I’ll be better this time, just please. Come here and stop being stubborn. Or…. Oh, I’m sorry. Do you want me to come and get you darling?”

             The oohs and aaahs expressed by the passengers darkened the red hues on Yoona’s cheeks. Muffled sentences began to sprout. An elderly woman in the middle row exclaimed, “Teenagers these days, they just can’t contain their feelings. How nice it is to be young and passionate.”

             Unable to take the embarrassment any longer, Yoona sprinted down the aisle and sat beside Changmin. He noticed that her hands were crumpled to a fist and the veins in her wrists are protruding and blue. She was blinking back tears.

             He swallowed. He might have gone a little bit too far. The following minutes had been induced torture. Yoona was doing everything in her power to pretend he isn’t there, and guilt suffocated him too much he can hardly speak. The vehicle swerves left. Just as he’s about to mumble an apology, Yoona typed something in her laptop.

            She pressed Enter and stood up.

           “I hate you so much.”

             It goes without saying that the next few hours had been wasted on thoughts of Yoona rather than the algebraic problems at hand in class. Th