Kyungsoo quivers as cold air caresses his fragile body. His cheeks are glowing a small hint of pink along with his frosted skin and he flounders with his fingers; intertwining them then wriggling them as if he is conducting an invisible orchestra. Just a few minutes ago, Kai had walked past him with a smile on his face and he has been restless ever since. Despite these strange feelings, he isn’t aware that there is a girl glaring at him, teeth gritting against each other and hands curled into tight fists ready to throw a punch.

“Do you see him, Eunkyung?” She growls, pointing an accusing finger at Kyungsoo. Her friend moves closer to her to get a good look at the sweet and innocent Kyungsoo who is busily watching the gloomy sky.

“What about him?” The first girl turns to look at her friend as if she has said the most offensive thing to ever escape a human being’s mouth.

“Not only did Kai walk past us, he also smiled at that- that filth!”

“Whoa… Calm down, Hyesook.”

“It’s not fair!” She screams, alarming the rest of the population occupying the same area. They all turn their heads sharply to look at her before returning to what they were doing, all except one. Kyungsoo had seen that she was frustrated and nervously walked over to her, unaware that he was the cause of her anger.

“Are you okay?” He asks shyly. She looks at him, all feelings of hatred draining from her body. How can she hold a grudge against someone so nice?

“Yeah… fine…” She says while biting her lip.

He beams an adorable smile. “J-just making sure.” He then walks back to where he was previously standing, leaving both girls embarrassed and guilty.

The wind howls ominously and icy air assaults Kyungsoo’s ears, dark clouds stick firmly to the hidden sky and the trees rock harshly in the relentless gale. Out of nowhere, his arm is suddenly gabbed and Kyungsoo can feel himself being pulled away into the main school building. When his arm is released from the strong grip, he scrunches himself up as much as possible. He positions his open hands in front of his chest to surrender.

“Please don’t eat me…” Kyungsoo blurts out, fear controlling his mind instead of common sense.

“Eat you? Hee hee! You’re as cute as Kai says you are,” the other person says. Kyungsoo’s eyes open wide when the unnecessary compliment is thrown at him.

“Wh-who are you?” He whimpers, relaxing his arms and letting them fall to his sides.

“I’m Yixing.” His grin seems to cover eighty percent of his face, dimples caving in on his cheeks. Kyungsoo repeats the name over and over in his head until he remembers where he has heard it before. Yixing is one of Kai’s friends that he had mentioned while Kyungsoo was waiting for Jongdae after that basketball game he was forced into watching.

“I thought Kai said that you didn’t talk much,” Kyungsoo says, eyebrows furrowing as he recalls the conversation from that afternoon.

“That kid’ll make up anything if he wants to start a conversation. Speaking of Kai,” he pauses to add suspense, “he wants to talk to you.”

“But I saw him earlier," Kyungsoo retorts calmly. "Surely he could have talked to me then.”

“Yeah… that’s true…” Yixing frowns as his master plan starts to crumble. “I dunno… He just told me that he wanted to talk to you.”

Kyungsoo sighs heavily. “I’ll go talk to him.” He looks at his feet and twists them a bit. “Um… about what you said earlier…”

“What did I say earlier?"

Kyungsoo fights off his second blush of the morning and mumbles, “about, uh… Kai saying that I was, um…”

“Cute?” Yixing’s frown flips upside down. His grin returns and his eyes light up as he stands with his arms akimbo. He chuckles heartily when he notices Kyungsoo blush on command. Kyungsoo fidgets on the spot and nods his head slightly. “Yeah, Kai has called you cute before. Can’t blame him though. You are really cute!” Yixing reaches out to pinch Kyungsoo’s cheeks before racing off and out of sight. What a strange guy.

Kyungsoo already knows where Kai’s homeroom is because Jongdae is in the same homeroom class as him. His steps are small and meek when he reaches the door. What should I do? How many people are going to be in there? What if everyone tries to kill me? Oh no! I’m going to die! He starts to think of the possibility of fleeing but it’s too late. His fist has already met with the door. Why did I just knock on the door? Am I stupid? Okay, okay, calm down Kyungsoo. You can do this. When the door opens, Kai appears with a surprised look on his face, almost as if he wasn’t expecting Kyungsoo.

“Hi, Kai!” Kyungsoo says, a bright smile lighting up across his face.

“Hate to be rude but what are you doing here?” Kai leans against the doorframe; he looks sinfully handsome this morning which makes the situation even worse. Kyungsoo looks at him puzzled. He tries to recall what Yixing had told him. He’s sure that Yixing had told him that Kai wanted to talk to him. Did he get the wrong name?

“Yixing told me that you wanted to talk to me,” he says truthfully, hoping not to embarrass himself.

Kai launches himself from the wall with astonishing force and shouts, “that son of a--” He shoves Kyungsoo to the floor before scurrying out of the room as if he’s possessed or bewitched.

With everyone’s eyes set firmly on him, Kyungsoo leaves the room embarrassed and rejected.

                                                                                                                -

Sitting in his literature class, Kyungsoo is taking pages upon pages of notes. Surely their teacher can’t possibly believe that they can memorise all of this for their exam within the next week. At the worst time, the teacher rubs out all of the notes on the whiteboard which the class were actively scribbling down. This causes an uproar of groans and complaints from the whole class. Luckily, Kyungsoo had written everything down before the teacher had rubbed it out. Junmyeon, who is sitting next to Kyungsoo, leans over to say, “can I borrow your notes?”

“Sure,” Kyungsoo whispers cheerfully, smiling bashfully while passing Junmyeon his notes. Since he has already got Junmyeon’s attention, he takes the opportunity to ask him about something that has been bugging him.

“Junmyeon?”

“What is it? Are you okay?” Junmyeon abandons copying down Kyungsoo’s notes and looks at him analytically.

“Surely I should be asking you that.”

“What do you mean?” Junmyeon grimaces, unable to look at Kyungsoo.

“You’ve been acting weird recently… I just want to know if something has happened because you're not talking as much and I haven't seen you for a while...”

“You don’t need to worry about me, Kyungsoo… I’ve just been trying to deal with something I don’t think you can help with,” Junmyeon replies warmly but with a pained expression on his face.

“It’s just that… you’ve always been acting weird around me and I was starting to think that you hated me--"

Junmyeon quickly interrupts him by clasping his hand over Kyungsoo’s mouth. “Stop that, Kyungsoo… I can’t stand to see you upset like this… Especially over me.”

“Sorry, Junmyeon…”

“It’s okay. By the way, Jongdae isn’t in school today,” he mumbles, rebounding back into copying down Kyungsoo’s notes.

“Why?”

“He’s got a fever.”

“Hey, you two at the back!” The teacher shouts. Kyungsoo and Junmyeon both lift up their heads at the sound of their names being called. “If I catch you talking again, I’ll give you both detentions,” He warns. However, both boys disregard the threat indifferently.

The rest of the day moves painstakingly slow. What made the day even worse was the fact that Jongdae wasn’t there to make awful jokes and lighten up the mood. Even Baekhyun was missing him! When the final bell rings, signalling the end of the day, Kyungsoo virtually leaps out of his seat and zooms out of the room at the speed of light. He exits the main school building and races out of the gates clumsily, the amount of times he nearly slips over is beyond uncountable. He was looking forward to having a romantic stroll home in the beautiful snow but unfortunately the snow had melted by noon.

Kyungsoo trudges his way home (which takes about twenty minutes) stomping through every puddle while reminiscing the beautiful, wintery scene that the town was painted in earlier in the day. When he reaches the east district, he whizzes past every house; the smoke puffing up to the sky and disappearing magically. Kyungsoo speeds up slightly, and then checks his watch – 5:21pm. He looks up again, only to trip over a crack in the cement. He stumbles slightly but lands on his knees and promptly picks himself back up and continues walking as if nothing had happened. He’s such a klutz, it’s embarrassing. Every morning, he is guaranteed to stub his toe on every solid object in his room at least twice. Finally, he reaches the front door to his house. Finally… I’m hom- OW! Kyungsoo stumbles to the ground for the second time that afternoon and stands up once again to be met with a cardboard box on the doorstep. If only he was looking where he was putting his clumsy feet, then he wouldn’t have walked straight into it. He picks up the standardly sized box but is then faced with the dilemma of trying to unlock the door with a large box in his hands. Setting the box down, he reaches into his coat pocket and fishes out his house keys. He unlocks the door and takes the box inside with him before shutting and locking the door behind him.

Armed with a letter opener and pair of scissors, Kyungsoo decides the perfect way to go about opening it. He analyses the box: the cardboard is bent in many places, the sticky tape loosely holds it together and it looks hastily sealed. Whoever sent this, they didn’t make it look very presentable. Curiosity soon gets a hold of Kyungsoo and he tears open the box, throwing the debris uncaringly on the wooden floor. When he opens the box, his eyes light up with joy and he feels his heart become lodged in his throat. There, inside of the box, lays a soft, fluffy teddy bear. Kyungsoo snatches it and cradles it his arms, knocking the box over which falls to the floor. Its whole body is a soft, light brown and it has plenty of stuffing inside of it. When Kyungsoo snaps out of his own world, he hastily picks up the box to check if there is a name on it to say who it was from – but there is nothing. Who, on Earth, has the audacity to send a stuffed toy to him?