Those days - txtzy

part 3: 二

To be honest, Kai was most well-known for being Choi Beomgyu and Choi Soobin's friend. He wasn't exactly known for his performing skills, nor his particularly attractive features, if he could say so himself. He was...well, overshadowed. Because, why look at a boy with nothing when you could fawn and simper over the two richest boys in the entire school?

Yeah, so that was his life. He didn't even know how he managed to attract the attention of such high social standing boys, it was as if one day when they walked into the school, they had beelined to him, and decided he would be their friend. The only normal one in the school.

So he stayed by their side, but despite that, he still felt lonely. Lonely when Soobin was chased by girls vying for his attention. Lonely when he saw Beomgyu receive awards after awards for being the smartest, all-rounder the school had ever had. Lonely when he was all alone in a party his friends were hosting.

But suddenly, there was a girl that he never noticed before, who noticed him.

Yuna.

Yuna was so thin, she looked like a pole, long and lanky. She always had this brilliant cheeky grin on her face, when she skipped classes to hide in a stairwell or arrived at school late with a cardboard box of kittens she found on the sidewalk. People thought she was strange, for many reasons. Her father owned a chain of liquor stores, and therefore her family had enough money to drive the two Shin daughters to school-who, actually were only half-sisters. But Yuna comes to school on foot every day without fail. The girls had different mothers, Yuna's was a problematic starlet (and Yuna was an accident) while Ryujin's mother was their father's childhood friend. You can probably guess who they're father stayed with. So many (including Yuna's father) blamed her mother's departure for Yuna's "difficulties''. But the girl brushed off all the sympathy and when asked, she'd say, "I have no mother." Yuna also keeps to herself and her group, but since Beomgyu was dating Ryujin, Kai got to glimpse Yuna a couple of times.

Which is why Yuna was so intriguing to Kai. Sometimes he'd catch himself staring at her from across the classroom, watching her balancing pens on her upper lip or folding origami with the worksheets.

-

So you could say Kai had many mixed feelings when they were assigned as partners for a group project.

Art, one class that Kai was not particularly fond of but found that he had exceptional talent in randomly putting lines and colours together in the way that made teachers gasp and praise him.

Yuna seemed to be an art prodigy. The doodles on her homework already proved that she was a brilliant artist, she could create a stunning piece of art with notebook paper and a ball-point pen.

"Well, Yuna might be...a little hard to work with," Beomgyu mentioned as he pushed his food around his plate, clearly thinking hard, "She has a lot of ideas, so she may hijack the whole project."

"And I heard she's a little controlling," Soobin added, stirring his soup with his spoon absently.

Heaving a massive sigh, Kai replied, "Well, what can I do? I mean, it's not like we have much of a choice."

"Maybe you should ask around to see if anyone would be willing to switch?" Beomgyu recommended half-heartedly. "What makes you think anyone would want to partner her?" Soobin said jokingly, but still conveyed the impression that most of the student population had of Shin Yuna: a trouble-maker no one could handle.

Slamming down his fork with a little too much vigour, startling his two friends, Kai then declared, "Well, then I'll do it with her. I'll do the project with Yuna."