The next few days have gone pretty fine; Hana spending her nights with Jongin to teach him dance lessons, Sehun and Hana continuing to work at the café. But the thing that still bugged Hana was that whenever she tried to bring up the question to Sehun, even the slightest relation to it, Sehun would immediately change the subject or pretend there was a customer that needed to be attended. After a few more tries, she gave up on even asking although the curiosity keeps on bugging her.

She would remind herself to just ask another time; when the time is right. Well, whenever that may be.

Every day, Jongin would come to the shop, sit in his place; the seat beside the window, and would just stay there for a few hours, annoying the heck out of Hana. Although she wouldn’t admit it, she kind of enjoyed his presence. Though annoying, it somehow helps in fixing the awkwardness that Sehun seems to posses when she asked him on that topic.

The more Hana sees it; the two of them really look great as friends. Their differences somehow make them closer; a sensitive, soft, fragile-looking teenage boy with a dorky, tough-looking guy. And she feels fortunate to have them as her friends, though she would never ever say that to the ever so conceited Jongin.

She hoped that it would stay this way forever. But sometimes, hope would remain a hope.

Her legs shuffled heavily up the slope leading to the dance academy, her backpack hanging on her right shoulder. Tomorrow would be the day her father would return from Seoul and a week after that, she’d have to continue her high school lessons. For the umpteenth time, she groaned and lolled her head back.

“Mind telling me what’s wrong?” the tanned boy beside her asked seeing that she wouldn’t stop groaning.

“My dad is coming back tomorrow and I have school next week.” She admitted as she leaned her head to her right shoulder to look at him.

For the past few days, Jongin and Hana had been walking together to his dance lessons. Jongin’s excuses would always be he didn’t want to wait for her at that cold place knowing that she would arrive late or something like that. Although she would feel uncomfortable with walking with him, but now she just didn’t care. They would always bring up a topic and debate all the way to the academy. But today, she didn’t feel like arguing that much with him. Instead, they just talked about school. Eventually, Jongin had to attend school at the area too. Might as well learn what the school is like.

Once they arrived at the building, Hana set down her backpack by the mirror and led a few warm ups and stretches before starting.

“Okay, today, we’re going to learn a few steps from one of my favourite songs; Sorry Sorry by Super Junior.” She announced after they were done with the warm up, her face lighting with excitement at the mention of one of her favourite groups.

“What?! I love them okay?!” admitted Hana when she saw Jongin stifling a laugh. Being unable to hold the laugh, Hana hit his arm for laughing so loudly. Can’t a girl fangirl on her favourite group for once?

~.~

Hana pulled her knees towards her chest and hugged them as she leaned back at the mirror, her chest heaving up and down from the exhaustion. Jongin sat beside her in the same posture, his black bangs covering parts of his eyes.

“Can I ask you something, Jongin?” asked Hana as she took a sip from her water bottle. Jongin nodded in response.

Hana hesitated at first. Should she even ask him? “This is a bit sudden but do you know anything about Sehun’s parents that maybe I don’t know about?”

Furrowing his eyebrows in confusion, Jongin replied with asking why she would like to know about that out of the blue. Hana bit her lower lip, dithering on whether she should tell him. He’s known him since they were little. He would know him better. From that thought, she told him on how Sehun would avoid mentioning about his parents when she tried to ask him about it.

“From what I know, his parents are quite nice. He never complained about his parents to me even though they often left him at his uncle’s house for his uncle to take care of him. As far as I can remember, Sehun always told me that his parents just had work to do back at their place. I don’t really know though.” Confessed Jongin, wondering why Sehun would avoid any mention of his parents.

Leaning the back of her head with the smooth mirror behind her, Hana let out a sigh. Maybe she shouldn’t look into it more. It was Sehun’s personal affairs. She had no right to interfere with them; she couldn’t shake the curiosity off her though.

Figuring that this was the moment to lighten the mood up, Jongin stood up as he rummaged through his backpack, searching for the piece of flyer he managed to snatch from a light pole on his way home. Feeling the smooth texture of the flyer, he dropped his backpack and extended his arm to show Hana the piece of flyer.

Hana tilted her head to the right as she stared at the foreign paper in front of her. Shifting her eyes to Jongin, he shook the paper, signaling her to read it. Slowly, she reached for it and began going through the words printed on it.

It was an advertisement for a dance competition. Her eyes lit up in excitement as she read each word on the flyer. It was a one day event where 20 teams will face in a battle against each other. The top three winners will not only win a prize ranging from 100,000 won to 500,000 won, but they will also get the chance to get a scholarship to major in dance to any university in Korea they want. The latter prize will only apply to the winners who want to major in dance.

The corner of her lips tugged upwards into a wide grin as she read the flyer over and over again. This would be her ticket to live an easier life; away from the stress, away from her… father. If she won this, maybe, just maybe, she could prove to her father that not only being a business can be successful. If she won this, maybe her siblings would not look at her like she was a failure to the family again; maybe, just maybe.

In front of her, the tanned boy still stood there with crossed arms, biting his lower lip in anticipation towards her reaction. Suppressing her grin, she raised an eyebrow at him, waiting for him to explain what this was about.

“So, umm. I kind of signed us up for it.” Jongin said so quietly that if she hadn’t paid attention, she would not have noticed it. His shoulders relaxed as he saw the small smile starting to form from her lips. He was waiting for a furious Hana to jump and throw a string of curses at him, but to his relief, she just smiled; grinned to be exact.

“You’re not mad?” he asked warily.

“Why would I be? Thank you, Jongin.” She looked at the piece of paper in her hands.

“You can keep it since I kind of have the copy of the registration paper with me.”

He didn’t know how long they were doing it, but he found that his smile would not fade with hers still plastered on her face. After what felt like seconds, Hana decided that it was time to head back home seeing that it was nearing midnight.

Jongin wished that he could walk her home. To make sure that she got there safely without any other disturbances from any drunkards roaming the streets. But he had promised his father that he would go back before midnight. Going out this late would already rise to many questions from his parents. It was just a matter of time they’d ask him where he’d been going these past nights.

After they bid their goodbyes, he made sure that her head had already disappeared down the slope before he turned away to head to his home on the opposite direction. He clutched the straps of his backpack and pulled up his hood over his head, his mind keep going back to the smile on her face. As cheesy as it sounds, it was one of the prettiest smiles he had seen.

~.~

“What are you doing here?” asked Hana.

From the moment her eyes spotted the white Hyundai Equus outside the house, Hana inwardly groaned in irritation. It had been 3 years since she hadn’t seen her. The closer she got to the house; her mood went down and down. It can’t be mistaken that her sister had decided to visit her from the sight of the white pumps in front of the door. And at this time of the night too.

“I decided to see you, my dear sister,” the sister, Park Sunyoung said, her white Gucci handbag hanging on her right arm as she crossed her arms in front of her.

“Oh, don’t make me puke with that tone of yours.” Hana replied, placing the keys on the coffee table, strutting into the living room, purposely bumping her shoulder with hers, “What is your real purpose of being here?”

Sunyoung searched into her handbag and effortlessly brought out a thick wad of 50,000 Won, stretching out her arm towards the younger of the two. Hana looked back and forth from the money to her sister.

After 3 years of not showing up and 4 years before that being ignored by her, it wasn’t strange that Hana felt the rage boiling inside her when Sunyoung bothered to come by. It felt like a mock to her for Sunyoung to just show her face now and expecting to give money out like it was nothing. What was she even trying to do? She wanted to boast about her limitless wealth to her struggling sister who had to work hard every day to even get enough money to get food?

“Take it,” ordered Sunyoung, the hint of arrogance could be felt from her words.

“No.” objected Hana. She couldn’t, wouldn’t take the money; the money that she didn’t have to work to get it. It would make her look weak in the eyes of the people she wanted to show that she was strong the most. It’s because of these people that she had to work her off although she was barely 10 years old. All the money her mother left all went to her father who spent all of it on her brother and sister.

“What do you mean no?”

“I won’t take it.”

Sunyoung couldn’t believe her ears. She had come all the way from Seoul to give Hana the money to keep. And she rejected it easily. “Well, if you don’t want to accept it,” she breathed in, stomping towards Hana’s room, “I’ll just have to force you to accept it,” throwing the money on the bed, Sunyoung easily found the keys of the room, locked it and hurriedly walked outside.

Hana didn’t have enough time to react when Sunyoung ran out of the house towards her car. She threw the keys to Hana’s room to the many pots of flowers by the side of the house and immediately started the car, pressing on the accelerator as soon as the engine roared. Hana knew it would be useless to chase after her.

It was frustrating to think of digging through the many pots of flowers to find the one key to her room. How could Sunyoung do this? Can’t she just accept the fact that she didn’t want her money?

It took some time to find the key in the dark, but eventually she managed to open the door. The money was sprawled all over her bed. As she picked piece by piece, she didn’t realize when the tears began to drip from her chin.

Those were the first tears she shed in a week; a new record.

Ta-da! Updated! ^^ Don't forget to comment :) See you again, soon :3