Tzuyu’s first period was Math. Beside the teacher, she usually does not pay attention to anyone else in class. After she sat down at her usual bottom left corner seat, she noticed that she shared this class with two other people from her Literature class.

A girl who is sitting in one of the front row seat and another girl sitting diagonally from the first, two rows down.

“This seems oddly familiar.”, Tzuyu thought. 

The front row seat was occupied by Mina, one of Sana’s friends. Two rows behind was Snaggletooth who was busy gawking at Mina to have not realised that the teacher had already walked in. The teacher was holding a stack of corrected assignments that was on the verge of toppling over. She gave a pointed to Snaggletooth before dropping the entire mountain of works on the table, making a loud thud that woke everyone up. 

“Ms Chaeyoung.”, Snaggletooth immediately shot up from her seat as the teacher looked directly at her.

“I would appreciate if you would hand these assignments back to the class.”, the teacher pointed at the stack of paper on her table. 

“Oh! Um..Yes miss!”, Chaeyoung walked up to the teacher and grabbed the precarious piles of works. 

As Chaeyoung was handling back everyone’s works, the teacher said: 

“Please have a look at your marks. Some of you have done really well, either maintaining your high average or improving it. Other…might need to do more revision on this last topic.”, at the teacher’s last sentence, Chaeyoung flipped the next assignment to see that it was her. An angry looking 5 stared back at her. She put it faced down on her desk before promptly return back to giving back everyone’s works. She read out everyone’s name to figured out where everyone was sitting. 

“Tzuyu?”, Chaeyoung said. 

“Here.”, Tzuyu raised her hand. Chaeyoung went over and gave her the assignment. Tzuyu flipped over to see an 8.5. She sighed in relief.

Chaeyoung got to Mina’s paper and was at awe at the perfect ten on the corner of the page. Mina took her assignment from Chaeyoung, their hands slightly brushed pass each other. 

“Thank you.”, Mina said, giving a little gummy smile.

“Oh…ah…all good.”, Chaeyoung replied and quickly moved on the next person before her cheeks got too red. 

After an hour, the bell rang and everyone started to pack their bags to the next class. Mina was one of the student who left first. She didn’t noticed that her keychain got hooked on the side of her chair and fell off when she slung the bag over her shoulder and left. Tzuyu walked passed Mina’s and stepped on the fallen keychain. She lifted up her foot to see a couple of keys and a train pass attached to a fluffy blue penguin. Tzuyu picked the key chain up and checked if Mina was still around but she and most of the class were long gone. She realised that it was only her and Chaeyoung who was still fumbling with her books who remained. Tzuyu walked over to Chaeyoung. 

“Ahem, hey…”, Tzuyu lightly tapped on Chaeyoung shoulder.

“Oh, hey. Sorry for hogging your table. I’ll be quick.”, Chaeyoung mistaken Tzuyu to be someone from the next class. 

“Oh no, don’t worry. I was actually in your Math class just then.”, a couple of uncomfortable seconds passed by. Chaeyoung mentally slapped herself for being so rude. Before Chaeyoung could say sorry, Tzuyu spoke first. 

“Anyway…I think this was Mina’s? I think you could give this back to her.”, Tzuyu handed Chaeyoung the keychain. 

“Oh! OK. But why aren’t you giving this back to her yourself.”, Chaeyoung cocked her head at Tzuyu. 

“There is a train pass on this and she might need this back by the end of school. Also, aren’t you guys partners in Lit?”, Tzuyu reasoned. 

“How do you know that we are partners?” 

“I’m also in your Lit class…”, the both of them just landed a double whammy on the awkward-classmates skits. 

“Do you have her number? You could text her that you got her keychain.”, Tzuyu continued. 

“That’s a good point. I’ll text her right now.”, Chaeyoung pulled out her phone. She was about to text Mina when she saw that there was only one minute till her next class. 

“Oh snap! I’m late!”, Chaeyoung quickly grabbed her bag and ran out of the classroom. Before she turned left, she turned around to Tzuyu: 

“What was your name again?”, Chaeyoung asked. 

“Tzuyu.” 

“Hi..oh wait, bye?…hehe. I’m Chaeyoung by the way. Thanks for this again.”, Chaeyoung held up the keychain and turned left to run to her next class. 

Since she had a free period next, Tzuyu calmly walked out the classroom. She thought back on the awkward situation she and Chaeyoung was in. 

“Maybe I should not a habit out of sitting at the back.”, Tzuyu mentaller noted. 

---

Chaeyoung’s next class was Art. Everyone was each in front of a canvas, working on a portrait of their choice. Despite being in her favourite class, Chaeyoung was not paying attention to the half finished canvas in front of her but the phone propped on top of it. She opened her phone and scroll over to her conversation with Mina. The chat was only filled with questions for when to meet up, all sent by Mina; and quick, short responses that Chaeyoung had put way too much unnecessary thought over. 

“Do I text her? Do I not text her? Should I wait after school to give it back? Next is recess. Maybe I’ll bump into her during recess…”, Chaeyoung racked her brain. She pulled the keychain from her pocket and took a better look at it. The case of the train pass was slightly scuffed from the keys attached along with it. The little blue penguin looked back at Chaeyoung, crescent eyes and an opened beak as if it was smiling widely at her. The little guy reminded Chaeyoung of Mina’s smile. She loved seeing Mina’s smile and felt a bit sad whenever she saw the girl promptly covered to suppressed it. It was her favourite charm in Mina and she wished the girl would embrace her amazing smile, gummy and all.

“I should give this back to her as soon as possible.”, Chaeyoung thought. She managed to muster enough and quickly sent a text to Mina. 

Chaeyoung 
Hey Mina.
I picked up your keychain after Math.
When do you want me to give it back to you?” 

After a couple of minutes, Chaeyoung’s phone dinged. Chaeyoung jolted at the sound and almost unintentionally slipped a brush across the canvas. 

Mina 
Hi Chaeyoung. 
Thanks for finding my keychain.
I’ll come to pick it up from you as soon as possible. 
Where is your current class? 

Chaeyoung 
I’m in the art room right now 

Mina 
I’ll come over to the art room during recess. 
Do you mind waiting for a bit after class? 

Chaeyoung 
Sure! 
I’ll wait. 

Chaeyoung smiled to herself and propped her phone back on the easel. That was the longest text conversation she had ever had with Mina. 

The teacher was walking around to check on everyone’s works, commenting on what they should improve. When the teacher got to Chaeyoung, he quietly observed the girl being hesitant to paint. The canvas already had a rough outline of a face but the colour were all quite blurry and no clear outline was laid out beside a faint line indicating where the nose bridge is. 

“How is the painting coming along, Chaeyoung?”, the teacher asked. 

“Oh, hi sir. Hm, I think it’s going well. I’m just not happy with the skin tone right now.” 

“You can always go back to fix it. You usually are so expressive with your painting. Why are you so hesitant with this one?” 

“I know sir…I just want it to be perfect.”, the both of them looked at the canvas. A rose beige shadow of a face stared back at them. 

“I used to be scared of painting portrait too.”, Chaeyoung looked up at the teacher. 

“I was never satisfied with my work. The eyes squint too much this way. The lips are not that thin. The skin tone needs to be darker. With every imperfection I found, I would go back and fix them. Worse case scenario, which was most of the time, I would gesso the entire canvas and start over again.”, Chaeyoung nodded and empathised with her teacher’s predicament. 

“After a while, I realised that all I painted were from different snapshots of the same face. I painted the eyes slightly squintier because I remembered that person smiling. The lips thinner because they were deep in some thought. The skin lighter because they were standing underneath a streetlamp.”, the teacher pointed at Chaeyoung’s brush and back at her canvas. 

“Whatever you paint will not be completely the same as what you saw or imagined. It will only be a still frame of something dynamic. So don’t be afraid that you will screw up. Whatever you ended up with, those are the things that you appreciated and took note of in that moment.”, the teacher squeezed her shoulder reassuringly before moving on to the next student. 

Chaeyoung felt better after her teacher’s pep talk and gained the courage to add more onto her canvas. She added a pair of soft eyebrows, a smiling mouth with a hint of gum underneath the upper lip. The eyes were still far from done but the nose was complete. Before she packed up her palette and brushes, Chaeyoung mixed a small dollop light brown and added a faint dot on the top right corner of the nose bridge. She took a step back to look at the whole painting. The teacher came back at complimented Chaeyoung: 

“It’s looking better now. I’m glad that you got over your fear of adding more.” 

“You’re wrong.”, the teacher looked surprised at Chaeyoung’s response. Chaeyoung added, without taking her eyes off the painting: 

“I was afraid that I would not add enough.”