“Yah, Chaejin, is that you?” speaks up another voice, in the same room. “I swear, I am going to kill both you and Junkyu when I get out of here!”

Oh no.

Out of all people, why are you in here with me?!

Ugh, I have to get out of here.

“Insoo!” I yell, and then proceed to start banging on the metal door. “Open this door, and let me out!”

“No can do,” sings the brunette, from the outside. “Trust me, it’s for the best.”

“For the best of what?!” I snap, “You better open this door right now, or I will kick you so hard, that you won’t ever be able to have children!”

Insoo chuckles, “Okay, now I don’t want to open the door anymore...”

I stop my thrashing, and then let out a sound of frustration, as I glare down at the floor. My ears suddenly perk up, as another voice joins Insoo on the outside.

“Did you get her?” they ask.

“Sure did,” replies Insoo, and they two high-five each other with a cheer.

It’s now Seyong’s turn to start beating down the door, and shouting out profanities.

“Sorry hyung, it really is for the best!” chimes Chaejin’s voice, rather apologetically.

Seyong gradually stops his pounding, and lets out a sigh.

“But honestly, you two have been so weird around each other,” states Insoo.

My eyes widen a bit, as I nervously knit my brows together.

“How so?” questions me and Seyong at once.

The unison surprises me, along with Insoo.

“See!” he points out, “You two are even speaking at the same time!”

Chaejin’s chuckling could be heard. “Hey, maybe that’s a good sign?” he muses.

“How is that a good sign?!” explode me and the male besides me, but that just makes the two on the outside laugh even more.

Hearing their teasing, Seyong and I start to mutter incoherent things under our breath, but then I stop, to elbow him. “Yah, stop copying me,” I hiss.

“I’m not copying you, you’re copying me!” he accuses.

“Anyway,” interrupts Insoo. “Whatever happened between you two, please sort it out.”

My cheeks suddenly find themselves heating up at his comment. “But nothing happened!” I growl, rather defensively. “What makes you think that something happened, anyway?!”

“I don’t know,” he says, and I can hear the shrug in his voice. “Maybe it has something to do with how much you’ve been eating lately.”

I let out a scoff, and then try to speak as calmly as possible; “Dude, food is my life.”

But Insoo doesn’t buy my confident words, as he starts clicking his tongue at me. “I know you love to eat, Hyeri, but I know for a fact that you only stuff yourself like this, when you’re nervous about something,” he says. “It’s like how you always gorge a block of chocolate before an exam.”

“Yah!” I yell out, “I only eat a tiny cube, because sugar is supposed to help stimulate the brain! Geez, you make me feel like a vacuum or something.” 

“Hey, it’s true though,” murmurs Seyong.

Even though I can’t see him, I still turn over to him and narrow my eyes, “Shut up.”

“So, I take it that you two will be alright in there?” says Insoo.

Seyong and I instantly refuse, and then go back to hammering against the door.

“There should be a light switch somewhere,” adds in Chaejin, completely ignoring our cries.

The two then announce that they’re going to leave, and when we hear that, the level in our knocking and shouting turns into desperate ones.

“Seriously, I don’t know what it is, but this thing is making me feel awkward,” comments Insoo. “That better be resolved when we come back!”

“You can’t leave us here!” I holler back, “We have history next, and Mr. Wu is going to kill us!”

“Mr. Wu can’t kill you, if he’s not going to be here,” laughs Insoo. “Don’t you remember? He said that he has personal matters to attend to this lesson, which was why he loaded us with that essay task in the last lesson.”

I blink for a bit, and then let out a groan, as my forehead rests against the cold door.

So this was all set up as a trick to get us in here.

There is no secret door, which most likely means that there is no stupid pop quiz.

Psh, pop quiz...I should have known from the start, when Insoo was so brief about my ‘plants and cells’ notes. Actually, I should have become suspicious of him when he brought up the pop quiz, because everyone knows that pop quizzes are mini tests that are sprung up on you from out of nowhere, hence the ‘pop’ in its name.

Ugh, why is everyone so evil, I hate this.

I notice that Seyong’s been rather quiet lately, and when I turn around, I can see a small light source, shining around the place. He’s currently using the light from his phone to search for the light switch that Chaejin had mentioned, and unlike Insoo’s fake ‘secret exit’, there is a button on the wall. Seyong flicks on the switch, and a yellow glow from above slowly comes to life. I turn back to the metal door, and try to open it, but there’s no luck; it’s one of those doors that open from the inside, and I was cursing at how stupid it was, to have one here.

Placing my ear onto the cool metal, a sigh ends up coming out of me. “Great, they actually left,” I mutter, but loud enough for Seyong to hear. I then turn to him and frown, “What do we do now?”

He shrugs, and then slips his phone back into the pocket of his pants. “I guess we wait,” he calmly says. “They’ll have to come back and let us out once school is over.”

“You want us to wait?” I say, feeling rather sceptical. “You want us to wait for three whole hours, in this cramped room, with cleaning supplies?”

“Then what are we supposed to do?” he retorts, with eyebrows pinching together.

“Oh I don’t know, find a way out or something?” I reply back, in the same stern tone.

Seyong rolls his eyes at me, but then takes a seat down on the plastic chair there. And then to keep himself entertained, he takes his phone out, and starts playing a game of some sort.

Seriously, how can he be peacefully playing Bubble Puzzle, at a time like this?!

I end up kicking the nearest broom out of frustration, but then end up slightly regretting it, as my action somehow stirred up a chain reaction. The broom fell, knocking onto another broom, which fell onto another, and now a majority of the things in the place were falling onto the ground.

And to make it worst, Seyong seems to be so absorbed in his stupid rainbow game, that he doesn’t even take notice of what has happened!

Ugh, why is this room so messy in the first place, anyway?

I growl at the domino effect, and then grumble to myself for my luck. Crouching down, I begin to pick up the bottles of detergent, gathering them together. Maybe this will help pass the time or something. I’m about to push away a mop, when it suddenly moves away on its own. Puzzled, I look up to see Seyong reassembling the mops and brooms neatly back into a bucket, probably so that I won’t tip them all over again or something.

“Thanks,” I mumble, feeling strange to say such a word to him.

“You’re welcome,” he replies back, but less awkward. “Hey, I just—“

I put up my hand to silence him. “Don’t!” I say, which confuses him a bit. “Don’t bring that up; just forget about it, okay?”

“Forget about what?” prompts Seyong.

“Exactly,” I say.

He blinks at me, looking completely baffled; “No really, what are you talking about?”

I let out a sigh, not really wanting to bring up the blackout incident. Everything about it makes me cringe, and I always end up squirming at what happened in the end.

“The...the blackout thingy, and yeah,” I hesitantly say.

Seyong stares at me for a bit. “Oh,” he eventually says. “That...right.”

The atmosphere is suddenly thick and stuffy, as we avoid each other’s face, and I inwardly groan at myself, for not having a way to escape.

Seyong then clears his throat, and attempts to lighten up mood, but I think he just made it a little weirder. “Well actually,” he begins, rather sheepishly. “I was going to apologise to you for always being such a jerk, but yeah...”

A look of surprise appears on my face; I wasn’t expecting that at all.

“I’ll keep what happened to be a secret, if you’re really worried about it,” he says, and I know that he is referring to my little breakdown. “But uh, the kiss thing—“

I cut him off, “Just don’t think about it.”

Seyong blinks, “What?”

“Just don’t think about it,” I repeat. “It’s nothing, and yeah, it’s a little awkward, but we can put that aside, right?”

“I guess so...” he softly responds, sounding a little unsure.

I let out a sigh, somewhat relief to hear him agree. “Good,” I say, and then hold out my hand. “So we’ve agreed to forget about that, and just go back to being normal, yeah?”

Or however ‘normal’ is supposed to be, in our crazy and weird friendship.

Seyong’s expression is unreadable, as I wait for his answer.

But then after a few seconds of delay, he then takes a hold of my hand, and shakes it.

“Okay.”