DaeSung’s POV
 

I wasn’t born with a handsome look. I was clumsy and sometimes annoying. I was not even smart and I was scared of everything; namely dogs, darkness, angry person and spiders. When I was little, I remember telling Umma how upset I was for not having the looks of an idol. Umma comforted me with these kind words,
 

“DaeSung, my baby, looks are only superficial. Even though you don’t have the beauty on the outside but you are very beautiful on the inside. That’s what counts the most. Trust me, people will love you for that.”

How cliché, I had thought. In a way Umma was admitting the fact that I was not handsome but her kind words did make me feel a bit better about myself.Then I had come to terms with me being ‘beautiful on the inside’.

I had one best friend since childhood. His name is HyukJae. He was the funniest, naughtiest, and cheekiest friend I could ever ask for. We did everything together. My life was happy with HyukJae. But the inevitable happened; HyukJae had to move to GwangJu and I was left alone. The rides on the bus to school had become so empty and lonely since I didn’t have anyone to talk to. The bullies in my class decided it was fun to bully me seeing that I was alone and I always had to eat in the toilet to avoid them. Nothing interested me anymore until I saw her.

But she didn’t see me.

It all happened one morning when I saw a girl running for the bus which had already departed. She was flailing her arms like mad, shouting for the bus to wait for her. She was wearing my school’s uniform so I knew that she was from my school but I had never seen her before. Probably because I didn't really pay attention to the students of my school. Out of pity, I shouted for the driver ahjusshi to stop for her. When she got up the bus, she was already panting and sweating. She smiled at the driver ahjusshi when she paid for the bus fee. Her smile was so beautiful; it had the childlike innocence in it. I felt soemthing warm lurking inside my heart just by looking at her smile. Unfortunately, I found out later that she wasn’t the smiley type.

“Thanks for waiting,” she said to him.

Then, she stood at the front of the bus, just staring out of the window all the way to school. She looked really stern, like she was angry at something. I couldn’t help but stare at her. It was the first time that I was acting weird like that. There was just something about her. Her long hair was tied in a high ponytail and she was wearing a green bag with the peace logo on it. At one time, she even looked my way and I tried to smile.

But she didn’t see me.

I found myself anticipating to see her every morning that I boarded the bus. Our eyes had met a couple of times but as usual, she wasn’t really looking at me and I had never seen her smile after that. To tell you the truth, she wasn’t particularly gorgeous. In fact, when she had that stern expression on her face, she looked like a bully. However, she was beautiful to me - there was just something attractive about her. I had imagined the situation if she ever talked to me, I think I would be so scared. She just had the killer aura surrounding her.

Okay, before you take me as a weird, stalker type creepy boy, let me tell you this. I’m not a desperate guy. I do have an admirer. Her name is GwiSoon. She is HyukJae’s sister, older than us by one year - smart and very pretty at that. I don’t even know why in the world she likes me when it is clear that she has so many handsome guys chasing after her. I guess, Umma was right; she is one of those who saw my inner beauty. She had liked me ever since HyukJae brought me back to his house during our kindergarten years. GwiSoon liked to play with hamsters so she liked to show me her pet hamsters and for my 8th birthday, she wanted to give me one as a present. But too bad, naughty HyukJae decided to serve that hamster to their family cat. GwiSoon was so angry at HyukJae and she asked their parents to ground him for life. I heard from HyukJae that she cried the whole night. 

GwiSoon always gave me presents and she always asked me to buy her ice-cream whenever she was upset and also to surprise her with flowers once in a while. I learned a lot about women from GwiSoon; like how women sometimes say one thing when they mean another, like how I should always look for hints from their expressions, that it would be better to apologize first no matter who was wrong, and that they like corny stuffs no matter how tough they appear to be. GwiSoon had declared that I was hers ever since we were 10. But do I like her? 

No.

Unfortunately, I only see her as a sister.

So there you go. I just want to show you how not desperate I am. But why did this particular girl on the bus catch my attention? I don’t even think I have the answer to that question. I just couldn’t help myself but to stare at her. I had noticed how she would glare at some random kids whenever they annoyed her, how she would sigh deeply whenever she heard some girls giggled at something, and how she would roll her eyes when some random boys lamely picked on girls. I always walked behind her when we got off the bus. I liked to see the way her hair bounced when she walked and how she smiled when she met with her best friend who would sometime wait for her at the gate. I found out that her class, 5B was just beside mine and always found an excuse to walk pass her class just to catch a glimpse of her talking happily to her friend even though the teacher was right there teaching at the front.

Okay, I do sound like a creepy stalker. But the thing is, she didn’t see me and these things went on for a couple of months before that day happened.

As usual, I was walking behind her but I didn’t notice that my shoelace was untied and I ended up tripping and shoving her from behind; causing her to bump into a really cold looking guy. When she looked at me with those angry glares and asked me not to let her see me again, my heart was crushed to a thousand pieces. To make matters worse, the bullies in my class saw all that and started to make fun of me. So I cried. 

Yes, I am a sensitive boy.

But I still tried to catch up with that girl even though she was nowhere in sight. Then, I saw someone that looked like her was choking so I immediately did the Heimlich maneuver on her. I didn’t even notice that it was her, that girl. She roared like a tiger at me and my heart was crushed again. 

And I cried. Again. 

About the Heimlich maneuver, I’d like to tell you a story. My grandmother was the one who made me learn about that. She always choked on her food whenever she was watching the evening drama on television and there was even one time, she was sent to the doctor for respiratory arrest. Yes, my grandmother nearly died simply because she loves to eat and yell at the same time in front of the television. Watching dramas can be a dangerous thing, you know. So, the doctor who apparently was tired of the recurrent choking incident, taught the whole family to do the Heimlich maneuver. Because we were always on the lookout for grandma’s choking, the whole family had been extra alert whenever we see people choking. Try choking in my home, and you’ll get 3 people who’d jump in to do the maneuver on you. 

Seriously.

Okay back to the girl, luckily her best friend was there to comfort me. And when her best friend, YeJin wanted to befriend me, I thought that God had finally paved the way for me and that girl to be close.

I found out that her name was Lee ChaeRin. ChaeRin. What a beautiful name, I had thought. I was so happy to find out some information regarding her.

But I saw it all. I saw how unhappy she had looked when YeJin was talking to me. She looked like she was on the verge of crying but had faked an angry expression on her face instead. I could see how upset she was from her eyes. I wanted so badly for her to accept me so when YeJin invited me to have lunch with them, I way beyond excited. During lunch, I did the Heimlich maneuver on her again, but this time I saved her life, even though I was the one who had made her choke - I surprised her with my famous “Pah!!”. She was so angry, and she looked like she was ready to eat me alive. But I asked her what I had wanted to ask since a couple of months ago.

I asked her to be my friend.

She looked reluctant to accept me but then YeJin was blackmailing her about something called the SeungHyun aftermath which I didn’t really understand and she agreed. With that, I was her friend. My heart was doing fireworks of their own but I acted neutral. I didn’t want to be seen as creepy. I think I dug my grave later that day when I asked her why she was angry but when I saw how difficult it was for her to answer, I made a stupid comment about women's period and ended up being chased by her in the classroom. I thought it was pretty romantic, us chasing each other in the class, but I don’t think that she’d agree. We became closer after eating together and when she finally gave me her phone number, I was so excited that I walked into a parked motorcycle. 

Later, I walked her home because YeJin had somewhere else to go and I saw some beautiful flowers in a garden and picked some for her. There was this one time in the bus, I saw her looking with envy at a girl who was holding a bouquet of flowers and made a mental note to myself to give her flowers if we ever got closer. I was right; she loved them. She was so happy but the garden’s keeper just had to ruin our sweet moment by chasing after us. Luckily she didn’t stay angry at me. That night was the first time that we exchanged cellphone messages to each other. I told her how glad I was that she was my friend but she didn’t reply to that and I ended up waiting for the whole night for her reply.

The next day, I found out that ChaeRin had a crush on a boy for 2 years. The boy was good looking and I felt so heartbroken but I managed to fake a happy face. I decided to be happy for her. Then, the bullies were bullying me again but this time they went as far as to force me to their ugly shoes so I thought that I had enough and asked the principal to transfer me to 5B because at least I’d get to see her everyday. At first, Mrs. Choi wasn’t too keen on the idea of me transferring into her class but after hearing my story I think she had a change of heart. I was seated beside MinHo, ChaeRin’s crush. When he found out about me being bullied, he suddenly decided that I was his friend and asked me to tell the bullies to meet him. In a way, he was trying to protect me. 

I also found out that MinHo was also the world’s sleepiest nerd. In a way, I was happy that he was always sleeping because whenever he was awake, he would talk about academic stuff that would make me doze off instead. Unfortunately for me, MinHo wasn’t known by the bullies and I ended up having to run for my life to Mrs. Choi’s desk. When MinHo knew about it, he suddenly decided that he would join us for lunch. I was jealous when I saw how annoyingly happy ChaeRin had looked and when she started to talk in that Master Yoda language, my heart was crushed but I still kept that smile on my face. I was happy to see her happy. Whenever I saw her looking MinHo’s way, I would smile at her.

We went to eat ice cream and ChaeRin was bothered by two handsome boys. She said that they had called her ugly and it was sad to see her so unhappy so YeJin and I immediately complimented her hair. I tried my best to make her smile by imitating the way she talked whenever MinHo was around and she blushed. At least, she wasn’t upset anymore after that. That night, when Umma asked me to go to the grocery store, I saw the flowers blooming in my garden so I picked some and gave to ChaeRin. She was so happy when I gave her the flowers. Adding to that, I shouted that I thought she was beautiful. It was honestly what I really thought of her but because I was embarrassed, I immediately left without seeing her expression. But I knew, those words made her happy.

When MinHo joined us for lunch, he went straight to sleep and YeJin was busy drawing something so I could see that ChaeRin was looking so upset. So I showed her my magic pond; I told her that the pond had magic powers which was something that I had made up to make her feel better. It made her smile and she said that I was a great guy. I started to believe that the pond really had magic powers because ChaeRin had changed her opinion of me and I hoped that she would turn to like me in the future; that she would see me in a different light someday.

The next day, we found out that MinHo wasn’t mysterious and I could see that ChaeRin was disappointed. I knew this MinHo thing would bug her even though we did find out that he was single. Then, for some weird reason, YeJin took ChaeRin away from us to talk and then YeJin literally just went crazy. She was kicking the air and screaming like she was the lead actress in a horror movie. ChaeRin was looking at her weird but the weirder part was when MinHo sounded like he was actually impressed that YeJin could be crazy like that. I’m telling you, that MinHo guy sure is something. 

That night, when I called her, ChaeRin souded upset when I asked about YeJin. Maybe they had a secret business that only they knew about and wasn't ready to share with me. Then, ChaeRin asked me to see her. She sounded so upset that I really wanted to make her feel better. So I asked her to wait for me in front of her house. I remembered comforting GwiSoon with ice cream whenever she was crying so I thought to bring ice cream from the freezer to give to ChaeRin. I thought that it would make her feel better. Only God knows how fast I had ran to her house that night. Our house was like a kilometre away but I think I made it there within a minute. When I was reaching her house, I was sweating like a pig and I saw her sitting at the bench in front of her house, just staring emptily at the sky. 

She didn’t see me so I just stood there quietly for a while, admiring her from that spot. I saw her sighing a few times and sometimes she was biting her lips. To me, at that time, she looked her most beautiful; all vulnerable and innocent-like. She was wearing a really outdated Garfield pyjama which I figured must had been a couple of years old since the trouser was only reaching to her mid-calf and the shirt was small for her size. Her hair was a mess and she kept running her fingers nervously through it. She must had been really upset because she didn’t seem to look at herself before going out to see me. After a few minutes of just staring at her, I approa