Second semester begins without any special happenings than the usual loud noises coming from the students who haven’t seen one another for two weeks and professors trying to calm everybody down to hopefully start their first day of classes. It’s a normal and ordinary day except that there’s a transferee student, rumored to be a foreigner but when she shows herself in Kyuhyun’s calculus class, she doesn’t seem to be a foreigner at all, just an exceptional goddess who must have come from another planet to save humans before earth’s final destruction.

Well, that’s what everybody thinks other than Kyuhyun who is busily typing on his phone until his professor shows us with the goddess behind him.

Kyuhyun hurriedly puts his phone on his pocket and tries to concentrate his attention on the scary-looking professor. He looks behind him and he sees her, smiling prettily at nobody in particular, just scanning the class, but when she meets Kyuhyun’s eyes, she smiles even brighter at him and doesn’t look away until the professor says, “Please introduce yourself.”

Kyuhyun raises his brow at her when she finally removes her gaze on Kyuhyun and smiles at the entire class. That’s only the time when Kyuhyun feels it’s alright to look at her again and not feel awkward.

“Hi,” she says, with her soft voice that reminds Kyuhyun of Joohyun, “my name is Im Yoona. I hope I can be friends with everybody. Thank you.” She ends, sending another smile to the crowd.

After classes, Kyuhyun moves to get out of the classroom as fast as he can but apparently, he’s not fast enough because as much as he doesn’t like to admit it, he catches Yoona looking at him more than once or twice. And not that he’s denying his good looks, but he isn’t really interested in the new girl, unlike all his other classmates, especially Hyukjae and Donghae who seems to have gone head over heels towards her.

“Hi, my name is Yoona,” she says when she suddenly appears in front of Kyuhyun, like magic but not really because when she sees Kyuhyun striding off his desk and out of the classroom, she immediately fixes her hair a little and follows Kyuhyun out.

“Oh, h – hi,” Kyuhyun stammers, taking a couple of steps backwards because Yoona is awfully closer than necessary. “My name is Kyuhyun.”

“I know,” Yoona chimes.

“What?” Now, Kyuhyun doesn’t really want to sound mean or anything but how the hell does she know his name when it’s their first time to talk? Not unless she’s a stalker but she seems to be too pretty to be a stalker.

“I asked Hyukjae-ssi and Donghae-ssi,” Yoona adds, still smiling.

She opens like she’s about to say something else but Kyuhyun’s phone vibrates inside his pocket and Kyuhyun immediately gets it, anxious of who might be texting him after second period.

Baby Kyu. Do you still remember me?

“I’m sorry, but I’ve got to go,” Kyuhyun says before turning her back on Yoona and walking away, not even looking at her crestfallen face before he walks away. It’s not that Kyuhyun doesn’t find him beautiful because anybody would be blind not to recognize Yoona as beautiful. He’s not just interested and being uninterested takes away everything, no matter how beautiful a person is.

The number is unregistered but Kyuhyun gets a tingling feeling of who it might be.

Yesung-hyung?

Kyuhyun’s heart beats faster than normal as he clutches his phone to his heart, not sure anymore if he’s in the right way to get to his second period class.

I missed you, Kyuhyun-ah.

And this time, Kyuhyun’s heart stops beating. He’s not sure why. He’s not even sure if it really did stop beating but he feels it, on his heart, like the jar that are getting emptier and emptier with its beads since the ball is starting to fill up again, like that one person who could fill it up is back again.

Before he can think rationally, Kyuhyun presses “call” and if not for the loudness of the hallway in the university, he might have heard a ring not far from him, coming from the corner of the staircase he just turned from right after the second he presses “call.”

“What’s the matter, Kyuhyun-ah?” Jongwoon’s voice is hoarse and raw, but there is yearning in it.

“Hyung.”

Kyuhyun doesn’t know what to say, actually. He just wants to hear his voice and to know that he’ s there, that he’s real, even though he hasn’t seen him, yet.

“Kyu.”

Jongwoon doesn’t know what to say, either. He knows it’s dangerous to talk to Kyuhyun at the university, even though Kyuhyun still doesn’t know but he just wants to hear his voice again, even from afar and even only through the phone.

“How are you, hyung?”

“Fine, I guess. What about you?”

“Fine, too. You got a new number?”

“Yes, I kind of need, too. Did you text me on my old number?”

“Um, yeah.”

“What did you say?”

How are you?

What are you doing now?

I miss you.

There words are full of ambiguity, like they’re still testing if it’s alright to talk like they used to, like they’re still experimenting if the other is still the same whom they learned to like, whom they learned to fall with.

“Nothing important, hyung.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

There is a pause, a transition between an experiment and a development until Jongwoon breaks it and says the thing he’s been meaning to say ever since he decides to press “answer” rather than his usual “reject” not unless the call is coming from his parents.

“I’m sorry.”

“No, not sorry, hyung,” Kyuhyun says quietly, leaning his back against the wall as the rest of the students dispersed through their respective second class periods. “Anything but sorry.”

“But really, I’m sorry, Kyu. I couldn’t meet you at the ball.”

“Why?”

Jongwoon pauses, not knowing what to say, and finally deciding to give Kyuhyun a piece of truth because Jongwoon knows that Kyuhyun deserves that. “I couldn’t leave home that night. I’m sorry.”

“I told you, hyung, anything but sorry. Why couldn’t you leave home?”

“My parents,” Jongwoon answers, hesitating, like they’re trespassing a restricted area where they shouldn’t wander into, “wouldn’t let me.”

“But you sent a message, though,” Kyuhyun muses quietly, a hint of emptiness is on his voice.

“I couldn’t keep you out of my head,” Jongwoon says, smiling is spite of himself, “so I thought I should at least send a message.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why couldn’t we meet?”

The silence that follows that might be the longest in the history of all silences in phone conversations. Kyuhyun, at the hallway, his back still resting against the wall as he casted his eyes at the ceiling and Jongwoon, several meters away from Kyuhyun, peeping from behind the corner and witnessing Kyuhyun’s sad gaze upon the ceiling, neither knowing what to say, both wanting to reach out but are incapable to.

They are the only ones outside, out of their second class periods other than those who have second period as their vacant periods. They are close and yet, so far.

“Why do you want to meet me, Kyuhyun-ah? You don’t know me. A little. At all.”

“Why do you think, hyung?”

Jongwoon doesn’t answer. He doesn’t know how to anymore.

Kyuhyun waits because he doesn’t want to say something else anymore. It felt as if he’s said enough and the only thing he is waiting for is for Yesung to answer him.

“Say it.”

Kyuhyun takes a deep breath.

He opens his mouth.

But right before he can say anything, Yoona, then and again, appears in front of him. “Why did you walk away like that? And why are you still here? You’re already ten minutes late for your second period class. Let’s go!”

Kyuhyun only stares at her doe eyes. Then, like Yoona just killed someone important to Kyuhyun, he walks passed her and angrily says, “Get lost. Stop pretending like we’re friends or anything because we’re not.”

He isn’t usually mean like that because he is talking to Yesung, for God’s sake, after two long weeks and after Yesung didn’t show up at the ball. He is freaking talking to Yesung, freaking hearing Yesung’s voice, and is almost freaking admitting to Yesung that he is in love with him and is almost freaking asking Yesung to meet him and go out with him, too. So how the hell does she dare to show herself in front of Kyuhyun and ruin his conversation with him?

Jongwoon is there to witness how Kyuhyun treated Yoona and not that he approves of what Kyuhyun did but who is Yoona to Kyuhyun anyway?

“Hello? Hyung?” Kyuhyun frantically says over the phone, checking over and over again if Yesung’s still on the other end of the line, forgetting about Yoona and walking back to the direction where he came from, because it looks like he walked farther away from class, willing to give up his second period and even God-knows-until-when period to talk to Yesung until Yoona showed up.

Yoona stands there, arms crossed, looking at Kyuhyun who is walking away from her. Never in her life has she been ignored by a guy not just once but twice but that only makes her more interested with Kyuhyun. “You’re interesting, Cho Kyuhyun,” she says, smirking.

“Goddamnit,” Kyuhyun mutters, saving Yesung’s new number and trying to call him again.

Say it.

“,” Kyuhyun murmurs, “I love you.”

Kyuhyun turns in the corner where he’s gone from and Jongwoon thanks whoever God is watching him from above who gave him the wisdom to turn his phone in vibrate mode the moment he ends Kyuhyun’s call to him. Kyuhyun is face to face with Jongwoon, his phone on his ear, ringing but nobody is picking up at the end of the line and Jongwoon’s phone on his hand, behind him, its screen lighting and its vibrating.

Now, if there’s anybody – if there is really somebody – who can tear Kyuhyun’s mind from Yesung, it’s only probably Jongwoon.

“Hyung,” Kyuhyun says slowly, dropping the phone from his ear until the call goes dead because of being unanswered.

Jongwoon smiles.

Kyuhyun doesn’t know why but he steps forward and stops short in front of the older man, then in a split second, his arms are wrapped around Jongwoon’s smaller frame.

Jongwoon freezes.

“Kyuhyun?”

Jongwoon can’t deny the strange feeling of being in Kyuhyun’s hold that feels quite like home.