Byun Baekhyun. He's not again a new talk at school. He's been popular since the first year we started high school. I remember how my classmates used to mention his name, like, almost everytime. Byun Baekhyun---the charming shorty---always managed to make the girls look like hyperventilating female cats.

He used to be nothing special to me. I mean, I admit he's sweet and he's the type of guy with this ladies' killer aura from head to toes. However, at that time I had never asked myself how the aura was able to attach to him. What's more, how can I even think about it---yet I said he's nothing special.

Then I started to change. I don't quite remember when this became a habit, but sometime in the beginning of our senior year, he began to attract my attention. No, I don't think it's his aura that made me interested. I just liked to look at him.

He's not the tall one among his friends, but somehow it's easy to recognize him around the boys huddled under the stairs when I was walking back to class from the library. He has a unique voice, and suddenly, somehow I can recognize his voice even before he came out from behind the corridor. Don't ask how this could happen, I can't tell you the answer, because I myself have no idea. I don't even know what I felt for him.

Because I didn't feel anything, if there's anything to feel.

I just liked to look at him, and incidentally this new habit had awaken all my five senses to anticipate his every move when he was around.

I remember once coming to a music festival at school when I heard that he would perform with his band. He sang a song called 'Love Foolosophy' from Jamiroquai at the time. And I have to admit, he had a nice voice. That kind of emo vocalist voice in early millennium era with a touch of a very strong soul style, and acid jazz music that fits his voice.

And he's very popular. Almost all the girls screamed his name enthusiastically since he introduced himself up the stage, until the song ended. They still had not stopped screaming even after Baekhyun and his friends got off of the stage.

Turns out he was not only popular among girls only. This I learned while watching his Hapkido practice. He's one of the assistant coaches, or perhaps that's what you call it. He was on the Hapkido team that trains kids around Jungwon high school. The children love him. Every Friday and Saturday afternoon they gathered in the gym. With them, also some girls who would sit on the bleachers watching them Baekhyun train with the kids, and with his club after then.

Since then I started watching him playing football during lunch hour. I watched him while he was joking around with his friends on the field side. I began to understand why girls couldn't seem to erase his name in their heads from there.

Baekhyun has a high sense of humor. He always managed to make everyone laugh with just one throw line, his chatter would enliven the senior class corridor. He has a sweet smile, he was a vocalist, at the same time he was also a Hapkido athlete, a level-four black belt holder who loved to play nunchaku. It was enough to make his fans like flounder fish run out of oxygen as he casted that high Brazilian kick on the air.

He fascinated me. I admit. And I like to watch him so.

So after I tell you the series of his amazing traits, here comes the flaw. You know, no man is perfect in this world. Hazel Grace, a character in the book of The Fault in Our Stars I once read, re-popularize a term called hamartia---which emphasizes that a person, whatever he is as perfect as it seems, would have a fatal flaw. To me, Baekhyun hamartia is his manhood instinct. 

Byun Baekhyun, is the present-day Casanova.

.

Apparently, Baekhyun's popularity was directly proportional to the way he enjoyed the popularity itself. All I hear from his fans, Baekhyun has been dating sixty-four times since junior high. I hope the hell they were just exaggerating, like usual. With this number means he's been going out an average of two weeks with a different girl for at least those three years. I was not surprised, and I didn't blame him for that. In fact, I didn't stand in judgment over all the choices he made to meet his great curiosity of the opposite in adolescence. Yes, it's very normal. What abnormal is the average number I got for the fact of his dating issue.

And after this, is what you guys are waiting. After almost getting bored with a description of Baekhyun blablabla and everything that caught my eye, I know you're wondering when we'll start talking to each other. I'm telling you, the process was not too long. In fact I never thought it would be that easy to have his attention.

Baekhyun and I, also some of our other friends, rode the same bus everyday on our way home after school. We used to sit close together on the way back, squeezed into a crowded bus after work hours, or gathered around at the bus stop. Since starting our third year, most senior students got busy with their activities of each university preparation, we rarely walked home in group as it once was. 

I had just finished additional classes in science academy not far from the school at that time and was waiting at the bus stop when my ears caught a familiar voice from a distance. I turned my head, looked at him a glance with his friends---who turned out to notice me. Then I threw my face toward the street, waiting for the bus to come. The boys were standing a little away from me. I didn't hear what they talked about, but I was sure, I swore I heard my name was mentioned two or three times by some of them.

Only Baekhyun got in the bus when it finally came. He sat next to me, smiling sweetly as I turned to him.

Then there was silence.

"Want some gum?"

I turned to him again. He handed me a mint gum. At that time we had passed half way home.

"Thank you." I said, taking a sheet of gum, only to find it was an empty wrapper. Baekhyun purposely rewrapped the opened gum sheet and put them neatly back into the box as shown like new. The same went for other gum inside the wrapper. The boy snorted and giggled.

"Aish, that's not funny." I said then.

"It's not. The highlight lies in your expression." He said, still laughing. 

I didn't say anything. 

"Saehee-ya, Ryu Saehee? Listen to me, there's something I need to tell you." He said again, after a moment he stopped laughing, so I returned to look at him. I realized then, that I had never looked at him that close. 

He was too close. I shifted slightly to the window. 

"What is it?" I asked. 

"I was just wondering, it keeps popping out in my head lately."

"What?"

Baekhyun smiled again. For King Sejong's beard and all his ladies, I don't like that smile. It's like a trapping black hole. 

"Did anyone ever tell you you're an attractive girl?" 

At that time, when the sentence came out, I really wished I could give him a better expression, in order to keep his feelings. Because we were not close friends. We even almost never speak to each other, and to hear that said suddenly came out of his mouth got me realize where this was going.

I just snorted, and smiled a little. 

"Forget it." I said then. 

"What to forget?"

"Everything. Any game you play with your friends, forget it. I'm not interested."

Baekhyun widened his eyes---that was not quite successful. Baekhyun has a standard eye of Korean people in general; it's not big or with clear eyelids. He looked surprised, or perhaps, pretended to be surprise. His hands dropped to his chest, his facial expressions looked injured. 

"That's rude, and I haven't even said anything." He said defensively. He tried to make me feel guilty, and he managed to actually, just not as long. Baekhyun ruined it with a smart enough. 

"But you like me, don't you?" He asked almost two seconds after.

"Why do you think I like you?" I asked back. He again acted as though surprised.

"Come on, I saw you everywhere I've been lately. Classroom corridor, cafeteria, football field, Hapkido practice, and even my band festival. You've never been there before."

I shook my head, but I didn't retort back. I never knew he was aware of my presence there; within each practice, in the show, and what's more to the surprise was that he apparently realized I had never been there before. Maybe it was not him. His friends could tell him what was happening, but that's not a problem for me. Byun Baekhyun just had no reason to come up and talk to me like that. Like he was interested.

"Tell me. Why did you do it?" He asked again. I sighed softly.

Byun Baekhyun is person who persistent on something. I knew this conversation would never end if I didn't give him the answer he wanted to hear, so I told him what I thought.

"Because you fascinate me." I answered briefly. His smile grew wider once it came out of my lips, like someone who found an oasis in the middle of the Sahara desert. 

"Then today we start dating. How that sounds, Baby?" He took my hand that rested on my lap, holding it with two hands and leaning it against his chest. His eyes were dilated, I was wondering if this was what people said as famous Byun Baekhyun deadly gaze. He was ladies' killer, and he doesn't have to do it with being manly as men usually. Only a few aegyeos, girls will melt.

But you know? I do not hate his aegyeo. 

"Byun Baekhyun, I said you fascinate me. It doesn't mean I like you." I pulled my hand. My bus stop was near that point, so I pulled my bag's strap to my shoulder, getting ready to get off. 

"And no." I continued my sentence, "I'm not dating you. I told you, forget it. Bye, Byun Baekhyun."

That way I stood, jumped both of his feet into the aisle about to get off from the bus. Actually I wanted to go back turned looking at him, but I held my self off. 

"You won't give me a reason why, Saehee? Ryu Saehee! Yah!"

Instead of answering his question, I just looked at him and smiled. I raised my hand, waved goodbye along with the bus stopped at the stop, then stepped down. The last thing I saw was Baekhyun pursed his lips disgruntledly. He