“Seehoon, Seehoon, play!” the redhead excitedly pointed towards the swing.

“It’s Sehun. And that would be; Sehun, let’s play with the swing, right?” the boy sighed.

“Play, play!” Once again her words were followed by frevent pointing to the swings. “Play!”

Sehun sighed again, then nodded.

“Alright, Alright, let’s play.”

She looked confused for a second, but smiled happily when he started making his way to the swings.

“Play~!” she exclaimed excitedly as she followed him to the swings.

Suddenly, Dia was confusedly looking at a boy who was shouting at her. Had she done something wrong? She wasn’t sure what he was saying, but he didn’t seem happy. Suddenly she got a push from the side, a little girl smiling at her as she did it. This seemed to make the boy happy as well. She was still lost. What was going on? Then a boy stepped in front of her.

“Seehoon,” she muttered. He seemed angry too, shouting at the other kids. She softly tugged at his sleeve, pointing away. She didn’t like seeing her friend angry. It took a while, but finally Sehun gave in.

“Seehoon angry?” she asked and added: “Dia bad?”

For a second he seemed hurt, but before she could say another word he shook his head.

“Dia good,” he pointed at her with a smile as he mimicked her broken Korean. “You did nothing wrong Dia.”

---

Dia woke up feeling more than a little disorientated. That was the weirdest dream she had had in ages. She didn’t get it. Sehun had been bullying her since forever, right? So why would she dream something like this?

Had a scary dream?

Even a text from her stalking, confirming her suspicion he was still watching her, could not completely take her mind of her dream. It had seemed so real. That definitely had looked like her kindergarten.

---

Hee-Jin had just texted Xiumin she wanted to see him before school, and she was already regretting it. Today, she was going to break up with him. Did she want to? No, she did not. She loved him a lot. But she did not love the things he was doing to and saying about her best friend. And she could not condone death threats, no matter how much she had loved, no, still loved him.

She took a deep breath as she saw Xiumin walk up to her locker. She was going to go through with this no matter what. But as soon as he smiled at her she wanted to forget everything. To forget he had been out to hurt her friend. To forget she had found that out. But there was no way she could.

“I’ve missed you.” And with just one sentence he had weakened her resolve. Again.

“Please stop.”

Xiumin looked confused. “Stop what?”

“Let’s break up.”

His confusion seemed to first turn to fear, quickly followed by pain.

“You want to break up?” he asked softly, no longer able to look at the girl he loved so much.

I don’t.

“You can’t forgive Dia. But I can’t forgive you. So I have no choice,” she replied just as softly.

“You always have a choice,” he countered. “Choose us.”

“I always did. But you chose revenge over us,” the girl said sadly and turned away. If she continued this conversation, she’d end up saying it was fine. That he could do whatever he wanted because she loved him. But she wouldn’t.

She didn’t see the shift on his face when she had left. How the pain got driven away by anger.

“It’s all her fault. Stupid redhead ruining everything again,” he muttered. He didn’t apologize as he bumped into a first year, but kept walking. He would not let her get away with this.

---

“I broke up with Xiumin,” Hee-Jin said softly when she met up with her friends.

“You did what?” Dia exclaimed, her dream instantly forgotten.

“Of course she did. What he did was unforgivable,” Hoya commented.

“It was,” Hee-Jin agreed, but everything about her screamed sadness, and it only took Dia a second to wrap her arms around her friend.

“I’m so sorry! If only-”

“It’s not your fault, so stop acting like it is,” the clear irritation in Hoya’s voice made both of the girls look up.

“You should stop blaming yourself for every little thing. What Xiumin did was wrong. And you didn’t make him do that, he did that himself. You always make everything your fault. I bet that’s why you’re not telling us about your stalker either right? It’s your fault, so you should fix it yourself? Or do you just trust us that little?” the boy ranted on, seemingly getting more frustrated with every sentence.

Dia opened to reply, but got cut off before she could even say anything.

“Oh right. You don’t want us to worry. Because as long as you pretend you’re fine, we won’t worry, right? We’re not smart enough to see through that. Or we don’t care enough. I don’t even know what you’re thinking. But you’re wrong.”

Dia bit her lip softly, trying to figure out what to say. She let Hee-Jin go and now turned to Hoya.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” she said softly.

“Of course you didn’t.” He took a step towards her and softly touched her cheek. “But we love you. I love you. So stop protecting me, and let me protect you.”

Hee-Jin had her hand clasped over , she was so sure he was going to kiss Dia. He moved slowly, but she still saw him lean forward. This could not turn out well, and she wasn’t sure how she could stop this from happening, especially not after he had already confessed.

“Thanks,” Dia replied with a soft smile. “I’m so glad to have a friend like you.”

And just like that Hoya froze. It took him a second, but then he smiled at her weakly.

“You should be, so start treating me like one,” he muttered, his arm already dropped besides him. And before they could say anything else, the bell rang, signalling class would start.

“Let’s hurry,” Hoya said simply and started walking.

---

“Come on, let’s go eat,” Hee-Jin tried to say enthusiastically. She was pretty sure Hoya wasn’t exactly looking forward to talking with Dia now, but she hoped she could at least find some way to cheer him up. Worrying about him had dulled the pain from her own break up just a little.

Hoya had meant to decline, saying he had something to do, but Dia beat him to it.

“I have some archery stuff to do, so please go first.”

“Alright,” Hee-Jin nodded and looked at Hoya. “Are you coming?”

“Yes.”

As Hee-Jin had expected, Hoya was pretty down.

“Don’t forget to eat!” she told Dia as she took Hoya’s hand, dragging him with her. He was going to need some serious cheering up. And although she wasn’t quite in the mood for that, she was going to try her best.

When they had left the room, Dia walked up to Sehun. Even after Hoya’s rant she still felt saying ‘I’m going to talk to Sehun because I had a weird dream’ was not going to be a good idea.

“Can we talk?” she asked him. The boy looked confused for just a second, before he retorted:

“I don’t know, can you? You never were that good at Korean.” His friends started laughing, but Dia just shrugged. She had gotten used to this over the years.

“I’m pretty sure I’m beating you on the tests, so that says more about you than about me, Seehoon.”

Recognition flashed in his eyes and he got up. “Alright, let’s talk.”

When his friends looked at him weirdly, he added: “Hey, if she can’t hold back her adoration for me, who am I to stop her right? I should at least properly reject her.”

His friends snickered, while the redhead could only mutter: “In your dreams.”

“Let’s go,” Sehun said and started walking. The girl just nodded and followed him.

“Where are we going?” she asked after a while.

“Library. No one’s there at this time, so it’s quiet.”

“How do you even know this stuff,” she muttered, but when they reached the library, she found he was right.

“So what did you want to talk about?” Sehun turned to her.

“Well…” Dia was unsure of how to start.

“What?” the familiar annoyance in his voice had a strangely calming effect on her.

“Did we… use to be friends?”

Now Sehun was quiet for a while.

“We were.”

“So… I called you… Seehoon? And I could barely speak Korean?”

The boy nodded and a smile appeared on his face.

“I taught you quite a bit of Korean, in fact.”

“Then why…” she mumbled, staring at her feet, trying to figure things out. “Why… Did I… I did something, didn’t I? To make you hate me? Like I did with Xiumin? I messed everything up and I don’t even remember what I did wrong.”

“You did nothing wrong, Dia,” he said softly and patted her head. When she looked up, he had disappeared.

“Yeah, that helped a lot,” the girl sighed.

---

Hee-Jin and Hoya had been eating in silence for a while, when finally Hee-Jin couldn’t take it anymore.

“How are you holding up?” she asked her friend.

“Let’s just not talk about that,” he replied with a wry smile.

“You’re hurt right? I want to help somehow.”

“You can’t get her to like me. And I can’t do that either. I almost kissed her, but she never even noticed. I bet even if I had, she would think of it as a friendly greeting. Heck, I hear people in Europe greet each other like that all the time, so she would be used to it. She can’t even think of me like that. Not even after getting the boy of her dreams and realising he wasn’t the one… It’s like she doesn’t even see me as a man…”

When Hee-Jin stayed quiet, he continued his rant: “It’s like… I don’t even know what to do anymore. I should just give up on her, but I don’t want to. I just don’t know. So I don’t really want to talk about it until I figure it out.”

---

“You’re really doing well today, noona,” Minwoo exclaimed as another of Dia’s arrows hit the center of the target. He frowned when she ignored him completely. With all that had happened today, her archery practice had been a welcome distraction and she put her all into it, focussing only on her bow and arrow, forgetting about everything else. And today, she actually succeeded pretty well, having yet to miss an arrow.

“If I shoot like this on sunday I can win,” she muttered.

“Definitely,” Minwoo agreed, but again the girl did not seemed to have heard him.

“Why are you here? Get back to the first years, Minwoo,” Donghyun scolded the boy and he nodded.

“Sure. I’d rather practice than get ignored anyway.”