For some days later, Daeun had managed to play it cool when she saw or met Mingyu. She couldn’t deny that she felt nervous every time they had to work together, but she covered it up so smoothly to the point Mingyu barely noticed that she was actually felt uncomfortable working with him. But Mingyu, being his usual self who was careful around girls, didn’t open up that easily. He made things comfortable between him and Daeun only to team-mate extent. He joked around, but this mysterious vibe lingered around him. They never talked about private stuff, mostly only the orientation task and some random topics.

Although Daeun had a lot of questions in her mind, she had to admit that she didn’t have courage to actually ask Mingyu about it. Thankfully, being her usual observant self, Daeun caught some characteristics of Mingyu which she hadn’t discovered before knowing him. For example, his tardiness habit which he actually was doing right now. The class had started since 20 minutes ago, and Daeun couldn’t help but to wonder where Mingyu was. The lecturer, Ms. Song was in the middle of explaining the details of scoring when Mingyu stole all the attention by opening the door as quietly as he could.

“Sorry I’m late,” Mingyu apologized to the whole class as he entered the classroom, bowing down. Few freshmen shook their head in disbelief—he was late during the orientation with seniors, now he was late coming to morning class.

The lecturer sighed. “I’ll check your attendance although you are 22 minutes late just because it’s the first day. Next time, if you’re late more than 10 minutes, I’ll have to cross your attendance of the day and you’ll be tagged as ‘absent’. Do I make myself clear?”

Mingyu nodded, still not looking at the lecturer. “Yes, Ma’am,” he mumbled. “Crystal.”

Ms. Song’s face softened a bit. “Go on then, have a seat. Don’t just stand there like a statue or whatnot.”

Again, Mingyu nodded. Finally, he lifted her head to face the whole class who stared squarely at him. Daeun could tell that Mingyu didn’t feel apologetic at all for his tardiness, but strangely he was acting slightly odd. She grew curious when Mingyu’s expression was changed the moment he stared at the lecturer. His expression was complex to be described—it was a mixture of both positive and negative emotion, Daeun would say. The stranger thing was Ms. Song’s expression was also changed when Mingyu finally lifted his head. Only, her expression was clear—surprise. They stared at each other for God knew how long.

As if someone invisible slapped him, Mingyu finally blinked and proceeded to his seat next to another freshman at the very front row. Ms. Song also gained composure at some point but still seemed quite taken aback. From now on, everybody in the class was just silent, sensing some awkwardness going on around the classroom but choosing to remain silent.

“What is your name?” Ms. Song asked Mingyu, her voice was shaking a bit. “I need to mark your attendance before I’m forgetting.”

“Kim Mingyu, Ma’am,” Mingyu answered, locking his eyes on the lecturer. Instead of giving a checklist on Mingyu’s column of attendance, Ms. Song was staring at Mingyu for another solid five seconds before grabbing her pen and marking Mingyu as ‘present’ today on her attendance.

“Oookay…” Ms. Song mumbled very lowly. She closed the attendance book and cleared . There was a pause before she finally said, “Where were we?”

“You were explaining about the scoring, Ma’am,” answered a student in the second row.

Ms. Song had a moment of realization. “Ah, right. Thank you, Hyebin. So let me get this straight—there are only three assignments during this semester and there is no written test.”

The majority of the class cheered on, assuming that this class wasn’t going to make their head boiling with overloading assignments. Daeun stayed silent because she knew it was going to be hard to get a good grade if the scoring was divided into three parts only. Once you screwed up an assignment, it was almost enough to ruin your total score.

Seeing the class cheered, Ms. Song smiled and held her hand high as a motion that the class should be quiet. “Don’t get too pleased too soon, students,” Ms. Song spoke in a melodic tone. “Do you think this subject is going to be easy? This is not the Introduction to Journalism class where you can sit at ease in class. This is not Writing Mechanic Class either, where you can do the assignment calmly on your desk. This is the Applied Fact Finding class. You have to discover facts, discover the real deal out there.” The class grew silent, realizing how hard this class could be. Daeun smirked a little—this subject was actually interesting. This was different from the assignments that were given during high school. It was time to really jump into the society.

Ms. Song walked back and forth in front of the class as she continued. “I’m not gonna lie, but this class is tiring. Although there are only three assignments, on top of that no written test, the assignments are heavy. As a freshman, there is this possibility that you’d screw up. Like the name of the subject, you need to actually apply what you learn in another class to finish the assignments. Since the assignments are loaded, you will work in pairs for the whole semester and will be graded equally as partners.”

Students groaned, some of them even complained overtly. Being equally graded could be a burden sometimes, especially when you got paired with a free-loader. Ms. Song again held her hand high to shush the students. “You are a college student now, you have to learn how to work with other people. This is no high school, kids.”

The complaints faded because the students didn’t want to be addressed as immature high schooler. The student named Hyebin raised her hand to ask a question.

“Yes, Hyebin?”

“How do you decide who works with who, Ma’am?”

Nice question. Ms. Song smirked playfully hearing Hyebin’s question. “Hmm, let me see…” she mumbled, “should I let you guys choose your own partner or should I decide who works with who?”

She’s going to decide, Daeun thought without the slightest doubt. Most of the class requested to get to pick their own partner, but Daeun was sure that Ms. Song was going to pick their partners at random. Seeing the students panicked a little over the partner-picking, Ms. Song again smirked playfully. “This morning, I did something to your desk,” she announced suddenly, silencing the students. She looked satisfied because her students seemed confused. “Check the bottom part of your desk,” she ordered.

“Ms. Song likes to joke, apparently,” Yuju mumbled beside Daeun which Daeun silently agreed on. The two girls were careful not to bump each other’s head as they took a look under their desk. They discovered a colored piece of paper glued to either side of the desk. Daeun carefully tore it away from the desk and saw a number written on the paper. She unintentionally sighed. Not again.

“Have you found out what I did to your desk? Now, you do know what number you get. The person who has the same number as yours will be your partner for the whole semester. Most of you are sitting with your close friend next to you, but unfortunately you don’t have the chance to be paired with the person beside you because I completely randomized the distribution of the numbers.”

“Too bad we won’t be partners,” Yuju pouted,