Kim Soyeon plays with her eraser, hoping that it will at least distract her from glancing over to the corner seat every few seconds.

The teacher is taking attendance and Soyeon swears that she is not getting worried because someone isn’t here.

“Ahn Daniel?”

“Here!”

She hasn’t gotten her notebook back from Daehyun yet, not that it actually matters much now that she knows Daehyun has already read it. And so has half the class.

She wonders why, out of all her other stories, did Daehyun have to read the most embarrassing and worst written one.

She doesn’t even like Myungyeol to begin with.

She doesn’t even know why she’d written that piece of I-don’t-know-what.

“Jung Eunji?”

“Present.”

“Jung Daehyun...”

The teacher doesn’t even wait for a response before making a small marking on her attendance roll with her pen before continuing.

Soyeon’s sixth sense tells her that something is not right. But what?

“... Kim Soyeon?”

Her deskmate nudges her hard and out of mostly shock than instinct, she jumps out of her seat.

The teacher raises an eyebrow at her.

Soyeon’s eyes dart back and forth the classroom before she realises what she is doing, and sits down so fast it is as though a black hole has opened beneath her and is her in.

She buries her head with her arms and silently thanks the Gods that Daehyun isn’t here.

“Kim Sunggyu?”

“Here!”

And then she knocks herself on the head for thinking about Daehyun again.

 

__________________

“Yah, sleepyhead.”

Hyorin stirs, refusing to get up even when someone taps on her head lightly. Whining softly, she smacks away the person’s hand, causing him to chuckle.

“Yah wake up now, princess~” The person chuckles, tapping harder on her head.

Shin Hyorin does not want to wake up. She wants to remain a so-called ‘princess’ forever.

Then, two strong yet gentle hands lifts up her head, one on each side, and Hyorin winces as an abrupt ray of sunlight slaps her in the face. She turns around to glare at her attacker, only to freeze as a more than familiar face grins at her, gummy smile in full glory.

“Good morning, princess.”

It will be an understatement to say that Hyorin is blushing.

However, she decides to just play along.

“What’s so important that you have to deny a princess her beauty sleep, prince?”

Yongguk chuckles. “I’m just wondering if you had your history textbook?”

“Oh,” Hyorin’s smile falters a little, before she plasters another smile on her face as she randomly reaches under her table, feeling for the thickest book in there. “Here,” she announces, pulling out the textbook and hands it to Yongguk.

“Thank you princess~ see ya!” Yongguk winks, saluting with his other free hand as he leaves the room. Hyorin watches his retreating back as her smile grows wider and her cheeks feel even more warmer than usual. She puts her hands on either side of her head, closing her eyes once more and smiling as she remembers his warm touch.

“Anything for you, prince.”

However, a certain question is still lingering in her head.
 

__________________

“Hey...”

Jang Kyumi looks up, one hand instinctively covering the pages of the notebook that she is writing in. “Yeah?”

The stranger fakes an expression of hurt, “you don’t remember me?”

Kyumi shakes her head. She doesn’t remember having much friends, even less of those being girls, to start with. “We’re not in the same class,” she states matter-of-factly when the girl pulls out the seat next to her and sits down.

“Do I have to be in the same class as my childhood bestie to talk to her?”

Childhood... bestie?

“Oh!” Kyumi’s eyes widen, “Sohyun?”

“Took you so long to remember, huh,” Sohyun replies, her sentence dripping with sarcasm. Kyumi’s eyes narrow when she remembers those pointless quarrels that they had when they were young.

“You look completely different,” she replies, level of sarcasm almost the same, if not even higher, “are you plastic, darling?”

Sohyun wrinkles her nose. “No?”

Just then, the bell rings. Sohyun immediately stands up, and heads for the door. “I’ll see you later, then―”

“Wait!”

The girl turns around, enquiring look on her face.

“I, uh,” Kyumi falters, “what class are you in?”

“1/3,” Sohyun replies cheerfully, before making her way out of the class. “I’ll see you later, okay!”

1/3.

That’s also Jongup’s class...

 

__________________

Kim Himchan is just about to enter his class when a girl bumps into him. Instinctively, he grabs the girl’s shoulders, steadying her.

“Are you oka―” “I’m so s―”

Both of them freeze when their eyes meet, and Himchan feels the girl stiffen in his grasp.

“No,” the girl whispers almost inaudibly, then tries to push herself away, but somehow, Himchan doesn’t want to let go.

“Yah!”

A second later, someone wrenches Himchan away from the girl and starts pulling her down the corridor, away from him.

Himchan stands there, staring helplessly at the backing figure of Jung Sohyun.
 

__________________

They come to an abrupt stop after turning several corners, and Sohyun walks right into her saviour.

“Yah,” Yoo Youngjae starts, analysing his little sister’s expression, “yah, Jung Sohyun!”

She looks up.

“Don’t let him get the better of you, okay?”

“But...” she utters, it coming out weakly. Youngjae doesn’t think twice before he pulls her into a hug, rubbing small circles on her back.

“You’ve done it before, you can do it again, right?”

He can feel her nodding into his shoulder, and he pulls back, smiling.

“Okay, let’s go play!” Youngjae announces, pulling Sohyun once more at the wrist, towards one of the less commonly used exits he knows that students use to escape school during school hours.

“But Daehyun oppa―”

“He can go home himself.”

“But―”

“Fine, we’ll come back later.”

A somewhat lightened expression appears on Sohyun’s face as she starts to follow her brother, instead of getting pulled, and Youngjae can feel this small voice in his head going all mission accomplished!

Even if Daehyun is not here, I’m here, okay?

___________________________________

a/n;