I’ve been publicly humiliated before. More times than average. This isn’t my first time. In fact, by now I should be used to it. After Namjoon, the Beach Incident, and all the other less-than-graceful moments in my life, this should be water off a duck’s back. And yet I’m sobbing into my pillow as if I’ve never been at the end of all this mortification and embarrassment before.

And it’s all because of Mark.

The house is graciously empty when I arrive and no one would have to hear me slamming my door shut. I never walked home so hard before, I thought my heart was going to burst. I didn’t even bother coming back to our classroom for my things. I just left. Without telling Nari or Youngjae. They’ll figure it out soon enough, if Seokjin doesn’t tell them about it first. I don’t even care anymore.

I pound my fists on my pillow and scream into my sheets.

“What’s up with you?”

Startled, I look up and find Jein leaning against my doorjamb. “Why are you still here?”

“My semester doesn’t start until next week, you dumb-dumb. I haven’t left yet. We were just having breakfast this morning. Who’re we murdering today?”

“He tried to kiss me today.” Saying it feels so weird. So wrong.

“Ooh. Who did?” Jein should really try harder at pretending to be concerned about me. She barely concealed her excited grin as she jumped on my bed and sat next to me. Aren’t older sisters supposed to be comforting and understanding when it counts the most?

“Mark did.”

Jein gasps “So? Aren’t you, like, in love with the dude?”

“No!” I wail, “I don’t know. It’s complicated.”

“What happened? Your freakout is a little disproportionate to the scenario in my head.”

I flop face down on my bed. “You don’t know what’s half of it.”

“Tell me. Tell me. Tell me.”

I feel like I’m going to regret this for the rest of my mortal and afterlife and whatever is beyond, but I tell her anyway. ”So I made him candy because it’s his birthday today and I wanted to tape it to his locker like before, so I did that. But Jackson came and we talked and I was asking him why he hasn’t made up with Mark yet and that maybe we could all be friends again. What was I thinking, right? I’m so stupid. But then Mark shows up and then out of nowhere, he tries to kiss me. In front of everyone.”

I hear Jein stifle a giggle and I mentally glare at her because I can’t be bothered to expend energy to get up and actually do it. “That's not out of nowhere. Maybe he was jealous?”

“Of what?”

“Well.” Jein whacks at my legs to make room for her to be comfortable on my bed. “Jackson did like you. He was going all beast mode on Rap Monster at the beach. Maybe Mark was acting out of some misplaced jealousy?”

“How do you know these things?”

It’s convenient to forget that Jein’s blog network is still alive and as active as it was when she was still in high school. If anything, it’s probably even bigger now. Her finding out, through whatever channel or medium should not even be that surprising at all. Jein seems to know everything but the answers to her exams.

“Think about it. Why else would Mark do the things he does? He’s just being a stupid boy about it, but it makes sense? Kind of? Maybe if you, like, squint really hard?”

“I don’t think he likes me. He barely stands my presence.”

“Oh, then what’s all the last couple of days about? The mornings he’d wait for you so you two can walk to school together?” Jein’s absolutely beside herself, all giggly and tickled pink.

I bury my head under my pillow. “Misplaced chivalry? A deluded sense of responsibility? I don’t know.”

“Why didn’t you ask him?”

I scream into my mattress. “It’s complicated.”

“Why do I get the feeling all of this would’ve been easily avoidable if people said stuff out loud?”

I kick my legs to get Jein off my case and off my bed, but she just laughs and sits on the back of my legs. “You’re so dramatic. Okay, hard-hitting questions. Do you or do you not like Mark?”

Oxygen-loss is a very real thing so I surface from underneath my pillow and lie on my cheek. “I did? I was crazy about him all of first year and all until the start of summer. But then I started hanging out with Jackson and his friends, and I realized I don’t really fit in with Jackson and his friends. Mark was always so cold towards me, too. And then I started thinking about what I really liked about Mark, and all I knew was that he had the sweetest shyest smile and that he flies on his skateboard. I never really knew him, even after spending all this time together. And I realized, after getting to know Namjoon and all the other boy scouts, that there’s always so much more to what you think about a person and what people say about them and what they project on the outside. And it really got me thinking. Mark is like that, too. But even after all this time, I don’t know him at all. And…liking his smile or seeing him like he’s flying aren’t good enough reasons to like someone.”

“Those are perfectly valid reasons to like someone,” Jein says. “Didn’t say you were in love with the guy. That would be…different. But you know, you liked him enough to make him candy.”

“I did like-like him. I’m just not so sure now because…”

Because of all the crazy things that’s happened to me, this is the worst because it’s Mark. Deep down, maybe I’ve always know that I’ll one day get over Jackson and his friends and all the trouble I’ve gotten in association with them. I’ve gotten over Namjoon’s accidental kiss, and I’ve gained more friends along the way. Maybe the reason I’m so upset now because of the possibility that Mark and I can never be friends again.

My phone buzzes from inside my skirt pocket again. It’s been doing that since I walked out of school. I fish it out and toss it to the side.

“Aren’t you going to answer that?”

“It’s probably Nari or Youngjae.”

Jein leans forward to read the screen. “It says Mark.”

“Ignore it.”

“I don’t know,” she says, “He seems pretty desperate. That’s fifteen messages and counting and a dozen more missed calls. And it’s not even noon.”

“I have nothing to say to him.”

“Seriously? Now you have nothing to say? He probably thinks you rejected his feelings. You say he’s been difficult and moody, but he did try to kiss you in front of everyone. That’s like a big deal.”

What am I supposed to even say? I stay silent for a couple more minutes and after a while, Jein leaves me to myself and my thoughts. In an act I can only attribute to a major glitch in the universe’s functions, she comes up by lunch time to bring me food and juice, and doesn’t ask any more questions. I’ve turned off my phone by then, wary of switching it back on.

Later that afternoon, Jein covers for me saying I called her to say I wasn’t feeling well. That’s why I was hoe early. Then Nari and Youngjae drop by to bring my bag and the full report of the state of my street cred. That would have been all fine, except Mark came with them. He waited outside until Nari and Youngjae left, but I really didn’t want to talk to him. Jein says he left a little before midnight.

I need to think but Mark shows up gain Saturday morning. Jein tells me the news. Her bedroom faces the street, and she has the full view of Mark appearing from the corner and stopping to knock at our door. I just want to left alone. In peace.

“How long do you think he’ll stay there?” Jein asks, munching on some chips.

I’m sitting with her on the sill, hidden behind her thick drapes. “I don’t know. He’ll get tired of this soon enough.”

“I think you’ve made him suffer enough,” Nari says from the other side of my computer screen.

Youngjae agrees with her. “I kind of feel bad for him. He didn’t really do anything wrong…I mean…you know…comparatively. And you did kind of freak out. I mean, that’s understandable but…you know…”

I know Mark wouldn’t see me, but I hid behind the drapes anyway. “What am I supposed to say to him anyway?”

“Just talk to him,” Jein says. “Like, you know. Talk.”

All this time Mark and I have never really held a proper conversation. Maybe it’s time that we did that. Maybe it’s time I actually talked to him instead of leave candy in his locker. If I had just talked to him, thanked him properly the first time, maybe it wouldn’t have gone this far. But it’s too late to cry about that now.

I take my time down the stairs to compose myself, and I take a deep breath as I open the door. Mark looks up at me, eyes wide with relief.

Closing the door behind me, I say, “Hi.”

“Hi.”

“Look…about yesterday…”

I hop down the steps. “Let’s walk?” Jein can see us from her perch, and even if I don’t think she can hear us, I don’t want to risk it. What if she has the super power of reading lips? What if she has a bionic ear all along? I walk ahead and check to see if Mark is following me. When we’re far enough down the street, I turn slightly towards him.“I’m sorry I freaked out yesterday.”

He shakes his head. Mark’s ears are so red, they must be burning. “No, I’m sorry I tried to…to…I’m sorry. That was stupid. I…I panicked.”

“You…panicked?”

We walk a bit more in silence. We’ve walked like this so many times before, but something about the way we walked now felt different. I’m not sure if it’s because of what happened yesterday, or if there’s just something different about us now that’s making it this way. But every step feels so deliberate. That the him and me who walked down the street won’t be the same Mark and I when we walk back. Eventually we reach the snack lane.

“I got your candy, by the way. Thanks,” he says. running his fingers through his hair. “I really missed that.”

“They’ve been for you all along.”

I could hear my heart beating in my ears and my heart is about to burst from a different kind of sensation. I shove my hands into my hoodie pockets so Mark wouldn’t see them shaking. Everything about the moment feels so much more acute. The slight prickle in the air, the sticky sweetness of dalgona and cotton candy in the background. Even the crackle of the fire inside the grills.

“When I said I’ve been delivering them to the wrong person, I meant that I thought I was leaving them in your locker. I didn’t realize sooner that I confused your locker with Jackson’s.”

“It is my locker.”

“Huh?”

“It’s my locker," he reiterated, a little stunned. "But Jackson wanted to switch so…on file it’s technically my locker.”

I want to laugh but I felt pathetic. Nari had been right all along. She didn’t feed me wrong information. But I still ended up in the middle of all this chaos anyway.

Mark points faintly at himself. “The candy was for me? All this time?”

“The scarf, too. The red one that Namjoon has now. I made that for your birthday last year…”

I couldn’t look at his face so I stared at my feet instead. My cheeks feel so hot. “Yeah. I, uh, I had a bit of a crush on you in first year. And a little while early this year.”

“And now?”

“I don’t know, to be honest. It’s all so…crazy I don’t really know what I’m feeling. Because, you know, I realized…I don’t really know you. We don’t really talk. I realize all this now. Like, how Jackson never told me things even when we all hung out. That, too. I feel like such a bad person because I thought maybe if I hung out with you guys, I could be…I don’t know…it doesn’t matter now.”

I hear Mark step back. I keep my head down and squeeze my eyes shut. Then I hear his footsteps fade away like he’s running off somewhere. My knees give out and I sit on the curb, hand over my mouth so I don’t make stupid sounds because I can’t figure out how I’m feeling. Should I be angry? Upset? relieved?

Moments later, I hear footsteps coming towards me grow louder. Then I see Mark’s shoes stop right in front of me. Slowly, I look up. Dalgona, maybe twenty or more of them in a bag, hangs in front of my face.

Panting, Mark says, “Before they run out. Had to get them for you.” He pushes the bag into my hands before sitting next to me. “Peace offering,” he adds.

“Thanks.”

“I’m not good at this,” he suddenly says. “People…girls…”

“Neither am I.”

“Like…I’m just really bad at it…like yesterday…I don’t know why I did that…”

“Wait, what?”

Mark pushes him off the curb, and it’s like he’s vaulting off the floor with the way he jumps up and shakes away all the nervousness. “Ah. You’re, I don’t know, really annoyed at me maybe, and that’s reasonable. I…We…”

“You know we’ve never really had an actual conversation before. Like…a real one.”

He turns to me, surprised. “Because I don’t know how to talk to you.”

“Neither do I…” Wait…is this what I think it is?

His shy lopsided smile may be directed at the concrete, but it’s making my heart do all these flips and cartwheels. A part of me is telling myself to separate my feelings for that smile from my feelings for the boy, but given that my feelings for the boy are still undefined…

“Maybe we could just start talking,” Mark finally says. “Let’s start talking…and then just figure out what happens next?”

“I like that idea.”

So we talked. It was awkward at first. It was awkward for a bit, truthfully. But somewhere there, while sharing dalgona, it started sounding like a real conversation. We talked about school, mostly. We talked about the shared friends we now had. We talked about Jackson, and he told me that after yesterday, they might be ready to start talking again. I was happy to hear that. We talked about the little things, too. Little things that we might forget in time, but the feeling would definitely remain. We talked until it was dinner time and I had to go home.

“I’ll see you tomorrow?” Mark says, as we near the last streetlight towards my house.

“We can still talk later. I’ll message you?”

“That’s probably a good idea. Maybe if we just keep having this conversation, you know?”

Would it be too cliche to say I feel like I’m flying? That I wish everything should just stop right now.

“I think that’s a good idea. Let’s just keep talking, then. I’ll see you tomorrow.” I walk backwards to the front door and awkwardly wave good night.

“Hey.”

“Yeah?”

“What I’ve been trying to say today is…what I've meant to say since last year…”

“Since last year?”

Mark takes one big breath. “You got me, Han Jeah. You got me good.”

Flying. Definitely flying high.