"I hate to say this, but I told you so, oppa."

Irene hid a smirk behind her carefully-stitched look of sympathy as Chanyeol's knuckles turned white from the force he was clenching his fingers into a fist. They were both hiding behind tall pillars, at a spot with a bird's-eye-view of the gazebo. 

I thought you were different, Raerin-ah.

Chanyeol felt tears streak down his face for the first time in a very, very long while. 

The last time I cried, I swore to myself: "No matter how hard it is, I must smile like an idiot."

-

For as long as Park Chanyeol could remember, he had always been different.

"You're special, Channie-ah," His mother pecked his forehead affectionately on the first day of school. "You'll make lots of friends and your classmates and teachers will find you as precious as Mummy does."

Special. Chanyeol's little heart perked up at that golden word his Mummy always used to describe him. He was special. He was going to make lots of friends in school and he would get to play with everyone.

And yes, he was special indeed. 

To his impressionable, childish elementary school acquaintances, he was special for the wrong reasons. 

Pale knobbly knees sticking out from an excessively lanky frame, clothes that always seemed shrunken on his body no matter how new they were, wide elfin-like ears that protruded out. Chanyeol would always remember being shoved and humiliated when he approached others for company. 

 He didn't want to bother his mummy with his worries, but he always remembered what she told him whenever he was down: "Even if you're not having a good day, even if it hurts, always smile- someone else will have a good day because of you."

Little did his mother knew, Little Chanyeol took these words very seriously, like the gospel. To the extent that when his friends sneered at him mercilessly, he still relentlessly kept his smile on, leading them to think that he was demented.

The bullying streak continued on even till senior high, although it was less overt bullying and more subtle ostracising. Even the greatest saints can lose their willpower and patience and the last straw for Chanyeol came was when his mother's lovingly packed lunch boxes being thrown to the floor in the last year of the senior high by a group of insufferable gangsters as they called his mother an autistic loony for giving birth to someone like him. If there was one thing Chanyeol couldn't tolerate, it was insults to his loved ones.

Not it once did he confide in anyone about his problems, especially not his mother and of course not any other friend because no one dared to stick around Chanyeol much to even build up a friendship- but that summoned up the strength to write in the Aunt Agony column of the school paper.

Dear Aunt Agony,

I would confide in a friend, but I have none. Can I consider you as a friend? You can choose not to reply this I won't mind at all!

I know I'm different from the rest in school, but I don't understand what about me they don't like. I've never showed my sadness before, but recently I feel I can't contain my upset feelings anymore. They don't even know me, much less my mother, how can they insult the most beautiful and kind woman in the world?

Please don't feel bad for me because you can't help me! You're a very kind person for always helping others and you must feel burdened by other problems, much less my small one. Just writing to you lifts a load off my