I let out a sigh.

The clack of heels on the platform, the thrums and whirrs of the subway train approaching and the quick whooshes of air that impeded its arrival had all blended in into one unrelenting symphony, drumming against my ear drums and pounding on my head. The smell of popcorn from the vendor cart next to me was inviting, but still, I kept my back firmly glued to the wall lest I missed him while I buy my food.

The watch in my hand signalled that it was seven-thirty, but still, I waited.

Standing on my tip toes, I overlooked the crowd, trying to find that familiar dark head with the soft bangs that fell perfectly over his forehead. I found plenty of young men sporting the likeness of the hairstyle, but none of them came close to resembling his fair and gentle good-looks.

I sunk back down, a frown appearing on my lips. I was aware that it was a stupid thing to do, but his comment yesterday, the smile that tugged his lips as he said it, had made me desperate to know if he was going to make good of his promise. I knew it could have been a passing remark, a simple show of politeness that he might have felt obliged to give, but I couldn’t snuff out the hope that had been kindled in me. I wanted to see him again, and this time, I wanted to talk to him without seeming like an incompetent fool.

The sound of another whoosh; another train had arrived.

I gazed longingly at it, hoping that he would suddenly materialise in the crowd surging through the doors. I hoped in vain, because five minutes after that, the doors closed and the train rumbled on.

I waited another ten minutes, the fire of hope burning in me slowly dimming into a defeated, muted glow that made my heart feel heavy with disappointment. He wasn’t here; I felt like I had just made a fool out of myself.

The soft vibration of my phone in my skirt pocket jarred me out of my thoughts. I reached for it, unlocked the screen, and cursed under my breath as I read its contents:

Aeri, where are you? Yixing and I are getting worried. If you’re still asleep, you better get up now.

I pocketed the phone, glancing at my watch as I hefted my bag higher up my shoulder and ran into the crowd. Hyunji was right; I had to be at school by eight and it would take me twenty minutes to get there by subway. I was –undeniably and hopelessly –late.

The look I got from Mr Jung when I arrived was not a very pretty one for me to describe.

“You’re late, Ms Go,” he said, his brows knitting into a straight line on his forehead.

I had spent ten minutes in the station alone, battling the crowd after I disembarked, and another five sprinting all the way here. Totalling everything up, it didn’t really make a very pretty number.

“I’m sorry, sir,” I said, hanging my head. “I got held up at the station.”

Which was partially the truth. I didn’t intend on blurting out the fact that I had waited for almost an hour for a boy with whom I had not even made an official arrangement to meet.

“Detention,” he said, scribbling my name in a notebook. “Today. Meet me in the staff room.”

I hung my head, bowing and apologising once again as I cringed inwardly. Mr Jung opened the door and quickly ushered me to class. I complied, smacking my head repeatedly once I rounded the corner and escaped from his line of sight.

“You can be reckless and unthinking sometimes but this is a new level that I have never seen you cross,” Hyunji said over lunch, after I ­­­­­­­­­–unwillingly –told them the real reason as to why I was late.

“Yeah,” Yixing agreed, rolling his eyes as he handed Hyunji a tissue. “You don’t even know the guy.”

“Guys!” I whined, tired of being lectured. They were supposed to be my best friends; by right, they were supposed to be supporting me. But then again, this was Yixing that I was talking about; the guy who thrived on logic and was shrewd and calculating with everything he said and did. I supposed that Hyunji was the only one I could rely on for support.

“Hyunji, you understand right?” I said, turning to her with wavering puppy eyes.

“Believe me, Aeri, I do,” Hyunji said. “But honestly, risking the wrath of detention? I never knew that you had it in you.” She turned to Yixing. “What’s this for?” she asked Yixing as she held up the tissue.

“You have something on your mouth,” Yixing said, before he turned to me. “Anyway, this is hardly the way to show the guy your affections,” he said, watching as Hyunji dabbed the wrong side of from the corner of his eyes.

“What do you suggest then?” I asked stubbornly.

“Go and talk to him,” Yixing said bluntly. He sighed in frustration at Hyunji. “Geez, can’t you even get this done right?” Reaching out, he took her hand and guided it to the right spot.

“Great idea!” I said sarcastically. “And make a bigger a fool out of myself.”

“At least try,” Yixing said impatiently. “Take it from me, staying in the shadows is going to do you more harm than good.”

“I didn’t know you’re that experienced in the romance department,” Hyunji suddenly said, turning to him with a teasing look in her eyes. “Is there something you’d like to tell us, Yixing? Do you by any chance happen to like someone?”

I bit back my giggles as the colour slowly started to rise up Yixing’s face. I could see him struggling to maintain his composure, desperately schooling his expression into one of uncaring indifference before he braced himself to meet Hyunji’s eyes. “No,” he said flatly.

“But you seem to be talking out of experience,” Hyunji persisted, resting her cheek on her hand as her smile began to stretch from ear to ear.

“There is no one,” Yixing said firmly, narrowing his eyes at her. “I speak from the perspective of a guy. Nothing more.”

I decided to in for his sake. “Am I going to scare him away?” I asked. I saw Yixing’s shoulders droop in relief when Hyunji directed her attention away from him.

“Only if he catches you spying on him. Other than that, no, probably not. Unless you say something, he’s probably not going to know that you like him anyway.” She played with her straw thoughtfully.

“But you’re gonna have a problem when he starts liking someone else,” Yixing said, having recovered from that heart-stopping moment.

I groaned and buried my face in my hands. “He’s going to think I’m a creeper if I suddenly confess to him!”

“Of course you’re gonna scare him away if you suddenly upped and confessed to him after two days of meeting him. Just try and talk to the guy first.” I could tell Yixing was getting exasperated with me. With him, there were only two ways when it comes to doing things: it was either you do it or you don’t. No hesitation or contemplation or any whining in between.

That was probably why he chose to push back any thoughts about confessing to Hyunji –he didn’t want to get eaten up by anxiety while planning it.

“But look at him! He’s just so... perfect. How could I even talk to him without choking on my words?”

Yixing rolled his eyes and threw up his hands in frustration. “Fine! Don’t do it then.”

“But I do want him to notice me,” I admitted in a small voice.

He sighed and shook his head, having obviously given up trying to reason with me.

Hyunji reached out and clasped my hands reassuringly. “Don’t worry, Aeri. You’ll figure something out. When you do, Yixing and I will definitely be there to help you. Right, Yixing?” She nudged him on the side.

“Get your priorities straight first, woman,” Yixing said with a scowl. “Then I’ll consider lending you a hand.”

I grinned at them. “You guys are the best, but you know we haven’t solved anything right?”

I sat before the wooden easel, pencil poised in front of it as I contemplated the theme of today’s assignment. Scribbled across the board were the words ‘An Inspiration for The Day’, and as the title suggested, it was a somewhat a free assignment. We weren’t confined to only one object or scenery, but rather a plethora of possibilities that could take the form of any shape or any being. In a way, I figured that it was supposed to help develop our creativity –which, I could say, was a lacking aspect for most of the people here. Art was not a well-liked class for many. In a school where most of the students rely on textbooks as a foundation for their success, it was a struggle for them to produce their ideas and let imagination overtake everything else.

Although I could hardly say that I was talented in it, I still liked Art Class a lot. I found that I liked drawing, the sketches that come alive with every of my pencil astounding.

I ran through the possibilities and the highlights of my day that I could use in reference to the theme. I supposed I could easily draw a landscape, make something up in my head and lie that it was somewhere I always went to in order to get inspired. I could also draw a person, someone whom I looked up to and relied on as a motivator. Since I was terrible at recreating the human visage and anatomy, I decided to go with the former.

It took me about twenty minutes to realise that the scenery I had been absently drawing was that of the crowded subway station I was in today. I jerked my hand to a stop, biting my lip and wincing. While letting my thoughts wander, I had let it soar towards the one person whom I had been constantly thinking of since I first met him. My cheeks burned and I fumbled to look for a fresh piece of paper. Unfortunately, someone saw it before I could fully conceal it.

“The subway?” the high pitched, condensing voice said before I could tear off the tape that held the sides of the paper to the board behind it. “That’s where you get your inspiration? No wonder you’re so messed up.”

I gritted my teeth. “What do you want, Choi Minhee?”

Minhee flashed me a sickeningly sweet smile that looked as inviting as a crocodile’s. Her chestnut brown hair seemed glossy and shiny under the light from the window, but it looked unauthentic, fake. Her face was dainty and delicate, like a flower, as many people said, but the mask hid an ugly reality.

“Nothing,” she shrugged. “I was just walking around.”

“Then get lost,” I said bluntly. She wasn’t one of my most favourite people on the planet and I wasn’t really keen on being within such close proximity to her for an extended amount of time.

Minhee sneered. “Why would I do that? I’m not done talking to you yet.”

I rolled my eyes and turned away, picking up my pencil to add little touches to my drawing. The embarrassment had dissolved; my burning pride had forbidden me from tearing away the drawing and starting afresh while in the presence of Choi Minhee.

As I was busy sketching a few and adding a few details to my drawing, I heard a snort from Minhee. I whirled around, eyes widening when I realised that she had been perusing my notebook.

“Give that back!” I snarled at her, snatching the notebook away and scattering a few pencils onto the ground as I knocked them over.

She was smirking at me. “Kim Joonmyun? You like the new guy?”

I was seething. How dare she snoop through my belongings without my permission? How dare she patronize me with that condensing tone in her voice?

“What has that got anything to do with you?” I hissed at her, hugging the notebook to my chest lest she decided to steal it away from me and display it to the whole class.

“How could you even think that you have a chance?” she questioned with a scoff. “I mean look at you! Why would a guy as handsome as him look at someone like you?”

I glared at her, my shoulders rising and falling rapidly as I struggled to calm myself by taking deep breaths.

“I mean, please, you don’t even deserve to like him,” she continued.

“And you do?”

“Well,” she said, flicking her hair over her shoulders. “I’m certainly a better candidate than you.”

 I rolled my eyes, doing my best to clamp my mouth shut to keep myself from spewing curses at her. Choi Minhee was the type of person who liked to bait people, trapping them with their words and actions and then spreading a false rendition of the event to everyone else. 

“Oh, by the way, I need to use this,” she said, picking up a paintbrush submerged in black water that someone had left on my table. As she did it, she purposely flicked her wrist up, causing the dirty water to spatter onto my drawing and smudge my picture.

I stared it, my jaw dropping open.

“Whoops,” she said mockingly, “sorry.”

If I could see myself in the mirror right now, I could have sworn that there was steam rising from my ears. Blinded by fury, my hands darted towards another brush, one that was half submerged in a palette on a neighbouring table, and flicked it at her. I watched in satisfaction as the paint stained her clothes, dotting the pristine white ribbon around her neck and forming blotches on the blue vest she wore over her uniform.

“What is going on?!”

I jumped in alarm at the sound of Mrs Kim’s voice. Whirling around, I gulped when I saw that she was standing behind me, her hands on her waist, anger shimmering in her eyes.

“I have no idea,” Minhee said, her voice sickeningly sweet and innocent, her tone coloured with false shock. “She just picked up that brush and spattered paint all over me.”

“She spattered water all over my drawing!” I said defensively.

Mrs Kim’s eyes narrowed. “Really, Ms Go? I don’t see a brush in Ms Choi’s hands.”

My gaze darted towards Minhee, whose countenance still bore that innocent facade. Her hands however, were empty. The wretched witch probably took the chance to hide the brush when Mrs Jung wasn’t looking. I saw a flicker of smug triumph pass through her eyes.

“Detention, Ms Go,” Mrs Kim said firmly. “Today, after school.”

My head whipped towards Mrs Kim. “But I already have detention with Mr Jung today!”

“Well then,” Mrs Kim said, “I’ll just have him extend your detention. Now get back to work.”

Minhee’s smiled tauntingly as she waved at me and walked away, ignoring the murderous look that I was shooting at her. I turned away and buried my face in my hands. Everything was getting worse by the minute.