You are thirteen years old, and Chanyeol is fourteen. The two of you now attend the same school. You felt happy at first to be in the same school as him. When you were apart, you felt lonely because you didn’t have many friends. At least now, you know at least one person. Chanyeol is popular in school; nearly everyone wants to be his friend. And to your chagrin, there are many girls that like him as well. You can’t blame them. He had always been cute as a little boy, but seeing him now with your preteen eyes, you see that he is beginning to become handsome.

And at this age, you are wise enough to know that you don’t love him yet, not in the way that a thirteen-year-old girl can love a fourteen-year-old boy. But you hope you will. You hope that someday you can fall in love with him, and perhaps he will fall in love with you, too. For now, you settle with your crush on him, embarrassing and ridiculous as it is.

You try to approach him and make pleasant conversation with him in the halls and during lunch time. He always seems so friendly with everyone else. He is talkative, and funny, and dreamy. He is talented on the drums, as well, and makes all the girls fall for him. But whenever you try to talk to him, he closes up and doesn’t want anything to do with you. You figure it’s because he’s still shy around you. He was shy with you as a little boy, too. Perhaps he still hasn’t grown out of that stage yet.

When Valentine’s day comes around, you take a deep a breath. Like the other girls in the school, you want to confess your feelings to him on that day, the day that’s set apart to celebrate love. You blush at the thought. Not to be outdone by the other girls, you rush to a nearby gift store one afternoon and buy everything you might need; extravagant and expensive chocolate and other candies; a little teddy bear with a message in a bottle for your confession; a single red heart-shaped balloon; and of course, the most beautiful card you could find. All these things, paid for with your own allowance.

You can feel your heart beating in your chest and you feel so satisfied and happy because you are finally going to tell Chanyeol the truth. You longed to see how he would react. He would be surprised wouldn’t he? He had known you for a whole ten years. You felt like the girl-next-door, confessing to him like this all of a sudden. You felt so confident.

You took out a pen and began writing in the card: “Dear Chanyeol, I’ve never done this before and I’m a little nervous. But I think I believe in you enough to know that you wouldn’t purposely try to make feel foolish. So here it goes, here comes the truth, the truth I’ve wanted to tell you for so long. I was scared at first, but I’m not scared anymore. I like you. There, I said it. I like you, and I have for the longest time. I don’t want to be a burden on you, I just wanted to tell you because I thought you deserved to know. And it’s not just a simple crush; I honestly care about you. If you ever need me, I’ll always be here for you. Happy Valentine’s Day.”

The next day, before school starts, you leave it in front of his locker and then go about your day as normal, eager to see his reaction. Half the day passes, and you think that by now he has seen it, read your confession. There are butterflies in your stomach as you think about him reading that letter. You turn a corner to head toward the hallway where you know his locker is, but when you do, you accidentally bump into someone.

“Oh, sorry—,” you start to say, but you can barely finish before Chanyeol grabs a hold of your arm and begins dragging you toward his locker. You stare up at him for a minute, he who is dragging along as though you were nothing at all. You don’t remember him being this tall, or this strong. He has you by his locker in no time at all and finally lets you go. You stand there while he fidgets with the lock until it opens and the first thing to catch your eye is the present you gave him, sitting in a pile with other gifts he’s received. No doubt there were other confession letters there, too.

Your heart surges with pride for a split second when he reaches over and grabs your present and slams the locker on the rest of them. Smiling, you prepare yourself to hear what he has to say. But instead, he just holds the present out in front of you.

“Here,” he says plainly, holding out the present you gave him. You blink your eyes, not understanding. “Take it,” he urges you. You use both your hands to push it back towards him.

“No,” you say. “I… it’s for you, you’re supposed to keep it.” Chanyeol swats your hand away and holds the present back out to you, more firmly this time. There is a serious expression on his face that seems out of place. When you watched him interact with other kids he was always so cheerful and so happy. Why does he suddenly look so somber and nervous around you?

“I don’t want it,” he says, and your heart sinks. Surely he didn’t mean that.

“Did…” you begin to say. “Did you read it?”

Chanyeol swallows a lump in his throat and dares not look you in the eye. “Yes,” he says, and then clears his throat. “Just take it back,” he says. “I…I’ve been trying to hide it all day… and it’s getting troublesome.”

You bit your lip trying to keep yourself from bursting out crying right there on the spot. Weakly, you stretch your arms out to catch the present. Chanyeol releases his grip and the gift, the single heart balloon which has popped; the red teddy bear, the chocolate, and the card all fall. But your grip is too weak and it slips out of your hand and lands on the hard linoleum floor. The chocolates break upon impact, falling out of the makeshift basket. On the floor, the present looks just as crushed and broken as your heart does. A single tear falls out of your eye, a single tears that does not escape Chanyeol’s notice.

He bites his lip, too. “Yah,” he says to catch your attention, but when you turn to him and he sees you red-rimmed eyes, he doesn’t know what he wants to say. He doesn’t like this anymore than you do. So instead, the bell rings, and he turns around and runs off, leaving you alone with your rejected feelings.

After what seems like forever, you finally bend down and begin picking up the pieces of your gift. You gather them up in your hands, the shattered chocolate bar, the beat up teddy bear and you toss into the nearest trash can. You don’t want to see them again. You search around for the card, but it’s not anywhere on the floor. It must have been the first thing he got read of when he spotted the present.

At night, you cry in bed, wondering what in the world you had done wrong. You were nice to Chanyeol, you gave him gifts, showed him you cared. But in the end he didn’t like you. He always ended up liking something or someone else better. You like telling yourself, when you saw Chanyeol with other people, with other girls, that you must mean more to him than they do. You knew him before he was as handsome as he was now, knew him before they did. Maybe you were feeding yourself false hopes.