This is a bad idea.

I went on chanting that line over and over in my head.

“You can’t be choosing her over me.”

In front of me and Jinhwan was a girl slightly taller than him, obviously prettier than me, with an attitude of a world class hoe.

“I’m not choosing anyone. I’m sorry, but I never started anything serious with you. Please don’t be rude. I’m sorry.”

Yes. Tell her, Jinhwan.

I didn’t think that comeback was strong enough, though. This was the third girl who confronted us today, and so far I hadn’t seen Jinhwan talk rudely to any of them. He apologized a lot instead.

“But I thought we were a thing. I TOLD MY FRIENDS we were a thing.” The pissed off girl balled her hands and glared at me. “This is your fault.”

And she stomped away. Wow, it felt like I had just received a death threat.

An applause came from one end of our lunch table. “Another one. Congratulations,” Bobby said with a full mouth. Hanbin, who was sitting next to him, had stopped munching his food ever since the girl had come to our table, and hadn’t moved an inch since then. His eyes were glued on Jinhwan all the time.

All of this was still a shock to him.

“Come on, there must be something between you two.” Yunhyeong had a creepy smile on his face. He had been doing this to us since he had first noticed me sticking on Jinhwan’s side a lot more than usual.

I was sitting between Jinhwan and Areum at our table. My manly girl friend was unusually quiet, because she believed I was keeping things from her, and she wasn’t happy about that. Neither was Chanwoo.

I wouldn’t even know where to start if I told them. I promised to myself I would tell them everything going on between me and Jinhwan once I could figure out how.

In fact, I thought we should let our friends know about our plan to have me on his side and keep the girls away, but Jinhwan was against that idea. He wouldn’t tell me why.

“I told you, there’s nothing at the moment. We’ve just become closer as friends. Right?” Jinhwan asked for suppport, and I nodded. Anything was fine as long as he didn’t claim me as his girlfriend.

I didn’t need that kind of drama in my life yet.

“Don’t forget that you still have us,” Chanwoo muttered while looking at his food. By ‘us’ he meant himself and Areum. The way he said it really made me feel bad...

It’s not that I had stopped being around them, it’s just that whenever Jinhwan decided to go somewhere, I chose to go with him instead of staying with them. It wasn’t normal for us and they weren’t taking it well. After all, it had always been just the three of us in the freshman year.

Nevertheless, Chanwoo didn’t say anything more than that. I supposed he was still trying to keep a good image in front of the dance club members.

Just after I had finished my food, Jinhwan said, “Guys, I need to go first. Forgot I got to see a teacher.” Jinhwan wiped his lips with a tissue and got up from his seat. As if there was a switch in my head, automatically I stood up too.

Once again, everyone at the table gave us the same look of suspicion. Except for Hanbin, who apparently had lost interest in looking at us. At least he was finally eating his abandoned food.

“See you guys later.” Jinhwan waved at the others and flashed his eye smile at me. He seemed to be happy about the situation. “Let’s go.”

I followed Jinhwan after waving and flashing an innocent grin at the others. Not far away from the cafeteria, two girls approached us, and I just knew what it was all about. I mentally rolled my eyes.

Here we go again.

“Hi, Jinhwan.” One of the girls greeted, tucking her hair behind her ear and putting on a sweet smile that faltered a bit when she noticed me. “Where are you going?”

“The teachers’ room,” Jinhwan answered with a friendly smile. “Please excuse us, we need to go.”

“Wait.” The girl grabbed Jinhwan’s wrist and pouted. I almost snorted at that. “We haven’t talked in a while. Let me accompany you.”

“I have her to accompany me.” Jinhwan pointed his thumb at me. “You should go with your friend instead.”

Oh look, she was having a hard time keeping that smile on her face. “W-Who is she though?”

“Who is she?” Jinhwan looked at me and smirked. I began to chant in my head. Don’t say girlfriend, don’t say girlfriend, don’t say girlfriend.

“She’s my Tinker Bell.”

“What—“ Oh my God.

“See you around.” With an innocent smile, Jinhwan took my wrist and pulled me away from the dumbfounded girls.

“What was that!” I slapped Jinhwan’s shoulder after we were out of earshot.

“Ouch.” He chuckled innocently as if he hadn’t just dropped a bomb. “I didn’t say you were my girlfriend.”

“That couldn’t be more ambiguous! What makes you think she wouldn’t misunderstand that? Oh my God.”

I was so certain I would have to face some more angry girls from then on and I was close to breaking into tears imagining all the drama that would steal my peace away.

“It’ll be fine.” Jinhwan laughed and patted my head.

Ugh, I hate him. “It’d better be.”

Let me make this clear once again: I wouldn’t have done this if he hadn’t helped me for the audition.

It wasn’t that I didn’t like being around him. I just didn’t want to deal with the girls he flirted with.

As I had expected, rumors spread like fire at school. I wondered if Jinhwan felt guilty about it.

From the looks of it, he didn’t seem so.

Nonetheless, he really made sure to stay around me, even when I went to the toilet – of course, he waited outside. Having him on my side had become something I needed in order to feel safe.

It wasn’t that his flirtmates would hurt me physically if he wasn’t around – I mean, I didn’t think so, but who knew what could happen – but I just wouldn’t know what to say if any of them ever confronted me when I was alone.

It wasn’t always easy even for Jinhwan to deal with them, how would I handle them alone?

Something intrigued me; I noticed that Jinhwan always had his mouth under control. When his words weren’t enough, body language and facial expressions usually did the job.

One time a girl said, “You’re so fast to find a new toy.” In response, Jinhwan put his arm around my shoulders protectively and glared at the girl. He had this piercing glare that could shut you up in an instant when he was angry. I actually got kind of scared that he might lose it. Who would have expected that cute face to look that scary when pissed? It easily made the girl leave, even though she left while throwing tantrums in her poor friends’ ears.

You know, as long as he was there to be responsible for his words and tackle those girls away, I thought I would be just fine.

There was another major change; our friends had stopped calling us “little fairy”. I didn’t know whether this was a good change or a bad change – because of the “Tinker Bell” rumor, they began to call us Peter Pan and Tinker Bell. It should be something better for Jinhwan – Peter Pan sounded manlier than little fairy – but, not for me. It was either the same or worse.

Well, at least they had stopped questioning why I was often around Jinhwan. I would have been happier if they hadn’t teased us about this as well, but sadly, that wasn’t the case. They teased us a lot.

And by “they” I mean the dance club boys. Even Hanbin also tried to play along with the teasing, although sometimes I caught him spacing out while the others were being loud.

But it was all a different case with my two best friends – they knew a problem when they saw it.

“Hyejoo, when are you going to open up about this?” Areum asked one day, when I was sparing my time to hang out with her and Chanwoo after school, like we used to before the practice routine.

“About what?” I played dumb.

“Don’t play dumb,” she rolled her eyes. Chanwoo was quietly observing this conversation while sipping on his coffee. “Do you really think we don’t know what’s going on?”

My hand stopped midway and my cup of hot chocolate was left hanging as I could feel the colors drain from my face. No, that can’t be... They know? Questions began to flood my mind in a sudden mental panic attack. Did Jinhwan say something to them? Didn’t he tell me himself not to tell anyone?

“You can’t keep secrets from us,” Chanwoo said. “We’d find out anyway. You could have told us if you really trusted us.”

He sounded disappointed... Had he really found out about Jinhwan helping me for the audition? So he knew I hadn't been playing fair... Oh God, what had I done?

I felt like breaking into tears.

“Hyejoo.” Areum’s voice softened. She took my hand that was holding the cup and set it back down on the table. “Who are we to you? Are you really going to shut us out when you’re finally falling for a boy for the first time? This is a crucial moment in your life, and you’re not sharing it with us.”

“H-Huh?”

My panic attack subsided like an approaching tsunami that suddenly decided to go back to the ocean. I totally hadn’t seen that coming – how could they think I was falling for Jinhwan? “I’m not—“

“It’s obvious,” Areum continued like a professor with her self-made theory, “the way you willingly follow him everywhere—“

“And not looking forced,” Chanwoo added.

“—and how you get all shy when he looks or smiles at you, do you even realize that?”

“Um. No.” They were so exaggerating it – okay, I admit I liked it when Jinhwan smiled because he had an adorable smile, but that was it, nothing more!

“Are you afraid we would be against him?” Chanwoo asked. I wanted to laugh. “If that’s the case, I’m not against him.”

“Look,” Areum raised her index finger, “it took the whole seventeen years of your life for this to finally happen, and as your dearest friends, we’ll do anything to make sure this won’t turn into one flop of a relationship!”

Whoa, whoa, wait a moment. “Guys, you mis—“

“I might have been against his flirtatious before, but he’s really changing now. I can definitely see you both being together.” Areum cut me for the nth time, pressing her shoulder-length hair against her cheeks and smiling dreamily. “He even stopped flirting for you... How sweet!”

Chanwoo rubbed his arms looking like he was having goosebumps. Poor boy wasn’t used to the sight of our manly lady friend acting soft.

“He didn’t stop for me,” I said quickly. At last. I managed to utter a complete sentence.

Areum stopped and gave me an apologetic look. “Tinker Bell, you’re really dense.”

“What do you mean?”

“Whom else did he do it for if not for you?” She nudged Chanwoo. “Chanwoo, you’re a boy. Tell her.”

“He stopped flirting with girls and spent most of his time at school with you, except when you’re having classes. This means you’re enough to replace all those girls.”

Wow, I never thought they could make such shallow theories. A round of applause for them, please.

“He stopped for his own sake.” I retorted. “It’s best for him to get rid of those clingy and aggressive girls.”

Areum and Chanwoo looked at each other. “She’s jealous,” Areum said.

“Seems so.” Chanwoo agreed to the false statement. I sighed. It would require too much effort to assure them.

They were the dense ones here. I was sure of it.

The third week of school almost ended. There was only one week left to prepare for the audition – it was in the first week of April. At this point, I just wanted the day to come faster because my body was already sore from so much practicing. Jinhwan had told me to take a break, but resting had become something that made me anxious. Everyone else might be practicing hard while I was chilling.

I didn’t always practice at Seiyeon’s café, since the boys often went there either alone or together. When I didn’t go there, though, Jinhwan would make a video call and I would let him see me dance in my room. It had become such a routine that I didn’t even think of complaining about it anymore. About having video calls and being awkward, I mean.

Right, I was no longer awkward with him on video calls. Isn’t that such a nice improvement?

The closer we were to the audition, the stricter Jinhwan grew on my performance. He would constantly tell me, “Watch your face, loosen your muscles more, that’s too stiff, add more power there, give a little feminine touch.” When I couldn’t get something right, he would step up and show me how to do it. He once performed the whole choreo just to show me how it should look like, which really surprised me, because he hadn’t even learned the whole dance at the time he had picked the song for me. We had had to watch a dance tutorial video for that.

Before he could teach me to the very details, he had to learn and master the choreo first. He really had done that for me. I didn’t even know why he would do that much.

Maybe he did feel guilty about the whole Peter Pan and Tinker Bell thing.

Nonetheless, I was really, really thankful and he had had enough of me thanking him. I started to feel like staying by his side all the time was still not enough to repay him. I mean, sometimes it got a bit too much when it came to the girls, but technically I just had to stand by Jinhwan’s side while he did all the talking. A few insulting words wasn’t something I couldn’t handle. I wished I could do something actively to repay him.

Well, it was disappointing when I got that chance and still failed to do so.

It was Friday night when Jinhwan made yet another video call, looking terribly sad and messed up.

“Bbuyo is missing,” he broke the sad news. “I couldn’t find him anywhere. What if he got hurt?”

I tried my best to cheer him up, but that night I didn’t get to see his usual mischievous smile. That one stray dog in the alleyway really meant a lot to him.

Two days later, on a bright yet chilly Sunday morning, I was woken up by the sound of panting in my ear. I opened an eye and found Yoyo next to me, with his fluffy tail wagging excitedly and his moist pink tongue wetting the sleeve of my pajama.

“Good morning, baby.” I greeted him groggily, getting a on my cheek in return. “Let me get ready.”

Sunday morning was a special time for us, because it was the time for our weekly date at Han River. I wouldn’t really call it a date, though, since Yoyo was always quick to ignore me once he met a bunch of other fellow dogs there.

And, let’s say that Yoyo was a very passionate, unneutered four-year-old male dog. Yes, we hadn’t had him castrated. And recently he was quite pressured to express his natural desire to reproduce.

I was secretly praying that he wouldn’t shamelessly jump on any dogs there. I would be the one to feel ashamed.

Moments later, after breakfast with my mom, I dressed Yoyo up in a fluffy white coat that matched mine – we were a cute pair after all. I tied my hair up in a ponytail and put on my brown boots, stuffed one ear with my earphone, and off we went to the river.