It was a cold Friday night when Jaehyun noticed his sister's change of behavior. It wasn't that noticable but he was quick to grasp it. Jihyo had begun to draw herself away from him, she had started to eat less and refused the snacks he brought to her room. At first he thought his little sister was only going through a moody week of the month and she had it bad but when it didn't get better in almost a month, Jaehyun decided there was another reason -though he couldn't point out what was wrong.

 Jihyo talked less and became less excited when she woke up in the morning. She would drag the time until Jaehyun had to send her off to school with his car to avoid her getting late for not catching the bus on time. It had been going like that for a few days -Jaehyun sending her off to school in the morning. Jihyo's smile faded each day when he waved her off from his car in front of her school. The smile was there, but the sincerity of it wasn't.

  Jaehyun had all the rights to be worried since he knew his sister's mood could change subtly by the season. It was known to the family that their youngest daughter was once mentally unstable due to her being sick and got indirectly cut off to the outer world because she had to stay in the hospital for a long time. Most importantly she lacked of friends and Jaehyun was worried it might have affected her permanently, that was what scared him the most when Jihyo decided she wanted go try out a normal highschool life back then.

 "How's school?" Jaehyun started that night when they had dinner together. Jihyo seemed to hesitate a bit as Jaehyun watched her, but she only answered with a small 'good' without even looking up from her foods. The older boy sighed and put down his chopsticks, drawing the attention of the younger girl. "You know you can tell me if anything is wrong, hmm?" He said once Jihyo looked up at him. He only noticed then how dark circles had started to appear around his sister's sharp eyes. He pressed his lips together firmly and hld his gaze on her.

 "School is good." Jihyo repeated, trying to assure her brother to no avail. Jaehyun sighed.

 "Is there something bothering you? At school? Somewhere else?" Jihyo shook her head but the stern look that Jaehyun sent to her made her spill the tea. He listened to his sister's story carefully, not to miss any details and he was genuinely shocked to know that his sister was going through a bullying from her classmates. "Why?"

 "B- because they said I'm selfish, I- I just wanted to help.." Jihyo pinched her nose and shook her head. She flashed him a smile. "But I guess they don't want to learn, not sure how their minds work." A chuckle left her lips. 

 "Did they do mean things to you too?" Jaehyun asked our of concern. The girl stayed quiet, her lips parting to say something but she kept closing them back and gulping down the lump in . It took Jaehyun a few seconds to realize his sister was holding back her tears so he stood up and hurried over her side to hug her. "That's it. We're going to the counsellor yeah?" He asked, trying to keep his tone as calm as possible while inside he was already fumming.

 Jihyo only pressed her lips together and showed the older a tight smile.

 "Hey, 1st place, can you tell me how tp answer this?" A girl in Jihyo's class asked one day, when the weather was still warmer and the plants were just starting to die. Jihyo looked up from her book and blinked in confusion, no one really talked to her so it was understable if she was shocked. "Uhm sorry for disturbing you but I really don't know the answer." The girl said apologically.

 Jihyo shook her head, "No, it's okay." She said before she came over and helped the girl. She explained carefully the theory and even gave her examples with her explanation. "Do you understand?" She asked once she was done explaining. The girl across from her hummed while looking at her book distractedly.

 "Yeah, so what's the answer?" The girl asked, looking up at Jihyo expectantly. 

 "Well if the question is like this then you can use this theory." Jihyo pointed at the rows of words in her notebook. The other girl nodded, eyes following her finger.

 "Hmmmnn okay! So what's the answer?" Jihyo blinked at that.

 "Sorry, was my explanation confusing?" She asked slowly. She felt something weird tugged on her heart.

 "No no! It's good, I understand, but I still don't know the answer to this." The girl answered with a small huff after. She seemed more impatient and Jihyo quickly caught up at what the girl was actually trying to do. She was trying to draw the answer out of Jihyo so that she didn't need to answer them, or that she simply didn't know how to answer them, and didn't actually listen to Jihyo's explanation. It was obvious. But Jihyo told her the answer in the end.

 It happened more frequently since then. Jihyo had became really popular among the girls in her class. They would come at her with books in their hands, asking for an 'explanation' for the questions they couldn't answer -or rather wouldn't answer. She got so many praises for her clever mind everytime they got what they wanted -answers- but it didn't feel quite right. 

 One day a teacher called Jihyo out and gave her a stern gaze. "Please don't be the source of your friends' homeworks. I know you understand which is right and which is wrong, Jung Jihyo-ssi." She said and Jihyo only nodded silently. She knew it. It wasn't right from the beginning. It was also unfair that the only one thinking was her. But mostly she didn't feel appreciated at all because they always pushed aside her effort to explain things to them. They only needed the amswers.

 Chenle had asked Jihyo at lunch a few times if she was really fine with it because it looked unfair even from his point of view. Jihyo did all the works. And she was too nice to even say 'no' to their classmates. Jihyo had thrown him a reassuring smile that might had been more fake than she intended that time but Chenle couldn't see through it.

 Her classmates would come to her when they needed answers to their homeworks and even went as far as asking her for answers on tests. Until at some point Jihyo just decided to sleep right after she finished answering her test, ignoring the pokes and paper being thrown at her from her classmates. For the first time since she got into that school, she felt like she might want to cry. 

 The test aftermath was really bad for Jihyo. She got hateful looks from her classmates as they left the class and even Chenle's thumbs up couldn't erase the hurt she felt in her heart. Well, who needs friends anyway. Jihyo thought as she sighed then smiled at her one and only best friend, Chenle.

 Jihyo's classmates became cold toward her after she kept sleeping during the test and during break times between classes that made it impossible for them to ask for their homeworks' answer. Hateful words were thrown behind her everytime she went to sleep, head heavily placed on her folded arms on her desk. Well, Jihyo didn't always sleep when she looked like she was.

 Chenle was the only one who defended her when he heard those hateful words coming from their two-faced classmates. He had shouted his lungs out and told their homeroom teacher about the situation. Jihyo had to beg the teacher not to tell her family because "I'm fine, ssaem.. It's my fault anyway and I don't hold grudge against them." She said assuringly to her teacher and also Chenle. Her fake smile was really well polished that no one noticed that it was fake.

 Truth to be told, her problem in class only added to her stress that she didn't know she had been carrying. The lessons she recieved wasn't all that easy since she hadn't been studying this intense for the past few years she was homeschooled. And her classmates secretly hated her but loved her when they were assigned as a team because then they didn't have to do the work. It was awful. Jihyo felt awful.

 Jihyo looked out of the window absent-mindedly. The clean white room she was in was more than familiar to her yet she felt strange for being there. She had been successful of doing anything to avoid the hospital ever since she got in highschool. But look at her state right now. Wrapped in the hospital gown under the white blankets on the white bed inside the white room laid an expressionless Jihyo. She had been staring at the sky from her bed for a long time ever since the doctor left her alone. Jaehyun was out to buy something just a while before the doctors came in and he still hadn't gotten back yet. 

 As if on cue, a very smiley Jaehyun opened the door to the room and greeted his sister, immediately drawing the attention from the girl. "Look at what I brought you." Jaehyun's dimples got deeper as he showed her a shopping bag and a takeout bag from some Chinese restaurant around. Jihyo frowned at the shopping bag and sat up on the bed carefully, head spinning a bit.

 "What?" Jaehyun rolled his eyes playfully at the question. He put the small shopping bag on her lap and told her to open it up, adding a 'You need to move your muscles a bit too' at her. He watched as the girl struggle at opening the stapled bag, frown getting deeper as she tried her best to use her muscles.

 A few minutes later the contents were spilled out of the bag by Jihyo who turned the bag upside down after she opened it. "Ohh.. are these socks?" Jihyo asked as if giving some pairs of socks were too weird to be real coming from a Jung Jaehyun. The said guy only grinned and shrugged his shoulders. Only then did Jihyo notice that the socks were super long and just thick enough not to be mistaken as stockings.

 "There's no rules about socks in your school right? Winter is near and I don't want you to freeze in those short skirts at school." Jaehyun spoke up as he took a seat on a chair after dragging it near the bed. Jihyo only hummed in reply as she took out a pair from the plastic wrapping, kicking off the blanket just to measure the socks on her legs. "Just perfect! I know your height very well."