i. You're ripped at every edge, but you're a masterpiece.

—Colors

____

I don’t know Kim Jongdae that well, but really, that’s not a huge surprise, because out of the couple thousand people in our high school, we all know Kim Jongdae and his friends, but few have the chance to know him well. In fact, not even his clique of friends—no matter how supportive and close they seem to be—know him exactly. I learn that he doesn’t mind, though, because he’d rather that than for anyone to tear down the walls he’s built up carefully, piece by piece, each taking more effort than it should’ve because that wall wasn’t supposed to be there in the first place.

There are a couple things that I know of Kim Jongdae simply from observation: he seems to smile a lot, but for some reason, never laughs. He’s not really the talker out of the group of his friends, though a lot of people agree that that’s his charm—he’s quiet, and it’s taken as a respectful sort of attitude. He seems to always end up wearing long sleeves, even in the hottest days of the year. People like to ask him about his mother, who is a supposed celebrity, but he’s turned down the subject so many times that they rarely ask anymore.

All these are what I’ve somehow managed to observe in the first two years of highschool with him; superficial things that don’t tell me a lot about him unless I get to know it better.

I do learn, though. He doesn’t laugh because he says that he’s afraid it’ll sound too fake and forced (smiles are easier to pretend). It’s not that he doesn’t have anything to say—he has a lot to say, an overflow of opinions to give—he just never seems to be able to find the right time to say them. The long sleeve shirts and hoodies are always there because he’s terrified of anyone seeing the marks, long, angry red, on his arms that not even his friends know. He doesn’t talk about his mother because yes, she is famous and he’d rather not let everyone know, but it’s also because he can’t quite bring himself to speak of the woman that comes home drunk out of her mind at least two times a week, who pays little to no attention to him anymore, the person who discouraged him from the one thing he loved with a passion.

Kim Jongdae is really more than he seems at first glance, and really, the more I get to know him, the more I realize that I haven’t even scratched the surface of who he is yet.

***

The first meeting is purely coincidental. We’re both taking the train home, and it’s around thirty minutes before rush hour so there are still seats. For some reason, he has ended up sitting next to me, holding a bundle of books in his arms and at the edge of the seat because he hasn’t taken his backpack off. He’s in four of my classes, I know him well (in fact, the whole school does)—no, I know facts about him well—and I’ve seen him around a couple of times. From what I know, Kim Jongdae’s a relatively nice person.

He has earbuds plugged in when he sits down his to me. Neither of us say a thing, just sit in awkward silence, not acknowledging the other yet obviously knowing that they’re there. It’s only when I’m about to get off at my stop when I shoulder my backpack and stand up.

“Excuse me,” I say to Jongdae.

He looks up at me. “I’m getting off here too,” he replies. It’s a statement, nothing more, and I give a slightly awkward nod as he gets to his feet also.

I soon lose him in the crowd of people carrying us up the stairs and away from the subway.

***

The next day, the school is all talk about the basketball team yesterday. Apparently they had won, though there’s almost as much people who are asking where Jongdae was yesterday, because he hadn’t shown up at the game.

I blink. He had been on the subway with me; had he not attended the game? And if he didn’t, why hadn’t he?

The question goes unanswered. I see Jongdae briefly again in the end second period, and he’s chatting cheerfully with his friends at a locker, always smiling like usual. They consist mostly of the basketball team; it’s as if his presence, or lack thereof, at the game has somehow gone unnoticed. I don’t understand and I’m too far away to hear any of the conversation, but I suppose it’s true that there’s something about Kim Jongdae that almost like a calming factor—you can’t get mad at him even if you want to. You just can’t, or at least that’s what it looks like.

I’m off and running to my next class, though, and I try not to think too much more about Kim Jongdae.

***

Fourth block is Languages, and, like usual, I’m dreading it as I drag my feet into the classroom. It’s worse than any of the other sciences, and I’m barely edging on comprehension when there are texts to read and things to analyze. Bilingual is no use when the language that’s important is the one that you’re terrible at.

I sit down next to Sohee. She’s organizing her belongings hurriedly, apparently trying to find something from the ever-messy backpack, though I don’t suppose it’ll be possible.

“Hey,” I managed as I sit down next to her. “What are you looking for this time?”

She looks up briefly at me. “Pencil case.”

“You can use mine.”

“No, I think I actually lost it and I have my student ID and everything else in there,” she laments. “Take back your stupid pencil.”

In front of us, Jongdae’s group of friends, loud and jousling each other, come into the classroom. I see him in the middle of them all—he’s not laughing like the one with the large ears or the person he’s talking to (Baekhyun, I think, I don’t know), but he’s smiling as he listens. They file into the classroom, raising the volume by a significant amount, before dispersing to sit in their seats again. A couple minutes later, the teacher heads into the classroom.

Sohee leans over. “Anna,” she whispers, “did you finish the homework?”

I blank, horrified. “There was homework?”

“Miss Go!” There’s the sound of wood on wood, and I flinch at the snap of the ruler. “Unless you'd like to share your conversation to us all, class has started. Please don’t talk.”

I hate you, I mouth at Sohee, and she just winks at me before turning back to the desk.

Ms. Lim starts talking about the text we were supposed to read—the book’s on my bed stand, I think, or my dad has taken in because it “looked interesting”, but it definitely has not been opened by me yet. I glance forward, where Baekhyun is slipping over a not-so-discreet note to Jongdae who seems to be somehow taking notes, and then beside me, where Sohee has set up a textbook in front of her desk and fallen asleep behind it. It’s nearly as discreet as Baekhyun’s note passing.

I check my timetable again. The next class is English—something I’m actually good at, even if it’s boring—and then math before the day is finished. There’s study hall from four thirty to five thirty, though neither of my parents mind the calls home when I skip and some excuse about studying for the diploma apparently always gets me through.

In front of me, the tall boy with big ears (I think his name is Chanyeol) turns around and hands me a slip of paper. “Here,” he says.

I take it, confused, but he has already turned around and I can’t ask anymore. There’s actually more than one, I noticed, small, blank squares of paper, a stack of them. It isn’t until the girl behind me taps me on the back that I turn around, no less confused.

“Pass them on?” she says.

I look over Chanyeol’s head—he’s too tall—and, unclear on what the instructions are and what’s going on in general, I pass the stack of paper back.

In thirty minutes, the bell rings and I’m out of the classroom. And of course, it’s not until the next day that I realize that we were supposed to hand the slips of paper in, with our names written on them, to Ms. Lim when the class had ended.