FALLING | Day6 Dowoon

Day 1-Jina

"Jina," your friend Seulgi whispers, nudging you from behind with her pencil.

"Hey, Jina!"

She whispers again, more intensely, as you turn and give her your no-nonsense face.

"What?" you mouth back seriously, raising your eyebrows. 

It's been exactly two minutes since your history teacher sat at his desk, giving your class a few extra minutes to study, and at the moment, going through your notes to make sure you ace the test perfectly is the only thing you can concentrate on.

"Yoon DoWoon is staring at you," she half-squeals, half whisper screams, her smile turning her cheeks into apples and her eyes into crescent moons.

Turning back around quickly, you lean forward and grip your notebook, trying to act naturally. It's not that you particularly cared that the most popular boy in school was possibly looking right at you, it's just that, in general, you really hated being noticed by anybody.

Moving your pinky finger ever so slightly, you nudge the pen resting on the edge of your desk until it rolls onto the floor smoothly. Taking a deep breath, you muster up your courage and turn around, pretending that you're doing nothing out of the ordinary.

As you twist towards the aisle, leaning down to touch the tiles beneath your feet, you glance up slowly, right into Yoon DoWoon's gaze.

As soon as your eyes meet his, you instantly freeze, your entire body tensing. 

What the heck?

Seulgi was right, he really was staring at you!

But why?

You half expect him to smirk at you cockily or give you the cold, un-impressed look he usually reserves for the over-eager girls crowding around him constantly. But he doesn't do either of those things.

Curiosity giving you courage you normally lack, you continue to gaze at him until you notice something strange. His eyes are unfocused, his expression vacant, body sitting rigidly. It's only then that you realize he's not really looking at you. He's just lost in his thoughts, zoning out. Checking how well he remembers his notes, probably.

Letting out a sigh somewhere between disappointment and relief, you grasp your pen and sit up in one fluid motion, turning back to the notes you were studying. If you wanted to win a full-ride scholarship to university, you couldn't afford to waste any more time. Especially when your biggest rival was currently sitting kitty corner from you, studying so hard he was staring into space.

"Five more minutes," your teacher calls, and you feel your heart rate increase. You'd studied all week for this, but you had to focus now. This was more than a test after all. 

It was the only chance you would ever get to finally escape.

/-/

After class, Mr. Kim handed back your papers on the Joseon dynasty.

"The blue marks are my comments, the black is the critique from your assigned peer," he says.

"Remember to be open-minded. We can't improve if we're unwilling to learn from our mistakes," he lectures, smiling.

"This is your senior year, after all. Now is the time to get used to the expectations you will face out in the real world."

He walks by your desk, slipping a stapled packet onto the top silently. Glancing through it quickly, you see a few sentences in sprawled blue writing, but very little black ink. You heave a sigh of relief. Last semester DoWoon's comments were so harsh he made his partner cry. You know your writing is gifted, and you always get good grades, but if you're being honest, a small part of you still feels like you can never measure up to the boy who holds your school's number one place.