The shocked, repelled gasps of my classmates rang from around us. They all seemed so distant though, all I could see was Daehyun. The horrified expression he kept accentuated his lethally handsome features. Up close, he looked like some sort of dark angel, beautiful, but lurid, and every second that my eyes were glued to him, I found it harder to break away. Daehyun’s docile lips held me and kept me in my place, but not necessarily against my will. His body fit into mine and I simply couldn’t find the strength to move.

It was only until I heard the pitter patter of footsteps and Mrs. Yang’s squeaky voice that I was suddenly whipped back into reality.

“Jung Daehyun, _____, what... happened?”  To my astonishment, feeble Mrs. Yang looked very upset. Her eyebrows were drawn and her tiny lips were bent downwards in frustration.

I just then realized that everyone’s attention was on us. Leaping up from Daehyun, my hands shot up to cover my lips and I blushed profusely. I instantly regretted jumping up so fast though when the familiar head pain returned. I must have collided with Daehyun harder than I had thought because my concussion throbbed like crazy. Wincing, I tried my hardest to push the forbidding ache out of mind.

It seemed that everybody, including Mrs. Yang, had just witnessed Daehyun and my accidental kiss. Two obviously preppy girls who had helped Daehyun up off of the floor, judgingly eyed me from a distance. One girl whose deep brown hair was strung up in tight pin curls whispered to her equally beautiful friend, and they both snickered snobbishly towards me. I began feeling extremely self-conscious under everyone’s harsh glares.

 My cheeks heated up even more as an incredibly peeved-off Daehyun glowered at me from across the gym. Opening my mouth, I tried desperately to come up with an apology when a sharp buzzing sounded in my ears. Grasping my head, I shuddered as a wave of dizziness flew through me. Stammering, my mind started to slip. Thankfully, I was able to regain control of myself before anybody else noticed.

Mrs. Yang stood in utter disbelief, barely able to form a single sentence. She threw her clipboard on the ground and massaged her temples in pure annoyance. By now, the spotlight had moved onto her, and I’m sure everybody else, including me, wondered what she was going to do next.

Though strangely, she didn’t seem the least concerned about me or Daehyun, she only looked angry. Her selfish attitude irked me and the lump in my throat grew larger. 

“Daehyun, _____, for screwing around during class again today, you two will be in charge of cleaning up the gym after school.” Mrs. Yang finally announced.

My eyes widened and I was about to protest, but Daehyun beat me to it.

“That’s not fair! We weren’t screwing around. And, I can’t stay after anyways. I have dance practice after school!”

“Well you’ll just have to skip it today.”

“Mrs. Yang, can we please come and clean in the morning or stay after another day because I have violin lessons after school,” I chimed in. Daehyun rapidly nodded his head in agreement. After bouts and bouts of begging and pleading, our cries ultimately fell against deaf ears. Mrs. Yang wasn’t fazed one bit and her command came through in the end. Daehyun and I had to clean up the entire gym by ourselves.

The rest of the day couldn’t have gone faster. Before I knew it, I was directly outside of the gym, mop and bucket in hand, with a seething Daehyun beside me. His hands were shoved in his pockets, an old baseball cap tugged on to his head hiding his sour expression and letting odds and ends of his perfectly messy hair peak out. Loudly smacking and popping a piece of gum in between his teeth, he shoved the gym doors open while muttering an annoyed, “Let’s get this over with.”

I frowned but compliantly followed him into the gymnasium.

Taking in the full view of the gym, I screeched to a halt and my mouth dropped open with disgust. The mop fell to the floor with a loud ‘clack’, but Daehyun ignored me and kept walking. I seriously couldn’t believe it though. The gym was a complete wreck! The volley-ball net lay strung out across one side of the room, and a bundle of different balls were scattered in every which way. To top it all off, there were some very nice black skid marks etched into the floor. I had to bite my tongue to not swear like a sailor right then and there.

***

Tossing the last of the basket balls into the wire basket with the others, I sighed in relief as I flopped down onto the polished wooden floor. At half-past six, Daehyun and I had finally finished cleaning the gymnasium, and a great sense of pride filled me knowing that we had accomplished all of this cleaning in such a short time. Each piece of equipment was put in its proper place, and every bit of the floor had been washed and waxed. My reflection appeared to me through the shiny wooden floor, distorted and faded with the wood. Grinning at myself, I leaned back and stretched my legs out.

Noticing that I had finished, Daehyun wiped his brow and tossed the rag he was using to wax the floors aside. Yanking off his baseball cap dirtied with sweat, he shook his head back and forth like a wet dog and dramatically exhaled. To say the least, he looked utterly exhausted.

An awkward silence fell between us. Now that I was able to review the last four hours that I’d spent with Daehyun, something began tugging at my insides. The entire time we had been hard at work cleaning, Daehyun hadn’t said one word to me. He even went as far as to stay on the opposite side of the gym from wherever I was, keeping as much distance between us as possible. Was he really that bothered by the accidental kiss we had?

I felt like speaking up and asking him if he really was mad just because of that, but quickly decided against it. Mustering up my best smile, I made my way over to the worn-out Daehyun. “We should probably put this equipment away. Will you help me put these back into the storage room?” I asked, pointing to the baskets of volley-balls, soccer balls, and basketballs that were left sitting out.

Daehyun grunted from his place on the ground and mumbled a half-hearted, “Do it yourself.”

I pouted, but didn’t argue back. Wordlessly grabbing onto one of the baskets, I made my way into the dark, dank storage room. Hesitating as I threw the basket down onto the floor, I wondered why I was letting Daehyun suddenly affect me so much. Basically everything that he does angers me, and half the time I want to sock him in the face, but for some reason, it bothered me that he wasn’t talking to me. Why did he loathe me so much?

I jumped as another basket slammed to the floor next to me. Spinning around, I caught an un-amused Daehyun eying my coldly as he dropped the other basket he was carrying to the ground. He his heel to leave the room, but something burst inside of me and I leapt forward to grab a hold of his wrist.

“Are you mad at me because of that kiss earlier? Look, it was an accident, so…” I nervously rubbed at the back of my neck. “Can you stop giving me the cold shoulder?”

Peeling my hand off of his wrist, he shot me a detested look and folded his arms over his chest. “Kiss? Yeah right. It’s not like I even-“

Before Daehyun could finish his sentence, the lights in the gym flicked off, leaving us both engulfed in a sea of darkness.

I furrowed my eyebrows and blinked several times, making sure my eyes weren’t playing tricks on me. “What’s going on?” I asked. I started trying to feel my way out of the pitch-black storage room.

Daehyun didn’t answer, but from the rummaging noises that were coming from his direction, I took it that he was attempting to find his way out as well. I heard my footsteps hit the familiar wood paneled floor and the atmosphere around me was noticeably more open, so I took it that I had made it back into the gymnasium. It felt like somebody had thrown a huge black curtain over me though because I still couldn’t make out a thing.

“Follow my voice,” I called back into the storage room, assuming that he was still stuck inside.

More rustling, and finally a heavily panting Daehyun emerged from the room. Without saying a word, he somehow managed to grasp onto my hand in the dark and galloped up along with me up to the gymnasium door, which was thankfully very easy to spot due to the small amount of light filtering through. He pushed on the door handle, but strangely the door didn’t budge. Again, he prodded the door handle, but still nothing.

Unknowing to me and Daehyun, while we had been busy putting equipment away inside of the storage room, the security guard had been making his daily rounds. Checking the gym for anything out of the ordinary, he found nothing. Nobody was in sight and everything seemed perfectly fine. Thus, the security guard locked up the gym and, satisfied, finished up his security check and headed home leaving me and Daehyun trapped inside of the gym.

***

Groaning, I angrily banged my head back against the wall behind me. This long night never seemed to end. By this point, I wasn’t sure how long we had been stuck in the gym, it felt like hours. I sat curled up, hidden in the shadows as the clouded moon cast shallowly the dirtied windows behind me. I assumed that it was late.

Sometime during this prolonged night, Daehyun had quietly found his way beside me, hiding along with me in the dark. My eyes had just about adjusted to the lack of light and I could just barely make out the outline of Daehyun’s dark figure. He was leaning back into the wall, his legs comfortably sprawled out underneath him. He hadn’t spoken a word to me in what felt like forever.

 I really couldn’t comprehend why he was acting this way towards me. First, he bickers and argues with me at every chance he gets, and now, he’s not saying a word. At first I had thought Daehyun was just a simple, ‘class A’ jerk, but now, not even that could accurately describe him. Though he was obviously stupid, I could sense that he had a quick wit and that he was hiding things. He was brooding and mysterious, and for whatever reason, I wanted so badly to figure him out.

Finally unable to bare the silence any longer, I spoke up. “Do you really hate me?”

Daehyun’s blob of a shadow stirred and he leaned in closer to me. “Huh?”

“Do you hate me?” I repeated, not sounding as confident as I had before.

There was a long pause before Daehyun answered with an elongated sigh. Holding myself in my arms, I lowered my head and curled up farther into a ball. I’ll take that as a ‘yes’.

I thought that Daehyun would’ve just left the conversation like that, but he abruptly scooted over until he was close enough that his arm brushed against mine. I realized that we were both still in our school uniforms as the smoothness of his sleek blazer tickled my skin.

The moonlight radiating in through the windows contoured Daehyun’s solemn face. “I don’t know,” was the only answer he had to my question. Shrugging, he noiselessly chuckled to himself. “Well, I guess I do. What’s not to hate?”

“Yah!” I shouted, whacking Daehyun in the arm. “How can you say that so easily?”

He burst out laughing, clutching his stomach like he just got told the funniest joke in the world. My fists clenched I shot him an annoyed look. “You must be bi-polar...” I tried brushing off Daehyun’s words, but my heart couldn’t help sinking inside of my chest when he had said that he still hated me. My expectations were too high.

Daehyun’s laughing finally ceased and he looked just as pleased as ever with a smug look plastered on his face.

Frowning, I set my head back against the wall and stared off into the darkly lit gymnasium. “I shouldn’t have come here.”

Daehyun’s smirk disappeared. “What?”

“It was a mistake,” I muttered, drawing imaginary circles on the wooden floor with my finger. “I came here to become a better violin player, but all that I’ve accomplished was getting a concussion, landing detention on my first week here, and my neighbor hating me.” I brought my head up and peered into Daehyun’s bewildered face. “I’m really beginning to regret it.”

Daehyun looked to be at a loss for words. He uncomfortably fidgeted in his spot and opened his mouth, fumbling for something to say. “Why…?”

I crammed my eyes shut, wanting to block out the rest of the world. I wondered if I was just overreacting, or maybe just tired. I wasn’t entirely sure.

But, realizing how truthful the things that I had said before really were, my good mood immediately felt deflated. It was as though I had built up this amazing future in my mind, only to have it slowly crumble down around me. It pained my heart to know that my dream was turning out like this. Thinking back though, all of the things that had gone wrong since I’d gotten here were because of Daehyun. Frustrated, I wracked my brain, trying to make sense of the things that I was feeling. I came to the conclusion that I didn’t like Daehyun, but I couldn’t hate him like he hated me. I really loathed myself for being so indecisive.

“Sometimes I think that I shouldn’t have come here either,” Daehyun confessed from beside me.

Playing with the hem of skirt, I chose to ignore the now very serious sounding Daehyun. The empty feeling in the pit of my stomach grew, and I wanted very much to go home. And I was definitely in no mood to talk to or even look at Daehyun at the moment.

“What, are you not even going to look at me now?” he exasperated. Feeling a gentle hand on my chin, my face was lifted upwards and I was forced into staring up into Daehyun’s troubled face. My cheeks instantly started burning, our faces so tantalizingly close. I mentally reprimanded myself for once again being lost in his good-looks and charm.

“As I was saying,” Daehyun continued, his hand dropping comfortably back down to his side. “Sometimes I regret coming here, too.”

Still obviously frazzled, I nodded, urging him to go on.

“I want to become a singer. It’s been my dream since I was young. My parents had always been pretty wealthy too, so going to Sunhwa wasn’t a problem at all, but,” Daehyun’s voice went dry and his eyes turned downcast. “Then my mom fell sick, and my dad…” Clearing his throat, I could tell he was having a hard time getting the words out of his mouth.

Laying my hand on his, I gazed up at Daehyun, reassuring him that it was alright. He began once again.

“My Dad turned to alcohol, and eventually drugs. That destroyed him... and our family. Mom eventually died, and I was left to fend for myself alone in Seoul. I inherited all of their money though, so I guess I can still accomplish my dream..."

I was in utter shock. The things he had just admitted were so sudden. It scared me to think that they were actually true. It may have been too forward, but it looked like he really needed somebody to comfort him. Reaching over, I wrapped my arms around Daehyun’s neck, pulling him into me. His warmth overcame me, my cold skin heating up as it was pressed against his body. We sat in this sweet embrace, Daehyun’s light sniffling becoming increasingly louder as he buried his head into the crook of my neck.

I wondered how long he had kept those things bottled up inside of it. 

 After Daehyun regained his composure, he continued talking about everything that had been troubling him and all of the hardships that he had gone through. After his mother had fallen ill with an unknown illness, Daehyun’s father drank and used drugs to help cope with it. His father’s work found out about his drug addiction, and fired him, leaving all of Daehyun’s family completely jobless. Therefore, his father turned to dealing drugs, and evidently dragged Daehyun into the drug world along with him. Thankfully, he didn’t use drugs like his father had, but he had become a member of a very vicious gang. That's the reason he always had so many bruises and cuts on his face. When his mother found out about all of this, she left the family, never wanting to see either one of them again. A couple of months later, she died in the hospital, and Daehyun's father fled Seoul, leaving Daehyun utterly alone.

As he went on talking, I patiently listened, giving out advice when I had the chance. Daehyun kept his hand clasped around my own, which, strangely, I didn't seem to mind.

I also told Daehyun about my life back in Daejeon, and how hard it had been for me. We had grown up very poor, neither of my parents being able to find good, long lasting jobs. I was used to hearing about them being laid-off, but once thing that I could never grow accustomed to was seeing my mom’s tears after she was fired once again. The kids at school would tease me at every chance they got, calling me, ‘beggar’ because I never had enough money to buy a lunch.

I don’t know how it happened, but over the course of this night, something had changed between the two of us. We both gained a hidden confidence in each other, and we knew that we could trust each other with our secrets. It was a pitch-black night, but because we were together, hidden in the safe shadowy gymnasium, we both knew that everything we spilled tonight would be kept in the shadows as well. And before I knew it, I was drifting off, Daehyun’s chest rising and falling with mine, lulling me into a deep, peaceful sleep.

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Author's Note:

Sorry this chapter took so long, I felt like I wasn't really getting anywhere with the previous chapters, so I wanted to make this chapter longer to fit a lot of stuff in it! ^^ Also, a huge thank-you to my shinyuu Minji, aka, hellozelo, for helping me with the ideas for this chapter!! TUT Daisuki da yo~!! <3 <3 She is seriously an amazing writer and I highly suggest that you check out her fics, because they're all amazing~!! :D

http://www.asianfanfics.com/story/view/401718/finding-yourself-in-seoul-romance-you-exo-exok-kai-kaixyou

http://www.asianfanfics.com/story/view/406057/your-night-out-oneshot-romance-you-chanyeol-chanyeolxyou

http://www.asianfanfics.com/story/view/399886/a-coincidence-of-a-lifetime-fluff-oneshot-romance-you-zelo-bap-zeloxyou