Soojung felt a bit guilty when she found those two boys sitting in front of them again on the canteen.

“You two should stop pretending we don’t exist, because it pretty pissed me off seeing the both of you never greeting us whenever we passed each other,” Wonwoo rambled and this time his hair was cut shorter and no longer covering his eyes, placing his tray in front of Seulgi a little bit too loud and began to dig on his meal.

He started to care for these girls after all. Something about seeing the two of them so immersed and untouched by the world outside with flowers on their hair and happiness radiating from their eyes, it just spoke something Wonwoo had never seen before. He wanted to know more, so he thought, taking a look even closer wouldn't hurt. Not that he'd mind. Getting pricked by these girls wouldn't hurt so much compared to useless fist fights that occurred between boys that was never taken to heart. 

(How wrong was he, how wrong was he to underestimate them.)

“The other day was the last strike on our match,” Mingyu pointed out and sipped on to his box of milk, “Where did the two of you came from the other day? To have that many petals on your hair?”

Seulgi scratched on the nape of her neck, glancing over to Soojung.

“And stop doing that; talking with your eyes to each other like that. It’s like the two of you are keeping secrets from us,” Wonwoo was so forward in expressing his opinions. 

“Of course we keep secrets from you. It’s not like the two of you are close with us,” Soojung let Seulgi delivered the truth. She may be monochrome, but she was tough, more tough than the her in the past who constantly tugged on Soojung’s sleeves to let her know that she was still with her. 

“Yeah, it’s the truth,” she voiced out her opinion still, letting them know that she was in the same page as them. 

“That sounds like a challenge,” Mingyu smiled, unfamiliar and wild, it made Soojung’s skin shiver by the sight of him.

(And someday, she'd wish that she could paint that smile over and over and over again, besides his lips, trembling and shattering his heart apart.)

Æ

Without realising it, these two boys stuck their existence to them, trailing behind them wherever they went whenever they didn’t have soccer or basketball practice. 

From “Don’t follow us!” morphed into “Whatever.”

From scrunched eyebrows to laughing eyes.

From standing in pairs, one in the front or one in the back and vice versa to standing side by side, all four of them their hearts so free, longing for each other for protection and care.

Mingyu was having some commotion inside his heart with Soojung and her smile to Seulgi instead of him, her unwavering attention to Seulgi and most of the times, it made him a little bit jealous. Until Soojung began to treat him in the same way and he was sure he liked Soojung even though they knew each other merely for a year, and they were young fellows too. Still fourteen and confusing the concept between growing up and growing older.

Mingyu was growing up and growing one year older somewhere next month, his head fleet every so often between his school, his respected parents, his successful older brother, to his large group of friends he barely knew to his special group of friends he wanted to keep close and knew better and better.

Apparently, one of them had taken a favourite spot in his heart without making so many efforts, as far as just being herself; deeply humble and mysterious at the same time. There seemed to be so much kindness in her that she was trying to hold back.

Wonwoo just thought that he enjoyed seeing this girl named Seulgi with her ears peeking out sharply from her hair, with a mole he couldn’t see, feline eyes either glaring or laughing at him for his horrible jokes or offensive words (even though in mockery).

He felt irritated whenever he saw her weeping and looking hurt when he said something stupid (like how he liked her handwriting even though she thought it was horrendous and that she looked like a fool and goofball, burying herself in a field of flowers when he was thinking that this was the only place she could belong truly). 

It was so out of his nature to say those kinds of things, but he felt the need to say them whenever he was around her. It was made as if Seulgi made him unshackle himself off his rough exterior. The effect she had with him was very big, despite how laid back and casual she was for most of the time.

Δ

Soojung laid beneath the coverlet of blue floating far above them, hair sprawled all over the grass with a crisp scent of nature and wet flowers recovering from the rain’s parade last night. 

Her thoughts wander to the days where Seulgi glowed in her iridescent colours whenever they swam. Together, they glimmered in their own shades whenever they let the water swallowed and brought their feets padding to the other side. She missed those days, where they could watch the world spin before them while theirs stopped, with the stinging heat of the sun marking their bodies with its rude smothering.

When a rain of flowers fell down on her face and body, she laughed buoyantly, shrieking for Mingyu to stop but he didn’t because it was such a beautiful sight he wanted to stay and made all flowers rain all over her.

“You look foolish, Mingyu! What’s with that grin on your face?”

“You look way too happy for such a small thing, too!” He retorted, washing off all petals above her and she stifled another giggle, her eyes rising and creased into a shining twin pair of moonlight in the daylight, with colourful flowers from white roses, sunflowers, purple tullips, and red carnations. He mumbled things to himself how these flowers belong to those with the same nature, that's you. All those things he received from his father’s romance novels in his old shelves really did its wonders to him.

Wonwoo and Seulgi was near them, sitting and facing each other and her fingers were busy pulling one small flower to another and tying it in some ways they would end up looking like a flower crown. Seulgi was a master in doing this, she had made countless of them from fresh flowers around here. 

Wonwoo helplessly tried to imitate what she was doing. 

“What are you doing?”

“I’m trying to be productive and learn what you are doing right now,” Wonwoo’s eyes trailed to the blisters and scars on her fingertips. She constantly pressed her fingers to her skirt before continuing on her work, making sure the cuts didn’t sting as much.

“That’s not a very boyish thing to do; threading flowers to make a flower crown,” Seulgi snorted, more hostile than the previous months since they began their secondth grade. “You no longer hang out with those friends of yours, it seems.”

He leaned on his palms spread behind him, the birds chirping above then and it’s autumn with the trees lacking leaves and life. “I still do, with Mingyu also. Just not very often,” obviously because the two of you keep us busy

She went back to her half-finished flower crown in yellows and greens, and Wonwoo fished out his phone, pretending to look at the digital clock marking it 4 PM. 

He opened the menu button and tapped his thumb to the camera shaped icon, sneakily taking candid pictures of her while she was unaware of it (he had learnt the lesson to turn his flash off when Seulgi caught him red handed last week, accusing him that he was taking an embarrassing picture of her). 

He always questioned himself why would he do something like this, but it wasn’t like he was brave enough to ask her to take a picture of him, and it wasn’t like Seulgi liked to take pictures. She turned away her face from Soojung’s phone camera most of the time, too.  

“I think you’re not very bad,” Seulgi suddenly uttered out of the blue, her hair falling to the side of her face and he put away his phone to look at the the part of her face that was visible; her forehead to her eyelashes and her pale, thin lips. “You’re not as much as an as I thought you’d be,” as Seulgi wanted someone to let her know that they needed her, she was also a person who liked to express her need of someone. And this time, she just showed her feelings that his existence wasn’t a curse or something related to bad predictions. It was actually quite pleasant.

“How bad did you think of me, then?”

“Bad enough that I regretted being in the same group as you.”

“Well, that hurts,” he laughed, a deeper bass than last year and it was all amusement and intrigue, no him getting pricked. Jeon Wonwoo didn't get hurt so easily.

“I’m not sorry.”

“So honest of you, Seulgi.”

“I am,” she finally looked up earnestly. Then his hands clutched to his phone between his crossed legs as she reached out to his hair, her fingers softly and slightly grazed the black strands of his hair, resulting a blue petal laying on her palm as she held it to him. “There were petals stuck in your hair--”

“Did you lay around here when I wasn’t looking--” he didn’t hear the rest of her sentence but that word she just uttered to him, he should have recorded the whole scenery because it just took his breath away. 

She was saying it so softly and tenderly, so full of affection. It sounded more intimate that she intended to be somehow. She found herself feeling lukewarm as she saw the rising smile on his face, which he probably didn’t realise.

Wonwoo had never felt so warm inside of his heart. Not even when his favourite basketball team won, not even when he received Christmas gifts he had always waited every year. It wasn’t the same.  It was a wholly different kind of happiness he just learnt.

“Let’s go home, the sky is getting dark soon,” Mingyu suggested, already up on his feet with Soojung brushing flowers off her skirt, shirt, skin and black locks and Seulgi slung her bag pack in one shoulder, another hand filled with flowers and the other with a half finished flower crown. 

“You’re continuing that at home?”

She nodded, not looking at him.

Δ

By night time, he opened his gallery of photos and gasped, a hand over his mouth. He saw over a hundred photos he consciously took of her, fingers speeding up from one picture to another; Seulgi frowning, Seulgi smiling to Soojung and Seulgi hugging Soojung, Seulgi smiling to his direction but not to him, Seulgi laughing to his lame joke about Pringles, Seulgi staring blankly to his camera unconsciously (his favourite picture of her), Seulgi making flower crowns, Seulgi staring into an empty space, Seulgi walking in front of him and the list went on.

", I'm doomed. I've turned into a creep,"  Wonwoo sinked into his bed as his palm slid down to his face, "Goddammit, screwed, I'm so screwed."

He should ask Mingyu to take a picture of them when they weren’t aware, everything about this felt like an unrequited crush or just plain creepy and he felt like slamming his head to the wall for realizing this new feelings and getting so giddy over it.