The Monday Hoseok puts his glasses on is more monumental to him than he will admit-- little things like that shouldn't concern boys like him-- but it is, anyway, and so he walks into the classroom with a strange sense of foreboding. He knows he's gotten contact lenses, but what the hell, he's terrified as . His eyes probably aren't as good as the doctor said they were. He's going to trip over something. Or someone. 

Of course, he muses, it would be impossible to trip over Maija. At five feet and four inches, he isn't short, but Maija is towering: Hoseok distinctly recalls his forehead brushing the tip of her nose when they bump into each other in the halls. These clandestine interactions are rare, because Hoseok is the charismatic class clown seated in the first row, and Maija, who is always somewhere in the third or fourth row, is well beyond his nearsighted vision's capabilities. 

He doesn't really remember how Maija looks like. For two terms, he's convinced himself that despite his 550 eyesight, he doesn't need glasses. As a result, all he can remember from their conversations-- which don't really amount to anything more than calling "pass the paper" during tests-- is a blur of chestnut brown hair, a long, slightly hunched figure, and a permanently curious tone in the way she speaks. Kind of like everything she says is a question left unanswered. 

Sometimes the paper related conversations go somewhere else, even for a moment. Hoseok particularly remembers the day they discussed vocabulary words in English, and touched upon the unfamiliar phosphenes. The class had been asked to write what they thought the word meant on a piece of paper. Maija had called, "Hoseok, what was the word?" 

Hoseok had turned, hoping against hope he was staring in the spot where her eyes were. "Phosphones." 

"Oh, the colors you see when you rub your eyes?" The head of mahogany strands nodded in excitement.

"I- I don't know." 

He'd seen Maija's outline lean forward and then laugh a little, an alto tinkle that reverberated heartily in . "No, silly, I was telling you what the word meant." And that was when Hoseok realized he could never really distinguish the questions and the truths when it came to Maija, and it was funny that he didn't really mind. 

Hoseok is still terrified as by the time he makes his way to the last row of the classroom, fully conscious of the lenses now weighing down on the bridge of his nose. He counts one, two, three! columns-- and barely suppresses a gasp, holy hell, there she is, light eyebrows, wide eyes trained on a cellphone game of Smurf City that Hoseok can see so, so clearly with his new glasses-- 

"Maija, right?" He says, and when she turns, she nods slightly, smoothing out her skirt as she does so. That's the thing about not seeing well enough to make out her face- it had made him pay attention to all the other little things. Like how even when she speaks, there is something even about the flow of her words that still makes you think of silence- the loaded silence in between songs, the kind of silence you want to pay attention to. 

(So Hoseok pays attention to the silence in her words.) 

"Right, Maija." Her voice shifts an octave higher by the time she utters her name, and Hoseok decides that even Maija herself is a question he needs to answer. And as he takes the seat beside her and they begin to talk, and Hoseok begins to notice the button shape of her nose and the little lids under her eyes, he realizes he can't tell if she's his first phosphone or a mysterious question. 

He decides, too, that he doesn't mind taking the time to find the answers.