If you guys read the story message thingy, no, I didn't update yesterday even if I was supposed to D'X I'm sorry to all the people that I told I'd update3 but I HAVE A GOOD REASON. I was, like, really, really sick, and the day before that I basically overdosed on my medication, which I don't really think that helped with anything ;______; 3 so please excuse this chapter from being so short~ I still feel like throwing up right now lol.

When Hwayoung had arrived at school the next day, everybody gave her strange looks, smiling to her face but whispering behind her back.

               It was all expected because, after all, Ryu Hwayoung never missed a day of school, not until now. And it was because of what exactly? Lee Sungjong.

               “Nobody’s here yet,” she whispered to herself, slugging her feet over to her usual desk in the back. She side glanced Sungjong’s desk, remembering how she woke up early, early in the morning to find an empty chair beside her.

               She reached over to touch the wood atop it, trying to imagine what had gone through Sungjong’s head yesterday afternoon when she’d told him that her ‘friend’ liked him. Did he even care, to be unbearably honest? Hwayoung doubted it.

               As she heard loud, laughing voices coming in through the door, Hwayoung’s head perked up and she waited for the es to enter.

               “You’re back,” Qri said, rather flatly. The other six girls stopped talking and looked straight.

               “Hwayoung!” Jiyeon screamed randomly, pushing through Eunjung and Hyomin to get to Hwayoung’s desk. Although everybody looked at her weirdly (after all, she was probably the one that hated Hwayoung the most), she didn’t let the smile on her face disappear.

               “Oh my God, so I talked to Sungjong, and GUESS WHAT?!” she shouted, her voice echoing off the walls of the classroom.

               Hwayoung flinched a bit, daring not to look behind Jiyeon’s back at Areum, who obviously had recognized the frightfully familiar name. “O-oh really? What’d-d he say?”

               “MYUNGSOO LIKES ME!”

               “What.” Boram ran from Soyeon’s side to Jiyeon. “Seriously?! And you didn’t tell us? How? What? What happened –“

               “Well, anyways,” Jiyeon interrupted, “he didn’t actually tell me. He gave me this, like, totally obvious hint.”

               “Hint?” Hwayoung asked. That sounded more like what Sungjong would do.

               “Hint,” the reassured. “Anyways, he said the second syllable of the girl’s name started with ‘yeo’.”

               Hwayoung nearly choked on air. Sungjong was smart. “Girl? Are you sure he said girl?”

               “Do I look like a boy to you?!” Jiyeon demanded.

               No, but you obviously don’t look like Sungyeol either, Hwayoung answered in her mind. “So does Myungsoo know?”

               “Myungsoo? Yeah, I tried telling him during lunch, but he kept on having this completely idiotic look on his face. Ugh, he wouldn’t listen to a word I said.”

               “So when are you gonna tell him that you know he likes you?” Soyeon asked, leading the rest of the girls closer to Hwayoung’s desk.

               “Oh, I don’t know,” Jiyeon sighed, flipping her hair as she examined her nails (brat, Hwayoung thought). “I might wait until he asks me out.”

               “Asks you out?” Eunjung repeated, the words playing on her tongue. “Do you really think he’s going to ask you out, with all those guys running after you? Sungyeol told me before that he was unsecure of himself – he isn’t going to confess to you if he doesn’t know that you like him back.”

               With Eunjung’s face appearing, her voice coming clear, and the word ‘Sungyeol’ coming from , Hwayoung felt her bones go stiff and her blood no more.

               Background phrases of “You’re right” and “When should I” and “He’s so cute, all shy!” were excused from Hwayoung’s mind as all that came in was Sungjong, Sungjong, Sungjong.

               He was really taking over her life right now.

               “Look, it’s Sungjong,” Areum’s voice suddenly broke through.

               Hwayoung opened her eyes, watching as a nervous Sungjung criss-crossed through the seats to reach his own, his hand tightly clutching the side of his bag.

               “Yeah, it’s that guy,” Jiyeon said in a tone that clearly implied “I’m better than him, we’re better than him, don’t talk to him”.

               “It’s ‘that guy’, right Hwayoung?”

               Hwayoung shifted her gaze from her desk to Areum, whose glare could burn down buildings. “Y-yeah…”

               “What’s wrong with you two?” Hyomin asked.

               “Nothing!” Hwayoung replied quickly, her eyes darting from Jiyeon back to Areum, as if telling Areum that if anything was spilled, Jiyeon’s nonexistent ‘relationship’ with Myungsoo would be tattered.

“Hwayoung likes Sungjong. Hwayoung likes Sungjong. Hwayoung likes Sungjong.”

               “Yes!” Sungyeol cried, slapping his forehead in annoyance. “You’ve said that a million times already, Myungsoo.”

               “Yeah, but – Hwayoung. She likes Sungjong.”

               “Um, slow much?”

               “But…she…likes…him.”

               “But he,” Sungyeol started, attempting to try a new answer, “likes somebody else.”

               “I’m an idiot,” Myungsoo growled, hitting his head on the desk.

               “Yes, yes you are. Gonna figure out a way to solve this anytime soon?”

               “Solve what?” He asked, lifting his head back up. “I can’t do anything about it!”

               “So you’re basically leaving this all into Hwayoung’s hands,” Sungyeol said slowly, as if unraveling yarn. “You want her to confess.”

               “W-well, yeah.”

               “And how exactly is she going to do that? Think of the you-Jiyeon analogy, idiot. Would Jiyeon ever be able to break us up, even if she confesses?”

               “But…Hwayoung’s nice. Jiyeon’s a .”

               “Hwayoung’s nice to Sungjong,” Sungyeol corrected. “The same way Jiyeon’s nice to you. If I can say so myself, which I can from experience, Hwayoung can be a if she wants.”

               “But…she…her…” Myungsoo, fighting with himself, sighed. “What are we supposed to do?”

               Eyeing his four other friends in the front corner of the room, Sungyeol said, “I think I have an idea.”

Sungjong tilted his pencil, kicking the ground below him in annoyance. School was boring.

               He looked down at the essay he was supposed to be doing, and scrunched his nose up. He hadn’t even written his name yet.

               As he was writing it down, Sungjong realized something.

               He wasn’t even writing his name anymore – he was writing Hwayoung’s. But that made him realize something – it was really pretty. Her name, Hwayoung.

               Like her. Hwayoung was pretty, too.

               Sungjong’s eyes flickered from the girl’s name on his paper to the girl herself. She was leaned over on her desk, her hand just going up and down, depicting the movements of a perfect paragraph. She would stop every few seconds to just breathe and relax, stretching her fingers without laying the pencil down.

               The way her hand moved was just beautiful, too, in its own way. Her mechanical pencil had a little diamond strapped to it, occasionally knocking onto the pencil itself and making a little ‘ting’ sound that nobody could notice unless they were listening for it.

               Sungjong didn’t even question why he was thinking about her so much, he just was. She was something that was always on his mind and never left, like when you’re starving and just the thought of food can’t leave your mind.

               His eyes made a round, glancing at the rest of the Queens. Jiyeon was leaning on her left hand, the pencil in her right lazily writing a word that Sungjong could nearly 100% predict was Kim Myungsoo’s name. Soyeon’s paper was pushed towards the edge of the desk, hovering over the cell phone that the girl had in her hand, making it look as if she was just staring at a blank piece of lined paper. Hyomin didn’t even bother to cover what she was doing, and her paper wasn’t even out. Instead, there was literally an entire makeup stand as she continued adding the stuff to her face. Qri just had her earphones plugged in and, because her desk was against the wall, slept. Boram was continuously braiding her hair, taking it out again, braiding it again – the long going cycle.

               He gulped as he watched the two last girls, Areum and Eunjung. It was Areum he was so afraid of – what was with the girl, honestly. She kept on sending him these unbearably sketchy looks that sent chills down his back.

               Then there was Eunjung.

               No, he didn’t like her. He couldn’t like her – she was…she was Eunjung. Probably the second liked girl in the entire school, there was no way he’d even get a chance with her, so why would he even bother liking her in the first place?

               But then again, no, he didn’t know why he had lied to Hwayoung and said that he’d liked Eunjung. She just seemed so…hopeful. Probably for her friend, but he didn’t deem that as a good enough reason.

               He wasn’t bi as far as he knew. He had liked boys, always liked boys, and would always like boys. There wasn’t a girl anywhere involved.

               But Sungjong just smiled again, for some unknown reason, going back to his blank paper and deciding that if he would go straight (or bi, really) for any girl, it would be Hwayoung.

“It’s really quiet here.”

               Sungjong just nodded in agreement, knowing that Hwayoung could feel him. He was leaned against the bench, with Hwayoung sitting sideways and her head between Sungjong’s and his shoulder.

               They were at the ditch-day place, the little bench beneath the huge tree. The school lay behind them, close enough to walk to in two minutes though far enough to be separated from everybody else.

               “You don’t hang out with them anymore?” He asked, though he already knew the answer.

               “I don’t think they even care.” She paused a bit, then talked again. “Areum probably knows where I’m at, though. Myungsoo and Sungyeol keep them busy enough to not question about me.”

               “Do you mind?”

               “Mind?” Hwayoung snorted, bringing her arm up to lay it on her forehead. “They don’t give a damn about me. Jiyeon only has because of my knowledge of Myungsoo’s crush. By the way, that was very stealthy of you.”

               “Glad you thought so. Took me a while to come up with that.”

               “You ever think she’s going to figure out it’s Sungyeol and not her?”

               “Never. Too self absorbed.”          

               Hwayoung nodded, satisfied with that answer. “Can I have one?”

               Sungjong, knowing that she was talking about, took a brownie from his bag and lifted it to , allowing her to take a bite of it. “My mom made them.”

               “She’s a good cook,” Hwayoung said, swallowing it with a hard gulp. “Baker. Same difference.”

               “I helped her.”

               “That’s nice of you.”

               Sungjong just smiled, giving her another bite. “I actually didn’t do anything.”

               “Didn’t think you did.”

               Still smiling, Sungjong didn’t answer, just continued letting her take little bites of the dessert until that particular piece wasn’t there anymore.

               “My dad wants to have you over sometime this week,” Hwayoung said after swallowing the last piece. “Says you can bring Ren if you want.”

               “Want another one?” Sungjong asked. Hwayoung nodded and he took another piece from his bag. “I don’t know if I’d bring Ren. He isn’t all too fond of you, if you know what I mean.”

               “I…know,” Hwayoung said, a little conflicted. The brownie appeared in front of again, and she opened it, taking a tiny bite. “Don’t tell my dad that, though. He still thinks I’m his little angel that makes friends with everybody.”

               “Huh. I wonder why.” He fed her another piece, his eyes still locked on the sky before them. “Tell him I’ll come tomorrow. Without Ren.”

               “Without Ren,” Hwayoung nodded, swallowing.

               Another few seconds of silence and Sungjong said, “Are you free after school? Ren showed me this super good ice cream place.”

               “Is it the one on the corner?”

               “Yep.”

               “Can’t,” she said, taking another bite of the brownie before Sungjong pulled back again. “The rest of them always go there.”

               “Makes enough sense. How about I go home, you go home, and we meet up at school tomorrow?”

               Hwayoung laughed, saying, “Yeah, sure, that works.” 

I told you. I'm, like, messed up in the mind ;_; I wanted to update on Halloween so that you guys could all tell me your Halloween stories, but I couldn't! So you can still tell me, right? :) I'd love to hear them.♥

(have you realized I'm not using 'y'all' anymore. apparently my friend said that asians shouldn't say that =.=")

so we've learned that jongie isn't actually bi, and if he was, it'd be for Hwayoung :3 and yeollie has something in mind♥ woohoo~

I'M SORRY FOR THE NO-WOOGYU toyouknowhoyouare. I wrote all that and then I realized there wasn't any Woogyu, and like, I was too freaking dizzy to type anything else so...I didn't D: blame it on my laziness~

I have a question for YOU ALL (not y'all anymore lol). should I add in the Myungyeol tag? just curious, 'yo~

why am i typing so much in the a/r's lolololol. kaykay I'm gonna go chug down a few asprins now and do homework, so byebye! ^^ I'll try making the next chapter better, promise♥

HAPPY LATE HALLOWEEN. WHOOOOOOO. hope you had a good Thursday! ^^♥

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