Huang Zitao was not a morning person.

While he would normally wake up early, he would take his sweet time to actually get out of bed, then use the toilet and go down for a lazy breakfast. By the time he was fully conscious, it was usually already after midday; therefore, he could only ever really enjoy his ritual on the weekends.

Today was not, however, one of those days and as Tao opened his eyes, he realised that it was already 8.10 and he was not dressed nor did he eat, and worst of all, he no longer lived 3 minutes away from the school grounds.

As of today, he had officially been living in South Korea for 3 months. Unfortunately, the summer holiday had just finished the day before and it seemed that he was destined to make an amazing first impression and be late on the first day in his new school. After all the effort he had made to go to sleep early.

Ok, after all the effort he had tried to make. He did lay down in bed for a while but all sorts of thoughts just wouldn’t let him be still and he ended up jumping out of bed and calling his best friend. The part that he really hated about moving to Seoul from his native Qingdao was leaving Lu Han behind. They still spent hours talking and laughing but it just wasn’t the same, not being able to hang out in person. And yesterday’s conversation made Tao realise that from now on, they would have less and less things in common, not to mention time to talk. It was up to them to maintain their friendship alive.

When his mother was promoted to the position of head of stuff in the Chinese embassy in South Korea, his parents suggested that Tao enter an international secondary school and graduated there. But Tao had always been weak at English and thus decided that it would be much easier for a Chinese person to learn in Korean, especially that he himself already had solid basis in the language.

But the Korean language school that he attended during the summer months already felt like a distant past to him. Thankfully – or unfortunately, he couldn’t decide - he did not even have the time to be nervous about it, as he flew down the stairs with his uniform shirt barely buttoned up and his tie handing around his neck. He frantically ran into the spacious kitchen, intending to grab the first edible thing that he saw on the table and put it into his mouth. He did not even have time to take a shower.

His father, who worked from home and thus, in Tao’s opinion, always seemed to have all the time in the world, was seated at the table and reading his morning news paper. He barely acknowledged his son’s grand entrance as he turned the page to the cultural section.

‘Good morning, Pandao.’ He sounded way too cheerful in Tao’s opinion, so the latter just grunted in a very non-comitial way and grabbed an apple from the nearby bowl. He would normally get annoyed at his father’s constant teasing but he was already late and the joke was getting old, anyway. After all, he had 18 years to get used to it.

‘Remember to play nice with the other animals.’ His father grinned, finally looking at his son and noticing his dishevelled appearance.

‘Dad!’ Tao could not help but groan childishly. It was not his fault that he always looked like he hadn’t got a wink of sleep for a week. And why was his father always so embarrassing.

‘Why didn’t you wake me up? I’ll be late on my first day of school.’

‘Then you better run fast, son.’ His father’s grin widened even more. Tao just huffed in exasperation.

While putting his snickers on, Tao was trying to decide the best way to get to school on time. After a second of deliberation, he ruled out both taxis and buses. They were likely to get stuck in the traffic and he could not afford to waste even one minute. His bike was still in the repair shop. He looked at his watch. He had about 25 minutes before they would close the main gate and he had n idea what would happen next but he guessed it was not good.

He decided to run for it. He had visited the school twice, both times on foot, so if his estimation was correct, he could probably make it in 20 minutes at a relatively fast speed. He quickly took off.

Back home, he was a star athlete and still exercised regularly, so he had no problem running long distances. What he did not predict, however, where the obstacles he could possibly encounter on the way. As he took over an especially curvy turn, he blindly crushed into another person, running just as fast. They bounced off each other and landed on the pavement with a painful groan.

Tao regained his senses first and looked at the form splayed in front of him. It was a girl, dressed in a pair of blue snickers and a gray uniform he recognised as similar to his. She sat up and rubbed her forehead miserably. Then she blinked and turned to him. She stood up and Tao quickly did the same. Her gaze fell on his attire and she also recognised  it immediately as belonging to her own school. Before he had the time to voice out his concerns regarding her well being, she grabbed his hand and pointed in one of the directions.

‘Quickly, there is no time. I know a shortcut.’ Tao understood that much. He did not question anything, he just forced his legs into motion and ran alongside the girl who was visibly out of breath. They said nothing, running as if their lives depended on it. Which they kind of did. Soon they saw the main gate ahead of them and ran through it just in time to see one of the guards coming out of their booth and proceeding to close the gate.

‘Starting early this year, miss Sooyoung.’ The guard laughed, referring to her being late on the first day. ‘Just don’t let  this become a habit.’ He shook his head amicably.

‘Sure thing.’ She greeting him back, happily, although still heaving from the heavy exercise. As she was standing there, trying to catch her breath, Tao could finally see her face clearly for the first time. She had long, dark hair, currently all tangled up. She was a bit shorter than him, but not that much and had a sort of round, pleasant face that immediately made you want to smile back at her. Their eyes finally met and they both realised that very instant that they were still holding hands. She quickly let go of his hand, shyly looking away.

He cleared his throat, not sure what to say.

‘Thank you.’  She looked up, smiling happily again. Inexplicably, it put Tao in a very good mood. He smiled back.

‘I’m Sooyoung.’ She offered her hand, this time to shake. He followed suit.

‘I’m Zitao. Just call me Tao.’ She tilted her head in curiosity.

‘Chinese?’ She asked. He nodded.

‘Transfer student. Last year.’ He added, because he couldn’t think of a word for ‘senior’. The girl, however, understood perfectly.

‘Me too!’ She actually clapped her hands in joy. ‘Which class?’ He took out the schedule from his inner pocket and looked at it intently.

‘Classroom 202.’

‘Me too!’ She clapped her hands for the second time, even more excited. ‘You’re going to become a hot topic in our school, we rarely have foreign students here. I’m so glad to meet you. Let’s go before we’re late for class.’ She looked at her own watch. ‘Come on, we only have two minutes left.’

When they entered, students were already seated and the teacher was taking the attendance. He looked up from his register and smiled at her.

‘Park Sooyoung.’ His voice had a half-joking, half-warning tone to it. ‘As usual, almost late.’

‘But never fully late.’ She quickly pointed out and that made her classmates laugh. She just waved at them in glee. It quickly became apparent to Tao that she was the mood maker in the group. ‘This time, I have a valid excuse. I quite literally bumped into our new classmate.’ She pointed at Tao with both her hands, smiling at him widely.

‘Indeed, we do have a new student this year. Sooyoung, take your seat, please.’ She looked at Tao encouragingly one more time and went to the back, where there were still empty seats left.

The teacher looked back at the register. ‘Zitao, am I right?’

‘Just Tao is fine.’

‘All right, Just Tao, how about you tell us a few words about yourself?’ Tao feared this moment, when he would have to stand up in front of a group of teenagers and explain in his broken Korean his whole life story, but when his eyes met Sooyoung’s again, she was smiling at him with all her might and keeping her thumbs up, and somehow he managed to get through the introduction. The teacher  then steered him to a seat next to a skinny boy in the third row.

When he turned around briefly to look at Sooyoung again, she raised a sheet of paper where she had hastily scribbled WELCOME. Her friendly smile was there as usual and Tao laughed curtly to himself, his gaze back to his book.

‘You were late today, weren’t you?’ Tao noticed from the corner of his eye another girl that approached Sooyoung.

It was currently their lunch break but the lunch so meticulously prepared by his mother the day before lied forgotten in the fridge at home so Tao was debating whether he felt hungry enough to go to the cafeteria and grab something or the vending machine on the corridor would be enough. People were leaving the classroom and since nobody offered to eat with him, he figured he would be on his own today.

‘Almost late.’ The girl corrected as she hopped onto the desk and started swinging her legs.

‘Yeah, yeah.’ The other girl laughed and handed her a lunch box. ‘I brought your food. I knew you would have no time to even think about in the morning.’

‘Oh god, I love you. I’m super hungry.’ Sooyoung pretended to kiss her but the shorter just turned away in mock disgust. ‘But you could have just woken me up this morning, you know.’

‘Been there, done that. I never want to risk losing my hands again. Anyway, my friends are waiting for me. Don’t be a loner and eat by yourself.’

‘I’m not a loner. I’ll eat with… Tao.’ Her eye fell on the boy and he belatedly realised that he had been staring at the two of them all this while. He looked away.

‘This is Tao, our new transfer student. Tao, my sister Soo Jung. She’s in her third year.’

‘Hello.’ She had a nice voice and also a very nice smile, but there could not have been less similarities between them.

She was a complete opposite of Sooyoung, not only in physiognomy, but also in the way she carried herself. While one could describe Sooyoung as adorable albeit a bit dorky, Soo Jung looked elegant. Both of the girls’ hair was long but where Sooyoung’s hair basically lived its own life, Soo Jung clearly put a lot of effort into maintaining it wavy and shiny. Where Sooyoung’s uniform was a bit crumpled and ed, Soo Jung’s outfit was impeccable. The list could continue on and on.

‘I’ve heard about you, news travels fast.’ He just smiled, not sure what to say. Soo Jung looked at both of them. ‘I have to run. Have a nice meal, you too.’ She waved and left. Tao and Sooyoung were the only people remaining in their classroom.

‘You haven’t brought your lunch with you, have you?’ She asked. He just shook his head, embarrassed, but still smiling. She opened her lunch box. ‘Let’s share mine. My mum always makes a lot.’ She announced. She handed him the chopsticks.

‘Oh, no. I can’t... It’s your food.’

‘Nonsense. I know what it’s like. I’m usually like that, waking up too late and running all the way to school. If not for Soo Jung, I would never even get to taste my mum’s cooking.’ She made a face and Tao laughed. She took out a second pair of chopsticks from her rucksack. At Tao’s surprised gaze, she just added. ‘I like to eat, ok? You never know where you can find food so having a tool to eat is imperial.’

‘I know. I’m the same.’ He took out his own set of chopsticks and a spoon, grinning. Sooyoung clapped her hands in glee.

‘We’re going to get along just fine.’

Over the next few weeks, Tao’s life became busier. He joined the trekking team and tried to meet as many people as possible, hoping to find friends. He soon bonded with a guy named Sehun from the class next door, and Xing – a Korean of Chinese descent, both of whom were in his new team.

And there was also Sooyoung, or Joy how the rest of the school seemed to have taken to calling her. He quickly realised she wasn’t joking when she said she was almost always “almost late”. After the fateful first day, Tao always remembered to set his alarm but even though he managed to reach the school before 9 o’clock, he always ended up worrying whether his friend would reach the class on time. Soon he started waiting for her at the gate and they run to the building together.

She was always talking about one thing or another but Tao found it did not annoy him. On the contrary, she was the most pleasant person to be around. She soon realised he had a lot of problems with his school work so she dragged him back to her house almost every day and helped him in any way she could.

And then, there was Soo Jung. She was actually Sooyoung’s half sister, they parents having married about ten years before. Sooyoung was good at Korean and mathematics and Tao liked physics and chemistry but unfortunately, none of them were good at English. Sooyoung always asked her sister for help, who although a year lower, seemed to be far more advanced than both of them combined. Since Tao was around their household a lot, she ended up tutoring both of them.

Whenever Tao was left alone with Soo Jung, he felt somewhat awkward. She was a beautiful girl and he could not help but pay attention to her. However, he was thankful when Sooyoung came back into the room and alleviated the nervousness he felt around her sister. He could go back to infrequent, shy exchanges of looks with Soo Jung, while Sooyoung rumbled away about everything and nothing.

‘You’re hanging out with Joy a lot, aren’t you?’ Sehun asked, as he sat down next to him in the locker room. Both had showered and dressed and were putting their shoes on.

‘Why do you ask?’ Tao looked at him. A month had passed since he joined the team and he was finally beginning to feel more and more at ease with the other members.

‘No reason. She’s cool, we also hang out with her sometimes. But her sister… She’s hot.’ Sehun smiled knowingly. ‘You’re lucky to be hanging around Jung Soo Jung so much. She’s the school’s golden girl.’

‘Golden girl?’ Tao looked confused. Sehun patted his shoulder.

‘Good grades, sings in the church choir, volunteers at the hospital. She’s had a boyfriend until last year but he graduated and went to study abroad. Now she’s available.’ He elbowed him, grinning. ‘I think you might have a chance.’

‘I don’t know, I’m not very good at girls. At… picking up girls?’ Tao looked for the right words. ‘And my Korean…’

‘Screw Korean, you will soon speak the language of love. Or are you interested in somebody else? Don’t tell me you like Sooyoung? You’re always with her.’ Sehun teased. Tao blushed, shaking his head.

‘No, I-‘

‘What are you doing, spending all this time together?’ He wiggled his eyebrows.

‘No, I have not thought about her that way. She’s a good friend, nothing else.’

‘Good. She’s like one of the guys. Cute and all but who would look at her when Soo Jung is around? Seriously, go for it. I saw Soo Jung at the last training, she was looking at you the whole time.’

‘At me?’ Tao asked incredulously. Sooyoung’s sister was indeed attractive but he could not phantom what she would see in him. They did not know each other that well, their only connection being Sooyoung, and did not meet outside of the time they spent together studying. He greeted her on the school corridor and smiled at her but that was it. He was athletic, but he was not even popular back in China, so he could not imagine how his tired-looking face could compete with those of Korean boys around him.

‘Yeah. If you’re lucky, you can-‘

‘Guys, Joy is here.’ Minhyuk announced, pushing the girl further into the room. Although the majority of the team left already, the girl still looked uncomfortable as she entered the male space. Tao smiled at her.

‘You’re here?’

‘I was just waiting outside. Let’s get ice cream before walking home?’ She suggested, big smile back on her face and he nodded. No matter how tired he felt, he could never not feel happy when he saw her.

That night, he thought about what Sehun told him. He had not entertained a thought of having a girlfriend here in Korea, especially when he had so any other responsibilities and difficulties to deal with. In addition, he did not feel that comfortable around Soo Jung but then again, if his teammate was right and she liked him, then maybe he had a chance with her. She was pretty and a nice girl. and he could get to know her more.

With that resolution, he set the alarm for the next day and turned off the light. As he drifted away, further into the dreamland, he did not notice the new Kakao Talk message he just received. As it would turn out, one of many to follow.

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Changdeol says: Just a quick triple shot born out of my love for exo's Pandao. I promise I'm on top of things when it comes to my other stories.