Miryung High School
7.20 a.m.

It was yet another normal Monday. Minsun got up early as usual, and went off to school after she prepared breakfast for her grandmother. She rode the same, usual bus, and stopped at the same stop, which was right across Miryung High’s main gate.

However, some things did feel a little unusual. Like those curious eyes that had been glued on her since she got on her bus until she stepped into the school’s compound. It probably had something to do with that little embarrassing moment she had back at Kisang High last Saturday.

Of course, nothing happened between her and Taecyeon. Everything was purely accidental. Taecyeon was looking for the first aid kit as well, and since nobody was using the changing room, he thought he would just change there anyway. And that was when Minsun came into the scene.

However, the frog inside the white box was a different story. Minsun had a slight idea how did that frog made its way inside the kit, but she had yet confirmed it.

Maybe today.




Minsun played stupid of the obvious eyes that had been following her and made her way into class through her usual route. Main gate, main building, main hallway, courtyard; where the main notice board was, and stopped there.

There was a crowd of students gathering around the notice board. But for what reason Minsun wondered?

Minsun too stepped closer to the notice board, and found out that it was filled with pictures. 

Scandalous pictures.

Of Taecyeon and her.

Apparently, his fangirls were getting jealous of that little accident between her and Taecyeon last Saturday, but they wouldn’t believe it was an accident anyway. The news spread like wildfire, which was nothing surprising since Taecyeon had always been popular; he was crazily good-looking, abnormally tall, and unbelievably skillful in basketball. He was more than just a kingka. He was almost a celebrity. He even had a fanclub comprised of female students from various schools. His cyworld received four digit numbers of visits every single day.

Minsun wasn’t shocked to see those pictures pasted up there, but she was definitely feeling disturbed. The fangirls weren’t going to make her life easy from now on.

“What the hell?!” There was a sudden outburst of a certain male. Minsun looked behind her, and there he was, Jang Wooyoung. Wooyoung forced his way through the crowd towards the notice board. He rashly tore away those pictures of Minsun with half- Taecyeon on top of her, crumpled it in his hands and then held it high.

“Who did this?!” Wooyoung yelled angrily.

“Who did this?! Come forward and show yourself!” Wooyoung threw away the crumpled photos.

“COWARD!” He yelled again. Next, Wooyoung landed his eyes on Minsun, and walked towards her.

“Are you okay? Let’s go to the class together,” Wooyoung said worriedly and led Minsun towards their class by holding onto her hand; ignoring the curious onlookers. When they were at a certain distance from the notice board and that nobody could see them much anymore, Minsun pulled her hand away from Wooyoung.

Wooyoung paused his steps and looked back at Minsun quizzically at her reaction.

“I can walk by myself, thank you,” Minsun told him like nothing happened just now and then walked past the boy, who was shocked at her reaction. He thought she would at least say thank you.

“Y-Yah! You! Seo Minsun!” Wooyoung pointed at her. Minsun played deaf, and entered her class like nothing happened. 




2.00 p.m.

It was supposed to be normal school days, but today was a little bit different; for Wooyoung, Munhwa, and Minsun, though the most latter couldn’t care less about her slightly different surrounding. Minsun who usually prefer to bury her existence in the background caught Wooyoung and Munhwa’s attention, silently. Those two who witnessed the embarrassing event between their team captain and their classmate firsthand lent their sympathy towards Minsun who was slowly being labeled as the target of rage by the mass population of female students of their school.

Minsun wasn’t acting any different than usual though. She put on her glasses when classes started, and never took her eyes off her book or the black board. Let alone taking note on Wooyoung’s silent attention on her.

It was yet the time for basketball practice, so Munhwa walked to Wooyoung’s desk. Strangely, he didn’t seem to be ready to go for practice. His books were still scattered all over his desk, and he even had his blazer hung on the backrest of his chair.

“Hey, let’s go to the gym,” Munhwa said, but Wooyoung sat still at his desk, pretending to be busy with his school work, which was almost impossible to be seen actually.

“Uh, go ahead. I’ll be a little late,” he said without looking into her eyes.

Munhwa was taken aback. For a short moment she even considered if she was dreaming. 

“What’s wrong? Do you need any help with those?” Munhwa bent her neck to take a closer look at Wooyoung’s practice book, but the boy frantically closed it and hid it away from Munhwa.

“No, it’s okay! I’ll be fine!” The boy insisted. “Go ahead to the gym first! I’ll be there shortly, okay?” Wooyoung forced a smile, which came out awkwardly.

“Okay,” Munhwa said unwillingly. She smelled something fishy about him, but Wooyoung normally did anyway; not literally though. She bid him a simple farewell and left him at the class. There were still a few students left. Some were carrying out their cleaning duty, some stayed to study, and for Wooyoung, for his own private agenda. When Munhwa was no longer in sight, Wooyoung’s eyes started to wildly scan around the room, looking for that certain someone whose fate lied in his hand.

Or so he thought.

Wooyoung thought it’s finally time for him to execute a more intensive strategy. 

“Hey,” Wooyoung turned around and called one of his classmates, “Do you see Minsun anywhere?”

“Hm…” he paused for a while, “I think she went out to dump the garbage,”

Wooyoung looked forward again, thinking deep to himself.

“The garbage incinerator.” He whispered. At the back of the school building. That was a common place where the enemy jumped out for an ambush.




Slightly squinting her eyes, Minsun threw the garbage bag into the incinerator, and watched it burn for a while. When she was about to close the lid, somebody pushed her from behind. 

Minsun was so shocked that it felt like her heart was going to jump out of her chest. She was lucky that she managed to stop herself from dumping her face into the incinerator, and she was thankful that the force wasn’t that strong. Minsun reflectively ran to a safe distance from the incinerator and looked for the culprit who pushed her from behind before.

And there stood three girls in the same school uniform with her, one of them was from her class and the other two must be in the same age with her. They looked pissed, from the way they stood with spread legs and folded arms. 

“Seo Minsun.” One of them with red highlight on her hair said. She must be the leader, Minsun thought since she stood in the middle.

“Yes?” Minsun replied calmly.

The girl group leader scoffed. “Yah, what’s with the lame response? Don’t you have any respect?!”

“Well, do you mind explaining what you’re trying to enquire from me?”

“Yah!” A girl from behind the leader shouted. “Show some respect! !”

Minsun kind of grasped the idea of their sudden rage outburst, but she remained calm and indifferent.

“If this is about Ok Taecyeon sunbae-nim, please take note that there was nothing going on between us. Everything was just an accident.” Minsun explained gently.

“Yah! Don’t give me lame excuses!” The leader spoke again.

“Then, what do you want me to do?”

The leader stepped closer to Minsun and grabbed on her collar, which took her by surprise.

“I hate your face. I hate the thought that you touched Ok Taecyeon. I want you to disappear from this place. Don’t ever show your face in front of me!”

“Hey! What are you doing?!” A male voice shouted. Minsun and the rest of the girls looked towards the direction and saw Wooyoung standing there, watching them. Wooyoung waited for the girl to release Minsun, but there was no sign of such thing happening anytime soon.

With angry, big steps, Wooyoung headed towards the girls and grabbed the group leader’s wrist.

“Release her,” Wooyoung threatened her, faking deep voice so he would sound scarier and more heroic, at least that was what he thought how he sounded like.

“You’re from the basketball team too, aren’t you?! What, did this girl seduced you too?” 

“Yah, release her or I’ll tell the teacher that you put up those pictures on the notice board too!”

“Tch!” The girl loosened her grip on Minsun, only to push the her away. Minsun fell to the ground, on her bottom.

“Minsun!” Wooyoung quickly crouched to help her up again. As he did so, he looked angrily over the group leader who wouldn’t care his warning at all and left without another word with her followers.

“Are you okay? I knew these things would happen. Taecyeon sunbae always have these crazy fangirls following him around, treating him like he was their prop-”

“You did it, didn’t you?” Minsun said as she straightened her skirt, and dusted it off.

“W-What?”

Minsun finally looked up and look at Wooyoung in his eyes. She seemed mildly annoyed, instead of feeling thankful like Wooyoung expected.

“You put the frog in the kit, trying to scare ¬Munhwa, but I fell for the trick instead. The prank went wrong, so you felt guilty. You played hero so that I’ll be thankful to you instead of being mad at you and thus revealed your little secret. Is that right?”

Wooyoung’s expression fell flat, his tongue frozen.

“H-How… How did you know?”

“I know. Right from the beginning.” Minsun picked up the dustbin and walked away, going back to the classroom.

“Are you mad at me?” Wooyoung followed her trail.

“Yes, so stop following me.”

“If I didn’t, those girls will come for you again,”

“Let them be,”

“I can’t!” Wooyoung fastened his pace and stopped in the middle of Minsun’s path. He grabbed her shoulders to stop her, and to emphasize his motive. 

“That is very dangerous! Let me protect you for the time being, okay?”

“You’re afraid that Taecyeon sunbae find out about the truth and punished you, didn’t you?” Minsun frowned, narrowing her eyes suspiciously at him.

Wooyoung was shocked at how much she knew about him and slowly put down his hands. His head held low in shame.

“Yes… You’re right… I’m sorry,” he said weakly. Minsun sighed.

“You’re forgiven.”

“Really?” Wooyoung brightened up again.

“Yes. So please step aside.” Minsun went around him so she could continue her way towards her class again. Wooyoung jogged a bit to catch up with her again and walked by her side. 

“Then you should follow what I told you. I’ll guarantee you that those girls would stop bullying you in no time!”

“Fine.” Minsun said, half-sighing.

“Fine? You mean you’ll let me protect you?” Wooyoung asked, a little bit too excitedly.
. 
“Yeah,”

“Assa! Follow me!” Without alert, Wooyoung grabbed Minsun’s wrist and started to lead her somewhere.

“H-Hey!”

“Don’t worry! I got everything planned! Just trust me, okay?!” Wooyoung fastened his pace, which forced Minsun to run along with him.




The door to the gym slammed opened.

“Hey, guys! Sorry I’m-”

“Wooyoung, you’re late!” Taecyeon yelled in the middle of the practice session which sent it to a halt right away. But then, his scary hungry beast expression turned to shock when he saw the guest who tagged along with Wooyoung. 

“Oh, hyung!” Wooyoung raised his hand as he chirped away happily. “Sorry for being late, but I really had an important matter to attend to,” Wooyoung looked at Minsun who was still standing by his side with a wide smile on his face. Minsun looked a little surprised to find herself in yet another of Wooyoung’s sneaky ploy so soon.

“Hyung, can we let Minsun use the gym for her study or club meeting for a while? We all know what happened this morning and Minsun is innocent but it’s too dangerous for her to be walking around in the school compound right now. Please? At least until the commotion died down and your fan girls stop hunting her down,” Wooyoung said bluntly, making Taecyeon felt a little burdened that it was partly his fault for involving Minsun in this trouble.

“Uh… I guess… As long as our practices aren’t disturbed,” Taecyeon said, looking vulnerable as he slightly scratched his nape.

“See, Minsun? I told you he would let you do it here!”

Stressing the blame of the whole incident on Taecyeon so that people would forget to even wonder who or what actually caused the incident. Smart.

Taecyeon walked closer to Minsun and took the chance to clear things up. He seemed embarrassed but braved himself to handle this matter head-on.

“Um, hey. Sorry for all the trouble I caused you. I’ll try my best to stop it, but until then, feel free to use the gym. We never let the girls come here to disturb our practice session.”

“Thank you,” Minsun replied softly with a tinge of pink on her cheeks, probably infected by Taecyeon just now.

The rest of the boys in the basketball team too welcomed Minsun warmly. They lent their sympathy that Minsun had to be the target for their jealous, vengeful fangirls to unleash their extreme jealousy on. It was quite awkward at first to be the only girl there in school uniform to sit in one corner holding onto her revision books, but it got more comfortable as she watched the boys goofed around, Wooyoung being punished by the captain, the boys fighting for food on snacking time, and the captain’s new side when he acted goofy and sometimes even seemed a bit careless. Munhwa too helped a lot to make Minsun felt comfortable by talking to her. As for studying, Minsun didn’t have any problem studying under any condition as long as she had her text book with her.

And so a new chapter in her life started. From then on, the plain, dull life of Seo Minsun changed its direction and took on a new road. A road completely stranger to her, which she had no idea where it would take her or what was waiting for her at the end of it.