It's later that night Jungwon was long gone into the dream land upstairs. Your dad were already asleep in the master bedroom.
And you were in the kitchen with your loyalist brother, Daniel sitting next to you in the counter. Earlier when you went to nearly tattle to your dad, Daniel appears with the vintage box in his hands and eversince then, you couldn't try or want to talk to him.
He was being extra quiet for once while you were drinking a milk, and then out of nowhere, he looks up from his phone and says. "I did the most unforgivable sin that I could've ever done to you, Noona"
"Are you going to tell me what is it?", you asked, one hand on your hips. He looked back at his phone, as if considering whether to tell you or not.
"Well, you see", he began slowly, considering his words as he spoke, "I accidentally sent all of your letters in the postal office when you made me upset the other day"
Your mouth dropped in shock. The grasp of your hand in the glass nearly slipping before you set it down to the counter. "Can you say it again to me, Dongkyu?"
"I mean, maybe it was time", he says, his eyes not the least bit guilty. His voice is calm and even. Anyone looking at him would think he's speaking of the smallest issue.
Because it's your problem and not his.
"Daniel, don't tell me all of the seven letters was now received by their addresses?", you say, widening your eyes at him in betrayal.
"It's all a matter of time before Jungwon and Sunoo could get theirs, I know", he says, then lift up his phone to let you see how Jay from Seattle is posting the letter in his story at Instagram, "What would be the point of hiding this when it's already right here before your eyes?"
You can't even believe he would say that easily. "The point is, one of the receiver is the most popular guy in school. Lee Heeseung and technically he is my classmate, Daniel!"
"Be quiet", he hissed, making you realized how loud you had been talking. "He might hear you. Will you make it harder for you?"
"I don't care if he hears me. Sooner or later, he will know because of you!"
Daniel rolls his eyes at this. He thinks you're dramatic for your age, but you're not. It's because you could wake up and go to school the next day with everyone finding the nobody named Y/N sent a letter to a popular guy and what about the others? The aussie boy? The skater guy? The transferee in the first day?
What would they say?
Suddenly he says, "Do you know what Jungwon told me once?"
"What?"
For a moment, you forget all about the letters. Because no matter what the six boys say, if Jungwon managed to see you as someone else other than a sister, and if you were to get hated by the majority of the school tommorow, you will always stop and listen to a story about the cute dimpled guy sleeping up there next to your bedroom.
"He told me when he thought I was asleep in my bed how if you weren't only my sister, you'll be his first crush"
At this, the corners of your mouth turns up, and you get up from your seat, flinging your arms around your brother's neck.
He leans his head back and frowns up at you. "What else did he say about me?", you asked.
Daniel shakes his head. "That you're cute and demanding, though now maybe he had changed his mind", You release him, and layed your head in his shoulder instead. "What will you do though if he finally reads the letter?"
You look down to the glass of water in the table. "I don't know", you sit back down and say, "Perhaps I will kill the distributor of those dumb lovesick letters"
He smiled guiltily. "Noona", he begins, in his patient mature voice, like you were the younger one and he is the elder. "What if all these seven boys you've loved before all asked you out?"
You hold out your two hands in his face, and he hesitates, then layed his chin down your hold. You squeezed his cheeks like when he was still a little one. "That's impossible to happen, baby danny because noona here is ugly and a nobody. Wait and see, they'll return the letters back to me"
But even as you're saying it, you know it's not true. In your opinion, this day would be the last of your light-hearted conversation with your brother.
All the cares and reassurances in his mistake that have been your companion on the way to your bedroom are now more than fading memories and your heart is filled with nothing but concerns and worries for the next day.
Or it would be if Jungwon didn't sleep in your brother's room, and even though he was not included in the conversation, he didn't stay asleep for long. Instead, he haunted the stairs while you were talking deeply to Daniel.
Later, when you were washing your face in the bathroom, no matter where your mind journeys, there he was - larger than life and a lot more perfect.
Even before you entered your room to rest for the tiring day, opting to watch out for Jay's Instagram, you still saw Jungwon's smile and then when you finally close your knuckle around the doorknob, Daniel's room light was still on.
Jungwon is there, in the open doorway, looking at you like he had not seen you earlier. His eyes squinting against the dark, his mouth tight lipped and he was holding onto a pillow. "Maybe it would be good if you said it instead of hiding it from me this long"
"Good night, Jungwon", you said, trying to mask the shock from your voice. The hurt in his face did not suit Yang Jungwon's face.
You looked at him cautiously and reached forward to open the door of your room. His eyes were still watching you when you walked up to him and pressed a kiss to his cheek, already knowing the normalcy you have with him will turn upside down once all the letters had been sended to their respected person.
Although, God knows you can have complications and difficulty leaving him to lock yourself in your room afterwards. Much later, you also found yourself debating whether "Ignore it all" wasn't a way out for Daniel's mistake.
Still, that's all by the by. Jungwon was part of your story, but he's not the beginning of the letters in your vintage box.
It's all started with Lee Heeseung.
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This was how you heard the rumors of the most popular nice guy in school crushing on the girl the rumors never failed to mentioned who.
It was two years ago. You were sitting in the library with Violet during your free time. You were suffering in math homework; she's despairing at the thought of reciting the Latin language in one of her subjects. You had your head bent onto your notebook, deciding whether to tear it out with your stress, and then suddenly, Daniel comes running into your table.
And then he said, "I need to tell you something bad"
Mentally, you ran through the list of how bad it could be to hear his bad news. It was a short list. He didn't hang out with the bad sorts; maybe to Jungwon who wasn't so charming in your eyes back then, maybe to Sunoo forcing him not to go home early to get this ice cream near the school, and to his classmates, that was it.
You were about to ask him when Violet nudged you and swiveled your head to look at the entrance where Lee Heeseung, probably the most gentle guy in your class entered with his friend, Seon.
If someone were to ask you what he looks like, you would say he's the most angelic guy out there.
He looked like a guy you would expect to be good at singing and dancing, the kind of guy who values his thoughts. He's on the skinny side, but he's strong. You become aware of this fact, because you fainted once out of the summer heat in your class's outing to a resort and he carried you in his arms all the way to the cottage.
What was surprising, what was shocking was that Daniel finally speak up the bad news. "My source says how they saw him with a gorgeous girl this weekend and it's not you"
You've never heard Heeseung went out with a girl except for that day. He was dedicated on his dreams as everybody would say. He's above all the boys only dreaming for sport cars and sexy girls. He has priorities.
The way it happened was so sudden. Heeseung approached the literary works of English poets when a girl from the other section appears in his back, she was another popular student that you never bother to know the name.
She came to him and announced, "My dad wants to meet you tonight"
Her voice was loud, the way she said it was obvious to make you all hear it inside the library. She wants to be the envy of everyone as always.
"Alright. I would tell my mom to go with me, too", Heeseung grinned ruefully. "Will it be okay if we talk somewhere more private, Yana?"
"Wow", you said, trying not to look at them as they soon get out of the door together, hand in hand. All you felt was despair.
The first stab of envy visiting inside your chest for the first time in your life. The sadness was so thick and the envy so black, you felt like choking on it.
That night, you wrote your first letter to Lee Heeseung.
Dear Lee Heeseung,
I don't really know how to say this or where to begin, but let me start off by saying how you've been my first crush and know that nothing could ever develop between us. I am 100% positive that you'll never learn about this letter nor will I ever have the courage to send it to you. I have not known you for a long time and I never got the chance to talk to you in class.
But I do know this. I have feelings for you. Whether it was actual love or just a swift passing by crush. What do I know for certain that you are my reason there was an actual guy like you in this real life. Kind, humble and the most thoughtful guy I have ever known.
You are precious to me and whoever that girl is, in the library with you should learn to take care of your smile and know how to make your day with her simple existence. Just thinking of seeing you hurt, I could probably lose my mind.
Maybe after this phase of my young heart sees another one, I will think less of you and my heart can ache less for the time being. But I need to get this off my chest and off my numbing mind.
You are probably the only boy to introduce yourself to me in the first day. The one to help me arrange the chairs when I was punished by something I didn't do by those girls. The one to shush them off when they're making fun of my friend's quirky fashion. And most of all, the one to choose us when all of our classmates doesn't want us to be in their group at any activity.
Now, I do know that you do not feel the same. I mean, how could someone like you fall for over someone like me? It's not unheard of a popular guy liking an ordinary girl, but I knew better than to go imagining in that direction. And it hurts because you've been the first person I feel this thing with.
And even if I accepted the truth of you being only a person, just a person of my desire in my wildest dreams, I can never forget the way you made me feel with your simple role in my life as the cause of my addicting hormones of giddiness.
Only in my most private moments I am willing to admit that I'll miss you. I know I shouldn't feel guilty about missing you, but I do.
I’m at war with myself. I hate you and then I love you, I decide I never want to see you again only to then beg the universe to see you one more time. But I know that I'll only see you with her.
To the lucky girl.
I never knew it was possible to constantly have someone on your mind like this, and to feel deep loving feelings like this. And the problem wasn’t finding you.
The problem is forgetting you.
Sincerely, Kim Y/N
P.S This is the end of your chapter in my life.
You cried a lot. Just like that, it was over. It was over before you even had a chance with him.
You keep thinking you will be hurt the next day to see him, but it didn't. The physical and emotional affection evaporated in the creation of the letter for Heeseung. You play the broken strings of your signal one last time and it didn't reach out to him anymore.
It is saying these things that keeps you from falling apart. And maybe by just imagining of meeting someone new in the future, you can make your idea as something real, but either way, you must imagine them.
Because even then, there was an outward sign how the letter for the nice guy will not be the last, but only the first of the many.
And that's how you started the letters to all the boys you've loved before.
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