"You should have lunch with us, why do you always sit alone?" Hye Ri started pushing me with her tray the other way, diverting me from my original path to the empty lunch table at the corner of the school's cantine. 

"But I'm okay, though..."

"Well, but I'm not." She hurried her pace and walked beside me. "Please save me from becoming a future third wheel~" She whimpered, pouting.

"Huh?" I chuckled. "What do you mean by third wheel?"

"See for yourself." She whispered before putting down her tray on the same table Myungsoo and Ha Jin were having lunch.

Third wheel because of those?

I tried to hold back my sulky expression as I sat right in front of Ha Jin, Hye Ri next to me.

Ha Jin raised her eyebrows before smiling.

"Hey," I said.

"Byunghun." Myungsoo said, nodding once, as if acknowledging my presence. I chuckled — It was funny! 

"You guys are classmates," Hye Ri stated as she stirred her rice inside the soup. "You should be friends by now, but I never see you together."

I awkwardly shifted in my seat, focusing on my food, or at least trying.

"Byunghun is too quiet, he doesn't talk much."

"Well..." I glanced up to see him shrugging. "You don't, either, so..."

"You're good for each other, the silent duo. You could get popular — the cold faced ones, prince aura." Hye Ri nodded as she ate. "Oh, wait, silent duo? Add Ha Jin in there."

"That was low." I said, glancing at Ha Jin, who was quietly (well, obviously) eating her food, almost absent-minded. She didn't react to what her friend had said; maybe she was already used to it? Either way, it made me feel bad for her.

"Yeah." Myungsoo said, showing some emotion by frowning at Hye Ri. He sleepily blinked. "You should be careful and think before saying things like that. You could hurt Ha Jinnie here by saying things like those." 

Ha Jinnie. 

Ha Jinnie.

Whoa, that gave me goosebumps. I tried not to show my surprise as he said that. Ha Jin didn't even react, and just focused on eating, not even looking around. So, I decided to finally ask something that was maybe unnecessary but that had been bothering me ever since the other day:

"So, are you guys dating?" I asked as I took my glass of water to my lips, sipping from it.

It was a funny scene, and I would have laughed if I wasn't feeling so disappointed myself: Myungsoo discreetly choked on his food and lowered his head, coughing. Ha Jin slightly blushed, with her eyes wide open, and incessantly shook her head, staring at me.

I tilted my head, waiting for an answer, staring back at Ha Jin. It didn't come.

"They aren't." Hye Ri answered in a monotone voice and was going to fill with rice before adding, "Yet." She playfully glanced at Ha Jin, her cheeks puffed because of the huge portion she had just ate.

Ha Jin squinted her eyes at me. What? I mouthed. The following was funny: she pointed to me and then to herself, and mouthed you, me, later.

"Be it." I nodded as I smiled.

"What?" Both Myungsoo and Hye Ri asked, as they didn't realized Ha Jin and I had been (even though briefly) talking.

"Nothing." I said, turning to my food, supressing yet another smile.

"Why did you do that?"

"What?"

We were walking by the school campus, on the back of the building in itself. I stopped to wait until Ha Jin was finished with her writing.

"That! On the cantine, if we were dating. Why did you do that?"

"Oh, that." Well, of course I knew what she was talking about, but she was reacting so... weirdly over it that I decided that I wouldn't acknowledge it so easily. "But why are you getting so mad over it?" We paused again.

"It was SO embarassing. Please don't do that in the future." She glared at me.

I dryly chuckled — I wasn't liking it. "There's nothing bad about it, why are you overreacting?" I put my hands on my pockets and strided forward, eyes locked ahead of us. "It's as if you liked him or something." I said absent-mindedly.

It took me a while to notice that I couldn't hear Ha Jin's steps. I stopped my pace and glanced back, to see her a few meters behind me, looking at me with a surprised look that slowly turned to a hardcore blush. Then, I was the one with the surprised look. I turned my whole body and walked over to her.

"What, you do?!" I couldn't prevent the sudden rise my voice suddenly suffered. I felt my chest squeeze again, and this time it hurt. I rubbed my hand over it, trying to ease it, but it just wouldn't go away. It was uncomfortable, it... it really hurt. I couldn't control my evident scowl either.

She lowered her head and embarrassingly raised her hand to do a so-so movement with it. She then looked at me with her big, pitiful eyes and bit her lip.

"You like him so-so? What's that? You either like him or you don't." I was slowly getting angry. But not at her — at myself. Why? How would I know that...

She bent over her knees and started writing. I peeked over it as she wrote. "He's really nice to me,"

What, and I'm not?

She kept on writing, unaware that I was looking.

"He has always been nice to me, so I—" She stopped her writing to play with the pen between her fingers (—it got me thinking, for how long has Ha Jin been writing to be in contact with people?—), as if hesitant of what to say. "—I think I fell for him."

Whoa, that... that really hurt. Why? Was it because I was clearly chosen over another boy? But that's more than obvious Byunghun, you've known her for a few weeks now, how the hell did you get your hopes (if that's how you call it...) up when it came to whom Ha Jin liked? You're nothing but her friend — and that, if she considers it that way...

I closed my eyes and bit my lip, turning on my heels to continue our not-as-pleasent-as-it-was-before walk around the campus. I heard her fast steps until she was walking by my side. 

We stayed silent for a few minutes, and I only broke it when we were already inside the school building. As we were walking along the corridors, she fastened her steps until she was facing me, with her back to whatever was ahead of us, and then cocked her head to the side, tilting it to the back afterwards, mouthing 'What?' as she smirked in a mischievously way, but then turned it into a grin.

It...— Honestly, it took me a while to give in and eventually smile back. I was sad, it really affected me and I didn't like that at all.

She ran past me, grabbed my shoulders and strongly shook me. I turned to her with a confused look on, my frown never leaving my face. She mouthed a non-stopping "What, what, what, what, whaaaaat?!", with a rather frustrated expression.

I chuckled, "What, what?"

She then pushed the corner of her lips up, with the help of both her index fingers, ending up with a goofy smile. "Smile!", she mouthed.

I smiled, "I am!"

She smiled and nodded in aproovement, switching her face to mockery for a few seconds, and then laughing.

I lightly pushed her by hitting on her arm. "Why do you do that? Stop mocking me." I laughed, as she shrugged, silently laughing as well.

We hung around until the bell was heard, meaning our lunch break had come to an end. I walked her to her classroom, and, a few doors away from it, we said our goodbyes, not sure if we were going to see each other for the rest of the day.

A/N: omg, omg, my Chrome had some problems, so I've been using Firefox for a while now. Today I resolved the problem with Chrome and it's so much easier to update stories with this browser! The italics are kept, while on Firefox I had to change it one by one xD EDIT: Ughh, but it doesn't keep the paragraphs, how annoying. It was too perfect... ahahah :)

Thank you so much for everything, really! I hope you like this one :)