“He dropped you in the lake? The ing lake?” Jia slams her fist down on the table. “That !”

We are standing in front of the Fluck building the next morning, angrily seething.

“He didn’t get pictures or anything, right?” JB asks concernedly. I shake my head.

I massage my temples. “Now I’m all sniffly. God, I want to kill him.”

“Okay, when we walk into the cafeteria for breakfast this morning, act normal,” Suzy tells me. “Pretend like it didn’t faze you at all-,”

“It hasn’t fazed me,” I say in a low voice. “It just made me hate Sehun even more. I’m going to demolish him.”

When we enter the cafeteria, we are greeted with a sea of maroon and gray. The entire school is wearing some piece of Andong spirit apparel- from a bold maroon headband to a school sweatshirt. Sehun is sitting at the center lunch table, running a hand through his messy blond hair. When he sees me by the door, he smirks. His friends all turn to me and start snickering.

As I watch with narrowed eyes, Sehun picks up his glass of water and swills it, popping his eyebrows up in derision. Everyone at his table collapses into raucous laughter besides him. No doubt they know all about what transpired last night.

them.

“It’s the day of the first varsity soccer match,” Min grudgingly informs me. “We have to show school spirit. Why do you think Suzy put that ribbon in your hair?”

I tear my gaze away from Sehun and look at Min in horror. “What?” I hiss, my fingers darting up to the maroon bow in my hair. “I don’t want to support the soccer team!”

“You don’t have a choice. Everyone’s supposed to get hyped about soccer.”

“And basketball,” Jackson adds, a cocky smile on his face. “We’ll only have to deal with a few more months of this soccer crap.”

“This is bull,” I mutter, churlishly throwing myself in a seat. “God, it’s cold.”

“I told you to bring your cardigan,” Jia says in a knowing voice. Her arms are crossed. “It’s the middle of October. I told you that you’d get cold.”

“Do you want me to come with you?” JB calls as I stand up.

“It’s fine,” I sigh. “I’ll only be a minute.”

I hurriedly stride out of the cafeteria. But I’m a little surprised. Shouldn’t everyone be talking about the little... lake incident last night? It seems like no one knows about it.

I hope they don’t. I would become the laughingstock of Andong and that would bring me right back to Square 1.

Suddenly, I become acutely aware of a presence right behind me.

“Nice ribbon,” a husky voice murmurs in my ear.

I whirl around, my fists clenched.

“Son of a ,” I growl.

Sehun is towering over me, so close that his torso is almost touching mine. I instinctively take a step back, and he sneers.

“It’s so nice to see that you support the Andong Soccer team,” Sehun drawls. He closes the gap between us, and I back up once more- until my back collides with a wall. I wince.

“Wow, I’m honored that you came all the way out here to talk to me,” I retort, my voice dripping with sarcasm. “Do you need anything, or are you just trying to bolster your own self-worth?”

“Careful.” His eyes glitter maliciously. “We wouldn’t want you to fall in the lake again, would we?”

“Fall? You dropped me. At least I learned my lesson about locking my dorm room.”

“Mmm. Good for you.”

I cross my arms. “I have a question. Who did you tell about what you did last night?”

“Just my friends.”

“Really? Not the rest of the school?”

“No. Why?”

“I should be asking you why. Why didn’t you tell everyone?”

Sehun leans his face down to mine. “I don’t need to. That was just a warning. Once the fun really begins, the whole school will know anyway.”

I glare at him.

His eyes coolly hold my gaze.

A gust of wind blows, and I involuntarily shiver.

Sehun smirks. “Aww. Did you forget to wear your sweater?”

“ off.”

And in the most condescending manner possible, he proceeds to remove his cardigan and pull it over me instead.

“Wear that to the game for me,” he murmurs, and brushes past me and leaves before I can say another word.

The bell rings, and students bustle into the courtyard, hurriedly heading to their classes.

I, however, am left rooted to my spot.

Fuming.

It’s time to take things into my own hands.

The question is, how.

“Where were you?” JB asks curiously as we walk to Advanced Calculus together. “You said you’d only be a minute.”

“Something came up,” I grumble. “Hey, question. If I were to destroy your life, what would I have to do first?”

He throws me a look. “That scares me.”

“Oh, you know who I’m talking about.”

“Yeah, I do. And if I had the answer to that, don’t you think I would’ve ruined him a long time ago?”

I pause. “I have another question.”

“Shoot.”

“Why exactly do you and Mark and everyone hate Sehun so much? Like, I hate him too, but the rest of the school idolizes him.”

“Various rivalry reasons. Plus, he treats us like .”

“He treats everyone like . But they all still love him.”

JB fidgets uncomfortably. “I don’t know. Things... happened. With him and Mark. It was all years ago, but grudges never die.”

“Wait.” I blink. “What happened?”

When I see the uneasy expression on JB’s face, I quickly add, “You don’t have to tell me.”

“No, it’s just...,” He exhales. “You should probably wait for Mark to tell you himself.”

I nod. “Hmm. Alright.”

My curiosity has certainly been piqued.

Everyone in my Writing Seminar is congregated around Sehun and his friends when Mark, Suzy, and I enter the room.

“You guys are going to do great!” a girl squeals, leaning over Jongin’s desk.

“Our team’s definitely better than Daewon Academy,” another guy tells Kyungsoo. “We beat them 0 and 0 in the two matches we played against them last year. Their goalie graduated, too.”

I scowl, throwing my bag next to my seat. I’ve always hated how Andong hypes up its sports programs so much. Sports culture is so annoying.

“You all don’t need to worry about anything,” I hear Krystal say as she lets out a graceful laugh. “Sehun has his lucky charm. The Andong soccer team has never lost a game with it.”

I subtly turn around.

Krystal is showing everyone a gold keychain hanging off of Sehun’s backpack, a 3-piped telescope. It looks surprisingly cheap, though. Like a small little trinket you’d pick up in a gift shop.

“It’s his lucky charm,” Jongin tells a giggling girl. “Sehun refuses to go anywhere without it.”

“I’m not complaining, though. It works. Remember when we beat that team ranked 1st in the region?” Kyungsoo laughs. “That was all the work of Sehun’s keychain.”

It hits me and I gasp in realization.

Bingo.

“Mark, Suzy.” I forcefully wedge myself between them. “Listen to me. I have an idea.”

They are all still engaged in spirited conversation when I march up to them. Sehun’s eyes meet mine, and he languidly raises his eyebrows.

“Nice cardigan you have there,” Sehun croons. “Come to wish me good luck?”

With a shock, I realize that I am still wearing Sehun’s stupid cardigan. I was too angry to realize that I have been wearing it this entire time.

!, I think, and am about to hastily rip it from my body when Sehun says, “Uh uh uh. Do you really want to be doing that?”

His eyes dart over to Krystal, Victoria, and Sulli for just a moment. They are glowering at me with murderous looks in their eyes.

If I show that I’m wearing Sehun’s cardigan, I’ll look even more pathetic in front of them, I realize. They’ll rip me to shreds.

So I reluctantly drop my hands from the buttons on the cardigan.

“Bastard,” I mutter, and the smile on his face grows wider.

“What are you here for?” Jongin asks in a lofty tone. Everyone surrounding him is looking at me with the same disdainful expression.

“Keep it down,” I utter. “I’m trying to work.”

Kyungsoo gives me a fake-sympathetic look. “Ooh, that’s right. Wouldn’t want your scholarship to be revoked. It would be a shame for you to have to go back to the gutter you’re-,”

“Jongin, is your leg still hurting?” Sehun asks. “I don’t want you to start cramping during the match.”

Jongin shrugs. “I iced it. There’s not much else I can do.”

“Take care of yourself,” Victoria tsks, and Jongin chuckles.

When my eyes meet Sehun’s, both of us quickly look away.

“Is there anything else you need?” he asks, looking down at his desk.

I pretend to scratch my hair, and twist my body around the slightest.

Mark is sitting at his desk, erratically tapping his foot in a jittery manner. When Suzy sees me looking, she gives me a subtle nod.

“Nothing else,” I respond, and walk back to my desk.

“I got it,” Mark tells me in a low voice, pressing something into my hand.

I keep my fist tightly clenched. I only open my fingers when the bell has rung and everyone rushes out of the classroom.

Sehun’s telescope pendant is sitting in the palm of my hand.

5 minutes later, it’s sitting at the bottom of the lake.

Take that, Sehun.