The three hour drive to Intermony was actually pretty nice. As soon as she plopped down in her plushy seat, Eunji pulled out her earbuds and put on her favorite relaxing playlist. She sometimes liked to pretend she was in a music video; looking out the window at the beautiful scenery, the peaceful music transported her to a different place. Some of the other students on the bus had started to talk to each other, introducing themselves before they got to camp, but Eunji just wanted to keep to herself for now. She would socialize enough when they got to camp and she wanted to spare herself the effort for a couple more hours.

Although the other kids started to get a little loud, Eunji tried her best to ignore them. She turned the volume of her music up enough to drown out the busy voices around her. But there was one person at the back of the bus who didn’t seem to grasp basic bus etiquette. From what Eunji could tell from the front of the bus, he and another student had started to freestyle battle, loud trap beats thumping from the huge 80’s-esque boombox on his shoulder. At one point the the taller of the two even stood up on a seat and starting headbanging, wildly shaking his black shaggy hair, earning loud laughs from the other passengers and a loud warning to sit down from the busdriver. The peaceful zen state Eunji had achieved at the beginning of the ride was effectively and utterly shattered. Huffing a little to herself, Eunji turned up the volume even more, to an almost dangerous level, and hoped they would quiet down soon.

After a long period of speeding down the highway, the bus had to slow down as the woods grew wilder and the road narrowed. At every sharp turn at an even narrower road, Eunji thought they had finally arrived at the campgrounds, but the bus just chugged onward with no signs of stopping.

Finally, the bus pulled into a long, winding driveway lined with perfectly trimmed hedges that stood in harsh contrast to the wild forest surrounding them. The driveway itself seemed go on for at least a mile, and in about five minutes, the bus screeched to a halt in front of a large fenced gate. Beyond it, Eunji could see glimpses of some of those huge stone towers she had seen on the website. Suddenly, everything felt very unreal, as if she had been whisked away from everyday life and plopped into a different world, a place where anything could happen. Maybe she would be discovered by a top music producer or meet the kids of celebrities that were rumored to be attending camp. Maybe she would make really nice lifelong friends that she could connect with. Who knows?

She quickly took the earbuds out of ears and packed them away in her backpack as the bus was buzzed in at the gate. Now able to hear the people around her, Eunji was suddenly aware of the excited buzz that was passing over the passengers of the bus, and she couldn’t help but feel a little excited too. Here was the place she’d be living in for the next four weeks!

“Now the dazzling five-thousand dollar experience begins,” Eunji whispered to herself, her voice lost in the increasing chatter of the excited students.

It looked like she had spoken a little too quickly, as her first memorable experience after arriving camp was her suitcase getting stuck in between bus seats. She struggled mightily to pull her suitcase loose, but to no avail.  Nearly everyone was off the bus, and no one had bothered to stop and help her, not even the bus driver.

Five-thousand-dollar experience, my . Eunji huffed as she wrestled with her stubborn suitcase. She was just about to give up when suddenly, someone tapped her on the shoulder.

“Do you need help with that?” A deep voice rang out. Finally, a kind stranger offering to help!

Eunji spun around to find her face nearly buried in someone’s chest. She looked up, feeling a little ridiculous at how far she had to lift her head. It was that boy! The one with the shaggy black hair, the one who had kind of ruined her peaceful bus ride. Big eyes and even bigger ears peeked out from under his long bangs and he looked down at her expectantly.

“Uh…” Eunji was about to decline but… she really did need the help.

“Yes please,” she said with a worn out smile. The boy smiled.

“Haha, yeah I thought so. Here,” he reached his hand around her and pulled hard at the suitcase. It slid out with ease.

Stupid suitcase.

“Big suitcase, huh?” He laughed, revealing a smile as big as his eyes, ears and height.

“Yeah. I mean, we’re going to be here a month so,” Eunji patted her now-freed suitcase sheepishly. “Gotta be prepared.” Eunji tried to lift her suitcase to get through the narrow bus aisle, but alas, she had never been one to work on upper body strength. Or any-part-of-the-body strength, really.

“Ugh,” Eunji grunted as she gave it one more try. She was embarrassingly aware of how noticeably her arms were quivering.

“Haha, here let me get that,” The boy again reached out to help her. He lifted the suitcase easily, revealing well-defined arms and carried it out of the bus, all while holding his own duffel bag and rucksack too.

Oh.

“Thank you so much,” Eunji said as he set her suitcase down on the grass gently. “Uh, what’s your name?” She looked up at him again, feeling a little shy now after all his help.

“Chanyeol.” He said simply, flashing her a wide smile. He ran a hand messily through his hair, fully revealing his face. She noted, in a purely observatory way, of course, that he was very, very good looking.

“I’m Eunji.”

“Nice to meet you, Eunji.” He flashed another million dollar smile.

“You too, Chanyeol.” Eunji felt a little burdened by both Chanyeol’s kindness and his nice smile. Mostly by his being so kind though, of course. Although, it was a very nice smile.

“So. Quite a show you put on back there, Chanyeol.” The raucous kid jumping around on the bus seemed so different from the guy who had quietly helped her when everyone else had walked past. Eunji looked up at him a little teasingly. Man, she could not get over how far she had to lift her head to look at his face. Her neck would probably develop a chronic cramp if they became friends.

“Haha, yeah…” Chanyeol looked a little sheepish, but not embarrassed. “I get excited sometimes… And it’s the first day of camp, you know?!” He slowly lifted a bent arm to his face in a… did he just dab? “Turn up.”

“Right.” Eunji laughed. His excitement and overall positive energy was pretty contagious, like  a virus or something. A kind of happy virus?

“Well, I’m pretty sure we have to head to check-in now, everyone else is probably there already.” Chanyeol clumsily fished out a camp itinerary from the back pocket of his black jeans. He was dressed in a style that Eunji quite liked, from his clean white tee down to his classic Air Max’s.

“Yeah, I guess we’re the last ones.” Eunji lengthened her suitcase handle and pulled her backpack on her shoulders. “Better get going.” She held a hand over her eyes as she looked for any sign of the check-in building. It really was a beautiful campus. With everyone else already inside, all she could hear was the happy chatter of songbirds.

“It’s really nice here, isn’t it?” Chanyeol caught a glimpse of Eunji taking in the surroundings in a sort of awe.

“Yeah.” Eunji nodded. “I guess this is what five thousand dollars buys you.”

“Hahaha, yeah, I guess.” Chanyeol laughed enthusiastically. “I’m pretty sure half of that goes to just maintaining all these weird bushes.” He gestured loosely at the various random hedges shaped perfectly into all kinds of shapes, from a music note to a bear.

“Yeah, what’s with that,” Eunji laughed. Their eyes met as they smiled easily at each other.

Chanyeol swung his duffel bag over his shoulder. “I haven’t seen you around before. Are you new?”

Uh oh. Was she going to be the one new kid at camp?

“Oh. Well, yeah, it’s my first year.” Eunji started walking towards an important-looking building that she thought might be the check-in area. “Are a lot of people here repeats too?”

“Around 70% are repeats, I’d say.” Chanyeol fell into step beside her, walking in a relaxed, loping gait with his almost too-long legs. Eunji might have laughed at the ~interesting~ way he walked, but what he said made a bad feeling settle in her stomach. She hated that feeling of being the new kid more than anything. He must’ve caught her worried expression because he then waved his hands exaggeratedly and said, “Don’t worry! Everyone is really nice!!”

Eunji laughed inwardly at his enthusiastic response to her anxiety. He was such an interesting character. His eagerness to help her, a stranger he had only just met, and to make her feel welcome felt so genuine and natural that it was almost foreign to Eunji.

“Haha thanks, Chanyeol.”

However, his comically frantic arm movements weren’t enough to dispel Eunji’s fears about what she was about to face at camp. To Eunji, although most new social situations weren’t great, it was the worst when she felt like the odd one out. Throughout most of her elementary and middle school days, she had always felt like she was the only one not in on the joke. Of all the different cliques and social groups at her school, she never felt like she really belonged in any of them, no matter how much she tried to twist and change herself. At the end of the day, she was always left feeling alienated from the world and, more importantly, herself.

That was, before she met her best friend, Brie Kim that is. Brie Kim, master violinist extraordinaire, kind, strong, generous and spit-water-out-your-nose funny, and for the first time this year, fellow camper! Unfortunately for lonely Eunji, her best friend was flying in a week late from her vacation in Hawaii. She and her parents had tried to argue with the camp into giving them a discounted fee because Arie would miss the first week of classes, but the school refused to give in. But Brie didn’t really care anyways because unlike Eunji, she wasn’t poor. In fact, she was very rich, as were many of the kids attending camp. And like most of the campers, this was not Brie’s first year. Brie was one of the reasons that Eunji, who was a little weary of new social situations, had in the end, readily agreed to go to camp. With her best friend at her side, Eunji felt that she could confidently be herself and very much enjoy her time at camp.

But strangely, Eunji was almost glad that Brie wasn’t here yet as she talked casually to Chanyeol on their way to check-in. Talking to Chanyeol, Eunji felt like maybe she didn’t have to be that socially anxious, tightly-wound person that most people knew her to be. That she thought herself to be. So as she and Chanyeol walked into the main building’s grand entryway side by side, she felt her heart flutter a little, not of anxiety but of excitement.