It was not love at first sight.

The first time I laid my eyes on him, I was not able to see him as anything special.

I remember how I thought about him as common, boring and not to forget mentioning irresponsible, as he several times skipped class to work.

Not even was he dressed nicely; most of the time entering the class room dressed in stained blue work trousers and a simple, quite plain shirt.

It was not until later that I got my eyes up for him.

His name was Jonghyun and he started in my class just six months into the last year of high school. Apparently he came from Seoul to Daegu, because of some private issues – I have heard some rumors about, that he circumvented the wrong group of people and got involved in drugs, but I choose not to believe in them, before I get them confirmed or disconfirmed by the guy, himself.  

My class was divided into five groups of tables, with four or five people in each group. Frankly spoken, I was not very happy for my own group, since I overheard them bad mouthing me, already on the second day of knowing each other. Not that you actually get to know a person within such short a time period – but I guess everyone has their own prejudices; just like I had the first time he entered the class. However, I do have enough common sense not to speak them out aloud.

Shortly after Jonghyun started in the class, our teacher also finally decided that it was time for some changes in our groups, if we wanted them. Some of us did and some of us did not – it seemed like a complicated situation but our teacher took a quick decision and made us do a survey, where he had to tell about, what we thought about our group and let know if we eventually wanted a new one.

The people, who wanted a new one, would then get one.

Of course it happened in secret, so your class mates did not get to know your answer, though it probably was not the hardest problem to figure, when I was moved into a new formed group, consisting of me, Jonghyun and two other class mates.

In the beginning I had mixed feelings about being in group with the new boy.

Yet I do not remember anymore when those feelings suddenly got changed.

I do not remember when he suddenly got under my skin.

All of a sudden he was the only person I could think of and I could not get him out of my mind; his maroon spiked hair, his irresistible, hypnotic, chocolate brown eyes which was to drown in, his lopsided smile and his honest grin, heck even his nose with its large and uneven odd nostrils; everything I had not noticed before, I started to notice now.

I found myself thinking about him all the time: What is he doing right now? Where is he now? Who is he spending his time with? Or is he alone?

Is he thinking about me?

Of course not, stop thinking stupid stuff.  

Obvious it was not only his look that drew me towards him. It was also his personality, and I tell you; I feel ashamed about my earlier prejudices. It did not take long time for me to realize that he treated me different than the others usually did. He talked to me, like I was just a normal human being (which, of course I am, but my class mates sometimes make me forget about it), and he would ask me questions about myself and my life; he was the first person ever to show a genuine interest in me as a human with an actual life.

All of a sudden I looked forward going to school; I looked forward to meet him every day.

At some point I was feeling madly in love, yet to afraid to admit it for anyone else. But that was also because, that I knew he liked someone else; a girl who I slowly found myself spending more and more time with, just in hope that it would lead me closer to Jonghyun. She was not that bad, most of all because she already had a boyfriend and had turned Jonghyun down at several occasions, yet it hurt that he continued to try so hard.  

In December our group worked in the school’s food stand to earn money for an arranged class trip.

At the time spring arrived, we were all going to Japan, and I will probably never really forget the time spent there.

Not that anything actually really happened, but it is something I treasure as a beautiful memory.

The day before we had to leave, Jonghyun wrote me on Facebook and asked if I had everything settled for the trip. Startled I watched my screen for a couple of minutes – stunned by the fact that it probably was the first time that anyone from my class had written to me – before I decided to play it cool and answering him as if it had been the most normal thing in my whole life.

Sadly it was not.

The trip turned out to be quite frustrating. Pretty much everyone got in a huge fight with each other, and even Jonghyun got annoyed on the girl he claimed to have a huge crush on. I never really got to know why, though – we do not talk so much together again. I was just a passerby, who watched it all. One of the girls in my class even stated that she wanted to be me, since I was just being neutral. I still do not know what to think about that sentence.

You would probably think, that I was happy over the fact that Jonghyun had gotten mad at the girl he liked and had decided to freeze her out. Sadly, it was not really the right moment, seeing that I had just promised her and her friends to walk with them in the theme park we had to visit the next day. Of course Jonghyun was supposed to walk with them as well, when I agreed to it, but it seemed like he had decided otherwise. When I got to meet him at lunch time in the theme park, though, he asked me if I was having fun and got to sit down and talk for a bit.

Another reason I found the trip frustrating, was because I literally was getting sick and tired of everything, and I had, had a rather unpleasant experience with the Japanese family I stayed with for half of our stay there – none of them spoke neither Korean nor English and it had been rather hard to communicate with them.

On the other half of our stay, we stayed on a hotel where some guy from my class had taken a pity on me, and had asked me to share a room with him. For a short moment I had wondered if Jonghyun would ask me to share a room with him – we were supposed to be friends after all, right? But he never asked; instead of he just accepted the offer which randomly was thrown at him by some dude he talked a lot with.

Maybe if I had, had the courage and had asked him, he would have accepted as well?   

One of the nights I was sitting outside the hotel and phoning with my grandmother, when all of a sudden he walked up to me together with his roommate, and asked if I wanted to come inside with them. It was an awkward moment, since I was using my headset as microphone and he obviously did not notice it himself, before I told him that I was on the phone.

Oh, he ended up answering while scratching his neck, and he might or might not have added something along with: Then come up afterwards.

What did that even mean? Should I come up to his room or was it just a declaration on, that I was getting late and that I should get some sleep? – I never figured, because I ended up going to my own room, being the coward I am. I never got inside my room, though, because my roommate had decided to throw a mini party in there, even though alcohol was prohibited on our class trip.

It frustrated me; I felt like and I was tired – all I wanted was my bed, yet I was sitting on the staircase in the hallway, crying my eyes out as everything was getting to much for me to handle in my current state.

Later that night, when I had gotten friends with my roommate again – after having handed him in to the teachers, so I could get some needed peace, we ended up sneaking downstairs to get us a midnight snack, because I was honestly starting to starve after everything. On our way down the stairs though, I hear him: Kibum.

Yet I did not grasp it, until a hand was resting on my shoulder and he spoke my name a second time: Kibum.

I looked up and there Jonghyun was standing with a genuine worried expression on his face, and he asked me if I was okay.

I still wonder where that question came from; why he was asking. Did I not seem okay? Had someone told him? Or had he seen me crying?

I ended up telling him yes, though it might have been a lie.

Why bother telling him that I was not?

To be honest, sometimes I could not stop wondering, if I liked Jonghyun just because he was being nice to me and treated me as an actually human being, but every time I got to look at him or hear his voice, my heart would always pounce a bit faster than usually and tell me otherwise.

Nothing ever really happened between us and he never showed any other interest towards me than friendship.

That is why, when last school day arrived way to fast, I was ready to tell myself that I mistook friendliness with love; I was ready to let him go, knowing that I would never get to see him again.

I stalked away towards the bus, without finding it necessary to tell any of my previous classmate goodbyes, as they were busying themselves with getting drunk and what do I know – I have never been interested in such stuff.

I fumbled a bit with my headset as I took my usually seat in the bus and looked outside the window with a heavy feeling filling my chest.

It is not love.

Eventually I decided on closing my eyes and getting drown in my music, as the bus slowly started to drive away.

Today, I still catch myself thinking on him from times to times…

“Yeobo, what are you doing at the computer this early?” He asked with a sluggish voice, sitting up in our bed, while palming the sleep in his eyes. A yawn escaped his mouth, as he wrapped his arm around my waist and rested his head on my shoulder to see what was happening on the computer screen.

“I am just… writing a bit…” I told him, feeling my cheeks heat, as his eyes fixed on the last sentences and he chuckled lightly.  

“What is up with the ending?”

 “I am just… trying to be dramatic…?”

To be honest, the bus did not get to drive more than a few hundred meters, before it suddenly came to a sudden stop.

I opened my eyes, as I felt the bus stop and watched as the door in the front opened, before a breathless Jonghyun gets to enter. He stopped and supported his hand on one of the bars, as he gasped after his breath.

Had he been running?

Why?

To catch the bus?

But was he not going to spend time with the others?

He lifted his head then and his eyes locked with mine. He straightened up and started to take small steps towards me, saying something in the direction of: You really thought you could just leave me like this? – But I was to blown away, to remember the exact choice of his words.

Just then, the bus all of a sudden started to drive again, literally making Jonghyun fall into my arms.