The birds gathered outside the library window were chirping its morning melody. The sunlight shined through the window and hit Sungjae’s face; waking him up. He squinted at the morning light and looked down to see Joy leaning on his shoulder. He smiled widely at the innocent girl and ignored the aching pain on his shoulder.

The door of the library suddenly opened and in came what look to be a librarian in her early fifties. The sound of the opening door wake Joy, causing her to jumped in surprise. Upon seeing Joy’s confused expression, Sungjae couldn’t helped but squeezed her cheeks.

“Mmmmmmm…” Joy whined.

“Morning!”

“Is it time for school already? Give me ten more minutes.”

Joy leaned back on his shoulder, but quickly got up when she realized that they were still in the library. The mystified librarian saw the two and approached them.

“Oh My Goodness! Have the two of you been here all night? Should I go call your parents?”

“Oh no, we are fine. We lost tracked of time yesterday and got locked inside. I’m sorry for the troubles. We’ll be leaving now.”

They both bowed to the elder lady and hurried to the exit. When they are outside. Sungjae stopped to stretches and take in some fresh airs, while Joy just continued walking toward the school building.

“Where are you going?”

“Class! It’s starting soon.”

“Seriously? Aren’t you gonna get some rest?”

“It’s okay, I can just sleep in class.”

Sungjae thought about going home, but decided to follow Joy to class anyway. When they got to their classroom, Minhyuk was already there looking anxious while asking some of Joy’s classmates if they had seen her.

“Sunbae!” Joy called to Minhyuk.

Minhyuk turned to see Joy staying in front of the classroom entrance. He quickly ran and wrapped his arm around her.

“Where the hell have you been all night? Do you know how worried your parents were?”

“And you too sunbae?”

Joy’s question calmed Minhyuk down a bit and he released Joy from his embrace.

“Sorry. I lost tracked of time and got lock inside the library. I won’t let that happen again. Promise.”

“Geez, seriously! How clumsy can you get? Auntie really need to get you a cellphone one of these days.”

“Yeah, you think so too right? When we get home, you need to help me convince mom in getting one.”

The two happily made an agreement with each other while Sungjae was dumbfounded by their interactions. He came closer and examined the two close relationship.

“Ummm…?” Minhyuk questioned Joy as he cleanly noticed Sungjae’s obvious inspecting eyes on them.

“Hey! What do you want?” Joy confronted him.

Sungjae just shrugged and walked to his seat near the back of the classroom window.

“Well, he’s an odd child.”

“Just ignore him. Sunbae, can you call my parents and let them know I’m okay?”

“Sure. Class is about to start. Are you sure you don’t need to go home for the day?”

Joy nodded and gave Minhyuk a reassuring smile before he left the classroom.

Lectures begin like usual, but to Sungjae surprise, Joy hadn’t fallen asleep yet. Instead, she was writing away in her notebook again. Sungjae took out his pencil and paper, wrote something on it, and asked the person next to him to pass it up to Joy.

Yeri patted Joy’s back and handed the piece of paper to her. Puzzled, she unfolded the paper to see a giant signature of Yook Sungjae’s on it. On the corner it said, “To my number one fan, you are much cuter than any fish in the sea.”

Joy turned around to make sure to give Sungjae a snickered and stuck her tongue out before passing the note to the girl sitting in front of her.

***

When class ended, Minhyuk and Wendy was already waiting outside of Joy’s classroom. Hearing from Minhyuk that Joy was missing last night, Wendy immediately ran to Joy’s classroom during lunch to check on the younger girl. After assuring Wendy hundreds of times that she is okay, Joy was finally able to eat her meal in peace.

The three friends exits the school and walked to the field of the building. Joy and Minhyuk waves goodbye to Wendy as they walked home. While waiting for her mother to come pick her up, Wendy noticed that Sungjae was also waiting outside for what seem to be his manager. Wendy decided to approach him and Sungjae gave her a small bowed when he saw her.

“No need to be formal, I’m only one year older than you. I heard from Joy that you two was locked in the school library last night.”

“Yeah….pretty much.”

“Hmm…Honestly, you don’t seem like a bad person, but I still think its best that you don’t bother Joy if you’re not serious with her. You know very well that your fans are going to attack her right?”

“So then me and her can’t even be friends?”

“...........”

“Can I ask you something?”

“What is it?”

“What’s her relationship with that upper classman?”

“What mean Minhyuk? He’s her childhood friend.”

“…....Have she ever been bullied in the past because of him?”

“Why did you ask? Did Joy told you?”

“Just a hunch. A guy like him, there’s no way the other girls wouldn’t get jealous of the girls that associates to him.”

“That’s true. Even I’ve ran into my fair share of troubles every now and then when I first met him. But my situation is nothing compares to Joy’s. Minhyuk also knew that she was having difficult times and tried to help. Of course, Joy just acted like nothing happened and dealt with the issues herself. She might appears to be strong, but anyone that been through such harassment will leave a scar. Even though she has no problem dealing with these kind of situations, I still rather she doesn’t have to go through it again.”

“Is there not another way?.......”

“Huh?”

“Can it not be that the only thing I can do for her is to not be her friend?”

For reading up to this point, thank you! :D

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