Hyejin took a seat on a small bench by the lockers at the hallway, right next to Namjoon and Taehyung, who were sitting there together. As soon as they both noticed her approaching them, Taehyung, who had evidently been waiting for her, excitedly smiled at his girlfriend.

“How is it going?” Hyejin asked both of them, but she could only look at Taehyung and smile back at him.

“You wouldn’t call it the best moment of the day,” Namjoon blankly responded, tending to be the most serious and least cheerful of all.

Hyejin looked at Namjoon and observed the melancholy on his face. With a bright smile, she tapped his shoulder playfully, signalling he should cheer up. Namjoon’s only way of responding at that not-so-perfect moment was a chuckle. She was not annoyed though; she was used to this attitude of his at any rate.

Hyejin turned to face a still smiling Taehyung sitting beside her, watching every single move of hers without altering the expression on his face. She went slightly closer to him, smiling back at him again. That was by far what she adored the most about her beloved boyfriend: his cute smile, which was always there to brighten all her days.

She was disappointed, however, by Taehyung’s abrupt reaction. He suddenly changed his expression and looked at both her and Namjoon, saying six words that took their turn to ruin Hyejin’s mood: “Let’s call Miyeon too, shall we?”

Over the few days that had passed, Hyejin had lost every trace of her desire to confront Miyeon. Miyeon’s presence – even the sound of her name – was as much as necessary to ruin her daily mood and cause her to show the irritation and anger she felt towards her. She could not consider her as her “friend” anymore and had almost completely ceased communicating with her. An inconvenience also got in the way though, and it was the fact that Miyeon happened to be close friends with the same people as Hyejin, and Hyejin had to lie to her friends each time as she did not have the courage to explain her true feelings to them.

Hence, her reply to Taehyung – with Namjoon simply switching his gaze between Taehyung and Hyejin, not in the mood to speak – was, “Sure, why not?”

After both of the boys had looked away, she secretly pouted while digging her phone out of her pocket. She was extremely bothered to be the one to call Miyeon, as it was evident that Miyeon would not pick up the phone as usual, yet she was still obliged to fake her agreement with her friends’ suggestion.

Right after dialling Miyeon’s number, Hyejin impatiently waited for her to supposedly answer her call. Instead, a few seconds later, the response she heard was utterly expectable: Miyeon rejected her call.

“She hung up,” she stated, pretending to be clueless as to the reason.

This left Taehyung puzzled once more, as it was another sign that something strange was going on. He sent a questioning look to Hyejin for a short moment, but he immediately changed it, replying: “Just a minute, I’ll call her.”

Hyejin remained in her position and waited silently, curious to see Miyeon’s reaction to Taehyung’s call. Namjoon, on the other hand, squatted on the bench, put on his jacket and covered his face with his hood with a shallow sigh.

“This is weird…” Taehyung stated after a moment, laying down his phone. “She didn’t answer now either.”

“I’ll go look for her,” Namjoon suddenly said, ready to get up and leave.

A now panicked Hyejin, however, stopped him by pushing him back onto the bench. “Of course you won’t…!” she exclaimed with a fake laugh. After a quick moment of trying to make a convincing excuse, her last words were, “There are a couple of personal things I just remembered to tell her, so I will look for her instead.”

Taehyung and Namjoon both rolled their eyes and stared at her as she was quickly leaving. Then they speechlessly looked at each other in amazement. What’s up with that girl?

☼

Meanwhile, Miyeon rushed out of the classroom with a pile of textbooks in hand. She was in a hurry, but she did not even know where she was going. The several thoughts constantly torturing her were ample to take her mind completely off reality.

Thus, instead of reaching her own locker, she passed by it, ending up at another area of the hallway where there were no lockers of her own or her friends’. However, she still did not bother to glance at where she was and switch directions. All she did was to continue walking hurriedly to nowhere, her eyes only looking at her books.

But this did not last very long either, because a minute later, she bumped into someone and a few of her textbooks crashed on the floor. Not daring to look at the boy in front of her, she bent down to pick up her books, although she noticed how the boy was going to pick them up in her stead.

The speechless boy wanted to introduce himself as Min Yoongi, but Miyeon was too hasty to get involved into any conversations. But Yoongi did notice the sorrowful look in her eyes, and that left him wondering what was up with her.

Although Yoongi was a senior student, he acknowledged the situation his juniors were going through. He was not really close friends with Jimin, but he did know him, and he was aware of his mysterious absence from the school. He was unlike his younger schoolmates though: without publicly showing it, he could deeply feel some small traces of concern for the missing one.

Because of all this, straight after taking a look at Miyeon’s sad face, he wondered if she was in the same class as Jimin. But he refused to believe it, as it was clear to every single student that nobody in the entire school would look so depressed for that particular reason. After all, the time period that followed Jimin’s disappearance was close to reaching three weeks.

Yet, even with these thoughts, he still did not overcome his desire to speak to the poor girl. “Hey,” he called in a low voice, with Miyeon just a couple of steps away from him.

Miyeon stopped walking, but still hesitated to turn around. She stood still mutely, the front tufts of her hair concealing the signs of sorrow drawn on her face. She attempted to get herself out of this quandary: should she turn to face Yoongi, or should she ignore him in cold blood and carry on walking?

In the end, she gave in. She slowly turned around and doubtfully glanced at Yoongi. As soon as he looked straight at her eyes, Yoongi’s face was filled with astonishment at how beautiful Miyeon was. The oval dark-colored glasses rested in front of her brown eyes did not ruin her natural beauty, regardless of whether she looked sad or happy.

At first glance, Miyeon also thought of Yoongi as a handsome guy, with his thick, light brown hair showcasing the sweetness on his face. However, she mentally told herself that this could not evolve into attraction. Besides, she had made it clear to herself that she only had eyes for Jimin.

“Hi…” she finally said with an awkward laugh, with her glances switching between the floor and Yoongi fast, and fixed her bangs.

“Do you want to talk?” he asked her, walking slightly closer to her.

Miyeon wordlessly shook her head in response, this time without looking at Yoongi, and turned her back at him to walk away. Yoongi, on the other hand, simply stared at her in confusion.

Miyeon was going to continue her way to her locker when she suddenly saw another girl walking towards her, although her eyes were still looking at the floor. Looking up, the view of her potential enemy brought back her strong desire to let her anger towards her burst. But then she didn’t, as she always had to keep cool in front of her putative friends.

“What are you doing here?” Hyejin asked her.

Miyeon could easily detect the coldness in her voice and was therefore sure it was time for a fight again. Great. That’s not even necessary, or is it?

Yoongi understood that Miyeon was probably busy with her “friend” so he decided to go away, apparently not having any more reasons to stay there.

“Why aren’t you coming with us?” Hyejin insisted questioning her angrily.

Miyeon, however, completely ignored her. With a disgusted glare, she tried to leave as fast as possible, but Hyejin stopped her with a hard and her head crashed on the wall.

“What do you want from me?!” Miyeon protested.

She attempted to leave once more, but this time, Hyejin pressed her against the wall so she could not move. She still tried to push her away though. Miyeon was a strong person and had always known how to stand up for herself. She could not lose her strength and look weak for the first time at that moment.

“Does it have to do with him again?” Hyejin gritted her teeth.

“What is it to you?”

“Your so-called crush is so weak. One mean word was enough for him to possibly leave Korea.”

Hearing these words, Miyeon felt like punching her, but she couldn’t as she could not move her arms. She knew Jimin was not weak at all. She knew he had every other reason to stay away from the school and his fellow students. And she could sense that he was not even far away from her, but justifiably hesitated to step inside the school.

Miyeon was going to reply when all of a sudden, she felt Hyejin pull her glasses off her face. “What are you doing…?” she asked her in panic. This time, there was no escape.

Hyejin remained silent. She threw the glasses to the floor and forcefully stepped on the lenses. Miyeon’s vision had gone extremely blurry, but she could still make out the view of her glasses shattering.

“Great,” Hyejin smiled and finally let go of her. “Now you will never see his face again.”

Miyeon quickly went away and Hyejin watched her with the same evil smile. After that, she pulled out her phone and sent a text message to Taehyung.

Hey Tae-Tae, Miyeon is studying at the library right now. She sadly won’t be able to hang out with us.

☼

She rushed into the bathroom and stared at her own reflection in the mirror. Feeling a sudden sense of weariness, she bent forward and pressed her hands against the washbasin. After a second or two, she washed her hands carefully.

Struggling with blurry vision, she cautiously took off her schoolbag and slowly opened the front pocket. After touching every single of the stuff stored inside the pocket, she took out the plastic case containing her contact lenses.

She opened the case and took out one lens. With great caution, she managed to apply it to her right eye. After blinking a couple of times, she realized she could see slightly more clearly. She applied the other lens to her left eye and her vision finally went back to normal.

She stood still there, not knowing what else to do. The incidents she had gone through for two weeks were not few, and all the unpleasant thoughts that haunted her mind would not ever leave her alone.

She walked into the toilet and locked the door. That was the best thing she could do right then. Isolating herself from the public would definitely make her feel better. She was not in the mood to face anyone but one person, and that person was nowhere to be found.

Leaning against the walls of the narrow room, Miyeon took her phone out of her shirt pocket. She blankly stared at the screen for a moment before unlocking it. Eventually, she had a look at one of her old photos.

It was a close-up of Jimin which she had taken secretly. He was normally standing by his locker and picking up his stuff. Even with that unemotional expression, he was always the most handsome boy alive to Miyeon.

Miyeon ran to Namjoon, who was leaning against his locker door inactively. He smirked and raised his eyebrows at her playfully while she was turning on her phone screen, probably ready to show him something interesting.

“Hey!” she exclaimed happily. “Look at this!”

Namjoon turn to look at the screen. Miyeon showed him a picture of Jimin at his locker.

“Isn’t he just so handsome?” she smiled.

Namjoon thoughtfully looked at her and his smirk faded. “Well…” he started. “He is, but… Don’t you find it stupid to have a crush on another Park?”

Miyeon simply stared at him and imitated his permanent smirk. “No, I don’t,” she said. “Love has no surname.”

Namjoon chuckled and Miyeon eyed him in confusion, but she eventually smiled too.

The picture had been taken almost six months before, and times had been far better back then. Back then, her friends accepted her feelings instead of judging her for being in love with a guy who got slightly bullied. It was back when their friendship was not at risk of being ruined yet.

“Park Jimin…” she muttered, still staring at the picture. It might be just an inanimate object, but it still meant a lot to her. “Park Jimin, when are you going to come back?”

Suddenly, her vision started to turn blurry again. She was surprised since she was sure there was nothing wrong with her contact lenses. What was it that was making her vision so blurry?

She blinked several times, only to finally realize that it was… a teardrop. A dreaded teardrop that she always prevented herself from shedding – until then. This time, she had to do it. She had to allow the teardrops trapped between her eyes and her contact lenses turn into actual tears.

She closed her eyes and let the tears stream down her face. It was an unusual feeling that she had never had before, even after everything that had happened. It was the first time in two weeks… that she was actually crying for Jimin.