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Haerin frowns when she hears the bell of her house rings. She looks at the time and it’s almost the usual time her mom gets back from work. She thought it is her and maybe she forgets her keys. She gets out of her room and quickly stepping down the stairs. The bell rings once again.

“Coming!”

Haerin pushes down the handle of the front door and pulls it. She freezes when her eyes fall onto the attire of the person in front of her first. She doesn’t even need to move her irises upwards because she immediately knows that the person in front of her is not her mom from the clothes. Hell, it’s not even belong to a woman. Most importantly, she remembers who wears that. In fact, she just saw it like an hour ago.

“Haerin.”

Like in trance, she finally locks eyes with him as he calls out her name.

Half of his face is being hidden by a shadow because of the cap he’s wearing. Though he kinds of look expressionless, Haerin notices the tiredness in his eyes with shadows gather under them and his face features look somewhat tense.

“Can I come in?” he asks and Haerin moves her body a bit to let him in.

Baekhyun asks another question straight away as soon as she closes the front door.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

Haerin sighs, tucking her hands inside her jacket’s pockets and leaning on the wall. They don’t even bother to get cozy on the sofa first. “Tell you what?”

“What Yuna did? I called and asked you last night, and you didn’t say anything.”

She glares at the boy. “I thought of telling you when you’re back. Besides, I told you in the end, didn’t I? Back at school.” But you sided with Yuna anyway, she leaves the last part out.

“You wanted to hit her back then, didn’t you?”

“So what?” she snaps. “She deserves it.”

“Haerin!” he raises his voice at her. Again?

“What!” she doesn’t back down this time and matches with his volume.

All of sudden, all the anger comes back again and she feels suffocated. Baekhyun makes her feels suffocated.

“Gosh! Why are you here scolding me? I said Shin Yuna started it first. Baekhyun, she hid my bag at the rooftop. Some of my papers are gone because of the wind. Then, she threw my stuffs to the lake. The lake! There are some homeworks that haven’t finished and marked. I need to re-do it all over again.”

“And that made you have the right to hit her?” he asks, feeling absurd.

“Yeah,” Haerin answers confidently.

“Then you guys will get trouble with the teachers. And no matter who started it, if you had laid a hand on her, the teachers will think you are worse than her.”

“Honestly, I don’t ing care.”

“Hae—“

“Stop!” She swings her arms to push him away when she sees that Baekhyun tries to touch her. “Just leave,” she finally says, feeling more tired than before. She reaches out her hands to touch the door handle before pushing it down, opening the front door slightly.

But Baekhyun doesn’t have any plans to leave soon, so he slams the door back shut. And with his palm still resting on the wooden surface, he lessens his distance from Haerin until she can feel his breath close to her face.

“You should have immediately told me.” Baekhyun shifts his tone, calmer now than before. “I would have taken care of it and asked Yuna myself. I would have asked her to stop.”

“Why? I’m not even your real girlfriend.”

Ouch.

Baekhyun feels like he’s being slapped by her sentence and he closes his eyes for a few second before open them back up.

“You’re not,” he admits. “But, you’re still my friend and I care about you.” Baekhyun reaches out to cup one side of her jaw.

His touch is soothing her anger in the inside, yet at the same time it crawls uncomfortable under her skin. Unconsciously, she starts tapping her foot.

“Yet, you helped her just now. Not me.”

Realizing his fault, his eyeballs start to waver. “That—“ The boy can’t even find his words.

“So, you care about Yuna more than me,” she answers it for him. She wets her bottom lip and lets out a hollow chuckle. “Obviously. Isn’t that why we start this fake relationship?”

Baekhyun feels like his tongue gets so heavy that no words come out of his lips when he wants too. Even his mind stops working to put words together to make a sentence. He leans away then, staring at Haerin.

“Well, congratulations, Byun Baekhyun. It’s clear Yuna still wants you because if not, why else she did what she did to me?” Haerin smirks and stretches out one of her arm to the door. “You should go see her now. And ask her back. I bet that she’ll say yes in a beat. Go.”

Baekhyun stares at girl in front of him and feels like he doesn’t even recognize her. He tilts his head to one side, eyebrows furrowing hard at her. “You’re ending this?”

“Yeah,” she shrugs her shoulders. “It’s done. There’s no need to do this anymore.”

Haerin feels like someone just punches her in the stomach when she looks carefully at Baekhyun’s expression. Why does he look so sad? Why does he look like he’s in a brink of crying? And his question earlier sounds like as if anything they had was real that it makes Haerin a bit uncomfortable.

“Haerin. I, I—I helped Yuna not because I think you’re the bad guy here. I’m just…” he trails off, yanking his cap off as he combs through his hair with his fingers. “Habit? An act of kindness? It meant nothing. I swear.”

“Whatever,” she shuts him down. “Doesn’t matter what it was.” Listening how hollow and empty her tone is scares Baekhyun.

Baekhyun starts to feel panic inside his head. Not to mentions, his head is pounding like hell at this moment because his lack of sleep and after what happened back at school. How can things accelerate this sudden and quick? His favorite aunt just passed away yesterday and he’s going to lose Haerin today. Even though none of them say this out loud, he can feel that if he walks out the door right now, it’s not just their fake relationship ends, but their friendship too. He knows that Haerin must have felt betrayed because he chooses to help Yuna back at school and she thought he thought nothing of her. But, that’s not true.

Everything was a blur and mess just now by the lake. His own body moved unconsciously to help Jingoo to reach for Yuna’s bag. And when he turned his head to where Haerin was standing, she’s already gone. Honestly, his gesture didn’t even mean anything, but by the look of her face, Haerin doesn’t believe him.

“Haerin-ah,” he tries again.

She shakes her head, silently asking him to be quiet. Sighing, she says, “Don’t be impulsive, though. Take a couple of weeks before you guys officially back into relationship.”

Baekhyun is dumbfounded right now. She was literally livid three minutes ago and cruelly asking to end their fake relationship. Yet, she still cares for his reputation and even kindly reminds him something pretty useless now.

Baekhyun doesn’t want Shin Yuna.

“I don’t want to end it,” he mumbles.

Haerin hears him. She heaves out a loud sigh and rubs her eyes tiredly. “We should. I’m tired with all the drama already.” Even her voice is soft but full of weight, like she’s seriously tired. She forces a small smile at him. “It was real fun, though.”

It does. It does too for Baekhyun. Then, it grows something more than that.

Baekhyun wants Song Haerin.

And it’s now or never.

He takes a step forward, lowering his head and holding Haerin’s stare, really looking at the girl for the first time. Back when he was still dating Yuna, that girl actually likes to talk about Haerin behind her back almost all the time; whether it’s academic, mindset, or physic. Baekhyun just knew that his then girlfriend was actually jealous and he tried so hard to make Yuna realizes that she was beautiful in her own way, also because he felt a little uncomfortable to be hearing one of his friend to be talked like that. Now looking closely, he feels that she does have the right to feel jealous of Haerin. His fingers come up to one of her cheeks and he feels her flinch just a bit under his touch.

“Baekhyun?” Haerin breathes out. Every bones and muscles under her skin are tensing under his deep stare that she can’t seem to escape. She feels her stomach does something but she tries not to think of it.

“You’re mad because you thought I sided with Yuna? I’m sorry for that, Haerin. But, you have to believe me I’m not.” Her stomach does another somersault hearing his apology. “And,” he pauses, swallowing his own saliva when it gets a bit harder to breathe. “There’s something I’ve been hiding.”

“What?”

“It’s been a while, but I’m not—I don’t want to go back to Yuna,” he finally finishes his sentence, shaking his head to show his sincerity at his words. His other hand which dangl