The owner of the voice happened to be standing right in front of her next class; boy about her age with bright orange hair. He clutched a sheet of paper that looked a bit like a timetable, roaming the hallway aimlessly as he seemed to bury his head into the sheet.

“FUUUUDGE!” Nayoung almost jumped. His eyes burned through the sheet of paper. It had taken Nayoung a moment to realize that ‘fudge’ was most likely was as an alternative to saying ''.

She couldn’t help but mutter “What the ,” herself.

After staring for a few moments longer, she then realized that the boy wasn’t from the school originally, because she was pretty sure that dyeing hair wasn’t something that anyone from within the school had done before. There was also the fact that no-one had ever gotten lost, either because all of them had been in the school long enough, or those that were just starting that year had quickly grown accustomed to the timetable.

Perhaps I should put him out of his misery?

Nayoung contemplated the outcome of doing so, which resulted in her readjusting her bag on her shoulder as she walked towards him.

Not like this’ll mean anything.

Yeah…just some random act of so-called kindness; easily forgotten, like me.

Nayoung had yet to learn of how wrong she was to assume so.

---

He knew that he was moving schools at some point in the year. Jung Byunghee didn’t think it would be this early, for it was only halfway through the first semester. He awoke with a start when father literally jumped on his bed. His loud voice rang in the teen’s ears.

“Oi get up!”

Being someone who wasn’t a morning person, Byunghee had only done the opposite and buried his head underneath the sheets, clutching onto his pillow as if his life depended on it. He then began to ponder upon whether or not he really was the son out of the two, because his father always had way more energy than he did, especially in the mornings.

His train of thought derailed when his father suddenly yanked the covers that he had been tangled in, resulting Byunghee to tumble off the bed along with his pillow and ungracefully land on the ground with a loud thud.

His father simply laughed at him as he groaned.

Knowing that he would fail to feign sleep at that point, he staggered to the bathroom with all of his belongings, re-appearing about half an hour later fully dressed and awake in his only pair of fitting jeans, a baby blue striped shirt and his favourite pair of hi-tops.

He walked out of his room and into the kitchen; he swiftly grabbed himself a slice of toast (and made sure to wipe off the excess crumbs that fell onto the marble counter that had just been cleaned). Hoping to keep this flow of events going, he bid farewell to his father who was trying to eat his breakfast while tying his tie at the same time; but he was stopped by the older man.

“Remember! Be nice to everyone- “

“Annnnd treat people the way you wish to be treated. Got it.” Byunghee smiled stiffly.

At this, his father smiled and he let Byunghee leave the house. However, it was only a few minutes after he had walked down the street that the boy halted in his tracks, the realization of not knowing where to go being the cause of his sudden stop.

Fumbling with his phone, he pulled up the directions to the school and smiled in satisfaction before he did a double take on his phone and frowned. His head was immediately filled with questions, reason being he was naturally horrible with directions, which came from his mother. 

No really, it was so bad that even at the age of seventeen, half the time he didn’t even know the difference between clockwise and anticlockwise.

And this was why he ended up having to run to the school since he was pretty much late. Focusing on how much time he had left, he wasn’t aware of how fast he was moving until he almost face planted the school’s office door.

Now that he made it to the school in one piece, he needed to get his timetable.

Byunghee (barely) managed to compose himself before he opened the door, only to find no one at the front desk. He took this as an opportunity to plop down onto one of the seats rather ungracefully to slow his rapidly beating heart down. It was after waiting for ten minutes when he began to tap his foot impatiently, and another five when he contemplated on screaming.

Just then, a boy about his age, if not a bit older, stumbled through the doors, mumbling several apologies with his head hung low. Looking up only after he got around to the front desk, Byunghee had noticed that there were rather dark bags under his eyes as if someone had hit him repeatedly, and he believed that the boy’s hair, bleached blonde in colour, was trying to make up for his really short height. That was when his eyes widened in realization at the boy’s height, and how the latter was looking up at him. 

It was a culture shock to the orange haired boy, basically because no-one he knew was shorter than him.

It must’ve been the hi-tops then.

“Sorry, I was studying for my exams and I guess I dozed off.” He said, tilting his head to the side when he noticed how Byunghee hadn’t really moved before he spoke again. “Do you need a timetable? I haven’t seen you around before.” Byunghee came to his senses at this, nodding as he closed his mouth for a brief moment before he opened it again to speak.

“Uh, yeah. Apparently I’m supposed to be in Year Eleven, class one?” Amused, the boy smiled, his eyes disappearing almost completely before he left the front desk and walked to a computer behind him. Within a few moments of him pressing what looked like random keys to Byunghee, the machine next to the computer whirred to life before the boy turned and handed a sheet that looked like a jumble of letters and numbers.

The hell is this?

“I’m Seungho, by the way. I help out with the office work when I have a free period. In this case, I’m free right now.” He held his hand out, and Byunghee smiled as he shook the former’s hand before his eyes fell on the clock. Seungho smiled once again at Byunghee’s panic-stricken expression as he looked at the timetable before looking back at the clock several times.

“Your next class should be Geography, I think.” Seungho said, narrowing his eyes in thought. Byunghee smiled sheepishly, interrupted by the bell ringing when he opened his mouth to speak.

“So, I have Geography now?” Byunghee asked, trying his hardest to not collapse at the foreign language that was his timetable. Seungho nodded, an amused smirk adorning his facial features.

“You don’t know where to go do you?” Byunghee nodded helplessly, frowning when Seungho laughed before the other asked for the timetable and gave the directions to the class. "You sure you don't need me to write it down?" This wasn't said in a mocking tone, surprisingly enough; the blonde actually looked concerned.

“I think I’ll be fine now. Thanks for your help.” Byunghee slowly said, smiling, and at this, Seungho smiled back.

“No worries. I’ll see you around.”

---

Writing out the directions, Byunghee noted, might’ve been a better idea.

Not lot of time had passed, yet he had been roaming around the hallway aimlessly. He still couldn’t understand the mixture of letters and numbers in each bar and because he forgot the directions that Seungho gave him, he was practically screwed.

“For fudge sake! Fudging hell! Fudge. Fudge fudge fudge. Fudge. My. Fudging. Life!” His voice echoed, startling himself before he looked around to see if any teacher had heard him scream out the chocolate dessert multiple times and then stared at him as if he was obsessed with fudge. If he could, he would've said the actual vulgarity, but he just couldn't, mainly because he would always feel awkward afterwards. Even he found it strange that he could say any other profanity, except for that one.

“FUUUUUDGE!”

Byunghee sighed in frustration as he stopped pacing back and forth to try and decode the timetable for the umpteenth time, his eyes burning a hole into the sheet of paper. He wasn’t aware of the footsteps approaching him until a taller figure loomed over him. Before Byunghee could even look up, it snatched his timetable.

“Hey! What-“

The person, who turned out to be a girl, instantly turned to him, and Byunghee immediately thought about how he’d never known that eyes could look so soulless, could hold no emotion. It was as if she’d risen from the dead.

If looks could kill…I'd probably be dead ten times over.

When he didn’t speak, she turned back to the sheet of paper before she looked up and pointed at the nearest door before she practically threw the timetable back at him and took long strides towards it. Byunghee widened his eyes and hit his head at the realization of the girl going to the classroom he was supposed to go to.

Byunghee shuffled to the door quickly before he looked around, baffled. That girl had simply disappeared from his sight.

Snapping himself out of his thoughts, and forgetting that the door still hadn’t been opened in the process, Byunghee went smack-bang into the wood. He groaned as his hand went to his forehead. He sighed as he then turned the doorknob and tried pushing the door, frowning when it didn’t budge.

“Oh my freaking god, why!?”  

A countless amount of tries later, he took a few steps back before he charged for the wooden menace known as the door, shocked a few moments later when he didn’t hit wood, but the floor. When he heard several people cracking up, he shot up from the retarded position he was in just in time to hear the teacher apologizing for leaning on the door.

“My name is Jung Byunghee.” He bowed awkwardly, silently wincing at the sound of a bone cracking somewhere in his back, before he took a look at the class. His eyes had filed through all of the students since they were basically the stereotypes in all schools before they stopped at a girl right at the back of the classroom. She suddenly stared right back, and Byunghee remembered the eyes he had seen just before entering the classroom. They simply kept staring at each other before she looked at her desk and scribbled something in what he supposed was her book, and so he looked away and turned to the teacher.

“You can sit right next to her for now.” He handed him a textbook before she narrowed her eyes at the class. Before Byunghee could ask who ‘her’ was, the teacher spoke again. “Raise your hand, girl.” With that, the girl whom he had stared at a few moments ago raised her hand, her eyes not moving from her desk.

Does she not have a name?

“She doesn’t deserve one. Her kind is inhumane.” The teacher said nonchalantly, as if that and mind reading were the most common things in the world.

Say what?

Byunghee turned to the teacher confused of what he had said.

“Her kind?” He questioned, but the teacher ignored it completely.

“You’re wasting my time. Just sit next to her already!”

Blinking in shock, he gave the teacher a nod before he moved right to the back of the room next to the girl. As he sat down and got his pencil case out, the teacher looked at the girl.

“Please be nice to him, or you know what happens next.” The male teacher said in a sweet voice that sounded very threatening at the same time.

What happens next?

The girl rolled her eyes before she mumbled more than she actually said, “I got it. Just go on with your mindless babbling."

A few people snickered, but they immediately stopped when the teacher stared at them in disapproval. The teacher's eyes went back to the girl and he glared before he turned to the board.

For the first ten minutes or so, he was completely focused, scribbling down whatever the teacher wrote word for word before he tried to adjust the grip of his pencil. As he moved his wrist, his eyes widened at hearing a rather loud crack before a dull pain hit him and he winced.

He attempted to stretch his fingers while he tried preventing his wrist from cracking again, sub-consciously stealing a few glances at the girl beside him who had now turned to a new page before he turned and looked at her properly. 

Her messy black hair that looked like it had been combed by fingers rather than an actual brush, reached just about halfway to her forearm. She had bags under her eyes like Seungho, only hers were immensely worse. A long-sleeved shirt hugged her rather slim yet oddly muscular build. Her legs were covered by a pair of skinny jeans that looked a bit too long for her from how the material at the ankles was folded a bit.

As far as Byunghee knew, the next few weeks or so were going to be the hottest days in Korea for quite some time, and each day was supposed to be hotter than the previous. Because of this, he didn’t know how she was going to survive in the heat, and what was worse was that she was wearing black.

However, despite the messy hair and the eye circles, Byunghee noticed that she wasn’t an eyesore, but she wasn’t overly attractive either.

If only her eyes- wait, how am I seeing her eyes?

The realization that the girl had been staring at him the whole time with her earphones draped around her neck and one eyebrow raised hit him, marking his cheeks with a flush of red. He instantly turned away while he held off the willing urge to slap himself repeatedly while mumbling ‘stupid’ over and over again, because he couldn’t seem to stop his habit of staring at people without even noticing. He inwardly cringed at the look she had given him before he gathered up what was left of his dignity and turned to her again to find she was still staring at him.

“U-uh, s-sorry.” The orange haired boy stuttered like an idiot, though she didn’t seem to take mind to it and simply turned away and started writing down notes again.

Oh, right. I should be writing notes too. Just need to actually look at my book first…

Oh my god, Byunghee! Stop trying to look at her!

---

Ugh. How long until this class has finished?

Being the impatient person he was, he believed that this class was the longest he had ever been in. And because of how frustrating it was that he didn’t know how much time he had to spend in this class, he concluded that it had become even more frustrating than his bad sense of direction.

And that would've definitely been saying something if you were him.

He turned to the front again and tried to listen to the teacher, though, like a radio with bad connection, it sounded grainy not so long afterwards. He soon felt his eyes drooping as he tried to concentrate on listening to the teacher’s monotonous babbling, but his efforts were futile.

Byunghee gave in not long afterwards. Once his head hit the table, he was off to his dreamland.

---

Perhaps my chapters are still too long even now. Ah well.

- RKP_Yoshi