M03

Everything was normal for Reina, in and out of school. Nothing special happened in the past two weeks, after the arrival of the new kid and the moving of the middle-aged man.

She never talked to anyone in school and was 'excited' to break her eight-school-weeks-of-no-talking streak from the previous term.

Yes she was excited, but secretly buried in her heart was a spark of hope that Vernon would initiate to converse with her like he did with everyone else...but he never really did.

When I mention 'everyone' I literally mean everyone; the K-pop obsessed, the 'adorable' juniors, the 'matured' seniors, the 'caring' teachers, the 'friendly' cleaner lady, the 'cheerful' lunch lady, the 'overjoyed' reputation maintainer, Mr Lee, and even the philosophical Principal Han Sungsoo! Everyone and everyone; all but Reina.

Perhaps it was because she was a wallflower. Oh, the irony of a girl with juxtaposing blonde hair being the camouflaging chameleon of the class.

In school, Reina was a mute. Outside school however, Reina actually did speak. She phoned her boss for miscellaneous jobs; she greeted the neighbouring granny who treated Reina like her own and she played with the granny's tiny grandson, Samuel. Other than them, Reina never did communicate with anyone else.

It was like she was in a shell. Maybe in her previous life, Reina was a hermit crab. In order to move her, she needed an anemone to bring her around.

Her new neighbour upstairs was not the anemone. He was the villain; the dangerous shark that swallows the hermit crab in whole.

The apartment directly above hers was occupied by the man who refused her entry through the elevator from the previous chapter; assumptions made after seeing fresh and crisp envelopes sticking out of the previously abandoned mailbox.*

Her new neighbor from upstairs was cool as a cucumber at the first week of moving in; everything went smooth as butter and no disruption was caused to Reina. He was like a baby shark, currently harmless but soon growing to be a large destruction.

Then the second week came, the baby shark grew to its rebellious stage-still no major harms done to human nature. He started bringing over his friends and they would have a blast at their place. They had a booze and watched soccer matches while clinking their beer bottles and having loud opinions grunting about (as Reina stereotyped and assumed based on the sound resonating from her ceiling wall).

They were obnoxiously loud between the hours of 3-6 pm (as Reina calculated) and this did not affect her schedule because she was usually either away for work in those hours or away looking for regular work in those hours.

Reina had never met this middle-aged man living above her, not that she cared since he did not interfere with her life in any ways.

★
((*in high rise building apartments, mailboxes are located next to the elevator in the lobby))
☆

On a particularly fine day, something special and out of the blue occurred. Reina was at her locker getting ready for that day's lesson. Nothing seemed abnormal, right?

Something 'different' happened when she opened the locker door.

Reina cranked the rusty door open with slight force and a flyer flew out of it like a butterfly. Puzzled, she picked up the flyer scraping against the floor and took in the details of the flyer.

A band club recruitment?

Disinterest was poured all over her face and judging by how 'free' the many flyers were on the ground and in the bins, she could predict the number of people actually interested.

Zero. Harsh number but 100% honesty.

In general, PHS' students' first priority is their studies, future endeavour, education, bla bla bla. Sports are on first runner up, mainstream music instrument playing on second runner up and other 'useless' 'unimportant' clubs on consolation.

There is a 'big' range of clubs, but the top club with members taking up 65% of the student population is the Tutoring Club, followed by the Reading Club (17%) for the aspiring writers, and the Sporting Club (12%) for the aspiring athletes. The other 6% of the students are either spread out among failing clubs that are soon to close for good or are either just out of any clubs.

Reina belonged to the second part of the 6%. She reasoned that clubs are 'simply put, a waste of golden time.'

❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈

Reina didn't know why she still came to the cafeteria anyways. She chided her disobedient feet that seemed to have walked against her will.

You came for the food, Reina told herself, but another voice spoke otherwise, telling her that she really came here to check out the band club, SVT and their covers....especially their 'Girls Girls Girls' cover since she was a sinful IGOT7.

She wasn't the only one. Students of all years came to support their band. Her prediction of 0% interested was awfully wrong. More than half of the school, including a number of enthusiastic and supportive teachers, was part of the audience.

"Hello and welcome to SVT's mini performance! SVT stands for Seungkwan, Vernon and The8 respectively and we are currently in need of club members. Relax and if you do enjoy our performance, please consider joining our club!" Seungkwan announced the start of the performance cheerfully and the audience clapped wildly, drum rolling for the start of the performance.

The Chinese boy, who sits next to Vernon in class, is known as The8, as he had introduced in his adorable accent. Reina found out that The8's real name is Xu Minghao and even though he seemed like the quiet otaku who wastes his time watching Naruto Shippuden during the warm balmy nights, Minghao actually spends his time b-boying and building an underground b-boy rookie king reputation.

His rookie king reputation certainly wasn't a boast. He was amazing and his b-boying appealed the crowd, gaining a roar of applause. Even Reina could say that she was shocked by what Minghao could do under his cold skin. But all in all, The8 was criticised to be a ridiculous name. Other than that, it was close to flawless.



Following up on The8's performance, it was now time for Seungkwan to shine. Unlike Minghao who's known to be the rookie b-boy king, Seungkwan's no other than the biggest diva and drama king. Despite being in the same class as Seungkwan, Reina never really remembered his name and he went by the title of 'Drama King' in Reina's name list. Now, however, she was sure that her brain would permanently register his name and his beautiful voice.



His voice was full of emotional feelings and it seeped into her bones while he chorused harmoniously to K-Will's You Don't Know Love. It was just-no words could explain how she felt as Seungkwan's melodious voice drowned into her body system. The audience chanted "Encore!" but Seungkwan sheepishly thanked everyone for the support before passing the mic over to Vernon.

Confident as usual, Vernon grinned from ear to ear and signaled for the background music to be played. Nodding to the catchy beat, everyone expected and stereotyped this half Caucasian boy to sing to some foreign song in a foreign language all too familiar to him.

The expectations fell to the pits like it did in the previous chapter. He didn't carol to the melody or rap some stereotypical English word-diarrhea about expensive gold chains and women. He rapped in Korean, occasionally slipping in some simple English words and hand-gesturing in a unique way.



"What song is this?"A junior asked enthusiastically as he bobbed his head up and down.

"J.Cole's January 28th"Reina whispered under her breath.

She didn't expect him to hear her, but he did.

"Thank you!" the junior twinkled and drew his attention back to the performance.

There goes my streak, Reina pinked out of the blue and sighed inwardly.

The original song by J.Cole, as Reina vaguely remembered, had a huge chunk of vulgarities and was rather shallow in Reina's opinion, but Vernon's remake cover of J.Cole's had a deeper, more refined definition. It really hit her hard when he rapped the three words: "What defines you?"

"What defines you? What defines you? Who are you?"

Vernon's rap lyrics seeded Reina's head and that was all she could think throughout his performance.

What defines... you?

❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈★❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈

A/N:

Guess who totally forgot to update on AFF? *raises hand*

This chapter was meant to be longer but I split it into half for easier reading. Thanks for reading and tell me anything to improve on please. (•ө•)♡ Thanks for reading!❥