Anyone But Him | JJK ✔️ (Completed)

Chapter 17

The temperature dropped drastically to a 6 degree Celsius the next day, and I was running a rather bad cold. My mother had sent an email to Teacher Nam to inform her about my absence, and Teacher Nam would in turn transfer the information to our amazing substitute teacher.

It was mid-September, and the season was starting to shift to winter. The weather pattern was only confirming it. Most of the trees were already barren and devoid of leaves, but some still had a few patches of leaves obstinately clinging to their last sliver of life.

This winter seemed more beautiful to me than the previous ones in my life. Probably due to the fact that I was more mature and grown-up now. When I was little and still a innocent kid, winter was always the best time of the year for me.

Especially if there was a blizzard. I could always stay home for the whole day, coped up with a few thick and fluffy blankets wrapped tight around me, sitting by the window and watching the snow fall lazily to the ground. School would be cancelled in the case of a blizzard, and those were the best memories of winter in my childhood. Such a pity that those good old days in Gwangju were gone.

I didn't know why, but I woke up all lovestruck and lovey-dovey. Perhaps the feeling would've been more extreme if I wasn't having a cold, but I didn't let it faze me. I should stay optimistic, especially in such a broken family already. I might actually go insane without something to be hopeful about. So might my mother.

The feeling was hard to let it go, so I clung on to it instead, searching through the depths of my mind who I might have feelings for. Jeon Jungkook? Nah. We'd made up to each other yesterday, but still, he would be someone I'd ever grow a liking to as a crush in my whole life.

I hadn't told anyone about that, but I'd been socializing with this guy from my class online. His name is Seol Changmin, and he was one of the slightly more well-behaved boys from our class. His looks were more than average, which was up to my standards already.

A few weeks ago, when Kyung Ah and I were just gossiping about the boys in our class, Kyung Ah had made the comment that all the boys were probably red flag, and I shouldn't develop any crushes on them, at least not now. They simply wouldn't take that seriously, she'd told me.

Not that I had any crushes that time. But now that I had one, my emotions were kind of mixed up, you know? What was I supposed to do? Chase after Changmin and demand him to start liking me too?

The door burst open, and my mother entered with a faint smile. "It's time for your medication, Chaewon," she said, holding the medicine bottle with one hand and a syringe with her other hand to feed me the medicine.

The medicine was really bitter and tasted like bile to me. Yucks. I refrained from medicine if I could, and left myself to recover by itself. It worked, anyways.

Grimacing, I passed the syringe to my mother and made retching sounds. "I'm sure it isn't that bad, honey," my mother said, giving me a wistful smile. "Just bear with it for a while. I'm sure the cold will go away after a while."

What was worse was that it was the second day of my period. Uh-oh. Which meant in addition to my cold, I had to cope with additional cramps too! Hooray!

The cramps didn't start until afternoon, which was when my cold was pretty much clearing up. I was curled up in bed in my pink PJs, with a heat pack pressed onto the place below my stomach.

My mother was sitting next to me, her eyebrows furrowed, one hand on my blanket. "Is it very painful, Chaewon?"

I nodded with a pained expression. My cramps, contrary to certain people, were quite severe.

It was the second day I was absent in two weeks. The class was probably wondering what was up with me, or if I had some kind of syndrome that kept me from going to school or something (I know I'm not making much sense). Or maybe they cared less about me than Jungkook having an emotional breakdown yesterday.