I Like You || kyy || completed ||

Chapter 12

We're parked a little ways from the school. That won't be a problem will it? 

I felt my phone vibrate in my back pocket just as the bell, signaling the end of the school day, rang through out the school. Involuntarily, I jumped at both the vibration and the shrill ringing of the bell. My nerves had been short, along with my temper, since I had caught the small glimpse of Yugyeom on the girl's phone screen. 

I gently eased the phone I had been given, from my back pocket before unlocking it and staring at the text on the screen. I wondered if Mark's parents knew about Yugyeom in that video. I'd ask them about it when I got in the car.

No, it's not a problem.  I responded quickly, my fingers gliding silently over the touch screen phone before I locked it and slid it back into my pocket. My fingers still shook, and my chest had tightened. The day had passed in a somewhat blur, I was anticipating seeing Yugyeom when I returned back to the house, now I was even more anxious. 

"Are ready?" Hongseol asked me, rising from the desk beside me. She slung her black, leather book bag onto her shoulders, shifted in place before watching me with a droll stare. 

"Yeah," I muttered, following her example and grabbing the tan leather book bag that I bought a few weeks prior to school starting. The book bag felt a little too light on my shoulders, but I knew with time, the weight of the leather on my shoulders would increase. Hongseol grabbed the sleeve of the uniform top in her pale hands, before guiding me from the classroom, weaving around students, saying her respective goodbyes to the people she knew and her teachers.

I followed in silence, worrying my bottom lip between my top teeth. Fabric clad bodies brushed against mine, voices rising and once again filling the halls to the point it seemed to follow Hongseol and I from the stifling school building, to the slightly cooler outside. 

"Where is your car?" The first real sentence from Hongseol, since our shared day at school together, I turned and looked at her in shock. She wasn't paying any attention to me though, her eyes moving quickly over the school parking lot, trying to pinpoint her parents vehicle in the sea of cars that already packed the seemingly too small parking lot. 

"Uh," regaining my whits, I too began a long, from left-to-right, sweep over the parking lot. I nearly groaned out loud at how far away Mark's parents had been parked, as if they themselves were afraid to be spotted. I pulled my already sore bottom lip back between my bottom teeth and began the trek to the car, after saying a rushed goodbye to Hongseol.

It took me about two minutes before I was sliding into the back seat of the air conditioned car, my back cracking as I slumped against the cool leather seats. I slung the leather bag into the empty spot to my left, before letting out a deep sigh. Mama Tuan giggled softly, turning around to look at me, even though the gray seatbelt pressing against her body prevented too much movement. "What was that about? Did today not go too well?"

I shrugged simply, placing my hands in my lip and brushing my thumbs over top of each other to distract the anxious feeling that was increasingly building in my chest. "It was okay," I whispered, even though my voice was slightly drowned out by the droning of the air conditioner that was working over time to keep the people in the car cool. "I saw some-"

"What did you say?" Mama Tuan's voice rose over the loud humming, though this time she didn't bother to turn around and face me. 

"I saw something though," I struggled not to yell, the nervousness had created a jittery feeling in me, usually resulting in anger. 

"What was it?"

"Yugyeom."

The car silenced, and even the humming of the air conditioner seemed to silence as well. Raymond stopped at the stop light, and from where I was sitting in the middle seat, I watched him clench the steering wheel in his hands until his knuckles turned white.

"W-what exactly did you see?" This time Mama Tuan turned around to look at me, a nervous glint to her dark brown eyes. I fought the urge to pull my bottom lip back between my teeth again. 

"It was Yugyeom and he was like," I furrowed my eyebrows and glared into my lap, "a stuffed zebra or something." Mama Tuan and Raymond let out deep sighs, followed by Mama Tuan slumping into the leather seat once more. The car moved forward once more, and I shifted my gaze from my lap, where I was clenching my hands into fists, to the outside world. Buildings went by in blurs, and certain buildings had even become land marks that alerted me we were drawing closer to the house.

"Well," Raymond cleared his throat and shifted where he sat, "we'll explain it when we get home."

~~

I slumped myself onto the love seat, feeling more exhausted then I had been when I woke up this morning. The group of boys, along with Haneul dutifully at Mark's side, where all piled into the living room along with Mark's parents, who had perched themselves up along the side of the wall. Mama Tuan's shoulders had remained hunched since the car ride, her eyes flickering nervously over all of us gathered. 

"What is this about?" I sighed out loudly after having sat in silence for over ten minutes. "It's not-"

"Tell her Mark," Raymond sighed out, pinching the bridge of his nose as if he felt a headache coming. "Tell her so we can all stop lying."

"Lying?" My stomach was doing flips and the lunch I had consumed at the school left me feeling nauseous. I shifted from my slouched position to sitting straight up, my eyes locked on Mark. Mark glanced from me to his parents, trying desperately to figure out what it was that they were lying about, before his flickering brown eyes landed on his parents with wide eyes.

"Are you sure?" An affirmative nod from his parents, and Mark sighed, turning from his spot on the couch so he could face me. "Listen. Before I tell you anything you have to promise not to say anything to anyone at school. Not anyone. Understand?"

I frowned and glanced once more around the living room at the group gathered, before shrugging limply and looking at Mark with a droll stare. "Promise." Though he didn't seem too convinced, he sighed once more, before revealing the secret that they had kept up since I had arrived months earlier. 

"We're in kpop group called Got7."

I felt my heart sink and my stomach roll again. I wanted to cry but I was too stunned to even glance at Yugyeom, who had sat himself across the floor from me. "Kpop group?" I breathed out, my hands beginning a constant tremble where they rested beside me. 

"Here," Mark sighed and stood. He walked to the large flat screen T.V and turned it on, before returning to his spot on the couch. "I'll show you a video." I looked numbly from Mark, to Yugyeom, who had a look on his face like he wanted to cry, to the glowing screen. The screen went black, before it flickered on with a video. 

An obscured image of a girl sitting at a vanity filled the screen, before it zoomed in on her cleaning the skin of her face, and a tear rolling down her freckled face. The image of the freckled girl cut out to a circle of the boys, only settling on their head and name and face for a few seconds before going on to the next.