Byun Baekhyun was like a vertical asymptote: you could get close to him, but you could never touch him.

   Everyone knew him. He was the kid whose glossy 8 x 11 portrait was smiling down at us from the center of the entrance hallway, a golden plaque reading “National Scholar: Byun Baekhyun” affixed underneath. He was the president of this club and that club, the founder of this organization and that organization. Freshmen would squeal excitedly as they saw him walk down the halls, whispering behind their hands, “Oh my god, that’s Byun Baekhyun! The Byun Baekhyun, valedictorian of the junior class!”

   And he was funny. Hilarious, actually- even though I despised his strange sense of humor. Apparently, the majority of our grade believed that odd code names and weird adjectives for everyday objects were downright hilarious. Once, Byun Baekhyun exclaimed, “What a bookie!” in response to a biography of Mark Zuckerberg. By the end of the week, you couldn’t walk a few feet down the hallway without hearing the same phrase.

Byun Baekhyun was nice to everyone. Willing to socialize with everyone. Friends with everyone.

   It took me a few years to realize it. For a while, I was so curious about him. He was a walking legend, the boy your parents squeal about at dinner parties. I wanted to know who he was, what he liked, what made him laugh, what made him cry.

We ran in the same friend circles, so I thought, Why not try to befriend him? One September day, 4 weeks into sophomore year, I walked into Chemistry and took a seat next to him. The air conditioner was broken and everyone was sweaty and sticky and I started to fan myself with my lab journal and he chuckled and asked me, “It’s hot, isn’t it?”

To which I replied, “No , Sherlock.”

   We were friends.

But as we spent more and more time together, my feelings for him began to blossom; my feelings of hatred and ire. Every time I flashed a sunny smile at him, I felt like slapping him in the face.

   Why?

   Because Byun Baekhyun was like a vertical asymptote: you could get close to him, but never touch him.

   Byun Baekhyun was like pi: initially easy to work with, but so hard to comprehend.

   We were assigned a project in History. Our teacher, a corpulent, hairy man named Mr. Jung, instructed us to create a timeline of the Roman dynasty. “Extra points if it’s colorful and creative!” he boomed in his jovial voice.

   I hated Baekhyun but we had to work together because we were friends. When Mr. Jung announced that this was a free partner project, Baekhyun and I immediately gravitated towards each other.

I hated him. But I worked with him.

   He invited me over to his house, a comfortable two-story in the suburbs surrounding the school. Thin dandelions sat interspersed among the wilted yellow grass. A bright purple scooter with glittery streamers flying from the handlebars lay against the white garage door. I was greeted at the door by a stickly woman with pursed lips and ramrod straight posture.

   “You must be Seri,” she smiled, her voice gentler than I expected. “Baekhyun is waiting for you upstairs in his room.”

   I nodded. “Thank you.”

   “Do you want some peanut butter and graham crackers?” Mrs. Byun asked. “Jungah and I made lemonade, too-,”

   “Mom!” A small, stringy-haired girl emerged from the kitchen, her hands covered in sugar and lemon juice. I assumed she was the owner of the scooter. “I accidentally spilled the lemonade! I’m really sorry!”

   Mrs. Byun crinkled her eyebrows. “Oh god, Jungah.” I left the woman to her daughter and went upstairs to meet Baekhyun.

  He was sitting on the floor, surrounded by sheets of neon paper, glitter glue, and Crayola markers. “Hey,” I said.

He looked up and grinned.

   “Let’s get to work,” Baekyun said. “Do you have your research?”

   “Yup!” I withdrew a sheaf of papers from my bag. “Let’s get to work.”

   He joked around while we painstakingly traced pictures on our timeline, laughed when we read strange facts about the Romans. Baekhyun was making an otherwise dull project fun to work on- oh, how I hated him and admired him at the same time. He could talk for hours and still not reveal anything about himself. He could tell you so much about his life and you would still walk away not really knowing him.

Baekhyun successfully kept up his usual, cheerful pretense for 2 hours.

Then I accidentally knocked over some glitter glue on the side of our poster.

   He freaked.

   “What the hell?” he exclaimed, shooting up. “, , -,”

   “Baekhyun, calm down,” I said, my eyes wide. “It’s just a little glitter glue-,”

   “Just a little- Seri, are you serious? Mr. Jung explicitly said he would take off points if our poster wasn’t neat! I can’t believe you would do something like this. We’ll have to start all over again!” He started tugging on chunks of his hair, his teeth grinding against each other.  

   “Baekhyun!” Now I was mad. Taking my thumb, I cleanly wiped off the glitter glue. There was nothing left of it, save for a tiny little splotch on the corner of our timeline. “There! All gone! Now stop shouting!”

   He buried his head in his hands. “But... it’s still ruined.”

   “Are you ing joking? How is it ruined? You worry way too much about stupid little things like this.”

   Baekhyun looked up at me, his glare callous. “Well, maybe that’s why I’m valedictorian and you’re not even ranked in the top 10% of our class.”

   I jerked back like he had slapped me in the face.

Baekhyun must have realized that he went too far, because he immediately said, “I’m so sorry, Seri. I didn’t mean it.”

   “I always knew I hated you,” I hissed, and stormed out of his house.

   The following day, Baekhyun apologized to me again. “You didn’t really mean it when you said you hated me, right?” he asked in a low voice.

   Of course I meant it.

   But I said, “I didn’t.”

   Byun Baekhyun was like a derivative: easy to understand as long as you didn’t think too hard about it.

   I knew he was going to kiss me. We were at Hana’s house. She was hosting our annual “last party of the summer”. Everyone was shocked that Baekhyun showed up; he wasn’t a party person, and he had always politely declined invitations to functions like this. But he showed up this time. Maybe it was because it was the party before senior year, our last year of high school. The year before we would all part ways, never to see each other again (until the obligatory class reunion in 10 years, of course).

   I don’t know why I went to Hana’s party. I’m the type of person that ends up going outside to gaze at the stars while everyone else is getting down and dirty to Lil Wayne inside. It’s not like I’m antisocial, and it’s not like I don’t like having fun. But every party, I end up in the backyard, laying flat on the grass.

   I was doing just that, until I heard the patio door open.

Twisting around, I saw Byun Baekhyun making his way down the wood steps to join me. Ugh.

   “The party’s in there,” I told him.

   “Are you sure? It looks pretty wild out here,” he teased.

   I placed both my hands up, pretending to bob my head to the thumping music resonating from inside the house. “Hey, don’t kill my vibe, man.”

   He laughed, and laid down next to me. “The stars are pretty nice.”

   What a cheesy line, I thought.

   “That was pretty cheesy,” he admitted, and I sighed.

   “Just keep quiet,” I told him, and he shut up.

   The booming noise of Hana’s Bose sound system was faintly audible amongst the soft hum of our breaths. We seemed so detached from the chaos of the party, a million miles away, looking down on it from a floating island in the air.

I felt Baekhyun’s soft fingers intertwine mine.

I said nothing.

“Hey,” he whispered, moving closer to me. “I’ve wanted to do that for a while now.”

“A while as in...?”

   “Ever since I met you?”

   I inwardly smirked. So the famous Byun Baekhyun had emotions after all.

   I my side to face him, slowly my lips. Baekhyun swallowed hard.

   “So what are you going to do now?” I murmured.

   “I’m going to kiss you,” he uttered, and in a second he closed the gap between our bodies and he was kissing me, he was kissing me so hard and I was kissing him back, I hated him, I hated him so much, but he was Byun Baekhyun, Byun Baekhyun was kissing me, he was running his fingers through my hair and kissing me, finally, finally, I loved him, I loved him so much at that moment, I loved him.

   The next day, he started dating Kim Seohyun.

At first I was shocked. Confused. I felt so betrayed and angry and horrible. I didn’t like him- no, I loved him- no, I hated him! But I thought I had Byun Baekhyun wrapped around my finger. Why was he dating Kim Seohyun? What happened to our kiss? What did he think that was? I didn’t know!

Everyone approved of their relationship. “They honestly make a perfect couple,” Soo Jin gushed. “Seohyun’s had a crush on him for years.”

“Baek and Seo are, like, this school’s power couple,” Yuri grinned.

“Baek’s so lucky,” Chanyeol muttered, pouting.

To an outsider, the concept of Baekhyun dating Seohyun was so simple. Both of them were smart, attractive, and popular. Even I understood why they were together.

But he kissed me the night before. It made no sense. I thought and thought and thought. Why was he dating her? I thought he liked me! I thought he liked me all these years!

And now I didn’t know what to think anymore. Byun Baekhyun was screwing with my brain. He was worse than transcendental derivatives, that bastard.

He stopped talking to me, too. He stopped looking at me. When we were together, alone or in a group, he would leave, period.

A small voice in the back of my brain hissed, Isn’t this what you always wanted? You hated him. You wanted him to leave. Why are you sad?

I didn’t know. I was immature, a confused teenager screaming one thing one moment and kissing the boy I hated the next. I didn’t know how to sort out my own feelings.

I despised Baekhyun for the fact that he wouldn’t become close with anyone, that he was a complete and utter enigma. And after I finally got close to him, finally glimpsed his true feelings or personality or whatever the hell that kiss was, he disappeared from my life.

You know what? I didn’t need him.

I needed the opposite of Baekhyun- no, I needed his arch enemy- or maybe someone a million times cooler than him. Someone that would anger him and make him regret the way he screwed me over.

I started dating Oh Sehun, who fit all 3 categories.

Sehun was a track star, basketball star, and an academic star to top it off. He was salutatorian to Baekhyun’s valedictorian. The best part was that he was the polar opposite of Baekhyun. There were rumors that Sehun did weed behind the school during lunch breaks, and that he was part of a gang at one point in his life. Sometimes he would show up to class with mysterious cuts on his arms.

Baekhyun was a clean sheet of paper, unwrinkled and fresh. Sehun was torn at the edges and covered in black Sharpie profanity.

Sehun and I had been more than acquaintances, less than friends. It was more of a... physical interest, per say. He would “accidentally” brush his hand against my thigh in the hallway. I would “accidentally” take my tank top in front of him after cross country practice. Baekhyun was distant, Sehun was straightforward.

When I approached Sehun, after years of not-talking-but-almost-ing, he smirked and said, “Finally.”

What a sleazy ing douchebag. I loved it. Baekhyun would be pissed.

And he was pretty ing pissed, after Sehun and I started making out right in front of him.

To my delight, Baekhyun and Seohyun were replaced by Sehun and I as the power couple of the senior class.

Byun Baekhyun was like calculus: although he caused years worth of frustration, anxiety, and troubles, once explained properly, he made sense in the end.

Sehun and I were excited about our high school class reunion. Personally, I couldn’t wait to see the looks on my old friends’ faces once they discovered I was married to Oh Sehun. What started out as a casual fling- something to throw in Byun Baekhyun’s face- grew into a legitimate, caring relationship.

Sehun had a wicked sense of humor. He would wrap me up in his big sweaters and murmur sweet nothings to me all night. He kissed my tears away. I loved him so much, so, so much.

And when we walked into the grand hotel conference room, our hands intertwined, we weren’t disappointed by our former classmates’ reactions.

“Oh my god! Sehun- Seri- you guys are still together?” Hana gasped. “That is adorable!”

“Wow, I didn’t see that coming,” Seohyun chuckled, nudging Chanyeol in the ribs. “We thought your relationship was kinda... shallow. No offense.”

“Thanks a lot,” Sehun grunted, playfully rolling his eyes.

“We both got into KAIST, so we were able to keep our relationship going,” I tell her.

Soo Jin asked, “So are you two dating, or...?”

“We’re married with our first child,” I responded, and everyone’s jaws dropped.

“Wow,” Chanyeol said, finally finding his voice. “That’s- wow.”

   Sehun and I simultaneously smirked.

   Suddenly, someone said, “Am I late to the party or what?”

   We turned. Byun Baekhyun was walking towards us, wearing a formal suit and tie. He had a small smile on his face.

   When he saw Sehun and me he froze.

   “Hey, it’s Baek!” Chanyeol slapped his friend on the back. “What’s up, man? Am I allowed to talk to the 3rd richest man in South Korea?”

   A robotic smile curved Baekhyun’s lips, and he let out a forced laugh. “Don’t be stupid, I’m still the same old Baek.”

   Sehun placed a comforting arm around my waist. I had told him about my failed first love a while ago, and he had promised me moral support tonight. “Are you okay?” he gently whispered in my ear.

   I nodded, pecking him on the lips. “I’m doing better than I expected,” I grinned, and he drew me into a full hug.

   “Aww, the cutest couple is still here!” Seohyun squeals. “We were just talking about how Sehun and Seri are still together, Baek. Did you know they already have a kid?”

   His smile grew wider, even more forced. “Wow, really? Congrats, you two!”

   “Thanks,” I smiled.

   “So how’s the CEO of Softwind Technologies doing?” Sehun asks jovially. “I’ve been watching the stocks. Your company’s on fire!”

   “Thank you, Sehun.” Baekhyun forced another laugh. Sehun snuck a quick glance at me. I knew he could tell, too.

   “Well, we’re going to go say hi to a few more people,” Sehun said. “We’ll catch you guys later!”

   “This is so weird,” I told Sehun as we were by the drink bar. “A few years ago, I would’ve done anything to have him kiss me again. But now, it feels like Baekhyun was just a little tick mark on my timeline. I could care less about him.”

   “That’s because you have a hunk of a husband,” Sehun smirked, and I rolled my eyes.

   “Hunk of a husband? Yeah, right.”

   “Take that back,” Sehun teased, grabbing my hands. “Or you’ll be sorry.”

   “Why, what will you do?” I playfully raised an eyebrow.

   “Sehun, my man!” someone hollered right as Sehun was about to respond (with some very sassy, no doubt). Sehun jerked his head around irritably. Wu Kris, his old basketball buddy, was striding up to him, his arms raised in a hug. “Long time no see!”

   “Kris!” Sehun clapped him on the back. “How’s it going? You know Seri, right?”

   Kris turned to me and stuck out his hand. “Of course I do! How’re you doing? I didn’t know you two were still dating.”

   “Technically, we’re not- we’re married,” I said, and when Kris shouted, “Whoa, you scored!” my face turned red.

   “Hey, I’m going to go look for more people, kay?” I told Sehun. He nodded and smiled before continuing his conversation with Kris.

   It was just my luck that the first person I ran into was Byun Baekhyun- again.

   “Hello, Baekhyun, how are you doing?” I asked politely.

He shrugged, looking at me with an unreadable expression. “Alright, I suppose. How are you?”

"I'm alright. I'm working as an engineer over at KEPCO."

"Nice! Wasn't that your dream job?"

"Yeah, it was, actually."

"You always loved math, didn't you, Seri?"

I laughed. "Yeah."

A few more silent moments passed. Baekhyun fidgeted restlessly with his fingers.

Finally, I said, “Well, I’ll see you later." I was about to hurry away, before Baekhyun exclaimed, “Wait!”

   I paused. “Yes?”

   He looked down at his hands, looked back up at the ceiling, fumbled with his coat. Finally, he said, “I’m sorry.”

   “Why?”

   “For... for that kiss. That one time.”

   I narrowed my eyes. “Okay?”

   “I need to explain something to you.”

   “Okay?”

   “See, I-,” Baekhyun rubbed his temples. “I’m in love with you.”

   If he had said that to me all those years ago, during senior year when I would frantically attempt to catch his eye in the hallway, or desperately try to talk to him in class, the world would have froze. I would have dropped to my knees and cried of happiness.

   But now, those words had as much of an effect on me as the phrase, “I’m about to pee my pants” did. Mildly uncomfortable but otherwise unable to elicit a truly emotional response.

   “I’m sorry, but I’m very much in love with Sehun,” I responded diplomatically.

He shook his head. “I- I know you are, I can see it. Just... please let me explain myself.”

“Alright.”

Baekhyun pulled up a metal folding chair, sat down, took a deep breath. I stared at him, my brows drawn together, waiting for him to speak.

Finally, he said, “I was conditioned to be perfect.”

I tilt my head.

“I had drilled it into my head that I absolutely had to be perfect. I had to get the best grades, I had to be popular, I had to be the person that everyone would love. I didn’t want anything to get in my way, or for anyone to discover my flaws. And it worked: everyone practically idolized me. They viewed me as a distant figure: admirable but unapproachable. I got tired of it after a while.” Baekhyun exhaled hard. “But you were the only one who treated me normally, in all the years that I knew you. You were so casual around me. And because of that, I screwed up in front of you.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“The day I blew up at you when we were working on that project- do you remember that?” When I nodded, he gave me a derisive little laugh. “That was horrible. I slipped up in front of you- showed that I was pretty messed up on the inside.”

“It wasn’t that big of a deal,” I lied, but Baekhyun merely shook his head.

“That’s the reason why I kept my distance from everyone. I didn’t want them finding out about all the ways that I was so... inadequate.”

“I’d hardly call you inadequate, Baekhyun.”

“That makes one of us,” he snorted. “So, I completely fell in love with you. I think part of the reason why I liked you so much is because I knew you hated me.”

My eyes widened. “Wait, what? You knew?”

Baekyun gave me rueful little smile. “Everyone knew.”

   “Just for the record, I didn’t really hate you-,”

   “Yeah, I figured you didn’t. I knew that you really liked me, in reality. I could tell after I... kissed you.”

   The mention of that kiss makes me wince. “Yeah.”

“But after that, I got even more scared. I was letting someone get far too close to me- someone who could potentially destroy me. I was scared as hell. I wanted you to back off. So I started dating Seohyun instead. I didn’t really like her- in fact, I was probably the worst boyfriend in the world.”

I tried to cut in but his words tumbled out like falling blocks off a tower. “When you started dating Sehun I was so angry at myself. I had let you slip away. But I was too scared to try to get you back. I didn’t know if you would take me, and part of me thought I deserved it. When we graduated I thought I would forget about you and move on, but since then, no one- no one- has treated me as normally as you did."

He grew more and more agitated. "Everyone looks up to me, calls me a genius, calls me a prodigy, but they don’t care about me, they care about what I am, they care about how I can make them look good and what I can do for their business and how they can exploit me and take advantage of me for themselves. I know why you hated me now. I think I hate myself now, too.”

Baekhyun finally shook his head. “Have you noticed that I’m alone? Everyone in our class has a boyfriend, a girlfriend, a spouse, a child. But I’m absolutely alone. I have no one.”  

Overwhelming pity for this broken-looking man, who was slumped against his chair in a defeated manner, flooded my senses. I leaned over and patted him on the back; a pathetic gesture made in response to my helplessness. “Baekhyun,” I whispered, “I’m so sorry. But you don’t need me for this. I understand how you feel frustrated about everything. Do you want my honest advice?”

He looked up at me with his big brown eyes. “Yeah.”

“How much money do you have?”

His face morphs into a puzzled expression. “Why?”

“Because I think you need to get the hell out of here.”

“Huh?”

“Go to Tahiti, or Hawaii, or the Bahamas. Get on a plane and don’t look back. Don’t work; just let loose and relax. You’ve been pushing yourself to perfection your entire life. Just take a break.”

“A- a break?” Baekhyun gave me an utterly scandalized look. “I can’t take a break! There’s so much to do! I have a company to run, finances to figure out, and customers to meet-,”

“I’ve given you my two cents,” I said, rising up from my seat. “I think it’s time you figured out your life, Byun Baekhyun.”

“Seri, wait, please don’t leave me-,”

“Baekhyun.” I take his hands and look straight into the eyes of the boy whom I hated, whom I cried over, who caused me so much heartache and pain and laughter and joy and excitement. The eyes of my first love.

“Goodbye.”

And I walk away.

A/N: honestly i don't know what the this is it's 1:12 AM and I have a ing physics test tomorrow IM SO SCREWED I HAVE SUCH A BAD GRADE IN PHySICS LMAO :(

This oneshot is dedicated to the people getting over their first love/first heartbreak :))))))