Then we fall into the ocean
I might have to call you again

-Horizon, I.M

Mondays were the worst.

Because the English language club held its activities on that very day of the week. As if it was already not stressful, the boys added a load of their bullshit on top of my head.

"There are even less people in the club now," Haneul murmured close to my ear making me flinch on my seat. "Did you notice?"

Every club meeting the members would decrease in numbers but I thought it was only me who ever paid attention to that.

Haneul's doe eyes behind those glasses of hers scanned my face for an answer. When she saw me sit silently she brought her face even closer and I could count the red freckles dotted on her small face.

"Some seniors from the other clubs warned me that the English club wouldn't be fun. The club hosts are as strick as teachers, that's why they had a number of fallout," Haneul whispered, her eyes darting back to the front for a second before meeting mine again. "The same thing happened last year."

"Kang Daisy." The sharp tone in the accent told me it was Changkyun.

Haneul fell silent and I stood up. For a brief second my eyes met Minhyuk who was standing beside Changkyun. The latter holding a sheet of paper in his hand, the white sleeves of his button down rolled up to his arms.

Minhyuk gave me a close mouthed smile. Changkyun fixed his glasses before massaging his temple.

"Daisy, can you come here and talk elaborately on what you wrote." Changkyun flipped the page, holding it and showing it to the crowd.

"What made you want to learn English, the question was that but you only wrote movies." He bit his lower lip and held it close to his eyes again, scrunching up his eyebrows.

"And anime. That's two words. You only wrote two words," I could hear Changkyun's incoherent sigh even from afar.

Haneul shifted beside me. "They are indeed too strict."

Brushing my clammy hands on my sweatshirt I went up to the boys in the front sitting there facing us. In the middle of them sat Wonho who gave me a nervous smile.

After walking up to them I faced the crowd. Which looked like it merely consisted of fifty people or less. Haneul had her hands clasped together before her chest as she gave me light nod. And then, suddenly everything became blurry.

The little amount of people felt like a sea of mass people staring at me. And I felt like an ant under a giant's foot that was quickly approaching to crush me down.

It was too silent. My breathing had fastened up. "Please try to say your answer in English too," I could hear someone say, probably Changkyun but I could not care, my ears were buzzing.

At that moment I realized I probably did not avoid crowds only on my own will. But because I was actually not good with them.

Because I was crumbling under the pressure of so many expecting gazes and it took me back to my childhood.

Kindergarten, middle school, to my high school days when no one wanted to pair up with me in group projects and I did not want to too.

I was not antisocial by choice. I was extremely bad at socialising.

No matter how much I tried I could not utter a single sound and seconds that passed by felt like hours.

"You told me you liked watching movies with your mom," Among those buzzing noises a single soft voice reached me from the back.

"You said you liked tangled better than frozen."

It was Wonho.

Only then my thought process had started to rummage through my brain, forming words and sentences.

"Ah... Yes. Because my mom likes watching foreign movies but she can't understand. The subtitles are too fast for her." Instead of looking at the crowd I looked below at my worn-out blue converses. I focused on the little dots of mud splattered across it.

I really needed to wash it.

"Since I was little I always watched movies with my mom. Just so I could understand and translate better for her I focused a lot on English in school. I watched a lot of movies. Generally I came to be intrigued in the language as years passed by," the words slowly escaped my mouth and then I realized I was speaking in English.

Because I had often practiced with my mom too to get praised by her, but they did not need to know that.

I stopped focusing on my shoes and looked up at the people before me again to see Haneul giving me the proudest smile she could measure. And invisible faces around her slowly started to be vivid. It wasn't blurred anymore.

"You wrote anime too." A deep voice muttered, curiosity in Changkyun's voice.

"That was my own field of interest. But I never watch dubbed anime, only subbed. I have to say that too improved my English. In future I want to learn the Japanese language as well."

When I finished talking a light sound of laughter emerged in the club room and with that, the heavy air was lifted. After taking a look at Changkyun who was staring at me with great intent (which I wondered why) I went back to my seat.

"You were amazing!" Haneul gushed while nudging me with her elbow. But I could feel my hands still shaking lightly, sweat pouring down my neck.

That was the reason I was so ready to flee when I first came to the club, because I was never good with crowds.

When I looked up from my shaky hands I could only see the pink head, Wonho's sparkling eyes, and bright teeth from afar.

This was probably the first time I had made someone proud, someone else than my mom.

That made me realize that a lot of my first times had occurred ever since I met these seven boys.

After the club meeting was over Haneul put a fist onto the air as she turned to me. "Today I'm going to talk to Shownu! I'm going to tell him I watched his performances on youtube!"

"Good luck." I patted on her shoulder and in return she gave a feline grin.

"You don't think that's a stalker-ish behavior, right? Like that's normal, right?" She held my hands into hers tightly, expecting a good answer.

"I don't know about that, probably not," but I was honest, in which her grin faltered.

"Probably not what? Not stalker-ish behavior? Or not normal?" She whimpered, I slowly took my hands away from hers.

"Why don't you find that out," I said as I hoisted my bag on my shoulder. Despite her saddened expression I bade her bye.

But as I was leaving Changkyun jogged up to me with his lanky legs, a bundle of papers on his hands.

"Don't think that I called you up to there over a personal grudge or something," He said as he continued to walk alongside me in the hallway. I slowed down my steps even though I did not need to.

"I know. I wrote too briefly," I said and he hummed in answer.

"You were unexpectedly good in speaking." And then he suddenly halted as we reached a staircase. I stopped on my tracks too.

"I need to go to the second floor to meet a teacher," he told me and I nodded in affirmative but he continued to just stand there.

And then he put off the glasses from his face looking elsewhere as his hand met his slick hair, fingers combing through it.

"If you need help with the Japanese language like you said before, you want to learn. You can seek tutoring from any of us. All seven of us are fluent in Japanese," he murmured in a small and low voice.

"That's impressive." It indeed was, while I struggled being bilingual and was not good at any of the languages I spoke, these guys here were fluent in multiple languages.

"And uh... I watch a lot of anime too." He shifted the bundle of papers from his left hand to right, that's when I noticed something on his right wrist just inches below his watch.

A simple tattoo, very small but noticeable. First the inked drawing looked like a smile to me but then I noticed it was a frown. Slowly I realized it was actually both.

A smile and a frown. A bracket with colons dotted in its both sides.

"Could you tell me what that tattoo means?" My sudden question had him bewildered for a second. Then he lifted up his arm.

"This?" He showed me, I nodded a yes.

For an entire few seconds he stayed quiet observing his own wrist tattoo. "It's like, there are always two feelings behind every action. And there are two faces behind every person but It depends on another's perspective, how you think of them."

He put his wrist down. "What you want to see in someone depends on you. Either it's true or false, or none." and he stopped, brushing his hair again with his free hand.

"Alright, I need to go." This time he said a little too quickly and without waiting for a response from me he vanished through the staircase just as rashly.

But his words left me wondering, perhaps there really was more to these boys than what I forced myself to see.

---
A/n: any of the members you ship Daisy with yet? Who?

Also chapter 17! Say the name!

I want to confirm you guys that the explanation I put behind kyun's wrist tattoo were my own thoughts on it. In case, anyone thought that was the actual meaning confirmed by c.k himself.

Logging out for today but before that let me give yall a snippet of Kihyun's dazed photoshoot

He had me going d-daddy?