Hyeri wakes up the next morning with a big yawn and an optimistic mindset. It seems like a good day is in the cards for her. Not only did she actually wake up to her alarm clock for once, she actually woke up before Minah, which means bragging rights for at least a day.

“Minah, get up!” She demands while shaking her friend relentlessly. “Time for school, and we can’t be late this time because I have to impress Miss Sojin!” Pacified by the somewhat intelligible response that she got, Hyeri jumps up to get ready, not without warning Minah that if she took too long she’d be left behind.

Equipped with her meager lifesavings and a practiced apology, Hyeri races off to school a whole fifteen minutes early, half-asleep Minah in tow.

---

“I’m here early, Miss Sojin!” Hyeri announces proudly as she struts into the classroom that morning, momentarily distracting Sojin from the papers she was working on.

“That’s…nice,” The woman replies, unfamiliar with giving praise. “I’m glad you’re okay.” She blesses her admirer with a brief smile before turning back to her work.

Hyeri, however, doesn’t notice the silent dismissal (blame her slight social ineptitude). She’s determined to finish what she dreamed about all night. “Um, actually, I wanted to say I’m sorry for messing up your car. And to give you my lifesavings to at least help with the repairs, even if it isn’t much.” Jamming her hand into her pocket, she retrieves the money that she took out of her ‘secret drawer’ earlier this morning and offers it to the blonde in front of her.

Sojin’s widened eyes give away how surprised she is. She glances over to Hyeri’s friend—Minah—but the girl is sitting at her desk, purposefully avoiding eye contact. This is her first time as a teaching assistant; she’s training up to be the real thing, but so far she hasn’t met a student as…strange as Hyeri. All of the other teenagers keep their heads down, study diligently or nod off to sleep in class and hurry out of the room when class ends. They certainly don’t converse with their teachers if they have any choice in the matter. But here is Hyeri, not only talking to her willingly but doing so with such fervor. And apologizing with what seems like complete earnest, even offering up the most precious thing to a teenager: money. It is unusual, to say the least.

“Hyeri, no, it’s fine.” Sojin pushes the girl’s hands away, maybe rougher than she meant to. “You don’t owe me anything. You were injured, and that’s way worse than scratching my car.”

The ‘rejection’, as the immature young Hyeri saw it, hurt. The idealistic dreams she’d had of this moment didn’t prepare her for this scenario. So, she tries to recover as subtly as possible. “Oh. Well, that’s okay. I just wanted you to know I was sorry.” She bows quickly and takes a seat beside Minah, thankful that during their conversation other students had come in, so the room is filled with chatter instead of heavy silence.

Minah leans over to brag, “Told you it wasn’t gonna work.” She says smugly, pinching Hyeri’s cheek before going back to whatever the hell she was doing.

It’s pretty hard to pay attention in class. Long after the first bell rang, Hyeri is both enamored at Miss Sojin’s greatness and trying to figure out how to get to know her more. If it wasn’t already obvious, the young student didn’t come up to her this morning only because she feels bad about running into her car. She may have a crush. One that she doesn’t understand the possible magnitude of. She’s just a simple teenager, after all.

After class, an opportunity presents itself. All the students and the teacher have left for lunch, and Sojin stayed behind to clean up. Hyeri can’t help but jump at this chance.

She walks nervously up to the teacher’s desk, math folder in hand. “Miss Sojin, can you help me with a math problem?” The teacher’s assistant turns around, attentive, looking expectantly at her, and Hyeri takes it as a yes. She lays out her stuff on the desk, picking a homework question at random that looks possibly hard. Sojin takes a seat in the chair the teacher had given her and examines the problem in silence.

It takes a minute, but soon she’s ready to teach. “What you must remember when you see problems like this is…”

Hyeri, however, has only been thinking of ways to break the silence and not get in trouble for casually chatting with her teacher. She doesn’t know what’s appropriate and what’s not in this scenario. So, she just blabbers her way through it.

“Triangles have this formula when you want to find the angle measure. There’s—“

“How old are you?”

Sojin is shocked into silence and Hyeri is cringing at the insensitive question. Out of all the questions, this came out of .

“I’m so sorry, Miss Sojin, it just kind of came out. I don’t want to know. Well, I do, but you don’t have to tell me. Not that I think I have any authority over you in the first place, I swear I—“

Sojin thankfully puts the girl out of her misery. “It’s fine, Hyeri. You don’t have to be so nervous around me, I don’t bite,” All while throwing her a bone, probably out of pity. “And since you apologized so nicely, I’ll let you in on my biggest secret.” She grins teasingly, cupping her hand over . “I’m 27.”

Hyeri tries her best to maintain composure, but the excitement at both Sojin’s playfulness and knowing a secret of hers gets the better of her. Of course, she needs to return the favor. “Now I’ll tell you my biggest secret,” She copies the same cupping motion. Sojin leans in closer indulgently, eyes narrowed in amusement. “I lied about needing help with my homework.”

This revelation is nothing Sojin didn’t already know anyway (Hyeri is a horrible liar), but she gasps in fake surprise anyway. “By the time I get the detention slips out the drawer you better be out of my sight.” She keeps her smile to emphasize the lack of seriousness to that statement, but Hyeri scrambles to gather her things anyway and rushes out the door, still giggling even as she almost tripped on a stray pencil.

This encounter only confirms Sojin’s thoughts: Hyeri really is strange.

A/N: I thought this was cute. Trying to emphasize Hyeri’s teenage-ness, partly because that fits her image in real life and explains why I’m going to be taking things slowly in terms of a relationship for them. She needs time to mature for it not to come off like Sojin is taking advantage of her so I’ll try my best to make their eventual relationship as non-creepy as possible.