together [daejae]

Chapter 11

In the afternoon, I met with Junhong and his friends outside at the main entrance. I had not seen Daehyun the whole day and I was a bit worried, but I thought that by the time I should have gotten used to him disappearing from time to time.

"Glad you could make it" Junhong said as we walked down the road to the town with most of the other students.

"More like glad you're finally with us instead of him" Jongup said.

I just responded with a short smile. I really did not want to talk about Daehyun right now, and luckily, Junhong seemed to notice that and asked Jongup about something else. I did not speak to them at all for a few minutes, until Yongguk suddenly walked next to me.

"So what brought you to this school?" he asked casually, hands in the pockets of his jeans. "If you wanna talk about it."

I cleared my throat, surprised that he suddenly talked to me. "Oh, well… my parents are pretty strict about everything. One day I was in the mall with a friend… He wanted to get a new game so went to the store and when we left, the alarm at the door went off. The security searched our bags and found a CD in mine. I still have no idea how it went there, but of course they didn't believe me and called the police, who then informed my parents. They were freaking out, acting like I had- like I was a criminal, and decided to send me to boarding school for complicated kids. So basically, I'm here for literally no reason."

Yongguk laughed. "Wow, your parents are crazy. Like, even if you had stolen it… Isn't this a bit much?"

"Yeah. But I was never good enough for them anyways. Just because I don't want to go to university." I shrugged. "Anyways, what about you?"

"Me…" he scratched the back of his neck. "It happened about three years ago. I had a breakup, after I found out about my girlfriend cheating on me… So I went to drink and got into a fight because some guy was trying to take a girl home who didn't seem like she wanted it. Couldn't even stand on her own. So I told him to leave her alone and he attacked me. The fight got pretty bad so someone called the police. Although I had just tried to help, my father decided I needed to be sent to this school to 'learn to control my aggression'." he scoffed. "Hearing that from the man who always freaked out and slapped me and my brother for the tiniest mistakes… I was even kinda glad I got out of there."

"Have you been home since then?"

"No. My brother visited me sometimes in the beginning, but now he just writes letters. He's busy with his own life. No place for me."

I nodded lightly. It must be hard for him. Feeling like nobody needed him in their lifes. If I had not witnessed him attacking Daehyun, I would never have thought he'd do something like this. Especially not after this story. He seemed like such a nice person.

"Life's not fair" he said quietly. "You think you've found happiness, but then it gets taken from you when you least expect it." he took a deep breath and turned his head away, but I thought I had seen a hint of tears in his eyes.

Before I could think about what to say, Junhong was next to us, an arm around Yongguk's shoulders. "What would you guys say to some ice cream?"