Her small thumb lightly grazed over the button with the image of an arrow, slowly caressing it as she read her message displayed on the screen of her phone over and over again. The strands of her black hair were not even bothered to be pushed away from her eyes and sticking on her cheeks. She heaved a heavy sigh out, turning on her bed and staring at ceiling that was slightly orange from the narrow streak of light seeping from the slit of the slightly opened door.

Glancing at the dark screen of her phone, she could barely see her reflection and what stared back at her was not the girl she wanted to portray as strong, but rather, a girl who looked too fragile and weak for her; her eyes were swollen and red with her cheeks and nose tinted red, dried tears ran down her cheeks.

That was the image she had prevented to let anyone else see, no matter what situation it was. Sure, she cried in front of Sehun and on rare occasions her family members, but never would she bawl her eyes out and scream at them for things they were mostly not a part of.

She felt that her cries were a weakness and if anyone would see it, they would feel burdened and eventually leave her. She wasn’t embarrassed. She was just scared. Scared of being left alone when all she wanted was to be with someone to comfort her.

And maybe, just maybe, that was the reason she was trying to send a text message to someone she hardly expected; Kim Jongin.

And the fear was also one the reasons she was turning her phone back on, deleting the message from being sent. What was she even thinking of when typing the message?

After not more than a minute of deleting it, her mobile phone vibrated in her hand as it was receiving a call. Furrowing her brows, she let out a tired groan as she brought the phone in front of her, the light from the small mirror slightly blinding her from seeing who the caller was.

Almost immediately, she answered it and she felt hardly surprised that it was Sehun. Oh, his confession. She thought, her cheeks gaining heat as she remembered the kiss. She was just about to talk when Sehun began saying.

“Before you hang up on me, I want to firstly apologize for what I did, Hana,” he said, his voice coming out in a shy and regretful tone. “I guess I just didn’t know what to do.”

There was a slight pause between the two as they both wondered if either of them wanted to continue or reply anything. Seeing that Hana wasn’t speaking, he continued.

“I mean it; the confession.” Sternly he continued.

“Sehun,” she softly replied as she bit her lower lip. It still somehow felt wrong; kissing him, him confessing to her about his love.

“Just,” he cut what she was trying to say, “think about it, okay?”

Murmuring a quiet ‘yes’, Sehun then tried changing the subject of discussion to the reason why her sister was there but Hana was too confused about the confession that she couldn’t continue the conversation. Telling him that she was tired, Sehun complied with her request to hang up.

After the call ended, she brought the phone down from her ear, tossed it beside her pillow and placed her arm on her forehead. With all the events and revelations today, she could already feel the headache coming.

She could almost feel the red file she hid under her mattress boring through it into her back, almost like it was nudging her to look at it. Ignoring the urge to take it out, she closed her eyes, trying to get some sleep and not wanting to think anymore.

Just as she could go off to dreamland, she could hear the front door noisily but slowly creaking open, a thud on the wooden floor followed. Out of curiosity, she opened one eye and peeked through the slit of her door to find that her father just came back. What she didn’t notice was the expression plastered on his face.

She would’ve just ignored him, but what she heard after that was enough for her to open her eyes wide and think about everything, recalling all the memories she could retrieve from years ago.

“Come back, Kim Ara,” the father muttered sadly as he sat on the floor, the name rolling off his tongue with enough gentleness that was Hana hasn’t heard in years; the name that he himself banned anyone from bringing up. The name of whom he had loved.

Hana’s mother.

~.~

They were shouting, screaming at each other.

Things were thrown all over the place, barely missing each other but their words still hit their hearts, fuelling the burning rage.

The four year old Hana was standing inside her room, peeping through the door, watching in horror as both her parents were quarrelling. Her petite body was shaking out of fear as she witnessed the fight.

It was the middle of the night and when she couldn’t sleep and wanted to go to her mother, she was faced with this scene. Her fingers wrapped tightly on the hem of pajamas as she listened to the quarrel.

“After three years, Ara!” the father shouted, his three fingers gripped in front of him, shoving them into her face to show her, “three ing years! How can you not tell me?! Was it even that hard to announce it to me three years ago?! I gave you a ing chance! And this is what you do to me?!”

“What should I do then, huh, Minki?!” she retaliated, her cheeks flaring up in red, “I knew you would react like this if you knew about this! Isn’t it enough that you got Hana?!” Her arm stretched out towards the room of the little girl, oblivious of the said girl behind the slightly opened door.

Hana slowly closed the door and retreated back to her bed, climbing on the mattress that was a bit too high for her as she brought her legs to her chest and covered her ears with her small hands, blocking all the shouting from being heard. She lay on her bed, her blanket covering most of her small body.

She hadn’t even noticed that the muffled shouts had stopped until she heard the door to her room being opened. Closing her eyes shut, she waited for something to happen. She could feel gentle hands on her head, it with much tenderness and care. A pair of soft lips was placed on her forehead, kissing her through the short, uneven bangs she cut herself.

“I’ll be back for you, my dear Hana,” she heard her mother say softly, her voice ever so quiet.

She never did come back.

~.~

The image of her father sleeping with his head on the table which had several bottles of soju was the first thing she saw when she went out of her room. It wasn’t a dream that she heard him say her name unlike the dream of her memory she had last night.

Taking the keys to the house from the table, she went out, her steps heavy as she headed to school. She clutched her blazer tighter around her body as a cold autumn breeze passed by.

She was too busy emptying her mind that she didn’t even realize that she had already arrived to the school. From the entrance, she observed the groups of students entering the school, smiles plastered on their faces with giggles in between their conversations. Hana bitterly chuckled at the thought of dreaming to be like one of them; living a normal, happy life.

As she was deep in thought, she didn’t even notice the milky-white boy sitting in front of her, throwing worried glances at her because of her lack of focus.

Hana lifted her head up and saw Sehun looking at her, eyes furrowed. Immediately, she shifted her eyes towards the window outside, breaking the short eye contact they had.

Out of all the things she was thinking, she inwardly cursed at herself for forgetting about Sehun and his confession. Biting her lower lip and lowering her gaze, she mentally thanked the teacher who came in just in time to stop Sehun from saying anything.

She had never been the type to lose focus in class since she had to keep up with her studies, but she did. And because of the lack of attention that she had to stay an extra 2 hours in the school.

Lunch time came by too quickly for her liking. With the break, it meant that she would have to face Sehun. And that was one thing she would like to avoid for the time being.

But while avoiding Sehun, she forgot about the other problem; Jongin. Inwardly, she groaned out of annoyance as she collided with his hard chest whilst running to the cafeteria. Hana was about to shout at him but stopped in the middle of her sentence when she noticed his wounded cheek and a plaster on his nose.

“What happened?” immediately she asked, somehow worried of his condition. Guilt washed through her as she recalled the 10 text message from him, asking about the dance practice. Maybe because of her ignorance, he had those cuts.

“We’ll talk in the cafeteria,” replied Jongin as he grabbed her hand and led her to the school canteen.

Jongin glanced back as he pulled Hana with him to the cafeteria. He somehow understood that Hana didn’t want to meet Sehun at the moment seeing that she was fidgeting in class, looking elsewhere and not paying attention whenever Sehun would turn around to look at her.

After taking their food and finding a seat, Jongin clasped his hands together in front of him and started telling her about what happened last night.

~.~

His feet shuffled one after the other on the gravel as he tucked his hands in his front pockets, tilting his head upwards to see the transition of colors of the evening sky. The orange like red color was slowly swallowing the light blue sky as the sun slowly set across the horizon.

Jongin wiped the small beads of perspiration rolling off his forehead with the back of his hand as he thought back about the dance on the rooftop with Hana, a little smile forming on his lips.

He knew it was wrong to be interfering with Sehun’s plan of confessing to her every time he would get the chance to be alone with Hana, but he just felt that he couldn’t let that be. Maybe the fact that if Sehun was together with Hana would mean that she would have less time with him to dance and hang out would be one of the reasons he felt the need to prevent the confession from happening.

But he somehow felt that wasn’t the only reason.

As he walked ever so slowly down the road to his house, suddenly, he was faced with a masked guy. With his face covered with a black mask and black beanie on his head with his dark fringe covering until the eyebrows, it made it hard for Jongin to recognize the guy.

He stared at the guy to identify him when something hard hit him on his cheek, causing him to fall to the rough ground. Jongin could taste the stale taste of his blood as he his lips. The masked man had punched him.

While he was trying to get up from his lying position, he was kneed to the ground. He held in his cry of pain as he felt the person putting more pressure on his stomach as he kneeled down to face Jongin. Harshly, the unknown guy yanked his head up and said in a rough voice.

“Stay away,” he warned.

The masked man pushed Jongin’s head to the side, slapping it in process as he got up to his feet. Sparing one last look at the staring Jongin, he frowned. His eyes seemed to smile as he gave Jongin another kick to his stomach, watching him writhe in pain, clutching his stomach.

Letting out a long breath, Jongin leaned back on the chair as he crossed his arms across his chest after telling Hana the story of how he got the bruises and cuts. Of course he left out the parts where he ran to Hana’s house to see if she was fine since the guy was heading to her place, but he was just going to another road.

“What a bastard,” Hana said as she stuffed the chicken into , a frown visible on her forehead, “What was he referring to for you to stay away from anyways? I swear, these crazy guys are appearing like mushrooms so suddenly.” She continued as she repeatedly stabbed the poor blob of mashed potato on her tray.

“Why is that?” asked Jongin, curious of the crazy guys sprouting about so suddenly. From the few weeks he had been staying in the neighbourhood, he had never encountered these ‘crazy’ people until yesterday.

Leaning forward, Hana replied in a quiet voice after looking to her left and right, “I just felt like I’m being watched nowadays,” taking in a deep breath, she continued as she let out a chuckle, “but whatever. I think it’s just my brother spying on me to see if I do anything bad.”

Jongin suddenly had the urge to ask for more details, but suppressed it in as he bit his lower lip and frowned slightly.

~.~

“Excuse me, I need to use the bathroom,” Hana said to Jongin as she got up from her seat in class. It was a free period and as she was still on awkward terms with Sehun, she thought that maybe she could study with Jongin and that turned out to be something good.

As she got out of the class, Sehun immediately shot up from his seat, ruffling his hair and strode through the class doors. With his long legs, he could catch up to Hana quite easily. He grabbed her wrist and pulled her back after she ignored his calls.

Hana could feel the blood rush to her cheeks and ears as she looked at Sehun in his pleading eyes.

“Hana,” softly he spoke, “Why are you avoiding me?”

She chewed the inner part of her cheek as she shifted her gaze to the floor, “Well, for one, you suddenly confessed and I guess I felt awkward to be around you,” explained Hana.

Sehun’s eyes turned into crescents as he smiled and laughed at her reaction, “You don’t have to avoid me if that’s the reason,” he told her, “Like I said, you have all the time you need to give me an answer, I’ll wait. Just give me a chance, okay?” he spoke, tilting his head down as he searched her face that was facing the floor.

“I guess it won’t hurt to try,” he suddenly heard her mutter as she lifted her head, an uncertain smile on her face. He asked her what was it to try about with a confusing expression and she replied, “Try your best to make me like you, Sehun."

A big smile grew upon Sehun's face, his eyes twinkling in happiness as he bear-hugged her. "You won't regret it, I promise you that," he announced in glee as he ducked down to try and capture her lips but was suddenly stopped from doing so with her slender finger.

It was a little too early for to accept him, so she opted to just hold his hand.

Author's note: OMG... I don't even know what i wrote. o.o It's crappy, I know.. Sorry for that XD And I'm sorry for the confusion in the timeline here. If you have any questions, feel free to ask me. I swear, I could already feel the Hana and Jongin shippers growling at me. Anyways, here is the update! Hope you enjoy it and be informed that I won't be updating for a week or two because I have like trials and oral exams #sadlifeofasenior . So yeah. Do tell me what you think about it! ^^ Annyeong!! *sings Lovelyz's Hi~*