The walls were practically vibrating with all the shouts and cheers of the audience, and I sat on my designated bench, squeezing the life out of my plastic water bottle. It was a star-studded night; I was wearing my best dress and pushing my hair away from my neck in order to let the light breeze passing through the halls touch the hot skin on my nape. On the monitor above, I was watching the live broadcast of the MC announcing the finalists.

“We’ve heard from some stunningly amazing contestant tonight, haven’t we, folks?” the MC said, smiling as he looked up from his cue cards. “It’s really the worst shame that we can only pick one winner. Everyone is a winner for trying, though! And now without further ado, I will be announcing the top two finalists of Brightest-Lights Singing Contest!”

I pressed my knees together while I prepared myself. There were three contestants thus far, and one of us was getting eliminated tonight. Once the names were read, there was no going back. That would be the very end. I held my breath while the MC broke the seal on the envelope. He looked over the crowd and smile so much that his eyes were narrow and wrinkly. He spoke into the microphone, two names: mine and Luhan’s.

My first reaction was to let out the long sight that I’d been holding in. I won, I thought. I was in the Final Two and I had a shot at first prize. For once, I was on a winning streak. I let out a nervous laugh and thought about how silly I was to be so nervous. I just hoped that my luck would go on. But then something pulled me to look to my right, and when I did, I spied my opponent sitting on a bench further down the fall, almost across the backstage. Luhan was hunched over on the bench, his elbow resting on his knees and his head hanging near his folded hands. He didn’t look nearly as excited about being in the Top Two as I was.

I imagined that he must have beside himself hearing the results, though I couldn’t imagine why. Luhan was definitely the more obvious choice when it came to choosing a winner. Handsome, charming, and talented, Luhan had nothing to be nervous about. Though I supposed that he had more to lose.

I thought about what I was doing here in this contest, and I thought about why Luhan was here as well. Though not the closest of friends, he and I had a past together. Something that was becoming more important the more time we spent at this singing contest. My mind raced back four years to when I first met him.

I was fourteen years old, and it was my first day of high school. I remember it clearly because I had just gotten braces the week before and because no one else in my high school would let me forget it. Walking into the halls, I was struck by how big and unfamiliar everything was. This was no longer middle school, the safe haven where I could behind my friends and avoid attention. In high school, no one ever forgave you for any type of deformity you might have. And on top of my metal mouth, it was painfully obvious that I was a little overweight.

The first day of school was the worst. I was teased relentlessly. In PE, the teacher asked us to line up according our height and weight so she could take it down for our records; the other girls immediately pushed me to the back of the line, snickering while they did. Another time, in English, the bully from my middle school used a lanyard to hit my arm. When I looked up to say something to him, he dropped the lanyard on my desk, saying that it was a gift: a whip to go with the chains in my mouth so that I could give S & M s. I was stunned, and all I could do was gape at the obscene language. Gaping was a mistake however, and everyone in that class stared and laughed. When the teacher finally arrived, they quieted down, but I slunk lower in my seat thinking of a way to just end the day early.

Needless to say, I made no friends that day. I went along just keeping to myself, not speaking to anyone. I went from one class straight to the other so that I wouldn’t have to see or speak to anyone. But when the last class of the day came along, biology, and I walked into the room, I was devastated with what I saw: tables instead of desks, which meant that I would have to share with someone else.

I took a seat in the back of the room, and as the other students came in, they avoided me by sitting in the tables closer to the front. The bell rang and there was still no one sitting at my table. I let out a sigh of relief and the teacher recorded the seating chart and began class. The first day ended, but my trials were far from over. The next day in that biology class, I was sitting alone at the table once more, but just as the bell rang, one more boy ran, late, into the room. He widened his eyes at the teacher and began trying to explain the reason for his being late.

The teacher waved him away and instructed him to take a seat somewhere. The boy’s eyes darted across the room. All the tables were filled… except mine. He locked eyes with me in that instant and cold fear dawned on me as I realized that he was walking in my direction. He took the seat next to me, and I scooted over to give him more room to sit without ever coming into contact with me.

“Hello,” he said cheerfully. “I’m Luhan. Can I sit here?”

I looked over at him. He was a boy of average height though a bit slim. His eyes were big and clear and looked perpetually happy. I could already tell that he was going to become the popular boy of the freshman class. Remembering his question, I just shrugged in answer and he settled himself into the chair. With that over, I tried to focus on the lecture.

“What’s your name?” he asked. At first I tried to ignore him, but he patted my shoulder to get my attention. “Your name?” he asked again. “I’m Luhan.”

“You said that already,” I said. “Shh. There’s a lecture.”

“Ahh, right,” he said, turning back to his notebook. It wasn’t long, however, before he interrupted me again. “What chapter are we on?” he asked, and I wrinkled my brows at him.

“It’s the second day of school,” I said. “We’re still on chapter 1.”

“Ahh, right,” he said. “Are you always this sarcastic?”

I narrowed my eyes at him. I could already tell that he and I were going to heads this semester. But suddenly he pointed at my face and I blanked out. What could he be staring at?

“That’s a lot of braces,” he said, leaning on his elbows and looking at my mouth. I unconsciously lifted a hand to my mouth to hide them from him. I turned away, just then, but I heard him shuffling closer.

“Are they new?” he asked. I was getting annoyed. Why did he want to know? So he could make jokes about metallic s like the other boys? Luhan pat my shoulder again, and when I turned to him, I kept my mouth closed.

“It hurts when they’re brand new, huh?” he asked. “When I got braces, the first few days, I could only eat soup and mashed potatoes. Getting your teeth molded is the worst part. When I had mine, they put this weird squishy stuff on a spoon and shoved it into my mouth and it tasted like crap.”

I softened my glare on him as he kept talking. Luhan smiled seeing me warm up to him. “I got mine off last month. See?”

He grinned so big that even his gums were showing. His pearly, white teeth were all straight and perfectly aligned in his mouth. He looked incredibly silly, it was almost impossible not to laugh. “You have really nice teeth,” I said, trying to keep my voice low so that the teacher wouldn’t hear. Luhan, pleased with the response he finally got out of me, smiled back.

“You’re going to have a pretty smile, soon, too,” he said. “By the way, what’s your name?”

I was about to tell him, but before I could say anything, the teacher had called on Luhan and told him to be quiet or he’d get sent to the disciplinary office. Luhan apologized graciously, but unconvinced that he would stop talking, Miss Wong made him switch seats with the girl in the table in front of mine. He talked to me less ever since that day. But I always remembered Luhan as the only boy who didn’t make fun of my braces, and as the boy who promised that I would have a pretty smile someday.

I tried to talk to him more after that, but just as I predicted, he was soon swept into the crowd of popular kids. I stopped trying to talk to him after that. What would a boy like him want from a girl like me anyhow?

The summer after freshman year, I got my braces off. Determined not to be the same loser that I was the year before, I started running two or three miles every day to lose weight. I went on diets and ate healthy foods. I disciplined myself, and by the time the summer was over, I’d finally caught up to the other girls in my class. So with a newfound surge of courage, I went ahead and joined the girls’ soccer team at school.

I saw Luhan often, though I never really got to talk to him much. The boys’ and girls’ soccer team had their seasons during the same time of year, so we often had to share the field with the boys’ team. I ran past Luhan sometimes, wondering if he ever thought about talking to be ever again. I wanted to show him my teeth. I wondered if he noticed that my braces were off or if he thought that my smile was as pretty as he had promised. But he was a star player; he was never distracted during practice. I doubted that he noticed.

When summer conditioning was finally over, the returning girls announced that they would be releasing the roster soon, and if our names were on the list that meant that we would be going to initiation night on during the first game of the season.

As a newcomer to the team, I dreamed of Initiation Night as though it was the Prince’s Ball and I was Cinderella. I idolized the returning girls for their strength, skill, agility, as well as their wisdom. They were fierce players and beautiful girls. I wanted so much to be like them. Initiation Night was like a dream, and when I saw my name on the roster, I couldn’t be any happier.

Initiation Night came faster than I thought, and pretty soon, I was in the locker room with the other sophomore girls prepping up for our first game. Although I still wasn’t the most popular girl on the team, I was treated with only a mild neglect. Mostly, I was left to my own devices, which I liked just fine. The returning girls then came into the locker room, with gift baskets personalized for each one of us. Each of the new girls received a basket of sweets, a soccer ball with their name on it, and a jersey personalized by the returners.

I waited patiently, and finally, Yoon, the captain, walked toward me with a sweet smile and handed the basket to me. I had a box of candy and a soccer ball, like the other girls, but when I got my personalized jersey, my smile diminished. The other girls had cute decorations like flowers and smiley faces or a surfboard for one girl who liked to surf. But mine only had words: “The BFG”… the - girl. When I turned it around, there were words around the bottom as well: “I like it in the back.”

I was mortified, and I tried to give it back to the returning girls, telling them that I would just play in my normal uniform. But they were relentless and they threatened to make trouble for me if I didn’t wear their shirt. And in my high school, whenever one of the returning girls told you to do something, you never questioned them. So, I sighed and pulled their profane jersey over my head and pulled it over. I felt disgusted with myself, but I looked at it as just one obstacle that I needed to cross over and I could finally be on the team.

When I ran out onto the field, everyone started yelling “BFG”. Throughout the whole game, the three letters were the only things people jeered at me, even when I made a goal. In that moment, it didn’t matter that I was a good soccer player and it certainly didn’t matter that I could everything they said: I was just BFG, the - girl that everyone picked on. When the game ended, I didn’t even bother staying for the handshake. I just ran home.

The next day at school, everyone knew about it. People called me BFG in the halls and they stared at me. The first class of the day was PE, and I was reluctant to return to the girls’ locker room. When I walked onto the field for class, I was mortified again that all the boys in my class had BFG jerseys as well… except for Luhan, who kept his blue jersey and matching shorts. The coach came around and assigned captain roles to Luhan and another boy. He instructed them to begin choosing their teammates for a soccer game.

The other boy seemed to be looking for me, so I hid behind the crowd of people. I already knew that he was just looking for a chance to call me “the - girl” again, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to let him have it. He yelled “BFG” over the crowd of people trying to coax me over to his team, but I stayed put. That’s when Luhan spoke up.

“__-ah!” he yelled. I was sure that that was the first time someone had used my actual name all day. Hearing it suddenly sounded strange. A few people were confused, asking who it was that Luhan had just called and if there was such a person in the class. When I looked over, Luhan caught my eye and he smiled as he waved me over. “Come over here, you’re on my team.”

I stood still for a moment, wondering if he really was talking to me. “__-ah!” Luhan yelled again. Everyone was quiet; there was no need to yell. But he still did. “Come stand behind me, you’re on my team.”

I looked around, seeing everyone’s startled faces as I walked over to stand behind Luhan. They continued choosing teammates, and then we separated to discuss team strategies. When I found myself playing defense with Luhan, I was finally able to talk to him a bit.

“Luhan!” I said, and he backed up so that his ear was closer to me but he could still pay attention to the plays on the field.

“Uh huh?” he said.

“Are… you sure you want me on your team?” I asked.

“Sure. Why? You don’t want to be on the team?” he asked, turning to me for a second.

“No, I do,” I said. “It’s just… aren’t you concerned about what people might say?”

Luhan thought about it for a minute before shrugging. “Not really,” he confessed. “What will they say?”

Why was he acting so clueless? “Because of what happened to me yesterday,” I said. The memories of Initiation Night came rushing back, and I started to get angry all over again.

“What happened yesterday?” he asked, and I raised my brows at him. Could he really not know? Wasn’t he even a little bit aware?

“At the game last night, when I – ”

“Ahh, right!” he said, a light bulb going on in his head, and I froze. Looks like he did remember. “Your first game of the season, right? I heard you made a goal!”

Was… that all he heard about last night? I thought about elaborating on the situation from last night, but Luhan suddenly stopped multitasking, turned to me, and just smiled. That’s when I learned that he knew all about last night and the BFG. But like him, he wanted me to just forget it and pretend it hadn’t happened. So, I just smiled shyly in return.

“You got your braces off,” he said softly. “It looks good.”

I think by now, I was blushing. But before anything else could happen, Luhan told me that there was still a PE game going on. And if I could make a goal now like I did last night, then his team might have a shot at winning. So, I pushed thoughts of last night aside and focused on winning for Luhan, instead.

In the third year of high school, I quit soccer and joined choir, instead. Luhan and I were put into the same English class with the same eccentric American teacher, who had big curly that looked like it should have been a shade of red, but something went wrong with the dye. She was a tall woman who always spoke passionately every time she spoke at all. I sat across the room from Luhan when she was lecturing about the importance of following one’s heart and desires, a running theme in many Romantic English novels.

“You, sir!” she said suddenly, pointing her finger at Luhan and causing him to jump in his seat.

“Yes?” he answered bashfully.

“What do you want?” she asked. Luhan cocked his brows at first, not quite understanding the question. Eventually, he figured that it meant “what did he want out of life?” So he cleared his throat and answered: “I want to be a professional soccer player.”

The rest of the class nodded in agreement. Luhan was a valuable player on the team; it only made sense that he would go on to become a professional player. But the English teacher beamed at him as though she weren’t quite satisfied with that answer.

“That’s what you want to be, isn’t it?” she said. “Good answer. But what do you need? What is it that you need to be doing, or what do you need to be? What do you think is your destiny?”

I remember thinking that this was a difficult question to be asking of kids barely in their third year of high school. But then again, the difference between needs and wants was made clear to most of us as younger children. What made it difficult was the fact that none of us really knew what life needs constituted. But it struck me suddenly that the difference between what one wants in life and what one needs resided in the very core of our persons, at the core of our beings.

Luhan shifted uncomfortably in his seat, but he suddenly looked up confidently at the rest of the class and said: “Music.”

Our teacher smiled at Luhan. “Good answer,” she said. I was surprised at Luhan’s answer since I never really thought of him as a musically-inclined person. But perhaps there was a lot about Luhan that I didn’t know, and rather than feeling discouraged, his mystery excited me in some way. It was in that classroom that I started to feel myself becoming inherently attracted to Luhan. Me and every other girl in the room, I supposed. Then the teacher stopped in front of my desk, whisking me away from my thoughts with the same smile she gave to Luhan.

“And you, my dear?” she asked. “What do you need?”

I was excited to search within myself for an answer, but before I could even think I heard a murmur behind me, a boy saying to a neighbor: “She needs to stop being such a loser.” I was distracted by that statement that I couldn’t give my teacher a proper answer. The bell rang before I could say anything at all. I walked out of class, grabbing my bag, and with all my things I started walking home by myself. I needed to get away from that God-forsaken school and just be alone, where no one’s unkind thoughts could hurt me. I had always been teased throughout my years at school, but it never really occurred to me until then just how alone I really was. Maybe that really was my destiny: to be the loser. To be the one who gets put down so that others could feel a little better about themselves? It was a crap destiny, but in my gloomy thoughts, it was the best I could do. I skidded to a stop realizing that I left my textbook at school. So with feet that were heavy with regret, I turned around, kept my head low and my eyes to the floor, and walked back to the school.

I was halfway there when someone poked me in the stomach, causing me to yelp a little and flinch. When I looked up at the culprit, Luhan was laughing good-naturedly in my face.

“Walking past me and not even going to say ‘hello’?” he teased. “I thought we were friends.”

I laughed nervously with him and tugged at my sleeve. “Hi, Luhan,” I said, my voice slightly too girly. “What are you doing?”

“Same as you,” he said. “Walking home.”

“Don’t you usually take the bus?” I asked.

“I just moved, actually,” he said. “My house is two more blocks down and then a right. But, hey, before I forget – ” he reached into his backpack and took out an English textbook. He handed it to me.

“You left this in class,” he said. Smiling graciously, I took the textbook from him.

“Thanks,” I said. “Saved me some walking distance. I was on my way to get this, actually.”

“No problem,” he said. “So, are you going this way? Can I walk with you?”

“Umm,” I said, but he was already walking ahead and lightly pulling me along by the elbow. “Sure,” I said.

“Thanks.” Luhan and I walked side-by-side in silence for a while and I couldn’t handle the awkward atmosphere. Sure, I’d spoken to him a couple of times and it was never that hard: the difference now was that I actually sort of liked him. And that changed everything. Luhan broke the silence with a question.

“So, what do you need?” he asked.

“Huh?” I said, and he laughed.

“The question from class,” he said. “Like… the difference between what you want out of life and what you think you need to be doing. What do you think you need to do?”

I bit my lip, still not comfortable answering such a deep question. “My question first,” I said. “Do you really think music is your… destiny?” Luhan widened his eyes at me and then shrugged.

“I’m still discerning that, actually,” he said. “It felt like the proper thing to say at that time. I mean, I love soccer, but music has always been a part of my life and sometimes I think about putting music away to focus on soccer… but then it just keeps coming back to me, like an itch that I’m trying not to scratch but the more I resist, the itchier it gets. What do you think?”

In honesty, I wasn’t sure that Luhan was cut out to be a singer. In my choir group, there were a few male singers whose voices could strike awe in the hearts of anyone who heard their deep, angelic voices. But I’d never heard Luhan sing before. I tried to imagine what his voice would sound like in a song. But when I looked over at him, the look on his face as he talked about music was different from the way he looked on the soccer field. During a game, he looked focused, determined, even slightly angry. But when he spoke of music, he looked… happy. Deeply happy, like the rest of the world could collapse around him and he’d still be on cloud nine.

I was feeling myself fall in love with him some more, and I had to snap myself out of it very soon. So I took a deep breath and gave him an answer: “I think… you need to just do your best, and the rest will follow.”

Luhan smiled at my answer when we paused our walk for a bit. “You’re right,” he said. And we continued our stroll. We passed by Luhan’s house first and I waved from a distance as he started walking towards his place. But before he got far, he suddenly turned around. I was going to ask if he forgot something, but before I could say anything, he was back in front me and hugging me around the neck with one arm. It lasted a mere second or two, but my cheeks were already deeply red by the time he pulled away.

“See you later,” he said, walking back to his house.

I was pulled out of my flashback when a stage crew member tapped my shoulder. “I need your music,” he said, asking for the CD with my song on it. I was back-stage again watching the monitor as the MC announced my name and Luhan’s as the finalists of the competition. I had been sent here by my choir teacher, who believed that I had a chance to rise above my school status as a loser in my final year of high school. It was just bad luck that I had to do this against Luhan.

I looked past the crew member and back at Luhan, who was still looking as nervous as ever. I knew exactly what this would mean for Luhan if he won: it would mean the jumpstart to his career as a singer, the beginning of his destiny. And what did that mean for me? For me, it would mean no longer being in the darkness. It would mean walking in the sunshine after being branded a loser for so long. And after that… well, what would happen after that? I had no clue.

“Your music?” the crew member asked again. I looked between him and Luhan on the opposite bench. I could just feel how nervous Luhan was. I could hear his thoughts, I could feel his pain. Dear Luhan who always picked me up out of my slump, who ignored all the horrible things people said about me. On my darkest days, it was always he who lifted me back up into the sun. Could I spend a little more time in the dark this time and let him be in the sun? It dawned on me just then what my answer was, what it was that I need to do.

“Can I talk to the judges, please?” I asked, raising my voice a little, which seemed to be a mistake since Luhan broke his gloom-fest to look over at me.

“They’re in study right now,” the crew member said to me. “But I can give them a message. Did you have a question?”

I looked over at Luhan, who was staring intently at me as though he were trying to figure out what I was saying. I nodded to the crew member.

“I… want to drop out of the competition,” I said. After assuring that I was perfectly sound in my decision, the crew member left to give my message to the judges. I sat back down on the bench feeling simultaneously accomplished and defeated. I closed my eyes awhile, listening to the sounds of the cheering audience and remembering how it felt to sing for them. A shadow passing over my lids promoted me to open my eyes. Luhan stood before me.

“I saw what you just did,” he said seriously. “What do you think you’re doing?”

I sat up and folded my hands in my lap. “What I need to do,” I said. I knew now what I both wanted and needed to do. All I wanted was for Luhan to have his destiny, to be a singer as he wished. And in order to do that, I had to become the darkness from which his light was born, from which he could shine. “I’m dropping the competition.”

“Why?” Luhan asked, slightly angry. “For me? I didn’t ask you to do anything like that.”

“I know you didn’t,” I said. “But I want to.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” he said. “Just days ago, you wanted this as badly as I did. Stay in the competition, __-ah.”

“No,” I said. “This is your destiny, not mine.”

“What are you even saying?” he said, sitting beside me. “My destiny is to just try my best, and everything will follow. That’s what you said to me.”

“But this is what I want to do,” I said. “Luhan, you’ve been there for me for a long time, and just once, I want to be able to let you get ahead, too. So let me do a good deed!”

“You mean let you drop out and thus let me win by default,” he said. “What kind of victory is that?”

“A victory that might let you be a singer someday, just like you wanted,” I answered.

“No, that’s what you want!” he said, staring right into my eyes. “But what do you need?” he asked, and once again, I had no answer for him. “I’ll tell you,” he said. “I think what you need to do is just do your best and everything else will follow in its rightful place. Don’t drop out. Sing with me.”

Luhan reached out and gave my hand a squeeze. His hand lingered there for a second longer and when I looked back up at him, he was smiling at me. For a second, I flashed back to that image of him as a gummy first-year student who was all too eager to talk to me and not make fun of my braces. And then again as a second-year student who ignored my humiliating situation on the soccer field and still wanted me on his team. And once more as the boy who hugged me as he bared his soul on the way home. So I smiled back, and I hoped that he could remember as the girl who tried her best for him. As the girl who hid in the dark to let him shine.

The brightest light in my life.

Author's Note: Ah, it's so sentimental and sappy >.< Haha, hope you enjoyed it though! I dedicate this one-shot to my friend, Becky, who had the ugliest braces back then but has the most beautiful smile today.