The next morning, I arrived at school alone, since Baekhyun didn’t appear at my door as he usually did to walk to school with me. I decided not to question too much about it, assuming that he was perhaps walking Soojin to school instead.

My arrival was welcomed with much more hype than usual, and I found myself getting more and more self-conscious as every person I passed turned to look at me. Girls were whispering, soft and barely audible. I caught snippets of words, syllables that I couldn’t really make out. I turned sometimes to look at them and they’d quickly turn away, pretending as if they never noticed me in the first place. Even the boys, who were more indifferent to gossip, did a double take when they saw me.

People are behaving more and more strangely day by day, I thought, dismissing it with a shrug.

When I arrived at my locker, I was met with another surprise.

Park Chanyeol was leaning against the empty wall next to it, occupied by the pair of neon green headphones he had on his head. I paused and raised my brows. Was he waiting for me? Chanyeol and I rarely interacted since he was in a different class and was always busy with some activity or another. In fact, I’d say our interactions were completely limited to the music room, where it would be only him, Baekhyun and me with nothing in between us but their instruments.

Maybe he’s waiting for someone else, I thought as I slowly walked up to my locker.

I was proven wrong when Chanyeol turned his head and straightened up when he saw me. He pulled off the limited edition earphones from his head, taking a moment to pause the song in his iPod before waving at me.

“Hello,” I said, trying to keep the confused note from showing in my voice.

“I’ve been waiting for you,” he said, slipping the iPod in his pocket. “Hey, listen, can I talk to you?”

“Okay. When?”

“After school, at the music room where Baekhyun and I always practice in.”

“Deal. What’s this about anyway?”

Chanyeol smiled softly, almost ruefully. “You’ll find out.” With that, he popped his ear phones back on his head, pressed play, and walked away, leaving me staring at his towering figure in confusion.

I was pondering over Chanyeol’s odd behaviour as I extracted my books from my locker. What was so urgent that he needed a private conference with me?

I shrugged and slammed the locker doors shut, deciding that it would be a question that would soon receive its answer. I walked down the hallways, conscious of the stares and whispering that followed my wake. A couple of senior girls scrutinised me on my way up the stairs, scoffed, and then marched back up. Even Kris, the school’s basketball superstar, did a double take when he saw me going up.

I ducked my head and let my hair fall over my eyes; I was so not used to this attention. In fact, the nature of it still remained a mystery to me, and I doubted that the passing people in the hallway were going to enlighten me anytime sooner.

I soon got my answer, when I was speed-walking down the hallway to my class and literally collided into Soojin.

“Whoa, what’s the rush?” she asked with a laugh as she helped me steady my books.

I looked up, relieved to see a friendly face. My eyes flickered towards the figure standing behind her, watching me silently.

I was right; Baekhyun was with her.

“I’m trying to get away from all this,” I said, averting my eyes away from him and addressing Soojin instead. I gestured with one hand towards all the people staring at me. “I feel like some lab rat after being experimented upon.”

Soojin wrinkled her eyebrows, cocking her head at me amusedly. “So you have no idea what this is about?”

“No,” I hissed. “What did I do wrong anyway?”

“So it isn’t true, then? That you’re dating Luhan?”

My jaw dropped. My eyes widened in disbelief as I stared at her, my chest rising and falling rapidly as the information sunk into my head. All these people thought I was dating Luhan? How on earth could they think that anyway?

I doubted Sehun could have been the culprit behind these rumours; the boy was mischievous, but I knew he was loyal to Luhan. He kept his secrets as how a best friend should. But then again, a lot of people saw us that day, including Kim Jongin, whom I conversed with by the fountain. He could have easily spread these rumours; after all, the boy did have a lot of girls hanging on his arms. One slip of a word and the whole population of the school would know about it.

“Where on earth did you hear that?” I asked bewilderedly. I was just about prepared to murder Jongin if she confirmed my intuition and said his name.

“A few kids saw you two walking around after the dance competition –alone.”

“That wasn’t a ­­­–we were just –”

I snapped my mouth shut when I realised that my brain was too fogged up from the shock to think of any good excuse.

“So you were with Luhan?”

“He just wanted to celebrate. Sehun and his other friend, Yixing, was supposed to come with us, but then Yixing dragged Sehun off –”

“And left you two alone? Sounds like he was setting you and Luhan up to me,” Soojin said teasingly.

I opened my mouth and shut it again. I looked helplessly at Baekhyun, begging him to get me out of this mess, to think of some excuse to help me. I was surprised that I was instead met with a cold gaze, hard and callous, as if I had done him a personal wrong.

I stared at him, hurt. Baekhyun looked away.

“So it’s true you were dating?” Soojin asked, oblivious to the exchange between Baekhyun and me. She looked giddy, excited, like how a girl friend would be when you tell her that you were dating the boy you liked.

Baekhyun turned in his heel and left then, not bothering to hear my answer. I just stared at his slowly departing back, feeling an ache bloom in my chest at seeing him treat me so coldly. In all the years, I had never seen that look in his eyes, the look of absolute anger and hate. And all of it was directed at me.

I was vaguely conscious of Soojin grabbing my arm and shaking me. “Is it?”

“Friends,” I said, reciting the same word I had been saying over and over again. “We’re just friends.”

Just like how Baekhyun and I used to be; just like how we were before we tangled ourselves up in this mess.

Baekhyun basically ignored me for the whole day, to the point that I was desperate to talk to him. I tried sending him little notes, slipping them onto his table when the teacher wasn’t looking. I waited for him to answer, but never received any. When I turned to talk to him, he never spared a glance at me. He brushed past me during lunch and I never saw him for the whole period.

At that point, Luhan had managed to intercept me and had brought me up with him to the rooftop. Baekhyun’s cold treatment had made the ache intensify in my chest; I was desperate to make it go away. Although Luhan wasn’t exactly the person I wanted to meet right now, I figured he would serve well as a distraction.

“Are you okay?” he asked me. My movements had been robotic, lifeless, and my eyes had been glassy as I stared at the view of the flat expanse of the sky that the rooftop provided.

I didn’t answer him at first, being too occupied with my thoughts.

“Hey,” Luhan said gently, cupping my chin and turning my head so that I would look at him. He looked worried, his hair ruffled by the gentle breeze that blew past us. “Is this about the rumours?”

It took a while for me to register what he was talking about. “Rumours?”

“You know,” Luhan said, pausing for a while as if he was trying to rephrase the words that had been flying across the whole school since morning, “the one about us dating.”

“Oh, that. No, I was thinking about something else,” I replied, looking away.

Luhan didn’t seem to believe me. “Look, I’m really sorry. I could tell my friends to stop and –”

“Luhan.” He stopped when I called his name. “That’s not what’s bothering me,” I told him.

He frowned. “What is?”

“Personal issues,” I muttered.

I heard Luhan shift in his seat, sliding closer to me. I felt a hand enclosing itself around mine. “If you ever need someone to talk to,” he said, his voice soft, “you know I’m always here.”

I turned and forced a smile at him. I was touched by his sincerity, his efforts to ease the burden I suddenly felt weighing down on my shoulders. The only problem was that I couldn’t tell him. Something told me that Baekhyun and Luhan were two entities that couldn’t coexist together in my world.