Lina was lucky enough to have her grandfather picking her up after waiting for about an hour inside her classroom. It took him time to find her but once he did, he was as shocked as the secretary the moment he spotted his granddaughter all dirty from the board chalk that was covering her.

“Lina? What happened to you?”

“Oh, its nothing grandpa…”

“Nothing? Then why are you covered in chalk?”

“Grandpa, I’m tired, can we just go home? Please?”

A sigh from the old man’s lips, he picked up Lina’s backpack and held onto her free hand as they walked out of her classroom.

The drive back home was quiet with the girl having her head resting against the window while looking at her view with Mr. Choi stealing glances her way from time to time.

Once they arrived with the car parked a few feet away by the trees, he helped her out of the vehicle by lifting her up as he told her to climb on his back while he held onto her small backpack in one hand and her cane in the other.

“But grandpa I’m too heavy!”

“No you’re not~ Come on, your grandma has been worried about you.”

At the mention of her relative, a slight frown appeared across her face, not having the emotions to deal with her. The grandfather noticed the sudden change in her facial expression and looked back at Lina with confusion striking in his eyes. “What’s wrong pumpkin?”

“Nothing…”

“Lina.”

“It’s just… I’m mad at grandma.”

“Mad at her? Why?”

She looked down at the ground, making the man crouched down as he slightly lifted her head back up to properly look at her. She softly mumbled her words, but they were loud enough for him to hear. “She broke her promise…”

“Ah~ what promise?”

“That everything will be fine…” Finally figuring it out, Mr. Choi nodded his head in understanding as he hid the pain in his heart, sensing that his granddaughter had had a hard time on her first day at school. “Sweetie, you shouldn’t be mad at her. It happens to everybody to have a bad day. She just wanted to see you smile~ Can you smile for grandpa? Hmm?”

He ruffled her hair to get out some of the dust that was left and the gesture left her amused as she smiled with her eyes closed, enjoying the touch. “There’s that smile!” She giggled as the man got back up on his feet; she quickly wrapped her arms around him as she thanked him leaving him to softly pat the top of her head with a small smile appearing on his slight wrinkled face.

“Now let’s get you inside, okay? You still have a worried grandmother cooking your favorite meal~”

At his words, Lina quickly pulled herself away with the brightest smile on her face, leaving the old man to chuckle again. Asking her once more, she finally climbed on his back, careful not to hurt him, before walking inside and finally ending her horrible day on a better note.

For the next week, things weren’t getting easier for Lina.

She still had Hwa Young and her friends bothering her from time to time while the rest of the class would just ignore her, without even giving the chance to glance at the new kid.

As for the boy that came to her rescue on her first day, he would secretly keep watch on her through the free time he had since they weren’t in the same class. He knew she was having a hard time and it left him to watch her with pity tugging inside his heart.

Every time he tried to approach her, she would constantly keep her distance as she felt like he was just messing with her; after having her own classmates turn her back on her, she felt like it was the same for the rest of the school, which included Cheolyong as well.

He knew that it wasn’t because of her health that he was curious about her. From out of nowhere, she not only became the new kid at school, but she also became the new kid in the village, intriguing him about what was her life before she moved here or even, anything at all about her. He knew how mean people could be, especially the kids their age and he wanted to be the exception; he wanted to be the one that she could lean on.

He wanted to be her friend.

Its not that he didn’t have any friends, in fact, he was pretty popular because of his family’s background, but it didn’t meant to him that he couldn’t have more friends, right?

As for Lina, she knew that he tried countless times to talk to her and treat her like any other student in this school but even that thought got her scared because she could see how they treated each other and she didn’t want to be part of this; she preferred to stay by herself than to be with people who wouldn’t treat her right.

By the end of the week, she would wait after school hours for her grandfather to pick her up instead of taking the school bus back home, and instead of waiting for an hour like the first time, she’d wait for longer since he would still be working.

It didn’t bother her at all; it gave her time to herself as she would do her homework and even read a book she’d bring if there were still some time left.

Cheolyong’s ‘obsession’ became a turning point when he decides to secretly follow her after school, one day. During the second week of school, he would stay by the gate, waiting to see Lina come out without even knowing that she doesn’t leave school grounds until later during the early hours of the evening.

He would usually wait by the gates of the school and would give careful glances on each student so he could see if she had come out yet and would wait until the school grounds were clear to see that he hasn’t spotted her coming out from the main entrance, which made him think that he probably missed her in the crowd.

“Or maybe she’s still inside?”

He would repeat the same process everyday and quietly wait for her until, on the last day of the school week, he spotted a familiar truck parking by the sidewalk. Seeing the old man come out, Cheolyong quickly hid himself behind a tree as he watched Mr. Choi make his way inside the building only to come out a few minutes later with Lina by his side while holding onto her bag.

‘So that’s why she stays late… But… Isn’t that the man that always fights with dad?’

Once the car truck was gone, the boy came out from behind the tree and watched the vehicle until it disappeared while he was still left pondering over the ways he could find to get closer to Lina.

But what also crept up his mind was the old man he saw; he knew who he was and he knew that his father didn’t like him for some reasons he never knew because ‘he was too young to understand’. It made things more difficult for him since he didn’t want to get in trouble just because he wanted to befriend the granddaughter of Mr. Choi.

Difficult but not impossible.

Once he stepped inside his house and greeted his family, he went straight to his bedroom, throwing his bag by his desk and jumped on his bed before grabbing onto his manhwa from his night table and picked up from where he left off just yesterday, falling back into the fictional universe.

As he was near finishing, a sudden idea popped inside his head, making him quickly sit up to stare at the shelf where his other graphics novels were lying; noticing that she was holding onto a book when she left he thought that a good way to break the ice was to let her borrow one of his manga.

Usually, he wouldn’t even let his parents take a hold of them but he really wanted to befriend her and couldn’t think of any other way to do so by borrowing one of his ‘books’.

“I must have something for her in there, hmm…”

The moment he found what he thought would be the perfect book, he spent probably half of his evening trying to come up with the perfect words to break the ice as he constantly kept imagining himself in different scenarios to foresee what could happen even though they were simply fictional.

The last problem remained: when?

He couldn’t talk to her after school hours and there was definitely no way that he would to do it during school since he knew that she could be teased even more and that wasn’t his intention.

In the end, he decided that he would still take the book with him and if an opportunity presented itself, he would go for it.

A/N:

Something I meant to ask but keep forgetting: Is this the font you guys see in the chapter title of the layout? (Just curious >.<)