There was once a time when I had diligently drawn what I had assume to be an image of a duck, briefly after I had discovered a book by the title The Ugly Duckling in the library of my school when I was about ten year-old. Back then, I thought the story was strangely heartbreaking. I had not known about heartbreaks, but I could feel my heart twisted every time I thought about how lonely the duck would feel as a misfit. I had drawn the duck within a page of my notebook, with the intention to show it to my parents when I returned home during the Christmas holidays.

But my parents were not delighted by my newfound skill, and they began to ask if I had taken up arts seriously at the tender age of ten. I had denied it but they had assumed I had found something else that may be more interesting in ballet. My father had dismissed the drawing, telling me that it had looked stupid and I was wasting my time. My mother had torn the page off my notebook, telling me I should use all the time I have to do ballet.

My parents did not realize what they had done back then, was the catapult that made me decided I wanted to quit doing ballet and pursued my newly developed passion in fine arts instead.

And they could have not known I had picked up the torn page from the garbage bin and straightened it out, only to have it nicely framed and hung on the wall of my apartment as a reminder.

“Excuse me,” I had hesitantly approached a girl who looked kind enough just before she walked into one of those lecture halls along the corridor of the Faculty of Music building. She had turned toward me almost immediately, with her eyes widened when she realized I had stood dangerously closed enough to her.

She shifted uncomfortably in her position before she awkwardly smiled. “How may I help you?”

“Do you know Song Seunghyun?” I asked, unknowingly allowing my eyes to shift down onto the medium-sized case she was holding in her left hand. Violin, I had assumed.

“He’s in my class,” she answered with the awkward smile still peculiarly etched on her lips. I had to force myself to smile back at her, just as a polite gesture and not because I had brought myself to actually like her. The girl pushed opened the door of the lecture hall and peered in, only to turn back to me in a second later. “He’s not here yet but he’ll be here soon,” she said.

I smacked my lips, only to find my act as a bit foolish especially in front of a person whom I had barely known. “I could wait for him here, right?” I asked again, only to secretly wish I had not been much of an annoyance.

“Yeah,” she nodded fast, her long black hair swung back and forth while at it.

She nonchalantly waved her right hand at me before she walked into the lecture hall and had the door slammed at my face. Nice, I thought for a moment before I turned and leaned my back against the wall just beside the closed door. I looked around, taking notice of the continuous flow of the music students along the corridor. Some were carrying different sizes of cases, while some were walking around with books thick enough to have given me a brain hemorrhage if it ever fell on my head by mistake.

I had looked rather idiotic to stand there by myself. I stood there, holding onto an obvious gig bag in my left hand, with my shabby tote bag hauled on my right shoulder. I had looked like a complete misfit among all of those music students, almost like the ugly duckling itself. I stared down blankly at my pair of white Converse; both were sprinkled with various hues of paint.

While I was foolishly humming a tune of an upbeat electro music I had heard once in a fancy club just a few walks away from the bar I had met the pretty boy bartender, my eyes had caught the presence of him. He was walking down the corridor, carrying along what seemed like a shoulder bag from afar. He had not brought along his electric guitar, or the loud best friend of his that I really wished to slap just to shut his mouth up.

It could be one of those few rare moments where I had felt incredibly relieved to see someone I did not particularly like. I began to regain my composure and rearranged the words I had wanted to say to him, especially about his gig bag.

“Hey,” I had not intended to greet him like an old friend—because I would never want a friend like him, ever—even more to unknowingly smile at him like a freak. I wished I could slap myself, or bury my head somewhere no other existence would manage to find me.

He approached me, both hands tucked into the side pockets of his brownish khaki jacket. He was still terribly putting on the same stoic expression, but I assumed that was simply the way his face naturally looked. “Hey,” unexpectedly, he had greeted me back though it was plain monotonously.

“Here,” I pulled the gig bag from my back and handed it over to him, still cleverly keeping the stained part hidden.

“Thanks,” he had taken it, managing a simple gratitude as his calloused fingers accidentally brushed mine. The tips of his fingers were peculiarly warm, as it brought memories of a summer day instantly into my mind.

I did not know why, but I had held my breath for approximately fifteen seconds when he flipped the gig bag in his hands around. Both of our attentions were then fell upon the front part of the gig bag where I had stained with the yellowish white paint off my paint brush. Surely, I could say confidently that I had fixed it, and by fixing it I actually meant painting something on the stain instead.

There was an image of a duck, painted nicely on top of the stain on his gig bag.

“I thought I have told you to fix it,” he had said firmly, yet not shifting his sight off the dried acrylic paint that had permanently marked his gig bag in the form of a painted duck.

“I did,” I answered back almost immediately.

He slowly lifted his face up, directly putting his sight onto my presence. He looked as if he was about to dissect me on a Petri dish, cutting me off until there was nothing else to cut. I had assumed he would be a bit skeptical about the duck, but I had not quite brought myself to expect he would be furious. But then again, it was not quite a solution to a fix an ordinary music student would be able to understand.

I had taken to notice how he ran the back of his thumb on the dried painting on his gig bag. It was awfully similar to how he had touched the dove badge I had seen him pinned on his bartender shirt on the night we first met. Perhaps he had a particular way of holding onto things as if it was all alive, with such gentleness and an unexplainable sensibility.

He glared at me again with his pair of expressionless eyes, as if those eyes could somehow magically burn a hole on my forehead. “There’s a duck on my gig bag,” he had said monotonously, and it had begun to terribly annoy me to the level where I wanted him to shut up.

“Unfortunately, the stain is permanent and all I could do to hide the ugly smudge is to paint on it,” I had explained thoroughly to him about the image of the duck I had painted on his gig bag. After all, a drawing of a duck looked way much better than a paint smudge generally. “It’s your fault trying to make an art student fixed something unfixable,” I added, my voice had laced with apparent anger and annoyance.

There was a moment of temporary silence between the two of us, as I watched him intently while he examined the image I had drawn. It was a childish decision, but when there seemed to be no other impossible options available, even a childish one would look completely fine.

Yet I had felt an unknown nudge within my heart when I saw his melancholic expression, though it was partially hidden behind the fringe of his brownish hair. He was looking at the painted duck on his gig bag, almost as if he wanted to remember every color I had used, the every of my paint brush and embedded it permanently in his mind.

It was not difficult to say that he had looked slightly sad.

I had desperately wanted to ask him again about him, being the bartender I had met on the previous nights. But something was making it impossible for me to ask, and it made me thought it might as well never to be spoken again. Hey, at least I knew I won’t be meeting the pretty bartender again due to my habit of constantly visiting from one bar to another.

“Hey,” I called out for him, watching him startled and immediately looked up and focused his sight onto my direction. He had brightly returned to show his usual stoic expression, acting as if I had not seen it all. “If you really don’t like the duck, I could replace your gig bag with a new one,” I had added, simply because I felt extremely guilty for an unknown reason.

“It’s okay,” he replied, hauling the strap of the gig bag onto his left shoulder while he shook his head.

Upon listening to his respond, I had hesitantly nodded my head and quietly glanced down onto the cheap watch I had worn around my right wrist. It was fifteen minutes after nine, and I had known it long enough to realize I was horribly late for my usual morning class.

I might as well just skip it.

“Song Seunghyun,”

Both of us had heard a small feminine voice called out for his name throughout the faint noises along the corridor, and almost simultaneously we turned our heads toward the particular direction. I had shifted my sight onto the surprising presence of a beautiful girl with dark hair pulled up to a tight ponytail, wearing something that was ridiculously tight under an ed trench coat that looked ridiculously out of season and a pair of fancy flats.

She actually looked as if she had insanely jumped out from a fashion spread in a fashion magazine, or simply someone who had jumped out from a television commercial that advertise some kind of popular hair care products. It was not difficult to notice her beauty, because almost all of the other students along the hallway had turned their attention toward her as well.

Oh great, another beautifully perfect species.

“I thought you were in class,” she said cheerfully once she approached the two of us, standing approximately inches away from Seunghyun, of whom she had fixed her sight on even from the beginning.

“Not yet,” he answered her nonchalantly, turning his sight onto my presence while at it.

I smacked my lips together yet again but this time losing all of the foolish thought about it while I uncomfortably shifted within my standing position, tightening my sweaty grip onto the strap of my tote bag. The girl whom I had not known glanced sideway toward my direction, only to allow me to see the slight smirk she had on her bright red lips.

was getting on my nerve without even saying a word.

“I should leave,” I had slurred those words while I tried the hardest on not to bother myself with the girl who had really made it into my list of people who I could hate without an appropriate reason, even more when I knew she purposely wrapped her right arm around his.

Pretty species stayed together, that was what I had thought.

“Yeah,” the way he had instantly answered back seemed to vaguely sound as if he had wanted me to immediately disappear from his sight as well.

“Who is this girl?” She asked, her voice laced with the plentiful amount of liveliness and sort of cutesy tone I could barely bring myself to ever like. I slightly winced when she asked about my identity, yet did not even bother to look at me properly once.

I was about to open my mouth, having all the sarcastic remarks I could possibly wanted to say exactly at the tip of my tongue, before he acted fast enough to respond to her question, leaving myself hung wordlessly. “She is just someone I know,” he had said and I had not had the other words to speak.

In the same, I cynically smiled at her as if it was my pleasure to have met her. She had completely dismissed it, obviously could not be bothered even by my sarcastic way of making myself obvious that I really did not like her. However, it was about the same time I had taken notice of what she was holding in her other hand. My breathing hitched, only because I have not seen that in such a long time.

She was holding a pale pink silky ballet shoes.

“Goodbye,” I had quietly uttered my farewell, making my way out from their sight as I needed to retreat to where I would not somehow constantly thought of myself as a misfit. He had slightly nodded his head; meanwhile she did not even bother to watch as I walked away.

“I did not know you know someone like her,” I unknowingly winced when I overheard her, emphasizing the last word in her sentence as if she was referring me to a disgusting creature that was there to drain her blood out.

I purposely slowed my pace as I walked away, trying to listen to the answer he was about to give. I imagined his stoic expression as he said, “She’s nice.”

And I would punch whoever dared to comment on the sudden warm sensation that crept onto my cheeks as I strangely blushed upon listening to the remark he had actually made about me. I had heard her scoffed painfully, almost as if the simple remark he had made would somehow kill her in the process.

It was easy trying to avoid attention as I slowly walked through the hallway, making my way directly towards the exit with the intention to hide myself in the library while I waited for my best friend to finish her class and brought me the important notes. I hung my head low, allowing my long untidy hair to fall off onto my shoulder.

I found it strange, but somehow I could still hear their conversation even when I thought I had quite a distant a way from where they were standing, as she continuously holding him as if he was about to escape.

“Will you come tonight and watch my performance?” I heard her ask, and it was easy to point out what she said as a ballet performance. I may had abandoned ballet completely, but somehow I had thought about how good she was, if she could ever be at the same par as I did when I was still a ballerina. She made me thought about my capability.

Pretty boy and his unknown likeness toward ballerina, and to think I was once the exact same kind of girl as that girl by his side.

I did not expect to hear his answer though, but then I had stopped in my track. It happened only because I had tucked my hand into the back pocket of my pale colored jeans and realized I had not given him the 1200₩ I previously owed him when he paid for my beer.

That had just given me another reason to meet him again.

Along the same time, I still somehow managed to catch the bits of his answer. I did not turn back—of course not, especially when she was still there with him—yet I seemed to have been glued onto the floor underneath, not knowing how I should actually think about this particular pretty boy.

He had said it out loud without even the slightest tone of hesitation, “You know that I really hate ballet.”

For once, someone actually did have the same opinion as mine.

*This chapter has not been proofread yet, due to it being written and published while I am in my office during work hours. Thank you for the lovely comments, I appreciate it all. Please apologize for the obvious grammar mistakes.

-The title of this chapter is taken from the song Stop and Stare by OneRepublic.