Violin ≛ Seo Changbin

last

It honestly scared me how much she started to appear in my mind. Whenever we happened to be in the same room as each other, she was always the first thing I noticed. How did she go from being practically invisible all these years to seizing my attention with a single glance?

At lunch today I saw her. She sat at a table with a couple other people I didn't really recognize. She was at the very end of the table, positioned so close to the edge of the bench I thought she'd fall off any second. There was an awkward gap between her and the other people sitting there that were excluding her. She clearly wasn't part of the friend group that occupied the table, as she sat stiffly and uncomfortably. 

"Why do you keep staring at that girl?" my friend, Jeongin, asked. 

"Oh, uh," I stammered. "I was just wondering if we should invite her to sit with us." 

"Oh her? Didn't we go to elementary school with her?" Seungmin pointed out, to which Minho nodded. They were my other friends I sat with at lunch. 

"Yeah, she always sits by herself. I remember one time, in like sixth grade, Changbin invited her to our lunch table and she ran away from us without saying anything," Minho said. 

"Really? I don't recall any of that," I answered in shock. 

"Yes, I remember it too. After that, we all decided not to really try with her anymore," Seungmin added.

-

"Oi, Changbin!" A familiar voice called out to me as I was passing the music room. "How have you been?" 

I smiled at our music teacher, Kim Woojin. I know it might be considered weird to be friends with your teacher, but he's actually only a couple years older than me and graduated early, which is why he was able to start his teaching career so soon.

"I'm good," I replied. I glanced inside the classroom to see several orchestra students unpacking their instruments and playing, and of course, I saw her there too. 

"I see you got your eye on a certain someone," Woojin winked at me teasingly. 

"H-huh?"  

"She's a good student and seems nice, she'd suit you well," Woojin slapped my back and grinned.

"No way, you're weird. I was just thinking about how she's a really amazing violinist. I heard her playing the other day, and I'm guessing she's the top of your class, right?" I recounted. 

Just then, one of the other violin players who was passing by burst into laughter. He was practically rolling on the floor before finally he spoke up, "I'm sorry, but I couldn't help but overhear your conversation." 

"Okay... so, what's so funny?" I was getting irritated by the way he kept snickering as if I was some kind of fool. 

"Seriously? You're talking about her? She's in last chair violin." 

.

if you didn't know, in orchestras people are assigned 'chairs'. Someone that is first chair is usually the best player and has a leadership role to their section.
In this story, she's in violin 1 (there's two violin sections). Being last chair means she's ranked last out of all the violin 1's in her class. 

Also I struggled  A LOT writing this because I chose to not give the main character a name, or at least not mention it at all for this book. Idk why I decided to do that, I just thought it would be cool I guess? But now I'm realizing it's going to be hard to have to always refer to the girl as "her" or "she" haha