Even back during the years when I was still unwillingly active in practicing ballet, I did not particularly thought of myself as an excellent student. I had always been showcasing average skills within my movements and it was quite safe to say that I had blended in well to barely keep myself within the school for quite a long period of time. It was strictly similar to how I would define my skills in fine arts. Most of my artworks were basically average as well, easily forgotten even if seen during exhibitions. It had always been barely enough to keep my within a university, and somehow graduate.

Among the fine arts student in the Faculty of Fine Arts, I did not stood out as the one with excellent grades or the one who surprised the most with amazing artworks. I had always been the one at the back row, merely finishing certain assignments or achieving B or C grades occasionally. I did not like being in the spotlight, because if I ever did, I would still be a ballerina.

The first class for the Wednesday morning had been cancelled on certain reasons I did not bother with the detail, yet most of the students who had been inside the lecture hall had decided not to leave at all, as it was still somehow raining heavily outside.

Bo-ram was sitting quietly in her seat which was exactly beside mine while we chose to sit together at the back row just beside the high windows, revising through a new thick reference book of which I highly assumed would be on surrealism she had borrowed from the library a day earlier. She had thought that the time could be used wisely with studying for an upcoming test I would sure enough to barely pass, of which I had sarcastically protested.

“I don’t think there is anything real enough in surrealism except for my ability to write a short two paragraph essay for the test.”

I had protested, only to be flicked by Bo-ram with her mechanical pencil on my forehead. It still throbbed in slight pain when I turned my face away from her, shifting my sight onto the two male students at the front row as they passionately talked about a certain topic of conversation of which I could not quite grasp from the distance. All that I knew, they both looked a bit too lively for the gloomy rainy day.

“Kim Hye-young,”

Almost everyone within the lecture hall had turned their heads toward the direction where a voice was heard, calling my name out loud. I had almost immediately stood up; my sight fell upon a familiar male student—whom previously had became my partner for an art exhibition during our first year unwillingly—who had peered from the front door of the lecture hall.

“What?” I asked, raising my voice slightly.

He raised his right hand, pointing his finger toward his back as he leaned against the doorway. “There is someone here who wants to see you,” he explained.

I reluctantly turned toward Bo-ram, noticing that she had pulled her attention away from her notes and was looking back at me with her usual widened eyes. It seemed as those eyes of hers were silently asking, what was going on and all I did was shrugged and made my way toward the door.

“Who is it?” I had asked him again while I walked to the door.

“Someone,” he said and grinned, and it was not quite the exact answer I would accept without the urge to make a sarcastic remark about it, but knowing how distant we both were except for casual greetings occasionally, I had decided to drop it all down.

When I approached the door, he had walked inside and left myself to meet whoever there was who wanted to see me personally. I peered outside, only to silently curse under my breath when a man suddenly jumped out from nowhere in front of me. Though, I had wished I had cursed out loud.

“What the ?”

Those three words however, had made its way out from my lips unknowingly. I focused my sight onto the man who was smiling foolishly in front of me, only to allow my brain to process all the details and pointed him out as the one by the name Lee Hong-ki, of whom I had caught reading The Ugly Duckling inside the library approximately a week earlier.

“Nice to meet you too,” he had said annoyingly with almost a singing tune, while still smiling at me with such a bright expression on his face, it had almost blinded my eyes if I had stared long enough.

At least it was still good to know some people were not affected by the horrible weather.

I began to tuck both of my hands into the side pockets of my dark green cargo jacket, absent mindedly shuffling some coins with the fingers of my right hand within the pocket. “How did you know my name?” I asked firmly, if not almost as if I was secretly angry.

“You don’t think I could find you, is it?” He asked back cheerfully, instead of getting directly to the answer I had wanted. He smiled, and I desperately wanted him to simply stop the bright act in front of me. I wished I could slap him, just for the convenience of wiping that foolishly charming smile of his off his face.

“How did you know my name and what do you want?” I purposely emphasized the same words I had asked.

He ignored my questions yet for the second time, pretending as if he did not hear me. Maybe he had suddenly become deaf, but I would not dare to think that far. “I can’t believe that you’re a fine arts student,” he exclaimed, much to my annoyance.

I did not quite had a firm excuse to force him out from my sight, because I had no class to attend as it was cancelled earlier and I had nothing better to do inside the lecture hall except for wishing I had the ability to overhear the conversations between other students who seemed to live a better life than I did. It was all due to that, that I found myself stuck with this particular pretty boy.

“Don’t you find it exhausting to always have that smile on your face?” I had mentally reminded myself not to ask, yet the question still peculiarly slipped through my lips with an ease. Even stranger was that I found my cheek to turn unexplainably warm after I had asked the question.

“No,” he answered with a short yet satisfying answer.

And I did not dare myself to ever ask it again.

“What brings you here exactly?”

He shuffled in his position, before he surprisingly handed me over what seemed to be a small notebook. I had stared at it as if it would grow thorns and furs, clenching my teeth in anticipation as I absolutely had knew nothing about what Hong-ki had intended, especially with the notebook.

“Le Vilain Petit Canard,” he had pronounced those French words with his thick Korean ascent. Actually, he had pronounced it all wrong I had to mentally remind myself not to burst into a laugh because it would be awfully offensive.

I hesitantly reached for the notebook in his hand, unknowingly brushed the tip of my fingers against his smooth ones. His hand was surprisingly cold, but it could only happen due to the weather. “Must have taken you years to perfect that pronunciation,” I cynically remarked, only to be dismissed by Hong-ki who had probably mistaken my words for something else.

“Your translation of Le Vilain Petit Canard,” he answered happily.

Wow, he was so energetic it could almost make me crazy.

Finally, it all became to make sense. I had remembered the scene when we were in the Literature section of the library, when I had accused him of not knowing French as to be caught reading The Ugly Duckling and only to be told that he would prove his ability to read French by translating a couple of pages from the French copy of the popular tale of misfit.

“Oh,” I muttered nonchalantly.

“I translated the whole book,” he explained later.

I had almost foolishly choked on my own saliva when I heard him well enough. “You did what?”

“I have translated the whole book,” Hong-ki said, grabbing back the notebook off my hand and flipped through it in front of me. I had seen numerous of pages inside the notebook with handwritten words on each of it, only to partially wish I had not made myself obvious about what I had thought of him. “Just because halfway through it, I found the story as very engaging,” he had added when he took notice of my reaction.

“There is nothing engaging about The Ugly Duckling,” I smirked.

“Obviously you have been reading the wrong version of The Ugly Duckling then,” Hong-ki replied almost instantly.

I snatched the notebook back from his grasp and flipped through the pages nonchalantly, still could not bring myself to believe that the same pretty boy who I had said not to understand a single French word had diligently translated and rewritten a whole book by himself. His handwriting was almost unreadable, as it would somehow hurt my eyes if I read through it for an hour straight.

“Awesome handwriting,” it was sarcastic remark.

“Thanks,” but it was clear enough that he did not understand sarcasm in its purest form.

I glanced up from the notebook in my hand and looked at him, still smiling happily as if the whole world would never be able to bother him. I had envied his ability to smile continuously, to act as if nothing would ever matter. Though mostly, I had envied him for owning legs that were thinner than mine.

“You do understand French,” he said.

I nodded my head lightly. “Yeah,” it was not as if I was proud that I could somehow understand French. I did studied a lot in my earlier years, and did not particularly spent much of my time doing anything else than just that.

“You do fine arts and speak French,” he stated the obvious.

“You have a problem with it?” I was feeling uncomfortable.

He immediately shook his head, still smiling at that though. I watched him pulled out his mobile phone from the back pocket of his jeans, going through it for a moment while I awkwardly shifted my sight off him and onto the freshmen who were going up the staircase not far from the lecture hall.

“You owe me,” Hong-ki suddenly said.

I widened my eyes, almost mimicking the usual curious expression Bo-ram had. “What do you mean?”

He boldly reached out and grabbed my left hand with his right hand, forcing me to uncurl my stiffed fingers and turned my palm upward. I wanted to scream for his brave act of doing whatever he wanted without having the need to ask, but I had been shut off words when he placed his mobile phone on my palm. The gadget lay lifelessly on my palm, its screen brightened as I looked at it.

“Your number,” Hong-ki explained as if it would answer my risen curiosity.

I continued to stare at him, unable to say a word. Was it a part of the deal, I had forced myself to remember any of the details I may had somehow forgotten from the days I had first met this bright pretty boy. Yet I could not find a word that would illustrate a moment when I had promised him for my phone number. And then I realized I had been tricked.

“No,” I said.

His expression finally changed, and he appeared slightly disappointed. “Why?”

“Because I don’t know you,”

He grinned at my quick respond, without knowing that it was rather offensive, at least for me. I stared at him, finally making an eye contact that was firm enough as if I willingly allowed myself to drown within the depth of his eyes. Amazingly, he really did have a beautiful pair of eyes. Oh well, another feature of this pretty boy to envy anyway.

“Lee Hong-ki,” he had answered back with his cheerful tone. I swore, if his voice could transform into objects, it would be those inflatable beach balls that would fill the hallway and bounce at every hit. “I am a third-year student in Film & Theatre and I want to be your friends,” I had watched the movements of his lips with every word he had said.

“Film & Theatre,” I purposely said those words.

Hong-ki simply nodded his head.

“I don’t make friends with snobs from Film & Theatre,”

“But I am not a snob,” he had protested.

I would agree on it too, because he did not quite fit into the category of those snobs within the Faculty of Film & Theatre. Most of the students thought too highly of themselves, as if they were certain that one day they would become exactly like Steven Spielberg or Baz Luhrmann with their pieces of junk they thought the audience would like. Hong-ki however, did not even look as if he would write a screenplay.

But then again, he did translate a whole French back into Korean while he looked as if he could not understand a word in French.

“Just your number,” he had actually begged, minus the part where he kneeled down for it. “I deserve something in return of proving to you that I actually do understand French,” he had continuously pleaded, almost catching the attentions of other students around us.

Ah, I knew where everything was going then.

“Fine,” I dialed my phone number with his mobile phone, saving it within his contact before I handed it back to him. He took it back, looking at the screen of his mobile phone with a look of disbelief on his face.

“Hye-young,” he had called out for my name.

I hissed, “Now you could stay out of my life permanently.”

“Hey,” he had been awfully oblivious to how his existence irritated me. “How about we go out for lunch together?” Hong-ki had asked, looking at me straight into my eyes with loads of anticipation. I would almost felt as if I was about to crush an innocent child’s dream if I had directly said no.

But well, there was nothing particularly innocent about a pretty boy with outrageous fashion sense.

“No,” there he had it, a direct rejection.

“Come on,” he had pleaded, trying to use the same way he did in getting my number.

I glared at him angrily, “I don’t like you.”

It had almost surprised me even, as to how boldly I had mentioned those words to him. I had not even shifted my sight off him as I allowed the words to come out of my lips. I unknowingly clenched my fists and turned around, did not want to make any more obvious attachment to the particular pretty boy. I got rid of one, and I did not think the one by the name Lee Hong-ki would be any trouble.

I was already walking away from him, halfway back into the lecture hall when I heard his voice all loud and clear, almost screaming out to catch all the unwanted attention from everyone. I had not dared myself to turn around, yet it was not because of embarrassment. If I had turned to face him at that moment, his pretty face might as well be horribly mutilated.

He would not want that to happen.

“Why do you hate me?” He had asked, his voice strained with anger.

Ah, about time he realized I really did not like him and his entire existence.

I disregarded all the eyes that had stared at me, as if I had really beaten up an innocent child into some sort of disgusted torture. I regained my composure, trying all that I could to simply shake away the sudden and desperate urge to really punch Lee Hong-ki. He had made my resentment toward pretty boy grown faster than a wildfire.

It took me quite some time, but I was able to turn back to him and uttered those words clearly enough to let him and everyone else that may had been listening heard me well enough.

“I wish all the pretty boys like you will just disappear.”

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*This chapter has not been proof-read. I apologize for all the grammar mistakes and errors that are present in this chapter. Thank you for reading, and especially for the new subscribers.

-Title is taken from the song And Then, Came Then by The Chariot.