#hyo-ryung

Although you technically always had a seat at lunch with your brother and his friends, you didn’t want to be any more associated with them than you had to. You loved your brother, of course, he’d been the one there for you since the beginning especially since your mother was absent and your father hardly gave the two of you the time of day, but you couldn’t stand the fact that he involved himself in that crowd, especially when he himself just got pushed around by the people within it. 

You never had any friends…

Until him.

Lee Su-hyeok.

One day, when you were sitting by yourself at lunch, headphones plugged in with your music playing loudly to keep the noises of the students in the cafeteria room having fun - and you not being involved - at bay, you didn’t notice the boy approaching your table until he sat down across from you. He gave you a small but genuine smile when you looked up at him in shock before pointing to your headphones and motioning for you to take them out. You took them out hesitantly, unsure of what he wanted from you. 

You weren’t oblivious to who he was. After all, he was friends with your brother and, therefore friends with the school’s bullies. The whole school pretty much knew who he was, and although he was different from the rest of the group, kinder and never really fighting unless they deserved it, you still weren’t sure of him. 

“Hi,” he started with an unsure tone to his voice.

“Hi,” you replied, your voice practically miming his with your own unsureness peeking through. 

“Sorry, this might be weird. I just…” he scratched the back of his neck as he looked away sheepishly, obviously not planning past the point of sitting next to you. 

‘Cute,’ you thought before scolding yourself as you remembered who exactly he was. 

His hand suddenly shot out in front of him toward you. “I’m Su-hyeok,” he said in a way that made it seem like he was trying to convince you it was his name. 

You let out a small laugh before extending your own hand to shake his, “I believe you.”

He blushed but let out a small grin.

“I’m (Y/n).”

“It’s nice to meet yo-"

“Oi! Su-hyeok!” He got cut off by his name being called from across the cafeteria. The both of you looked over to see Son Myeong-hwan calling out to him with your brother, Gwi-nam, standing next to him with an annoyed look on his face. 

“It’s okay,” you started before he could even open his mouth when he looked back at you. You gave him a small, reassuring smile, but you could tell he could see the disappointment lingering beneath it. “You should probably get back to your friends. I’ll see you around, yeah?” With that, you put your headphones back in and went back to eating, ignoring the way the small spark of remaining hope in your soul diminished when he got up and walked away. 

As you watched him sit down at the table where his friends were, rolling your eyes when Gwi-nam smacked him over the back of the head, that spark reflamed when he turned around to look at you and gave you a smile and a secret wave when he saw you already looking. 

Ever since that day, you saw him more and more often. You found yourself looking for him in the halls and noticing he had more than a few classes with you. Every day, without fail, he would give you your favorite snack right after your first class ended. 

“I overheard you telling your brother once that you were always hungry in our second class so I used to just leave these on your desk but now I think just giving them to you might be better.”

“B-but, I started getting those months ago?” You questioned him in confusion.

He just smiled before walking away.

It was so surprising to figure out he noticed you before you even officially met and even more surprising that he seemed to care enough to make sure you stayed fed. 

He was like a drop of rain during a drought. It had been so long since you’d had a friend that you forgot what it was like to have someone other than your brother care about you. 

It was refreshing.

When Su-hyeok finally got the courage to leave Myeong-hwan and his friend group, you were so relieved. The two of you had spent countless nights staying up way past your bedtimes spending hours on the phone talking and one night he confessed that he actually didn’t want to be in the group. He just didn’t really have anyone else. He entered the school alone and was instantly seen by Myeong-hwan who took him in. 

You’d wished he would be able to get out ever since you met, so when he told you he had made another friend you were ecstatic. You were so happy for him until you realized what that meant. 

You would be alone again. 

It’s not like he would bother sticking around now that he had actual friends outside of you, right?

You couldn’t have been more wrong. 

The day after he told you, you had spent the morning sulking and trying your best to avoid him, not wanting him to feel pressured to keep your friendship alive now that he had real friends. When lunch came, however, he sat down at your usual table where you always spent lunch alone. When you were about to get up and leave, he grabbed your wrist gently and looked at you with a sad pleading gaze. 

“Why have you been avoiding me? Did I do something?” He looked so sad as he asked and you felt so guilty.

Looking down and picking at your food, you told him. “I just didn’t want you to have to go through the trouble of telling me you don’t want to be friends with me now that you have your own friends.” You raised your head to look him in the eyes. “Su-hyeok, you don’t have to feel pressured to hang around me.”

His mouth hung open in disbelief and he sputtered before deciding to stand up and move to your side of the table.

“(Y/n), did it ever occur to you that I was friends with you because I wanted to and because I liked being your friend?”

The look of pure shock that you gave him broke his heart. He sighed and wrapped his arms around you, embracing you in a hug - something you hadn’t had in a long time. 

Although Gwi-nam was a good brother, he wasn’t a touchy one, so hugs were off the table. 

After the hug ended, Su-hyeok invited you to go over and sit with his friends but you couldn’t bring yourself to agree. You knew what your reputation was. How it made you seem to be: spoiled; rude; entitled. Despite no one - besides your brother and his friend group as well as Su-hyeok - actually knowing you, they all assumed the worst of you. Despite knowing Su-hyeok had his own reputation, you couldn’t find it in you to bring him down with yours. 

That was a little less than a year ago. Although you and Su-hyeok continued to remain friends, you refused to be around him in public and continued to stick to yourself when in school. 

“You’ll just drag yourself down if you hang around me, I don’t want that for you,” you would tell him every time he tried to change your mind. No matter how much convincing he did, he was never successful at changing your mind. 

In order to try to change the minds of your fellow students without the help of anyone else, you tried joining the Student Council.

There, you met Choi Nam-ra.

Although she had told you that her spot as Student President was just being paid for by her mother, you didn’t let it change the way you saw her. There was so much more to her than what met the eye and to be honest it didn’t surprise you. You knew what reputations and rumors did to how people were perceived considering you yourself were a victim of said reputations and rumors. Although awkward and blunt at times, she turned out to be a very kind and caring person who didn’t hesitate to call anyone out if they talked shit about you behind your back.

She would say the same for you. 

Nobody could speak badly about Nam-ra and get away with it in your presence. Although you were not a violent person by any means, you had a glare that rivaled that of your brother’s. Not to mention the tone you used with them if they were being a dick. 

Some people were scared shitless of you - not even just because of your reputation as the youngest of the Yoon family. 

Which is why you were surprised to figure out that you had been elected as the Student Vice President a few months after meeting Nam-ra.

She'd told you the news with a small smile on her face and gave you a quick hug, telling you how proud she was of you. She never told you but you were sure that she used some form of her Student Body President powers to get the position. Regardless, you were happier than ever to have a friend and a role in the school that didn’t consist of only being known as the bully’s younger sister. 

Your new status consisting of being the Vice President didn’t change the untouchability that came with the old one, if anything it just gave you more untouchability.

However, not all people saw it like that. 

One day, After walking down the hallway to your locker, you were approached by a boy whom you recognized from your first and fourth-period class. He had shaggy dark brown hair that went just past his eyes and he kept shaking his head to keep it out of his eyes. His cheeks were pink as he tapped on your shoulder to grab your attention and scratched the top of his head while you took your headphones out.

“Um… hi?” You whispered out hesitantly. 

“Hi, my name is Yoo Jaehyun. I’m in your first and fourth classes.” He shot his hand out, almost smacking you in the face so you jumped back before hesitantly shaking his hand. 

“It’s… nice to meet you Jaehyun, I’m-”

“I know who you are, (Y/n). Everyone in school knows who you are,” he told you as if it was a compliment but you just frowned and tried to take your hand out of his grip when he tightened his grip. You tried again and looked at him uncomfortably but he just seemed to ignore you as he kept talking. “I just wanted to introduce myself to you and tell you that I would like you to be my girlfriend. I like you and I think we would look good together.”

Finally yanking your hand out of his grasp, your elbow slammed into the lockers behind you painfully. You winced and held your elbow with your other hand as you gave him a slightly apologetic but mainly confused smile.

“But we don’t know each other?” You told him quietly. 

“I don’t need to know you I just like how hot you are. So what do you say, (Y/n)? Will you be my girlfriend?” He asked arrogantly.

You stood there and just looked at him, mortified. The way he said the words sounded more like catcalling than they did as a compliment and you found yourself feeling disgusted at where his palm touched your own just moments before. 

“Um… no… sorry,” you told him, though you were not sorry at all. 

“What? Why?” He asked, his tone becoming louder and more aggressive. 

“I… I just don’t-”

“You know, I always knew you were just a selfish bitch who didn’t care about anyone but herself and her fucking brother. No wonder no one talks to you,” he interrupted you again. “I was just trying to be nice but now that I know your personality is as fake as your spot as Vice President I don’t even want to anymore. You were ugly anyways.”

With that, he walked away. Leaving you to stare at the spot he once stood at and let the tears leave wet streaks down your cheeks as you furiously tried to wipe them away in the empty hallway. Completely giving up on being able to go to class, you decided to go to the girls’ bathroom and spend the rest of the class in there. Luckily it was the last class of the day anyways so you would be able to go home straight away afterward. You would just have to calm yourself down before you saw Gwi-nam or Su-hyeok.

Luckily you had another hour to do that. Texting a lame excuse to Su-hyeok and Nam-ra about why you weren’t in class, you decided to just gather your belongings and just head home alone. 

The next day, word had gotten around to Su-hyeok and Gwi-nam both about the situation. Someone who had been walking by had heard the conversation and started spreading it around. Unfortunately for the boy, Gwi-nam had gotten to him first. Su-hyeok had arrived at the scene just before you did, leading you away as he exchanged a slight nod with Gwi-nam. It seemed people forgot who you really were; who you knew. 

Even after going their separate ways and despising each other, they both could agree on one thing.