ADear Diary: What Do I Do?

(Chapter Three)

  We were only one week away from our last exam and to our dismay, it was the most difficult. Advanced English. So naturally, we had locked ourselves up in the city library once again and our faces were buried in Shakespeare's 'A Midsummer Night's Dream'.

  "This doesn't even make sense" Sehun whined as he tossed his copy of the play in Kai's direction. "It's a weird story with fairies. That's all I get from it"

  He wasn't exaggerating though. What he had said completely summed up exactly what we were all thinking.

  Long story, short- we were all mentally exhausted. Advanced Math had taken all our strength, and History had driven us to the point of procrastination and distraction.

  Sehun and Kai swore that they wouldn't take out their baseball gear until after our final exam. But they had brought along their bats and uniform along to our final library session. The two were anticipating that we'd end before 3PM.

  Seulgi and Chanyeol had become more involved (romantically speaking). Despite not having made it 'official', we could all tell that they were secretly eating together after our study sessions and completely forgetting about the rest of our group.

  Suho, Lay and the rest of the girls had entirely burnt out. Most of the time at the library, they had spent it watching random videos on YouTube. Alot of the time, they were watching cooking tutorials.

  As for Luhan, I mean, @manlymaaan, or whatever you want to call him- he had distanced himself from everyone altogether. Even me.

  But that wasn't to say that he had ignored 'rararang'; if anything, we had a conversation running almost during all hours of the day. It's already been two weeks since he sent me the selca- two weeks since I almost knocked on his front door.

  During all that time, Luhan seemed to answer all the questions before I could even ask them.

  I wanted to know why we all hadn't seen him since he was injured riding his motorbike. I didn't have a straight way of asking; but his blog gave me the answers.

‘Dear Diary:

Typing whilst your arm is in bandages isn't as bad as it sounds... But with exams happening; there's only so much I can do to stop myself from whincing with every math question I have to answer. Ah, I shouldn't have ridden my motorcycle that night.

That's in the past though and I hope these scars don't last long enough till t-shirt season. I don't want any of my family or friends seeing them. I don't want them to think I'm fragile.

Isn't that the whole reason why I bought that motorbike in the first place?

It's only after I've started this blog over a year ago that I realised that I didn't need to prove that I was and am stronger than they think.

Why doesn't anyone see me this way?

Your man, manlymaaan.’

  Of course, I hadn't revealed who I was just yet. It wasn't the right time for either of us and frankly speaking, I wanted to take up this opportunity as much as I possibly could.

  Speaking of Luhan, I had been talking to him on BlogNet ever since I had arrived at the library earlier this morning. It seemed that he wasn’t getting any studying done either.

@manlymaaan: can you smell it? :)

@rararang: uh, smell what lol

@manlymaaan: well, it depends where you are. Go outside!

  I gazed out the wide windows of the library. The sky was a kind of blue that I hadn't seen in so long and the sun seemed to linger in the afternoon sky longer than weeks gone by.

  Then I realised that we were so consumed with everything else but the fact that it was Spring.

---

  I made a quick getaway from the pack who had completely gave up on Shakespeare. I wanted to taste spring for the first time this year- even just for a moment.

  manlymaaan was right. It smelt like a charcoal BBQ burning in the distance and flowers about to bloom. A weird combination that was so nostalgic. I love spring.

  Strangely, the outside of the library wasn't filled with other students and kids lounging around the talla and steep staircase. There were one or two couples sprawled around and were enjoying the lovely weather.

  And right in the centre of the staircase was one faded-red head of hair. He was seated in an almost crouching manner... Luhan was here?

  He was wearing his long sleeved school shirt despite the weather being warm enough to wear the simple polo. I guess he’s still hiding his scars.

  l had time to race back inside but then again, manlymaaan didn't know that rararang was at the library. He didn't know that she was me and I was her. Why was I always finding myself running away from him? Running away from the truth?

  Sure, Luhan is definitely smart enough to become the engineer that he dreams of becoming. But knowing what I do about him, he couldn't pin the dots together; not yet anyway.

  "Haven't seen you in a while..."

  I sat myself besides Luhan who had been caught off guard. He was so engrossed in his cell phone screen but he returned a smile when he saw that it was me.

  "Yeah... Too much studying and remembering to do" He glanced to the pile of textbooks by his feet. "I guess it's the same with you and the rest of the gang, right, Aera?"

  "We're all completely over this fairy play" I chuckled, trying to get a better look at his phone. But Luhan retreated. He instantly switched off the screen and gave me a funny look. "...What are you hiding there, Mr.?"

  Luhan's face began to blush like crazy. Ah, how cute.... this crush of mine.

  "It's...it’s-” He stuttered and it was so unlike him. “I want to say that it's nothing but I'm hoping that it's something"

  He was suddenly confessing and confiding in me. The last time we did this face to face was the night he took me home. Yet we were speaking as if we were just continuing the conversation from that night.

  "What do you mean?" I asked naively. To Luhan in real life, I wasn't rararang. I was just plain old Kang Aera.

  "Don't judge me, okay?" Luhan was getting shy. His fingers wandered over his phone screen before eventually lighting it up. "I've been talking to this girl online and-"

  "Online?!" I faked surprise and he completely bought the act. "Are you sure it's not some creepy guy trying to mess with you?"

  "-I know, I know" 

  He insisted that I take his phone and look through rararang's blog posts as if I didn't already read... and write them myself.

  "But seriously, just take a look. Those kind of posts seem too legit. She's a student at a high school near ours and we actually have a lot in common.. I think it could work out"

  "So that's why you've been ignoring us!" I joked, handing back his phone. "You've made a new friend to replace us all?"

  Luhan chuckled before looking straight into my eyes. Maybe he could see right through me; maybe he could see right through everything and maybe he knew all along.

  "I don't want to be her friend" He immediately dropped his gaze, "I mean, I do, I definitely do. But is it weird that I want to be something more?"

  I tried not to choke and kept a straight face. This was more difficult than faking it through messages.

  "Look, you can't blame a person for thinking that it's weird" I answered as I looked straight to the street below our feet instead of towards Luhan. "You don't even know who this person is"

  "Except I do" Luhan insisted, now scrolling through old messages between manlymaaan and rararang. "I feel like she knows me more than... more than-"

  "-more than I do?"

  The words came flatly out of my mouth. It was what he wanted to say anyway. I read his blog post. Apparently none of us really knew him.

  "-None of you guys" His facial expressions became crestfallen and almost ashamed. 

  Luhan tucked his cell phone into his back pocket of his jeans before picking up his books. It appeared that our conversation was coming to a sudden and abrupt end.

  "I hate putting it that way" He tried to apologise but knew that the hurt was done by the words he said, "But I feel like the group has a preconceived notion of me. You guys seem to know me, but you know, not everything is as it seems"

  "You can say that again" I mumbled to myself but Luhan had already  risen up from the stairs and was headed down towards the street; so I called after him.

  "This girl might know everything about you... but do you know everything about her?"

---

  "What took you so long to smell the sky?" Lay was starting to mumble none sense as he drifted asleep on the library desk.

  "Uh, I... I saw Luhan just outside so I had a quick chat with him, that's all" I answered as briefly as possible; still affected by what Luhan had said.

  Of course I couldn't tell the rest of the guys about what we had spoken about so I was left to bottle up the hurt.

  But at the same time, Luhan or manlymaaan; whoever he is, totally just confessed that he had feelings for me or rararang- whoever he thinks he's fallen in love with.

  All of this was beginning to make me dizzy. It was an information overload on top of all the quotes and poetic techniques that I had managed to cram into my brain today.

  Should I be upset at the fact that he thinks that we don't know him, after so many years of friendship?

  Or should I be over the moon with the fact that my very own real life crush is actually reciprocating my feelings?

  "Are you okay, Aera?” Suho peeped over the top of his textbook, his eyes a bit weary, “Maybe you should head home and rest for a while? It’s not like Shakespeare, Hermia and Helena are going anywhere anytime soon”

  Few clouds eventually framed the earlier blue sky. Suho was right- as usual. I needed time to absorb everything up.

  More so, I needed to figure out what I was going to do with the news that manlymaaan has feels for rararang; yet Luhan feels like the real me doesn’t even know him.

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A/N: after a long while! Chapter 3 is here huhuhu my writing is a bit rusty so yeah LOL

A/N 2: edited and formatted!

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