Chanyeol disappeared from the face of the universe for three whole days.

I’m not a girl that would blatantly look for people. I don’t pay attention to who is around me and who is not. I have my own presence in school and to me, that’s all that matters. However, I couldn’t help but notice Chanyeol’s presence, too, whether because he introduced himself to me in the detention room or whether because he’s so large, everyone simply gravitates towards him. Whatever it is that’s made me conscious of him, its absence made me aware that Chanyeol’s suddenly gone.

He’s not around the cafeteria grounds no matter how many times I looked around every corner and allay. He simply wasn’t there. The groups he’s always sitting around with are scattered and sitting in different places. He’s no where to be seen in the library as well, and I haven’t really been searching, but knowing him and his antics with girls, I thought I’d at least catch him playing with one, unconsciously lifting my head to search for him as I did my homework.

I’m not exactly keen on admitting I’ve been searching for him, because that would make me sound caring, and if there’s something I hate, it’s to confess about any sort of positives emotions regarding people, especially loose and carefree people like Chanyeol. But I still somehow searched for him around. He wasn’t around our shared classes and I haven’t really admitted he truly was gone when Teacher Hee called for his name in English class and he wasn’t there, so she had to scratch his name off. 

I walk through the empty hallways of the school in my lazy stride to get to the cafeteria for lunch break. I don’t want to have to go to the cafeteria for food but considering I can’t get myself lunch food at home by the minimal time I have to get to the bus stop, I have to go there. I watch the emptiness of the hallways with a sigh. Students were so excited about lunch break that they literally ran out of their classes, leaving me alone in my seat with dust around me.

I pause in my strides when I see someone tall standing in front of one of the many lockers littered on the walls of the hallways, and I squint my eyes to see clearly, considering I’m half blind, and feel a beat in my heart accelerate viciously, going up in my throat, as I recognize the lithe body of Park Chanyeol. 

“Chanyeol?” I call without restraint, despite not being one hundred percent sure it really is Park Chanyeol, and I take a few steps forward in subconscious illuminati. “Is that you?”

This boy or man or whatever big body I am seeing turns around to face the sudden eruption of voice from my side, and I see Chanyeol’s confused face. The confusion, however, lifts away when he sees my face, and he beams at me. 

“My babygirl, I missed you.” He says in his low baritone, and I feel a sort of emotion extremely similar to longing flare within me at the sensation of his warm voice. Unconsciously of me, I smile, showing my two dimples that are as rare of a sight as me skipping classes.

“Wow, that’s really you,” I say back, walking closer and completely missing the girl that’s standing in front of Chanyeol, eyeing me curiously. “I didn’t think I’d find you after being missing for three days.” I’m feeling something inside that’s strange and new. I don’t want Chanyeol to see the small glimmer of joy his presence has brought me, so I clear my throat and show him nonchalance. 

“Missed me, sweetheart?” Chanyeol straightens from where he has been leaning over the lockers, where the thin girl is standing in front, to give me one of his usual smirks. 

I roll my eyes. “I missed my shoe. Anyway, where have you bee—“

The girl in front of Chanyeol clears , cutting my question off, and I flicker my eyes down to her miniature status in front of Chanyeol. I don’t know what I did wrong to her, but she glares at me, her cat-like eyes narrowed and threatening, almost like a cat thinking about a close attack. My eyebrows fly to the middle of my eyebrows in astonishment. Chanyeol, as well, stares down at her in surprise as if he has forgotten about her presence.

“Oh, you’re still here.” Chanyeol says to the girl, blinking. 

I snort, halfheartedly thinking the girl would be offended by Chanyeol’s lousy playboy antics, but I’m proved wrong when she merely shoots him an equally playful reprimanding look, eyeing him from beneath her eyelashes. She’s so small in comparison to Chanyeol’s massive body she looks squished against the lockers, but Chanyeol’s body not actually touching hers, so it’s just her size.

“You forgot about me so soon?” She tells him with a voice that I can only describe as cute. I blink. How did she do that? “Is this a way you treat a girl you’re interested in?”

Chanyeol laughs out loud, but I can see the fond surprise still lingering in his face. As a matter of fact, I look flabbergasted myself. Do girls usually act this way when the one they like treat them like they’re invisible? I know that if someone I like — right now there’s only Do Kyungsoo — I’d be offended if he forgotten my whole existence when I’m standing right in front of him.

“You’re interesting, sweetheart,” Chanyeol tells the girl, and I’m faintly taken aback, because this is exactly what he had told me, too. He leans towards her with an arm right on the lockers above her head, and my breath leapt out of my chest along with his playful gaze. “Remind me of your name again?”

The girl rolls her eyes but she still manages to look fond and amused, a hand twirling a lock of hair around her ear. She smacks Chanyeol playfully on the chest. “That’s so rude. We haven’t even been talking a few minutes ago, Chanyeol. You’re actually pretty awful at this, aren’t you?”

He brushes his knuckles on her chin and she obviously looks very heart stricken by the gesture, her eyes looking like two giant red hearts. But still, she tries to look unaffected, and I admire her for a teeny second. Chanyeol’s voice comes out small and growling. “Now now, babygirl, no need to get all feisty on me. I’m even asking for your name to remember this time, and trust me when I say that I don’t do this a lot.”

“It’s Areum.” She — apparently Areum —  still twirls a finger around her hair lock, and I see her clearly when she shifts to give me a look, curiosity lighting up her catlike eyes. She leans against Chanyeol to whisper, but I clearly hear her. “You know Moon Yuji, Chanyeol-ah? Heard she’s not exactly, uh, friendly.”

“I can perfectly hear you, Areum-ssi.” I snap in annoyance. I don’t really know who Areum is and where she came from, but I understand that she’s one of Chanyeol’s playthings. I’ve felt slight irritation towards her the moment I saw her leaning against Chanyeol and glaring at me, exactly like how I resent every girl that demeans her own worth by lowering herself to a boy that would probably only play with her feelings. This irritation of mine just skyrocketed now when she said what she said about me. I’m not friendly and I know that, but when people who don’t know you say this about you, it tends to annoy the out of me.

She looks taken aback by my snappish behavior, as if she hadn’t just labeled me as unfriendly, before looking annoyed herself. “Whoops, here strikes your unfriendly , Yuji-ssi. Maybe you should be nicer to people if you wanna have them around you.”

“That’s none of your business,” I say, still sounding childishly snappish even though I wanted to contain myself. My eyes are glaring and I know they are. “And if I want company around me, it definitely wouldn’t include you.”

The girl frowns more. “Chill, dude. What’s wrong with you? No wonder no one wants to be your friend.”

I glare, and I glare hard. There are a lot of reasons why people don’t want to be my friend, and I know my snappish behavior is not one of them, because I’m not usually snappish. I’m cold, unresponsive and unapproachable. I know this and I have accepted it for a long time. I already drilled into my own head that if people were afraid of who I am and this crust that enwraps me, then they’re not worthy to be friends anyway. This stranger telling me I’m not deserving of friends because I got annoyed at her for being an is winding up my unfriendly self.

I’m not here to talk to her and explain to her what I do anyway. I turn around to leave, because Park Chanyeol is not enough to withstand the badmouthing of people who think they know you. I walk away with practical stomps of my feet, and I hear Chanyeol yelping some kind of response to the girl before hearing his own feet-falls coming after me. Considering he’s larger than me, his footsteps resemble the tramples of elephants, and it doesn’t help that he’s running.

Suddenly he’s beside me and holding my arm to stop me from walking away, pulling me to an absolute halt. Since my previous annoyance is still pretty much on, I glare at him.

“Woah, walk slowly, Yuji baby. I can’t keep up with your strides.”

I snap my head towards his direction, a sneer on my lips. However, I know that my anger is not about Park Chanyeol and who he is. I’m angry because that stranger girl had hit a chord within me, and all of my irritation and vexation is directed to her, not Chanyeol. I try to soothe my burning feelings by taking deep, calculated breaths, each one occurring after three seconds of counting separately. I close my eyes and soften my stance and my demeanor, wholeheartedly feeling Chanyeol’s confused eyes on me. Then, I snap my eyes open, feeling remarkably more at ease with him than I was a few seconds away. That doesn’t mean I forgot the fact he had disappeared for three days, and I cross my arms over my chest.

“Where have you been?” I demand, tapping my foot against the floor impatiently. Chanyeol shoots me a loose smile, comfortable to see that I’m no longer on fire.

“Wheew!” Chanyeol exaggeratingly wipes his forehead, looking like he has been dropped from a nine drop building and didn’t pass out. “I thought for a second you were going to attack me there.”

“Chanyeol, where have you been?” I ignore his stupidness and ask seriously, pausing on tapping my foot on the ground and practically stomping on it to make a stance, eyes narrowed. “Did you forget about the project we’re supposed to work on?”

Chanyeol raises one of his eyebrows up, looking oddly like he’s ridiculing me. “The due date is still two weeks ahead, babygirl, three days a break is a good deal, no?”

“Not when it’s unplanned!” I snap, then walk away, pretty much expecting him to follow. Thankfully, he does. 

“Why are you so angry at me, Yuji?” I can practically hear the pout in his voice. I don’t turn around to grace him with an expression, knowing that if I did I might actually fall for the curl of his lips. A part of me knows that despite his pout, he’s pretty serious, because he used my name instead of his ridiculous nicknames. 

“Because you’ve been gone,” I say it in a tone that suggests it’s pretty obvious. “Without telling me, and risked three free days where we could have perfectly worked on our project. But no, you decided to leave without even telling me about it, and when you show up, you’re all over someone!”

“Aw, are you worried about me, sweetheart?” He jokes. His smile is so wide and petulant that I severely feel a temptation to punch it away. However, I’m not a very good puncher. I know this because I’ve never punched anyone before.

I pause in my strides at his stupid, stupid words, feeling him do the same.  I close my eyes and sigh deeply. Then I twirl around to face him. His eyes widen at my massively dramatic twirl. 

Calmly, I ask. “Do you think I’m an inanimate object that has no feelings?”

He looks surprised and confused all at the same time, his tall length pent over itself in resoluteness and discomfort as he tries to match his height with mine. The sight’s absolute mockery but I bite my tongue and prevent myself from laughing or showing the smallest signs of surrender. 

“Where is this coming from?” He murmurs. I still continue to cross my arms over my chest and projecting my dominance over the conversation.

“When you want to disappear again for three days please take the effort to tell the ones you have a coed project with.” I say, or more like command, my eyes shooting him with laser beams a sane person would want to push away from.  I feel like I won the conversation and I succeeded in putting down my leg before his, but I’m once again taken aback when he all but straightens into his normal statue and pulls my arm so that I’d be directly standing in front of me. I gasp at the audacity.

“Okay. I understand you’re angry at m—“ He begins.

“Do you know that I got detention that one time because a girl ruined my project—“ I’m interrupted.

“Yeah, you told me that, but the reason I’m really gone—“

“There’s a reason why people are slackers?” I stare wide-eyedly at him, as if he’s gone absolutely mad, and he blinks at me as if I’m the one who’s the idiot who has gone mad.

“You think people purposely want to fail school or somet