Chapter 3: Starting

Haerin

            I stared at the too-familiar ceiling of my bedroom, lit by the orange glow of my desk lamp. I’d grown far too used to this position – my back against the headboard, my eyes facing the ceiling, a piece of charcoal in my hand and an almost blank canvas on my lap.

            “Sketch someone whose eyes tell stories,” the professor had said, standing before a work of her own. She’d clearly expressed her disappointment in her failure of capturing the look in her father’s eyes right before he died, but for me and everyone else in the lecture hall, she’d gotten it spot on – the pain, the heaviness that could only be brought on by a lifetime past, and the small glimmer of hope as he looked forward to seeing his deceased wife again. Once again, her abilities had made me feel small and irrelevant in comparison – how was I supposed to draw such raw emotion like that?

I didn’t even know who to draw. For a while I’d considered my mother, but soon enough I realized that, like the layers of foundation she used to apply to the bruises on her arms, she’d grown too good at masking her pain. I could try to capture that look, those concealed wounds, but I was nowhere near that level yet and I would most likely end up drawing her with an unflattering expression on her face. And the professor had said to do it off memory alone, too, and not even Yunhyeong’s face had that kind of eternal image in my mind.

Letting out a slow, prolonged sigh, I let my hand move freely across the familiar rough paper, carving and smudging and drawing out whatever was in my mind’s eye. It was well past midnight, and my brain was sluggish with sleep, but for some reason my artistic impulses weren’t. Now that I thought about it, they were seemingly always wide awake.

            After some time, I looked back down at what I’d drawn, and found the eyes – always too close, always too dark – of the boy I’d met on the bus just a few hours ago. What was his name – Sehun?

            Deciding it was high time to go to sleep, I balled up the paper and tossed it into the overflowing trash can across the room.

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Sehun

            Five minutes into the first real class of my life, I concluded that the girls here – or in this class, at least – giggled far too frequently to be sufferable.

            They giggled the moment I walked in, talking in hushed whispers amongst themselves. They giggled as the professor called my name and I was forced to stand up and say a brief introduction. They giggled as I sat back down. They giggled throughout the entire lecture, and by the time the professor dismissed us an hour and a half later, my head was starting to hurt.

            “Sehun!”

            I turned in the direction of the voice in time to see Baekhyun running across the campus towards me, his arms pinwheeling comically. Several boys followed behind at a slower pace, awkward but friendly smiles on their faces.

            “Hey,” I said, raising my hand and giving a little half-wave. The group of girls that was the cause of my pounding head exited the building, and upon seeing me broke into another round of giggles. I suppressed a groan.

            Baekhyun looked sympathetic. “Oh, it’s them- wait, did you just have your first legit class with them?”

            “Um…” Unsure of what he was implying, I raised my shoulders a fraction of an inch and said, “Yes?”

            Baekhyun’s palm collided with his forehead, and he glanced over at the flock of girls that was walking rather slowly across the campus, reminding me vaguely of a giggling, lipstick-wearing, compact-mirror-carrying swarm of bees. “I’m so sorry,” he apologized. “I assure you, the entire female population in this school isn’t like that. You’re just… really unlucky. Oh, jeez. And you’re good-looking, too…” He shook his head, as if we were at my relative’s funeral and he was giving me his condolences.

            I blinked at him, feeling like I was missing something. Why was he acting like I’d suffered a major loss by having to attend a lecture with them? “Why, are they cursed or something?”

            . I curled my fingers into a fist at my side to prevent my palm from introducing itself forcefully to my forehead. This society didn’t have the curses and miracles and blessings that ran rampant in my town. What if I’d given my identity away? Baekhyun didn’t seem like the one to come to immediate assumptions, but surely he would’ve guessed I wasn’t who I claimed to be-

            To my surprise and relief, he only tilted his head back and laughed. “Sometimes, I think they are,” he said, chuckling, and it dawned on me that he thought I’d been joking. Forcing out a laugh that was more out of relief than actual humor, I stood there awkwardly as he caught his breath.

Fortunately, the group of guys who’d been walking behi