You dart up, only to find yourself in a place that is not your room, where you ought to be. At first, the room spins around, and you place your hand on your temple. You felt lightly dizzy, and after a while, everything is normal. As you sleepily rub on your droopy eyes, you find yourself in a bedroom that is most definitely not yours. You are sleeping on Dae Hyun’s bed. You gasp, and jump up, surprised. You calm down a bit and stare at the ground beneath you.

Dae Hyun lies peacefully, over a portable mattress with a soft and gentle expression on his face. He seems at peace, and you smile, because this is the first time you have seen him not so serious. You raise your eyebrows, thinking about whenever you smiled, it always seemed to be because of Dae Hyun. Really, what is he to you? I'm glad... he didn't do anything that I wouldn't want him to do to me.

He grunts, and you flop back onto the pillow, trying to hide your blush. You hear rustling beside you, and you’re guessing that Dae Hyun has waken up. You crawl to the side of your bed and stare down, only to find Dae Hyun's lips curling in a cheeky smile.
“You sleepy head.” he says while the corners of his lips rose. "You fell asleep in another boy's house."
“Mianhe.” you apologize to him in monotone, as if you didn’t mean it, but you did.
He gets up and shrugs, understanding the meaning behind your bored tone. This is why you showed your real self to him, because he understood. Only sometimes you would show it to him, though. Sometimes.

“Yah,” you call out. “I’m going. Thanks for everything.”
“Sure,” he replies as he gets up and folds his blankets, which is scattered messily all over the ground.
You hop off the bed, and slip on one of the blankets. It would be just like a movie, if Dae Hyun had caught you by the waist before you fell, but, come on, this is real life. To put it short, you faceplanted in front of a guy.

Your turn red and start walking out in a fast pace as you hear Dae Hyun chuckle softly behind you. Well, at least he laughed, you think to yourself as you walk out the door. Warmth envelopes your body, and you prepare yourself for a new day of school.

...

“Cleaning duty with you, great.” you mutter as your drag the broom behind you.
Minwoo skips happily behind you, carrying his broom.
“Waeyo, (Why,)” he says with a pout on his face. “Doesn’t my girlfriend love to spend her time with me?”
Minwoo is starting to get boring, you think. You still haven’t replied to him, whether you were serious or not. You were undeceive about telling him the harsh truth. Should I just throw him away? Dump him here and now?

As you scrub the dirty tiles on the floor of the pool, which used to be filled with water, you make conflict with yourself, unsure of whether to finally tell Minwoo that you weren’t serious about your relationship. You steal a glance at him, and you see his eyes contain a stern intensity and the corners of his mouth twitch, as if he were tired of smiling all the time. It must be tiring indeed.

With the back of your hand, you wipe the sweat from your forehead and lean on the broom, exhausted. Plus, the sun glared down at you, and you fanned yourself while sighing.

“Aren’t you tired?” you ask him, and he stops to look at you. “I mean, tired of acting happy all the time.”
He walks towards you, and lifts your chin with his soft and gentle hands.
“Yeah, I am,” he admits.

“Wouldn't you be so much prettier if you smiled? What a pretty face gone to waste.” he hisses at you, frowning. His sharp eyes stare down at yours. “You’re tired too, I can tell.”
He lets go of you before getting out of the pool. Just before he disappears from your vision, he stops to say something.

“I think we both know we’re not serious about each other.” he says before turning around.
Your broom drops to the ground. He was right.

The next day is the same, like every other day. Dae Hyun waits for you in the hallway at lunch. You walk to a table with Minwoo, putting up his cheerful facade. You eat, sometimes contributing to the lively conversation with the nod of a head or a short answer. You go home with both of them, drop Dae Hyun off. Minwoo puts down his facade, kisses you, and at night, you go to Dae Hyun’s place to play games.

Like a broken record, playing over and over again. But instead of being hopelessly bored, you want it to last forever. You want it to become an infinity. But you knew, and Minwoo knew, and Dae Hyun knew, that there is no such thing as infinity. You found that out the hard way, when Maria left you.

It was close to the end of year. Relief? Is that what you feel? No, something else. Like something is urging you to run, something that makes every single hair on your body rise, and something that makes you want to scream out to the world until you have no voice. Minwoo is graduating, and soon.