The next day, Yura and Minah decided to eat their breakfast on the rooftop of the school, and Areum had no problem with that, as the weather was warm and comfortable. Besides, she didn’t feel like going to the schoolyard as it only made her think of Baekhyun, which resulted in being confused again. And the fresh temperature above really helped Areum clear her mind. Besides them, there was only a small clique of four people on the rooftop anyway, so it wasn’t noisy.

She was just listening to one of Yura's rants about a teacher – her mind was elsewhere. It happened often that her mind drifted off to somewhere because a lot of things bored Areum. It wasn’t exactly Yura, but just … the atmosphere? The topics? Areum felt calm, but not in a positive way; she felt like sleeping. It was so different from when she was with Baekhyun.

With him, she was curiously listening to him or eagerly telling him something. With Yura and Minah, she mostly remained silent and halfheartedly listened. It wasn’t as if she wanted to be disinterested, it was just … hard, because all the gossip wasn’t all that interesting to her.

Two days passed with the three girls spening their breaks on the rooftop. It was the usual routine, as today Minah was excitedly telling the other two girls about the new guy in her tutoring (she was terrible at maths). Areum nodded her head and let out a few 'ooh's and 'ah's, but she caught her thoughts wandering to a certain boy again and again. Although she wasn’t really interested in what Minah was telling them, such topics were still much better, since this morning she realized that she indeed wanted to avoid anything regarding Baekhyun because whenever Yura or Minah talked about him, their tone made it sound as if they were talking about a bad person. Unfortunately, this morning there was weird news, as Baekhyun apparently got into a fight with a teacher, which gave Yura and Minah even more rumors to badmouth about.

Areum had immediately stiffened upon hearing that, as she simply couldn’t imagine Baekhyun wanting to fight with a teacher. There had to be a misunderstanding, definitely. But she had said nothing, not wanting to bring up the topic again that caused her and Minah and Yura to fight in first place, and changed the subject. She'd successfully done so, and the two other girls hadn't had the chance to do more than mumble incomprehensible things as 'always bringing trouble' and 'tch, I knew it'. Fortunately, those were things Areum could still ignore, but she did feel uncomfortable. However, she suppressed the urge to disagree simply because she wanted to avoid a fight.

But even if the news was done for the two other girls, it lingered in Areum's mind; the girl wondered what happenbed. So, as her thoughts were far away, she flinched as she suddenly felt something touch her shoulder. Jerking up, she stared into the eyes of a girl.

The said girl, who had long black hair braided into two pigtails, was nervously eying Areum. “Yeah?”

“Um, my name is Eunji,” the girl mumbled, glancing at her feet “I wanted to talk to you.” She seemed to be a shy girl judging from the fact that she avoided eye-contact.

Although Areum was confused, she agreed and quickly excused herself from Minah and Yura (it wasn’t like her absence made a big difference as to what she contributed to the conversation anyway).

“This is really random, I know, but … I'm a classmate of Baekhyun, and …” Eunji trailed off, trying to look for the right words. At the mention of his name, Areum froze and she could feel it again: the confusion. But before her thoughts could continue whirling around, the girl continued, “I know you two have been hanging out with each other.” Areum frowned. Was this going in the direction she thought it was? A jealous admirer of Baekhyun? “And that's great because he finally found a friend.” With that, Areum's ridiculous assumption went away as quickly as it had come.

“In our class, he isn’t close to anyone, you know.”

“And the reason you're telling me this …?” Areum asked, but she quickly realized that it sounded quite offending. “Ah, sorry, I didn’t mean to … I was just confused.”

Please Subscribe to read the full chapter