i.

and so it begins

***

The ninth hour announces its arrival just before Kai does.

"Why are you so late?" Seulgi demands of the boy dragging himself into the chemistry lab's computer room.

"Oh, don't even get me started—" Kai begins.

"What happened to your voice, man?" Sehun sniggers at the huskier than normal tenor of Kai's voice.

"I didn't mean the first thing literally," Kai says, glaring at Sehun. "And I'm sick. That was the story."

Seulgi raises a brow. "Short one, if you ask me."

"Why are there so many apples?" Kai bursts out suddenly. Everyone follows his glance to a poster on the wall that's always been there but has until now remained unacknowledged, the way wallpaper has no colour until you draw attention to it. For some unknown reason, the science department thought it fitting to put a poster about fruits on the wall of a chemistry lab, and an entire row is dedicated to apples.

"Why not?" Seulgi returns.

"But it says the same thing under each apple," Kai protests, with unexpected fervour. "Look at this. They all have different names, but the poster says they are all good sources of dietary fibre and vitamin C. Why don't they just put that under one apple and be done with it, instead of wasting all this space on apples that have the same values?"

Sehun considers him seriously, but Seulgi's face twitches. "You need to have a more open mind about apples," she says, then gestures emphatically. "Obviously they want to show what the different kinds of apples look like, but if they didn't all have..." here she squints "...dietary fibre and vitamin C, then would they still be apples?"

Kai his lips, sensing a blockade of his argument. "Well, maybe you need to stop disrecarding my opinions."

 A laugh escapes Seulgi without her permission, sounding harsh without meaning to. "Disrecard? Don't you mean discard?"

"What?" Kai frowns.

"Look here," Sehun says, drawing up a page from Google search. "Disregard is a word."

"Yeah." Kai follows up with swift support. "See."

"You didn't say 'disregard', you said something completely different—" Seulgi starts in deepening shades of condescension. She halts mid-sentence. "Actually, you know what, whatever. There's no point arguing with you."

Kai smirks smugly (ignorantly), and Seulgi reassures herself with the knowledge that she is not deaf and  'disrecard' is not a word.

***

If in the future, a cosmetic procedure that replaces fingers with pens is made possible and legal, then Wendy would be the first to sign up for it. Pens, pencils and markers are her lifesavers as she bookmarks spaces in her schedule for one activity after another, sometimes with barely a minute to spare in between musical practice and school newspaper meetings.

"Thanks," is something Wendy hears a lot, sometimes even "You're the best," or "How are you so talented?" but it has been a while since the comments have sunken in past her skin. There are days when she looks in the mirror and doesn't see herself, or worse still— days like today when she looks into the mirror and she sees herself smiling, but it looks more like a grimace.

As she charges on through her commitments, Wendy begins to wonder if the effort and pain put into her life will eventually stop being rewarded with accomplishment and start backwashing sweat, tears and stress.

Or maybe it has already happened. Maybe that is what's happening right now.

"Excuse me, could you please tell me the time?" Wendy asks a passerby who has a watch on his wrist.

"11:40," the boy replies, and Wendy smiles, though internally it is a wince.

When the boy walks away, she is still smiling. Always smiling.

***

Bomi notices it first in biology.

They're doing a textbook exercise on tonicity and because of the way the seats are arranged, when the textbooks shuffle around, Seulgi ends up with one to herself and Bomi fosters one with Jinri.

Good manners dictate that two people shouldn't talk to each other across someone (as that would be disrespect to the person between them), but manners don't have work to do when there is no interaction. It's halfway through the lesson and Jinri has not said one word to Seulgi, not even looked her way. Usually, Seulgi swaps seats with Bomi so she and Jinri can talk about this and that, and no one minds because that's just how things work.

Today is different somehow, and Bomi doesn't know why.

Jinri's head is bent low over her notebook, and as she writes, her wrist angles a particular way, exposing to Bomi a riot of words splayed across the skin in pen. FAT, the largest insult says. Pig.  Selfish. Waste of space. Alone.

Bomi tears her eyes away, and as she looks up, Seulgi catches her eye. "What's wrong with Jinri?" she mouthes.

"I don't know," Bomi mouthes back. Seulgi hasn't seen Jinri's arm; she can't have, otherwise she wouldn't be asking. All the while, Jinri is in her own world.

At her elbow, the textbook says something about salt levels of intracellular fluid and a jumble of other things Bomi barely understands, but none of it is makes less sense than the tempest on Jinri's arm. Biology, at least, has an explanation, has reason. This, Bomi thinks as she looks at Jinri, does not.

Across the space between them, Bomi exchanges another glance with Seulgi, and in the silence, she wonders.

***

When Krystal sees the way Suzy is approaching her, she smells news. "What, what, what?" she calls over the narrowing distance between them. "What happened?"

"Kangjoon fell out of the shower," Suzy tells her, the grave set of her features at odds with the absurdity of her words.

Krystal blinks. "What—"

"He's in the hospital right now. He hit his head and passed out," Suzy continues. "His mom just texted me."

The laugh that had begun bubbling on Krystal's lips dies. "Oh, my God... is he okay?"

Suzy bites her lip. "He's awake, but he's having trouble remembering things. Or so I'm told." The bell rings overhead, and Suzy's forehead tugs into a frown. "Ugh, perfect timing. I'll let you know if his mom calls or texts me."

Reluctantly, Krystal nods, turning away and thinking that after the recent and rapid spoiling of his luck, forgetting everything may not be a bad thing for Kangjoon.

***

"Daehyun!"

Two years ago, Seulgi never had to go onto her tip-toes to give her friend a hug, but nowadays the boys are rocketing upwards and the girls are settling into what nature has given them; physical changes are beginning to parallel the changes of the emotional variety.

"Hey," Daehyun says from somewhere near her ear. When they pull away, he gives her that familiar, restrained smile. He always looks so careful, Seulgi thinks. "How are you?"

Seulgi shrugs. "Same old, same old. How about you?"

"Yeah, I'm good," he says, but they both know it's a lie.

For a moment and for the first time in a while, Seulgi scrutinises his face and wonders when and how he changed this much, and if she's changed at all, too. Somewhere between then and now, he has become a man without realising; almost a different person entirely, something that shifts him like pins and needles. There is worry in the crevices of his face and Seulgi doesn't know if they'll ever be dug out. "You wanna take a walk?"

Daehyun consults his watch to find they have twenty minutes before class starts. "All right."

"You lied," Seulgi says as soon as they're beyond anyone's range of hearing. "You're not okay. Something's up."

He heaves a sigh; Seulgi feels the weight of it like it's her own. "I don't know, man," he says, relaxing into honesty's grip. "It's hard to explain how I feel right now, it's just... I don't know. I know I'm sounding really typical teenager angsty 'I-don't-know-what's-happening-with-my-life-anymore' but something's going on, and I don't know what."

"A good something or a bad something?" Seulgi presses.

"Well, I always feel so down... so I guess that's bad?" Daehyun tries a smile, but it's the wrong fit for his face. "Anyway, don't worry about me. How are things going with Kai?"

"Is this about Jiyoung?" Seulgi asks, ignoring his last words and the brief flash of scarlet in her cheeks.

Daehyun nods without conviction. "Yes and no. I mean, it's gotten to the point that I don't think there's any point hoping for her to be anything more than a friend. She doesn't seem interested when I talk to her."

"Maybe she's got a lot going on in her life."

"Maybe." It doesn't sound like he believes himself anymore.

"Hey." Seulgi punches his shoulder lightly. "It's probably for the best. You don't need any more stress right now, what with school and everything."

Daehyun huffs, smiling dryly. "That's the other side of it," he mutters. "I'm just so over school now. I  already know what I want to do when I leave school, so it all feels like a waste of time."

"Oh..." It's never really crossed Seulgi's mind to anticipate the future like that. For her, high school is a postponement, a chance to build up everything to the closest point of perfection before going out into the wide world. There is just so much more to school than... school. Seulgi shakes her head, as if to untangle the knots in her thoughts. "I get you. I think," she adds. "I'm the opposite, though. I have an idea of what I want to do, but I don't think I'm ready for anything other than what I'm already doing." She tilts her head upwards, eyes searching the cloudless sky. Her voice is small when she says, "The future terrifies me."

***

Walking home with Sehun makes Krystal feel like she has bought a calendar two years in advance, in the way that she know things will happen and time will pass, but she's not sure what to plan for or what she'll say, and all the while, time is ticking. Ticking, ticking, ticking.

There's less than a year and a half of high school left, and Krystal can't imagine not having to endure this almost tense, almost awkward atmosphere that blankets the two of them after school every day as they walk home. It's an aching sort of

"Does it feel weird, having s?" Sehun asks.

"I don't know, you tell me," Krystal says dryly. "Yours are probably bigger than mine."

Sehun snorts. "No, you have s." Out of the blue, he pokes her chest to prove his point. "See." He doesn't mean to be erted or hurtful, Krystal knows. He only wants to prove his point; sometimes it seems like it's the only thing that matters to him.

"Is that all you guys ever think about?" Krystal narrows her eyes. "s? Is that all that matters to you about a girl?"

"No," Sehun allows, "but they're always nice to look at."

"God, you're hopeless." Krystal rolls her eyes.

To anyone else, the disgust in her tone would sting, but Sehun laughs. He laughs like she's told him he's the best person in the world; Krystal thinks briefly that if her pride wasn't so inflated and if Sehun wasn't so pragmatic, then maybe she would tell him that.

She finds herself laughing along with him, because there is no world in which she is willing to back down from saving her pride, no world where he will resist proving his point. And as long as that is the way things are, Krystal can deal with that. If things stay this way, maybe she can pretend that time stops itself every afternoon for her and Sehun. 

A/N (5/08/14): Here it is! I hope I haven't disappointed you all. I just want to make a few things clear:

i. the characters, unless stated otherwise, are all the same age.

ii. there will be no kaistal or pairings. 

iii. the story doesn't really have a plot, it's just going to go along with the flow, so sorry in advance for the lack of structure, if that's what you expected.

iv. in this chapter, I've introduced the main characters, but as I stated in the foreword, other characters will make cameos :)

v. please don't ask me to update soon because I don't know when I will be able to update, since school and life in general is really busy. But thank you for reading, all of you :)