Chapter Three: Speechless

Krystal has learned to hide her emotions well. Growing up, she has somewhat perfected pulling the most convincing poker face. But somehow all throughout Math and World History, Krystal found herself scowling at Kai more often than she'd care to admit.

His arrogance makes her blood boil and the fact that he's been ignoring her despite only being seated a meter away makes her even more pissed. Classes during first days are nothing more than boring introductions from teachers and he could've at least tried to engage in small talk with her--- not that she'd want to actually talk to him, she just hated being ignored.

But Krystal is finding it difficult to understand why it's such an impossibility to get along with Kai when they, in fact, share the same set of friends. He even tries to tone down his animosity towards Sulli so why can't he do that with her?

With her mind going a mile a minute, she doesn't realize that Kai was now looking back at her too. She jolts out of her musings, silently berating herself for even looking at him in the first place.

"What?" She hisses at him, careful not to get the attention of their teacher who was droning endlessly about class rules and grading systems.

Kai raises both eyebrows at her blatant hostility. "You were the one staring holes at the side of my face, not me." He whispered back, challenging her.

"I... I was not!" Krystal purses her lips and looks away from him, annoyed that she couldn't think of anything better to say because he did just catch her staring.

Through her peripheral, she could see that he was still facing her with an arrogant smirk playing on his lips as if to say, “Is that the best you've got?"

Krystal resists the urge to snap at him.

So when the bell rang a few minutes later to signal lunch break, Krystal was all too relieved to be able to get up and leave.

She wasn't used to being rendered speechless by anyone and especially by someone as infuriating as Kai. She's prided herself with always coming up with the best comebacks and she hated to admit that Kim Kai was able to knock her off her pedestal, even temporarily so.

Kai actually dreaded meeting Taemin and Kyungsoo at lunch break. Holing up in his hotel suite and ignoring his best friends' relentless calls last spring break seemed like a good idea at the time. But seeing as he is about to face his friends' wraths... he wasn't so sure anymore.

His parents' divorce didn't come as a shock to him at first. In fact, he has only been waiting for the dam to burst the moment he learned how to speak.

He was a product of a loveless marriage of convenience and his sole purpose for being born was to secure his parents' ownership of The Arcadian and Hôtel Céleste. Growing up, his parents never even hid that fact from him and he never really cared.

They've been talking about getting divorced for years and it surprised Kai that it took them seventeen years to act upon it. But that night he came home from the yacht party, he saw the actual divorce papers scattered all over their library floor and the reality of it hit him like a ton of bricks.

His parents never cared much about him. Not like they did for their precious hotels. But his parents' separation validated something for him: that everything for his mother and father were nothing but business transactions--- even Kai himself--- he was nothing short of a business matter that needed to be dealt with.

The blast of cold air from the cafeteria's air conditioning unit and the clatter of utensils on ceramic plates woke him from his reverie.

Once he succeeded bypassing his schoolmates' attempts at small talk in the lunch line and paid for his food--- lamb chops with mint jelly and roasted vegetables on the side, yum--- he looks around for any signs