Chapter Twelve: Almost

The car stops for the red light. The pitter patter of the rain on the roof of the car gently fills the inside of the car with a gentle sound. The echoes of the trickling seem deafening enough, what more is the silence lingering between the two active presences. Maybe if there has been a microscopic microphone buried inside their chests right now, the two of them would have heard the loud pounds their hearts are making.

The world is moving on in seconds, maybe in milliseconds even, but they seem to be frozen in time. The road stretches forward, but they seem like they’re frozen on spot. And through the rear mirror, Junmyeon’s eyes meet with hers. Her eyes reflected a thousand emotions eroding each other relentlessly. One feeling outshone the most of them, though. Confusion.

Junmyeon then speaks up, “You know, this is the part during movies when the protagonist starts awkwardly laughing and laughs it off as a joke after he confessed to the girl he likes.”

“So…should I? Is that what I’m…well, supposed to do?” Questions Mi Ja awkwardly. She knows asking this would make her regret, and it does the moment she hears what he says next.

“Don’t,” Junmyeon pulls away his eyes from the mirror and adjusts the gear. The revving reverberates from the exterior of the vehicle, somehow relieving her that they’re about to continue the trip and that the tormenting silence is actually about to be put into an end. Mi Ja carefully looks over at Taehyung just exactly when Junmyeon suddenly continues, “Mi Ja, we all know that it’s useless; that the protagonist is always serious.”

“Junmyeon…” Mi Ja rubs her own cheeks. How can she swallow all of this in one gulp? The boy who always makes her irritated just confessed his love to her. Wait, this isn’t right. This seems so impossible. It just doesn’t seem right that the words love and Junmyeon are being used in the same structure. Mi Ja then swivels her head to meet his eyes.

“Don’t…” Junmyeon wipes his eyes in pretense, then he suddenly breaks into triumphant laughter and an arrogant smirk, “…forget the overly-used moments when protagonists confess to the girls they love. I take it back as a joke! Well, Mi Ja, sorry for keeping your hopes high but okay, the joke ends here.”

“…” Mi Ja doesn’t respond. To be honest, she doesn’t know how to respond.

“Hey! Snap out of it! It was a joke, seriously! Ahaha!” Junmyeon slaps the stirring wheel, uncontrollably laughing.

“What’s the joke, really?” Mi Ja asks, completely ticked off but is still speculating something. Junmyeon didn’t seem like he was lying but now he does. Which one is the joke? Which one of his statements is serious? Oh, right. This is Junmyeon we’re talking about. The possibility of him lying is ten thousand times larger than the possibility of him liking Mi Ja.

And seems like she completely disregarded even the tiniest possibility as she hung on to the truth she believes in.

Junmyeon continues driving, not meeting her eyes all this time, and continues talking as well, “Too bad, Mi Ja, I don’t think I’m a protagonist. I’m sure you feel the same way, too, that I’m more of a side character.”

“I don’t get the joke, after all,” she says, “Can you retell it?” the thing she needs at the moment isn’t another human feeling to worry about. She needs a confirmation coming from his own lips so she’d know where to position herself.

Junmyeon grins sheepishly as he gives his answer.

“Let’s not keep our hopes up, shall we?”

And without her noticing, Junmyeon has already parked the car in front of her house. She tilts her head, looking over at their house and sees that the light in the master’s bedroom still hasn’t been turned off. She lightly lifts Taehyung’s head and lets it rest on the window, slightly disturbing the latter’s slumber.

Mi Ja makes her way out of the car, picking up her huge luggage and slamming the door after bidding goodbye to Junmyeon. Once Junmyeon watches her back disappear after the door of Mi Ja’s house closes, he bangs his head on the wheel (yes, he tries his best so that he doesn’t hit the horn).

“ty excuses, Junmyeon, ty excuses,” Junmyeon clenches his fist, his own hair twirled around his slender fingers.

Mi Ja’s body doesn’t seem to have rested completely and her mind hasn’t calmed stable yet since the trip, and yet here they are. They stand straight like army soldiers side by side, actively paying attention to the morning announcement by the student council president.

The whole senior batch, Mi Ja and Taehyung’s, sits by class on the front area of the stadium. Apparently, the meeting has been going on for hours even if the gist of it is a simple reminder for students who are on the borderline of failing and graduating. Oh, and also, students who snuck out of the school excursion.

Speaking of the trip, the girls, who seem to have formed a club for Junmyeon, have been asking the teachers if Junmyeon will ever come back. And the teachers only flick their wrists, eye Taehyung (who supposedly is the cousin of the suspect), and then creates some messed-up lies like Junmyeon is dead of cancer or if Junmyeon is already 70 years old or that he is already married. Mi Ja doesn’t get why the teachers had to lie, though, but when Taehyung explained the whole story to her, she finally understood.

Taehyung actually had the teachers put up the lies because originally, Junmyeon came as a guardian because Taehyung’s father asked him to. The real reason itself was embarrassing enough, and yet Junmyeon decided to add fuel to the fire when he actually lied to the teachers that the reason why he wishes to come along is that Taehyung has motion sickness. And of course, Taehyung has somewhat a thing called pride (although it’s almost gone) so he asks the teachers to do this favor.

Mi Ja finds the whole story completely idiotic, of course, but she doesn’t talk about her opinions and insights at all, afraid that she might offend Taehyung. Albeit she keeps quiet and refrains from expressing her laughter for the hilarity of the whole concept, Taehyung notices and frowns, “Stop doing that.”

“Doing what?”

“That facial expression, it kind of irks me,” Taehyung pokes her cheeks.

Mi Ja then repeats the same expression again. She crumples her face in a sour look, crunches her nose and bites her upper lip, “So what does it do me if it irks you?”

“If it irks me, it does to you, too.”

“What makes you say that?” Mi Ja can see where this conversation is heading to.

“Because we are best friends,” Taehyung emphasizes, or so it seems that way to her, “We’re supposed to feel what we both feel for each other.”

Yeah, right. Mi Ja chuckles nervously and smirks, “I disagree.”

Taehyung then turns his head and says, “Why?”

“I don’t know, I just do,”

“You’re weird, you know?” Taehyung laughs at her before turning back his attention to the stage. After few minutes, the teachers finally dismissed the whole batch of students and commands that they go back to their classrooms to start the second period of the morning session. While Taehyung’s and Mi Ja’s class was walking towards their room, a bit farther than the other’s rooms, a student shouts out something that sends both Mi Ja and Taehyung into a state of being flabbergasted.

“Oh right, the teacher told me that the results for the exams is going to be shown later. They’re going to return the papers so we’ll be able to see our mistakes. Gosh, Miyoung, I wonder what my score would be!” Apparently, this statement wasn’t meant to turn out like some kind of announcement. It was supposedly an initiation for a conversation between some girl called Miyoung and Hyuna, but heck, her tongue might have slipped and had her spilled the beans to the whole class.

Mi Ja nervously loosens her collars as she gets reminded of the fact that during the exams, the only thing – or things – that has been occupying her mind wasn’t the lessons but the fact that they were to have a five-day long trip and the fact that Taehyung is Jinri’s now. She veils her anxiety with a tight smile as Taehyung asks him if she was alright, but as previously mentioned, Taehyung isn’t a completely lump of naivety. He can notice certain things – especially regarding Mi Ja.

“I told you, I’m perfectly fine.” Mi Ja reassures once again because Taehyung can’t seem to take his eyes off her ever since they arrived in the room. Taehyung is situated two seats away from Mi Ja, on the same row, and with this alone, his occasional glancing at her doesn’t only bother Mi Ja but also the others. The teacher arrived two minutes later than them, thus, once he finds himself sitting on the edge of the table, he started calling out name and the people whose names have been called walk in front to get their test sheets.

“Ryu Mi Ja.” The teacher mumbles through slightly parted lips as he gives Mi Ja a split-second glance. Mi Ja shakily stands up and then skids towards the platform to take her exam sheet. She doesn’t open the paper until she’s already reached her seat, and when she already positions her whole weight on the chair, her slender fingers slowly unfolded it.

She peeks inside the small opening. Out of 100, she ends with 78 when her target is 90. Oh, of course it isn’t such a bad score if it was other people but the thing is that it’s Mi Ja who got this score. She’s the type of girl who loves trying to reach things out of her capabilities. This part of her might appear annoyingly peculiar to others, but this trait of her makes Taehyung admire her.

Speaking of Taehyung, when Mi Ja slumped down into the chair