Jongin hurried as soon as he was done with his exam to the front gate, where Mr. Lee had waited for him. He barged into the car and told Mr. Lee to drive to Yonsei as fast as possible. The watch on his left wrist showed him that it was 11 past 2. Mr. Lee agreed to Jongin’s command. The car was running above 60 kilometers per hour on a quiet road, but unluckily, some of the main roads were jammed with cars and people. A curse word was sliding on his tongue, but he quickly hindered himself from actually releasing it. 

Mr. Lee stepped on the brake right in front of the gate of social science college. Before Jongin jumped out of the car, he told Mr. Lee not to pick him up later. He fled from the entrance and had to look around. This was his first time in Yonsei; where the hell is Hall B-102? Jongin asked the passerby, a male student with a book thicker than the bible in his hand, about the exhibition and Hall B-102. 

Right after he found the direction, Jongin ran through the spacious college, feeling the adrenaline rushing profusely inside his blood vessel. Then he spotted it. There was a big, bright-colored banner a few meters in front of the main entrance. He was about to enter with his quick steps when the receptionist girl held him back and asked him for his ID. Still, with an accelerated heartbeat and breathing pace, Jongin pulled his student card from his wallet.

Now his task is to find Seulgi. 

Jongin combed through the rows, trying to match everyone he saw with the mental image of Seulgi’s face that he had. He looked for a girl with long dark brown hair, at his shoulder height, round face, chubby cheeks, slanted eyes...

Then he found her on the fourth row.

His face lit up when he saw the exact figure he was looking for, and Jongin knew better than bottling all his built-up hope inside his chest. Instead, he shouted her name from a few meters apart, attracting the gaze from crowds around him.

“Kang Seulgi!!!”.

Seulgi turned her face to her right side. Everything was happening too fast. She identified the person she has been waiting to appear, along with the figure running with his two legs without any problem.

It was Kai.

And when they both finally faced each other, every sound around her was engulfed into a vacuum, the time stopped working, and the world suddenly belongs only to her and Kai.

“Kai?”, she widened her eyes, still grasped by the shock wave. 

“Yeah, it’s me”. Jongin dazzled the widest smile on his face. “I’m sorry, I just completed my exam on 11”.

Seulgi still didn’t know how to behave in front of him with every baggage they have dealt with before. It tasted like her dream came into reality after being swamped in her sleep for too long, and now she had no clue to handle this situation. She just stared at Jongin. There were too many details of him that she had to memorize. His hair was styled up and shorter, shaved on both right and left side into undercut style. The oversized maroon sweatshirt with a white-collar underneath, baggy black denim, and the sneakers with a similar shade to his top complemented each other so well in his tall figure. Seulgi had just noticed that when he smiled widely, there were dimples on the side of his face.

But the most striking detail Seulgi scrutinized from the man in front of her was not the one that presented with him, but instead, the one that wasn’t there with him. 

His crutch. 

“You’re...running with your legs?”. Seulgi looked down at both of his legs, and there was no crutch insight.

“Am I supposed to run with my hands?”, Jongin raised both of his hands to his head level. 

Seulgi burst into laughter in no time. Her joke receptor was being hypersensitive at the moment due to increased exhilaration, and Jongin was the one to accuse. That man chuckled along with her. “I mean...since when?”.

“Just last Friday. No metal needed anymore except for this one right here”, Jongin bent down a bit to tap his lower left leg.

An evident confusion was visible on Seulgi’s face. Before she asked, Jongin already answered. “I have a metal plate in my bone”.

“Oh my...”, she blinked her eyes rapidly. “Does it hurt? When you run?”.

“If it still hurts, I’ll still have my crutch by my side”. Jongin then turned around and took a few steps back to see the poster Seulgi plastered on the wooden board. “Woah...you finally made it. Mind to tell me the gist of your research findings, please?”.

Seulgi paused briefly to recollect the explanations she had been saying over and over again towards the visitor. It was ten times harder to speak when she had to face the boy she likes. But Jongin seemed to understand what she said from the regular nodding and humming he did, and that encouraged Seulgi to go further. 

“You’re using one of my messages too”, Jongin pointed at the part where Seulgi attached the screenshot. “Because you don’t know who I am in real life. And now you know. How will you explain that?”.

“No, I don’t know who you are in real life”, Seulgi said. “Yet”. 

Jongin spun his body to face Seulgi once again. He took a step closer and reached out his right hand, which Seulgi looked at before his face. 

“Let’s start here, then”, Jongin said, accompanied with his lips curled upward. “My name is Kim Jongin”.

Seulgi’s hand was halting to link it with Jongin’s, but space was meant to be filled with no other than hers. So that’s your real name, Seulgi thought as she scanned the boy’s face.

“Nice to meet you, Kim Jongin”, she shook his hand. “I am Kang Seulgi”.

“Thank you for keeping your promise, Kang Seulgi”.

“What promise?”.

“To talk with me again”.

~***~

Jongin ate a lot. Like, really a lot. 

He brought Seulgi to the pizza restaurant near Yonsei because one: he had been craving for pizza lately, and two: not far from the restaurant, there was a multipurpose park that allowed the visitants to play sports or have a cute picnic date—basically to do any outdoor activities. To eat together with Seulgi wasn’t the only thing he intended to do. He wanted to spend his time with her. Getting to know her. Learning about her. Fulfilling his curiosity about her.

And when their order arrived, he didn’t hesitate to finish the pizzas in front of Seulgi. He was too damn hungry, and never again, he wanted to let this desire slide away after months of losing his appetite. 

“Are you really that starving?”, Seulgi, who was sitting in front of him, asked him the obvious question.

Jongin nodded his head. “This is the most delicious thing I’ve ever eaten”. That sentence gained a chuckle from Seulgi. “I want to gain weight too, you know”. 

“Gain weight?”, Seulgi skimmed Jongin from his head to his torso—the bound of his body that was visible above the table. “You look okay, though?”.

“What do you mean by okay?”.

Seulgi was taken aback by his words, worried that it will cross his line somehow. “I...I-I mean...”.

“You mean that I’m handsome”.

Seulgi let a relieved sigh. He was just joking, calm down Seulgi. “I didn’t say that”, she rolled her eyes, hard enough to conceal the fact that she agreed with him in this matter. 

Jongin responded with a laugh before he scooted closer to Seulgi. “I lost a lot of weight these past few months”, he said. “I didn’t realize it at first! But then one day I saw the trace of my ribcage was showing clearly. So I said to myself to eat more. I have my appetite back, and I don’t want to take it for granted”. He started munching on the last piece of his pizza.

“Was that because...”, Seulgi lowered her voice slightly when she approached this sensitive topic. “Your...accident...”.

Jongin nodded. “There are persons who eat and sleep more when they are stressed, and I’m the opposite. I eat and sleep less”.

“Judging by four big slices of pizza you’re eating, I assume that your condition is getting better”.

“Way better than how I was in February”.

Four slices of pizza and a glass of cold cola were what Jongin could take that afternoon; meanwhile, Seulgi was settled only with her two pieces. Now that their tummies are full, Jongin dragged Seulgi out of the restaurant to walk with him, still holding her cloth bag in his hand. 

The sidewalk they were walking on was densely occupied with restaurants, cafes, and stores. When Seulgi spotted a coffee shop, her mind was unconsciously forming a relationship between the coffee shop and her first encounter with Jongin. Maybe Jongin didn’t think of the same thing. Perhaps it was just her. 

But she was so eager to ask him about a memory that now she retrieved from Coffee Palace.

“Jongin, why did you choose Kai that time?”.

“That used to be my nickname when I was in the US”, he told her, hands were swaying back and forth as he walked. “Korean, and ethnic names in general, were harder to pronounce for them. My parents then decided what my nickname would be”. 

“Ah...I see”, she nodded a few times. “How’s your life in there? What’s the most striking difference you experienced between both countries?”.

“That’s an easy question”, Jongin said, a broad smile mustered on his face when he looked at Seulgi. “It’s the study habits. I just finished my second grade when I moved to Korea, and I’ve been accustomed to more flexible and loose activities. But then everyone seemed to be addicted to studying in here?! Even when they were still as little as 9 years old. I had to adapt, and that has a cost on my sanity. I almost failed my third grade back then”. 

Seulgi raised both of her eyebrows and gasped. “Really? You did?”.

“Really! I ranked 28 out of 30 students”. Jongin took a turn to the left when they reached the corner of a boutique. Seulgi was separated from Jongin by another young man walking quickly for a split second, but she caught up forthwith. Jongin then continued when Seulgi was on his side again, “I got bullied a lot too for not speaking Korean well. During winter break, my parents gave me a private tutor to learn Korean and every other subject I was lacking. It wasn’t the wisest decision, though. I didn’t excel in my class not because I was stupid but because I had to adapt quickly to a new culture as a 9-year-old kid. That might sound funny coming from me because I’m Korean, but I didn’t really get to be in touch with my culture when I was young”. 

“It must be tough for you, wasn’t it?”.

“That was the second hardest phase of my life”.

Seulgi took a brief pause on their conversation. She secretly glanced at Jongin’s legs that were working faultlessly like nothing bizarre ever happened. No one will suspect that he got into a car accident four months ago if they scanned him with the eye. 

“Is everything okay at your home now?”.

The park they were heading to finally showed its appearance right before their eyes, after walking for nearly ten minutes from the pizza restaurant. Few people were present during this working hour. There were some kids not older than 12 who cycled around the park. A few youngsters were spotted too, taking pictures with their