CHAPTER VI
Sly

Two days had passed since Mari found out where her bracelet went. Her maids have came back from Hong Kong but Baekhyun was nowhere in sight.

“Where’s Baekhyun?” Kina asked, as she took the empty seat beside Mari. Mari just shrugged her away as she worked on her notes for Calculus.

“I don’t know, he wasn’t here yesterday, too,” Mari simply answered when it was obvious that Kina wanted an answer.

“Did he call in sick?” Jikyun said, out of nowhere. Mari didn’t even notice that she was here. She was usually late in the mornings.

Mari couldn’t concentrate so she just shut her notebook and gave her full attention to her friends. “No, I don’t know, really.”

“Oh!” Kina screamed in shock, grabbing Mari’s wrist – quite forcefully, in fact. “You got a new one?!” Kina asked Mari, rather oblivious of everything that transpired.

Mari just swallowed the lump that had formed in . “They weren’t listening, after all...,” she sighed to herself as she just answered a meek “yeah” to Kina’s question.

The three engaged in conversation. Well, two and a half. Half of Mari was off wondering about the replacement bracelet she had got that was supposed to be an exact replica but turned out to be quite different.

The shop in Hong Kong no longer carried the same design as the one her mother had given her. A part of her knows that it’s good enough for the upcoming family dinner but a part of her also knew that she has to get her actual bracelet.

X O X O X O X O X O X O X

Mari was furiously typing away on her laptop at the library when he came. “Hey, good afternoon,” he simply greeted her.

Shocked and confused, Mari yanked her earphones from her ears as she stared at Baekhyun.

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” he joked. The joke did not receive a reaction from her. After all, this is the first time she’s seeing him after the revelations she learned two days ago.

“Where were you?” was the first question she managed to cough out, from the thousands of other questions running inside her head.

“I have to do it now,” Mari whispered.

“I was sick,” he said. Mari could have taken that as an answer but her gut feeling told her not to.

A wave of awkward silence enveloped the two of them. Mari just stared, unable to form sentences that she deemed to be good enough. She couldn’t slip up about what she knows or else, her plan will fall apart before she could even execute it.

“Are you feeling well now?” she finally managed to say something. To which, Baekhyun turned to her in shock. “Crap, did I come out too caring?” she thought as she examined the subtle light in his eyes.

She has to do it now. She can’t screw up either. It’s now or never. The curiosity inside of her was eating her up, slowly washing away any awkwardness inside of her.

But he had already beaten her to i