CHANGMIN (JUNE, 2011)

      Ever since that night, the idea of needing to compensate for my loneliness was planted into my head.

      Perhaps this explained why I became distracted as I passed the girl who had asked me out on that Valentine’s day. I wondered if she hated my guts for having humiliated her. As we crossed each other on the narrow path, this was proved to be an instant no as she threw a flirtatious wink.

      This time, I stopped, actually taking time to assess her figure. Rilie was absolutely right—no man in his right (or straight) mind would turn her down. She had a turquoise wrap dress that hugged her curves in all the right places, her smooth shoulders were sun-kissed and golden. As she strutted down the path with her five-inch stilettos, her legs appeared miles long and moved in a way that models would kill for. There was no reason why any man on the planet wouldn’t be lusting after her.

      So I stopped my feet.

      “Hey,” I called out to her, and a satisfied grin appeared as she returned my greeting. “You want to grab a drink and study for the inverse kinematics test tomorrow?”

      “Of course.”

      I doubted that she even knew the meaning of inverse kinematics, but in this case, it wasn’t her brain that I really needed. I didn’t need any more traces of Rilie as there was.

      When I walked with her through the courtyard with fingers jabbing at us from