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Baekhyun is drenched in sweat from top to the bottom, his breath is heavy as he tries to calm it down, and his muscles is screaming in agony behind the layer of his skin. Coach Park finally let the boys off after it feels like eternal making them running and running and passing ball. He takes his bottle and hungrily gulps down the cool water. Then, he takes the small towel to wipe the sweats off his arms before hanging it on his neck. As he is rubbing his forehead and damp hair with the towel, he suddenly feels a couple of hard smacks on his back, which making him jumps in pain. He shouts and turns his body to see that it was Kyungsoo who had hit him.

He glares at the shorter boy, “What the hell?!”

But, Kyungsoo merely blinks innocently at him and he lifts his arm up with his finger points at a particular direction. Then, Jongdae starts to call out for Baekhyun too, shaking his body with his eyes staring at where Kyungsoo is pointing. Baekhyun mouths something about his friends being weird before following the two other boys’ line of vision.

Baekhyun blinks a few times, rubs his eyes with a towel, and even leans forward to make sure that he’s not seeing wrong. Song Haerin? Not long later, all of his teammates spot the girl too and starts with the annoying teasing and grinning knowingly at him. They all know that Baekhyun has ‘broken up’ with Haerin, so it’s amusing to see the girl is sitting on the bleacher like when they were still ‘together’.

Baekhyun is being pulled left and right, there are palms hitting his back, his shoulders, and arms, there are fingers messing with his hair. After waking up from his daze, he pulls himself away from his teammates’ assault, hitting and kicking all of them away. They all laugh at him but Baekhyun pays no heeds. He starts to jog across the field, where Haerin is sitting and has been staring at him with a small smile carves on her face.

“What are you doing here?” he asks when he is close enough. He doesn’t even bother to hide his grin, obviously happy to see the girl. He stands with one bench between the two of them, his hands resting on his hips.

Haerin shrugs her shoulders indifferently, “Waiting for you, duh.”

“Have you waited long? It’s so cold!”

“I just sat like ten minutes ago. I waited inside the school before,” she explains. She eyes his damp skin and sleeveless shirt, making her frowns in disapproval. “You should get inside and shower. Don’t catch a cold.”

Baekhyun grins wider from the way her eyes shine with worried for him. He nods his head, then leans forward to rest his hand on top of her folded hands on her lap. “Wait for me,” he softly says. His hand is gone as soon as he just puts it down.

“Don’t take your shower too long!” Haerin shouts at his retreating back, reminding him and he runs to get to the locker room as quickly as he can.

⏩

To Haerin’s surprise, Baekhyun finishes taking his shower, putting on his clothes and coming out from the locker room to her in the span of less than ten minutes. She even notices that he is one of the teammates who leaves the room earlier. She drags her gaze from his shoes to his torso and to his eyes lastly. She smiles at how his eyes are practically beaming at her right now.

“I’m impressed,” she nods approvingly.

Baekhyun nods his head to the road, asking her to walk together with him as they continue their conversation and Haerin follows suit.

“I don’t want to make you wait long. The weather is cold nowadays!”

He shakes his own body as if he is freezing from the wind and Haerin bursts into laughter because how cute he is being at this moment. The two starts their walks in silence after that. But, it hasn’t even lasted for five minutes before Baekhyun starts to open his mouth.

“Why are you waiting for me?”

Haerin looks down at her shoes and smiles, “You said you wanted to talk about us.” She lifts up her gaze to lock eyes with the boy. “And I’m very curious about it.”

His lips mold into a shape of ‘O’. He breaks the eye contact first and turns to look forward, his fingers reaching up to his neck and scratch at one spot that isn’t even itchy in the first place. He’s nervous and he can’t help it. He has two guesses why Haerin seems to be impatient to know what he wants to talk about.

One, she wants to hear him out now so that she can quickly reject his confession, again. And that , like really . Baekhyun doesn’t even know if he wants to confess again if that what she’s going for. Two, well, this feels hard to reach. But, two, she finally wants to give them a chance to seriously date.

“Baekhyun?” She bumps his side with hers to wake him up from daydreaming.

“Y-yeah?!”

Haerin chuckles, “You were saying?”

All of sudden, he is scared to talk about their friendship, or relationship, or whatever. He makes sure the sight of Haerin’s laugh burns inside his head. And if Haerin is still going to reject him after this, he’s not sure if they can still be friends. Even if they are be able to, but to have her so close yet so far? Baekhyun will lose his mind.

Oh, he’s scared.

Haerin notices how there’s a change on his expression, she frowns in confusion. “Baekhyun?” She stops in front of him and even holds the sleeve of his jacket. He can’t actually feel her because of the layer of his clothes but she’s touching him for the first time today.

He looks up, staring deeply into her eyes. “Do you like me?” She is taken a back unexpected question. But Baekhyun doesn’t wait for her to answer, he continues, “I like you, Haerin. I’ve told you before, but you didn’t believe me. And I’m here to tell you again.” He takes her hand which was holding onto him into his hand, while the other reaches out for her hand that was hanging by her side.

“I seriously like you and I want—no—need to know if you like me too? Don’t,” he presses through his gritted teeth, “Don’t make lame excuses. Saying it’s because I was lonely and even going as far as telling me what I feel when you’re not even me.” He glares dangerously at her. He swallows before goes on. “Because I know my feelings for you are real even though our relationship was a fake. Haerin, I really do.”

Baekhyun’s voice has turned so soft that it feels like he’s whispering. His eyes that were sharp has changes into a warm dark brown, reminding Haerin of a cup of hot chocolate in the winter. He keeps repeating himself that he’s serious about his feelings, when he doesn’t need to because she can see the way he always unconsciously smiles so sincere whenever he says he likes her.

Haerin’s silence is making him go crazy for a while. Nobody utters a word for the first few minutes. Then, at the slightest bit, Baekhyun feels her hands move. He looks down and sees that it is her hands that are holding his right now and she tightens her grip.

“I have a pretty bad temper,” words start to come out from her lips, gaining Baekhyun’s attention back to her face.

“And Yuna’s right about my bad personality. I know I don’t have the best personality.” She chokes out a sad laugh, pointing out her insecurities. Which Baekhyun smiles understandingly, shaking his head.

“My words sometimes can be hurtful, b-but I never mean to, you know?” And he nods, slowly pulling her closer and she lets him.

“In conclusion, I’m pretty hard to handle.” They are close enough that Haerin can smell the clean soap scent on his body. She wants to nuzzle her nose on his neck but instead, she keeps the eye contact, wanting to sink in all of the reaction he shows as she keeps talking.

“Yeah, I know.” But he grins. He grins so beautifully that it hurts. There is no frowns or any wrinkles on his face to show that he’s having a second thought.

“And you’re sure you want to be romantically-involved with me?”

He nods confidently that brings a smile to Haerin’s face. His fingers come up to sweep away a few strands of her hair, tucking them behind her ears. He looks down at he