➪The Man|| WINRINA

𝚃𝚑𝚒𝚛𝚝𝚢-𝚏𝚒𝚟𝚎

The major exam was tomorrow. Almost everyone attending Shang academy was bruning the midnight oil. It was, after all, a major exam that would dictate if they would stay or be forced to leave for next school year.


That didn't exempt winter. Hunched over her study table with her books, notebooks, and papers scattered around the surface. Also multi-colored highlighters with open caps were lined in front of her, all colors with a specific meaning: yellow was for the important details or topic, pink for the meaning, green for the examples, blue for the extra details, and purple to fill the rest of the paper.


Her books and notebooks were an educational colored book.


Winter tapped the bottom of her pushpen on her pursed lips. A no. 2 pencil was placed behind her ear, ready if she needed to write something down that she was unsure of.


And she was studying math, almost everything was unsure.


“why is there a three?” she scratched her right temple with her pen, brows furrowed as she tried to understand how x= 7×-21 turned to ×=3. “where did 21 go? Huh?”


She would have bothered yeji to explain but the girl was also busy trying to study all their lessons. It wasn't a easy task. Even if they only had a few topics, those topics consisted of at lesst 10 subtopics that needed on to properly understand to get.


“maybe I should study science. Yeah, science is easy.” or not. Winter pushed her math notebook, book, and papers away to make room for another set, except her paper were in a neat pile inside her expandable folder. She flipped open her book, instantly loathing the chemical equations that greeted her.


Their science had shifted from purely earth and space to a crash course of physics, biology, and chemistry. She loathed chemistry as she couldn't balance out the equations.


She blinked at the daunting numbers and chemicals. “so wait, cations are the metals while anions were non-metals...or was it the other way around?” her left hand move blindly at the side, to the side drawers where she opened the second drawer and took out the folded table of elements before unfolding it and spreading it across her table. “non-metals...okay. let's see... this is considered a covalent one since...it's only metal while this is ionic is the mixture of a non-metal and metal...okay.”


In her defense, chemistry was easy if you actually understood it. And so does to the rest of the subjects. You had to understand, familiarize yourself. As teachers say, familiarize, not memorize.


“yeah and I'll be saying, oh so familiar.” she snorted humorlessly. She smacked her lips then sighed as she became unmotivated.


Even the idea of being dropped by the school didn't motivate nor did it scare her. Not like she wanted to continue studying there. Jaemin was there and it was already a red flag. And jeno, he's a red banner.


She moved away the pen from her lips, choosing to tap it against the table. “I like you...”


I like you...
















“then you must know that I like you.”


“huh?”



Winter was dumfounded. Well, she did pick up the signs that karina liked both of her alter egos. Although, she would like to believe karina liked her as winter more.


“y-you do?” it wasn't the first time winter received a confession. She had around five before she moved. But this was her first time receiving one from a girl. “w-why?”


“why? Because you're—”


“you like my twin, right?” of course she does! She probably thought that winter was unattainable and chose minjeong. And even if minjeong was a figure of a lie created, it still hurts. “not me.”


“what?” karina was perplexed, blinking her eyes twice. “no, I like you because—”


“you like my twin, not me.” minjeong concluded before untangling their finger and jogged to catch up with their friends. He quickly latched on soobin who let out a surprised out. “you like winter.”















Winter scoffed. She doesn't know if she should feel proud that her real self won over minjeong. But, it somewhat messed with her since it felt like she, well he, was being rejected. Lied to.


“hah~” she chuckled in disbelief, placing the pen down on the table before cupping her forehead. “so this what jaemin is feeling. No wonder he's fucked in the head.”


That wasn't a laughing manner but she could care less. She tired with life already and everything started to feel comical at this point.


“fucked in the head...” jaemin was again acting weird. She wasn't sure if it was another personality. “but he looked sick, like really sick.”


And it didn't help that he was staring at nothing during the entire time. There were times he would talk to the rest of gucci gang, particularly with xiaojun, but he mostly kept to himself, staying st the sidelines with that solem expression, acting as if something died that day.


“probably his conscience.” winter sat up straight, arching her back to give it a good stretch  she threw her arms in the air for good measure. “welp, there's always tomorrow!”


Winter gave up. If she was going to rank lower than fifty then so be it. As their religion teacher said, with every misfortune is a hidden fortune. Maybe failing to rank high was her fortune.


She got up from her seat, pushing her chair under the table before closing every highlighter, books, notebooks, and stacking her scattered papers.


What? Do you expect her to get a sudden motivation? Of course not  this was not some type of kdrama wherein the main character would tie their hair in a ponytail and then start working in a timelapse with bright music playing in the background.


Because one, she wasn't in a kdrama, and two, she had short hair.


“Why did I even attend Shang academy?”






Ding dong!





“someone would visit me at this hour?” winter was curious who was at the door. “is it satan?”


She walked toward her door  stopping right in front of it before looking through the mini eye hole. She moved away, turning her head to the left, blinking her eyes with a stupified expression. “jaemin?” she peeked back into the key hole, confirming it was in fact jaemin. “what is he doing here?”


She unlocked the door of her apartment and opened the door for her unexpected guest. “Jaemin?”


“hello winter.” jaemin did a 90 degree brow, shocking winter. Jaemin stood up straight before shoving a plastic bag toward winter. He bowed again. “I apologize for the person I would be tomorrow.”