Kibum was crazy about his new shoes. They were dark purple, and expensive, and glossy, and, when he saw them for the first time, he thought he saw his very soul reflected in their shiny surface. Even if a number of other rich kids at his school could afford to buy themselves a similar pair, they wouldn't dare to actually wear them to classes, of that he was sure. No one was bolder or sleeker, or even smarter, than Kim Kibum.

Ownership of the shoes made him so happy that he didn't even whine too much over the fact that he had to go to school by bus like a normal mortal. It only meant that he would be able to flaunt his latest purchase in front of more people. (Although he did hope that his mom's Maserati would be back in service soon.)

In the bus, he plunged on the seat with a smile on his face. The morning was sunny, he was in a great mood, and it was flattering to see the old ladies on the opposite side ogling at him with admiration in their eyes. Kibum took out the phone to make sure that his teeth were as brilliantly white as he imagined them to be and his classic hairdo a la old Hollywood was still in place. That was the moment when the bus opened its doors on the next stop and the terrible thing happened.

The vehicle was ready to take off when a panting, disheveled someone appeared, shouting for the driver to wait, and practically flew into the salon headfirst. Kibum clicked his tongue at the sight of the pathetic being as the guy stumbled in (he, Kibum, would rather be late than show himself in public with a skewed tie and a sweaty face), and unlocked the screen to write a message to his friend, and then the bus finally budged. It budged so well, in fact, that in a blink of an eye the whole scene changed: Kibum diverted his attention from the screen to see the aforementioned "pathetic being" spread on the floor in front of him, but what had happened to his precious dark purple shoes almost made him squeal. That disheveled beast in whose bespectacled mug he recognized the class nerd going by the name of Lee Jinki, must have accidentally squeezed the orange juice box he'd been holding at the moment of his fall, because a half of his face, his arm and one of Kibum's shoes were now covered in the meaty yellow liquid.

"What did you do, you monster?!" Kibum yelled as Lee, muttering an apology, scrambled to his feet.

"I fell, I'm sorry," Jinki said, sitting down next to him. He took out some paper handkerchiefs from his backpack to wipe his face.

Kibum chortled bitterly.

"You "fell", you simply "fell", you say?! Well, excuse me, but do you have any idea how much these cost?" He pointed an indignant finger at the now ruined shoes.

Jinki's eyes followed the direction of the finger and then focused back on his classmate's furious face.

"How much?" he asked innocently, pushing his glasses up his nose.

Kibum wanted to shout the unfathomable sum right in his face, but stammered because he didn't know the exact price of the shoes himself –  his mom had just bought them for him without any questions.

"More than you can imagine!" he cried, nevertheless. "I could buy all of your family with that money, along with their goddamn meat shop!"

The old ladies sitting in front of them gasped, covering their mouths.

"Is that so?" Lee Jinki asked calmly. "Then I'm really, really sorry." And he stooped to wipe the damaged shoe as well. Somehow it was more embarrassing than Kibum had thought it would be. Seeing that some pieces of orange were still stuck to the luxurious leather, the boy spat on it to ease the cleaning process. Kibum's eyes rounded in horror as he opened his mouth to cry out in panic, but in a moment he saw that his shoe looked shiny and new, as if the awful disaster had never occurred.

"There you go, sunbaenim," Jinki said, stuffing the dirty paper towel into his pocket.

Kibum was so bewildered that he didn't find any words to say. Plus, his head had begun aching from the stress. They spent the rest of the trip in silence.

Kibum giggled to himself, settling more comfortably on the grass so that he could see the football field in front of him clearly. Lee Taemin, a younger friend of his, glanced at him curiously.

"What?"

"That dork is head over heels for me," he replied and laughed again.

"Which one?" Taemin asked, his pupils moving quickly between the faces of the players. "Choi Minho?"

It seemed that the tall, athletic senior in question sent a brief glance in their direction before emptying his water bottle in two big gulps (which looked very much like a TV advert).

Kibum sighed.

"I wish... No, that one." And he nodded towards the nerd in glasses, who was rubbing his knees like an old man while sweat was dripping from his hair – he looked very much like a mop that had just visited a bucket of water. A band-aid was plastered to his forehead because a shelf had collapsed on him while he was helping the teacher at the biology class.

"Lee Jinki?" Taemin seemed to be surprised. "Really?"

Kibum told him what had happened on the bus, not without grinning smugly at the end.

"...You should've seen his cherry-red face then, Tae! I'm sure he would've the shoe right then if only I'd let him!"

"Hm..." the younger boy pondered for a moment. "I wouldn't be surprised if he really had a crush with you, since you are hot as hell..." Kibum chortled. "...But it just doesn't sound like him."

The older boy frowned.

"How do you know?"

"I used to go to a book club with him, and he's just..." Taemin faltered, not knowing how to put his thoughts into words properly. "He may look like a village pumpkin, but in truth he is not that simple. At all."

"Then what did his spectacle on the bus mean?" Kibum wondered, feeling confused.

His friend thought a little more before answering:

"Knowing him... I think it was his way of saying ' you'."

At that point Lee Jinki seemed to notice the two boys staring at him (Kibum's mouth being wide open in shock). Taemin waved at him and he waved back, and, although his expression was neutral when he looked at Kibum, he somehow felt that Taemin was perfectly right. Kibum had fallen victim to a cruel deception.

On the lunch break, while everybody else was munching their meals, Jinki was frantically taking notes. He couldn't believe he had forgotten to do his history home work! He knew there would probably be a test today, and he tried to memorize the year dates well while writing. Thankfully, he had been listening attentively at every lesson, and wasn't really afraid of flopping the test. But the teacher was very strict, and he didn't want to get on her tough side by showing her a blank space in his copybook instead of homework.

His throat went dry and sore, and he reached for his glass of cranberry juice. But, only a second before his fingers closed around the glass, it was snatched away from him. He looked up and saw Kim Kibum standing over him with an evil smirk. With that smirk he drank almost all of the juice, only to pour the rest right on Jinki's copybook.

"Oh, sorry! Was that yours?" Kim asked with fake regret in his voice. Then he took a napkin, spat on it, and rubbed it on the stained sheet roughly, smudging Jinki's writing.

"There you go, sunbaenim!" he sang happily, throwing the crumpled napkin at Jinki's face and strutting away.

Yes, his revenge might have been harsh, but that's what you get for messing with Kim Kibum, the young man thought without looking back.

On the next day Kibum was playing with his food. Instead of finishing his plate of chicken, rice and vegetables, he arranged them artistically into a composition resembling a smiling face. It had olives for eyes, pieces of carrots for eyebrows, a piece of bell pepper for mouth and a nice lump of chicken for nose – all on top of milky white rice. Proud of his work, Kibum took a picture of it with his phone.

"And now I am going to eat you," he promised, putting the device away and grabbing his chopsticks instead. The thing he was looking forward to the most was, of course, the fried chicken nose, and he was specifically aiming for it, when, in a most unceremonious manner, an unknown pair of chopsticks appeared out of the blue and – voila! – the edible face on Kibum's plate was left noseless. He raised his eyes and felt his blood come to a boil.

"Lee Jinki," he growled through clenched teeth as the gloating face of his classmate grinned at him.

"Oh, sorry, was that yours?" Lee Jinki had the audacity to ask, still chewing – his, Kibum's! – chicken.

Before Kibum could give a worthy answer to the offensive question, the olive eyes – the second thing he had been looking forward to – disappeared too in two quick movements of the intruder's chopsticks.

"Look, now your self-portrait is blind. That won't do." With those sarcastic words – spoken in a surprisingly calm way – Lee spat the olive pits onto his small palm and placed them right below the carrot eyebrows. "There you go, sunbaenim," he said and walked away, his back straight.

Kibum's friends were astonished with their classmate's behavior.

"Who does he think he is?! The brat should be punished!" They cried in unison, showering the guy's name with all kinds of insults. But Kibum said nothing. He was going to take care of that devil himself.

Jinki was skipping merrily along the corridor, glad that the seemingly never-ending classes were finally over for that day. He was good at math, of course – as the best student of the class, he was good at everything – but covering his yawns while waiting for the rest to gather their slow wits and complete the easiest of tasks for three hours in a row was too much of a challenge. Feeling hungry and impatient to get home as soon as possible, he unwrapped the chocolate snack he had fished out of his pocket without slowing his pace.

Turning around a corner, he almost bumped into Mrs. Park, the drama teacher. She seemed oddly happy to see him.

"Jinki, there you are!" she cried with a sense of relief audible in her voice. "I've been looking for you everywhere! We're almost about to start!" And she motioned the boy to follow her.

Jinki couldn't help feeling a little crestfallen. His reputation of the most helpful student of the school had just deprived him of a much-needed dinner at home and maybe a good day nap. He had no clue about what was happening. It must have been a service he had agreed to do without thinking.

"I must say, it was really sweet of you to volunteer to play the tree in our spectacle. I'm sure our first-graders will love it," Mrs. Park assured him while they were climbing the stairs to the third floor. "Kibum said you were inexperienced in such things, but don't worry, you will catch on. Just be sure to hop into your costume quick, as we are really short on time."

The play lasted for two hours and a half. Kiddies had a lot of fun shooting balls of chewed paper at Jinki's face, and he tripped over his roots twice. And whom did he have to thank for that pleasure?

His fists clenched on their own will. Kim Kibum. Head of the drama circle. Of course. You'd better expect some drama in your life soon. Jerk.

The Annual Ttakbam Competition had been fun so far. Bent fingers, blushing foreheads, differently pitched howls of pain – what could be more hilarious? But the show got even more entertaining when the clumsy, normally shy space geek Lee Jinki got upon the stage to participate. He was greeted by whistling and laughter coming from the audience.

Mr. Choi, the PE teacher and the presenter, looked at him in surprise and probably concern – he was accustomed to the boy's tumultuous relationship with gravity, corners and sometimes his own limbs.

"Okay, Jinki... If that is your wish... ahem... Whom will you choose as your opponent?"

Jinki leaned to the microphone to say, without a millisecond of hesitation:

"Kim Kibum."

"Um, which Kim Kibum? We've got a few of those here." Mr. Choi asked, praying internally that Jinki didn't mean the intimidating Kim Kibum from 10C who had been the karate champion of their district twice already.

"Kim Kibum the art kid," Jinki specified, stretching his fingers in advance.

"Well! Kim Kibum the art kid, come up here, quick!"

Kibum's face twisted in disdain while his friends roared and cheered him on.

"Go destroy him!" one of them shouted, tapping his shoulder.

He didn't like the idea of participating in that stupid ttakbam competition, but at least, he reasoned, he would get to hit that jerk in the head. Walking towards the stage, he rolled the sleeves of his shirt up.

"I'd like to warm up first," Jinki announced, taking a walnut out of his pocket.

Then he walked over to the table where the prizes were stacked (cups of ramen, cans of soda, ham sandwiches – nothing spectacular) and placed the walnut on top of it. The spectators fell quiet, curious to know what he was going to do next. He stretched his fingers a bit more, closed his eyes and took a big breath. Kibum didn't manage to catch what exactly happened next, but he saw very clearly that what had been a whole walnut was now nothing but a bunch of broken pieces. The audience burst in applause, their attitude towards Lee Jinki taking a 180-degrees turn. Mr. Choi's eyebrows crawled to the very top of his head and Kibum realized that his own mouth was open wider than he would like it to be. Jinki made a tiny bow, smoothing his hair with a shy smile.

"That was amazing, I must say!" Mr. Choi commented, returning to his senses. "Do you have anything to show off, Kibum?"

Kibum sniffed, putting a hand to his waist.

"Only the modesty of a true sportsman, sir," he said coolly.

He got only a faint noise of support from his friends who were still too impressed by the sight of Jinki's chubby middle finger crushing that nut into atoms to appreciate Kibum's eloquence.

"Very well. So who will be the first?"

Before Kibum could open his mouth Jinki barked:

"Kibum."

Kibum didn't mind being the first and he did believe in his victory (surely, his detest for the guy would give him some strength), but something just seemed fishy and he didn't like it. There was nothing to be done, though. Jinki prepared his forehead for the hit by taking his glasses off and holding his hair back, and Kibum noticed how different he looked now. Somehow his face became even more annoying and he felt even more anger towards the evil nerd. He stretched his fingers.

"Let's go, then," Kibum muttered and got ready in the same way as his enemy a minute before: closed eyes, deep breath, special posture.

In the name of his new shoes, his chicken and his honor, he was determined to slice that white forehead open.

He put as much force into his hit as possible and it seemed for a moment that everything went nicely (although Lee Jinki tried to look composed, his eye did twitch at least twice), but then it came. The excruciating pain in his finger that made him turn away quickly – he managed to suppress a scream, but he couldn't control his face. Is the bastard's skull made of iron?! For all he knew, Lee Jinki's forehead had somehow struck him back.

It was Jinki's turn now. The thick-rimmed spectacles were sitting on his nose again – he surely wanted to take his aim well. The audience was chanting his name.

"Ready?" he asked tranquilly, looking straight into his opponent's eyes.

"You bet," Kibum growled, balling his fists.

He intended to get out of this with as much grace and fearlessness as he could muster. But then again, maybe, he mused, watching Lee Jinki bite his plump lip in tension and fold his finger all the way back with a look of triumph already fixed upon his face, maybe I shouldn't have left the house today.

And the world went black.