Inspired by: Real life events. Somehow... somewhat...

Irene felt like she was going blind as she squinted her eyes and held the penknife at an angle unfamiliar to her. As she registered the pretty shade of blue of the card, her mind drifted for a second to the person who was intended to receive this card; Wendy. A smile entered Irene’s face. Despite her distractedness, her fingers felt as if they had life of their own and continued with its work. Yet, her lack of complete concentration on her task proved disastrous.

“Ouch!” Irene

on her index finger, Irene’s priority was however to protect her card. Whisking the card away with her good hand, Irene placed a plastic sheet over it as she tended to her wound briefly before returning to work on it with a huge sigh.

“Hey, Irene, what happened to you? You looked like you stayed up all week,” Joy, her friend since high school joked.

Irene gave a weak smile back to her friend. In fact, that was the truth but Irene was too tired to narrate her story about ruining four cards and on the route to ruin the fifth.

“So… how are your preparations?”

“W-What preparations?” Irene asked innocently.

Joy nudged Irene with her elbows and wiggled her brows playfully. “Come on, don’t you keep anything from me. Yeri told me you have been doing things uncharacteristic of you.”

Irene’s jaw fell open as she could not believe that her younger sister had snitched on her.

“So… what are you doing with excessive amount of art supplies?” Joy prodded and in a slier voice, added, “which are coincidentally very blue?” 

It was frustrating how Joy had known about Irene’s crush on Wendy since the first week of university. How could one not when Wendy such a sweetheart with her awkward yet gentle-womanly ways. One fact about Wendy was that she was very into the colour blue. She wore blue, her backpack was blue, her bottle was blue, and she once had blue streaks in her hair.

Irene remembered the first class they had together. Wendy had sat right next to her and they had clicked instantly. Unfortunately, they were never placed in the same project group. Nevertheless, by some of luck or fate’s play, they always ended up taking the same classes, with Joy. Irene would be a nervous wreck whenever she had a presentation with her crush sitting in class. It did not help when Joy began to force Irene to step up her game and since Joy and Wendy were from the same music club, Irene was especially nervous, fearing what Joy might be telling her club mate.

Just then, Wendy had entered into their view, she was not wearing her contacts as she normally was. Instead, she was wearing glasses and looked even cuter than ever.  

“Your crush is here,” Joy stated and Irene’s heart jumped as she pinched Joy’s thighs under their desk. Joy yelped instead and caught Wendy’s attention.

That idiot!

“Joy, are you okay?” Wendy, as caring as she ever was, asked.

Joy nodded tersely as Irene threatened to pinch her again. Irene nearly heaved a sigh of relief when Wendy had turned back again. Their eyes connected for a moment.

“Irene, you look tired. It is just the beginning