## hand outstretched ᘏ !

GUILTY - CHAPTER ONE !

▎A click of a camera signaled her way to class, and she smiled at the flimsy material of the polaroid as she waited for it to develop. The trees around her were a mirage of hues, all different shades of reds, oranges, and yellows swayed in the breeze.

Autumn, the best season of all, was finally here and she could feel her inspiration levels rising quickly. It was nice to be able to walk to school without sweating out of her body and being miserable from the heat.

It was even better to feel content with not having much to do, and just going through the days to be going through them. School was nice in the sense that it gave her life uniform, and it gave her a routine, but sometimes it got overwhelming a bit too quickly.

"Hae!" Her attention was pulled to the approaching boy whose smile was wider than normal, and she started to wonder what he could have done to be so happy this early in the morning. Did he do something that she should be worried about?

"Chan!" His body skidded to a halt next to her and she hurried to make sure he didn't fall over. "What made you so happy this early in the morning?"

There were infinite possibilities truth be told, and she could only assume most of them included his friend Seungkwan, the one that he'd mentioned in passing that was looking into being a show host.

Chan's smile grew even wider, how was that even possible?, and he laughed.

"Yes! Seungkwan's got his first offer, and he called me this morning to tell me." Images of sunshine flickering through leaves filtered into her mind at his words, and her fingers itched to grab for the nearest sheet of paper to sketch out her mind.

She smiled back at him, happy to hear that Seungkwan was achieving his goals and to see how happy Chan was for him, and took in his face. His eyes were crinkled in the corners, his smile radiated joy, and his hand twitched occasionally as if he was overwhelmed with pride.

"I'm proud of him. I know how much of a big deal it was for him, but I'm not that surprised. Seungkwan's a natural show person, and he knows how to play his audience. He was bound to get some offer." Chan laughed again, and finally moved to hug her.

His arms wrapped around her and swung her in a circle, her laughing with him because this was a big deal. She had been there on the nights that Seungkwan and Chan had been helping each-other with their selective pathways, and she'd noticed how stressed Seungkwan would get when he couldn't remember a line.

Even if she wasn't a close friend to Seungkwan like how Chan was, she was still overly proud of the boy. He had been in so much effort, and it hadn't gone to waste. He'd kept pushing himself more and more.

He put her down and she slowly stopped laughing, realizing that a group of people were staring at them-at least two of them were. Only then did she figure out what it would look like to any outsider.

"Are those more of your friends?" She asked out of curiosity, but she didn't recognize any of them. Chan hummed in confusion as he turned to look, and he slowly shook his head.

"I have no clue who any of those guys are. I think the girl with black hair could be Chaewon, she's in two of my classes this year. She's really nice, but she's not very talkative either. The other girl...yeah I've never seen her before." He didn't seem bothered by them so she didn't worry about it.

His hand darted out to grab the polaroid and she twisted, the group momentarily forgotten as they fooled around. Chan kept trying to tickle her as she evaded him, laughing at how he was starting to grow more and more frustrated at not being able to see the picture.

It was only once someone yelled out, "Hey!" that they broke apart in fear of it being a teacher or a fight having started that they were missing.

Her brows furrowed when she didn't see anything amiss but then she noticed the two boys starting to walk over and panicked. "Oh my god, Chan! We should go. We were staring at them and what if they think that we're talking bad about them? It's the first day back!"

Chan shrugged, pulling out his phone to check a message, before answering, "We weren't though and it isn't like we did anything wrong. They were staring first, Hae."

She poked him in the side, glaring at him with fake anger.

He gasped, turning towards her with a mischievous smile, and she hesitantly stepped away from him. This could go two very different pathways.

"Chan, as a friend, I'm letting you know that if you try to tickle me again I will leave you here alone to deal with them." They both knew that she wouldn't simply because if she left, he'd follow after her.

His eyes twinkled and the only warning she got before he tried to tickle her was a giddy laugh. Her arm darted out to jab him in the side, and he shrieked as he jumped back.

Chan poked her back, "Yah! I'm your senior!" She started laughing again and he grabbed her arm, hauling her down the sidewalk as she teased him for his voice crack.

▎Her pencil hadn't been placed down once the whole class, and yet she hadn't taken a single note. She had been more preoccupied with trying to remember Chan's face the correct way, but it was fine because class was almost over with.

A smudge appeared right where her elbow had been and she glared at it, erasing it softly in order to not erase something else she didn't want to mess up. Chan's face stared back up at her, but it wasn't how she wanted it to look.

He looked more caught off guard, more shocked than happy, and she didn't know how to fix it. Most of her journal was filled with images she thought of from him, and in a sense he was like a muse for her.

If Chan was upset, her sketches were suddenly few and far between, but if Chan was happy?

Her notebook was suddenly losing two pages for new ideas to be drawn on. It wasn't like she did it on purpose either.

He was just someone that she had tied her emotions to so if he wasn't ok, well neither was she, but that was normal for the two of them. She took care of him, and he took care of her.

She sighed, picking up her stuff as the instructor dismissed the class, and started to walk out only to stop when she made eye contact with one of the boys from this morning.

Her heart dropped and she quickly slid out of the door, trying to speed walk away only to hear someone shout behind her. Her phone buzzed in her pocket, and she quickly grabbed it: sweat making her fumble with it as she started to send a message to Chan.

Someone's hand wrapped around her arm, and she jumped-her phone sliding out of her hand to hit the ground. The screen displayed that she was messaging Chan about the guy landed face up.

Great, now she's surely pissed him off.

"Uh-I don't mean to alarm you in any way. I was just trying to get your attention to tell you that you dropped this," and in his palm was the keychain that Chan had given her years ago, "I figured it might be something important?"

She gasped, snatching it out of his hand, and quickly checked it over to make sure it wasn't damaged. Her heart only stopped hammering once she had made sure it was ok. The cherry blossoms stared back.

The guy cleared his throat and she came to the realization that she had just yanked something out of hand, and he looked older than her.

"I'm-Oh my god, I'm so sorry. It's just yes this is very important to me, and I didn't even notice it wasn't on my bag." Her face flushed red as she quickly tried to fix the situation, "Is that why you were looking at Chan and me this morning?"

The guy blinked, "Uh...no. Sunghoon and I were trying to figure out if you were the girl in our classes or not. Luckily for me, I now have money waiting on me when I tell him that he was wrong."

She awkwardly laughed, "Ah...Yeah, I've never noticed you had Mrs. Yu. I'm Hae by the way. We haven't introduced ourselves and it feels weird to refer to you as guy to myself."

"Sunoo. Mrs. Yu's class is nice in its own way, I mean she doesn't ever check to see if we're doing the work or not." Sunoo replied and she laughed again, this time a bit less forceful. He seemed like a nice person to hang around.

Her phone started to ring and she jumped, quickly bending over to grab it. Chan's contact was displayed across the screen and she turned to Sunoo, prepared to tell him goodbye only to not see him.

She looked around in confusion as she hadn't heard him leave, and took a step to the right fully prepared to keep on walking until she heard her name being called.

To her right came Chan walking as fast as he could towards her, and he slowed down once he reached her. His aura radiating pure stress as she looked at him, noticing how sweaty he was. Did he run all the way here from his class?

Chan's face wasn't smiling, and she could only imagine fog over a lake. Bits of litter coating the ground, the sun dim and the world silent. Beauty was in everything, but he was pure sunshine. Fog didn't fit him.

"Hae, are you alright? You just stopped responding and then you didn't answer my call so I didn't know if something was wrong or not." His gaze swept across her and she flashed him a smile, hoping it hid her confusion.

He squinted at her, and she grinned more forcibly. He was too perceptive for his own good sometimes.

"Yeah one of the guys from this morning stopped me, apparently I dropped something," She kept out the part that it was the keychain he gave her, "He has Mrs. Yu with me and oh! His name is Sunoo, the other boy's name was Sunghoon."

She looked around again, narrowing her gaze over towards the end of the hallway where she thought she could see someone, before looking back to Chan. It wasn't anything but a locker probably.

Chan didn't respond as he looked around before sliding an arm around her shoulder and pulling her against him. She squawked, stumbling into him as he started walking.

They made it almost out of the building before he stopped and wrapped her into a hug. Her heart clenched and she awkwardly patted his back. Now her mind was filled with a stranger meeting someone for the first time and they were already close. She had never acted like this around him before.

He let go of her and his hands cupped her face, squishing her cheeks as she gazed up at him.

"Hae, it's only the first day back. Don't go making trouble will you?" Her lips slid down into a frown and she swatted his hands off of her. He relented, letting go and stepping away.

"I haven't started anything, and last time it was you who started it. Don't try to act all innocent." He shrugged, and started on his way again which left her to follow after him.

It was quiet for a while as they left the building, passing by their old route to go to a cafe near the college, before she spoke up, "Why are you upset with me?"

Chan sighed and rubbed his neck, "I'm not upset with you. I just have a bad feeling about this Sunoo and his friend Sunghoon. It's not anything against you." Her frown didn't lift and she stared at him.

If he was going to act like this, then she definitely wasn't going to introduce him to them. See if it bothered her.

"Hae." His voice was disappointed as she turned away from him, and away from the cafe they had been heading towards. She wasn't going to talk to him if he was going to behave this way.

"Hae!" He called as he quickly darted over to grab her arm and turn her around, "What is the matter with you? Why are you being so...stand-offish against me for people you don't even know?"

"I'm not being stand-offish, you're the one who's being annoying and looking too far into things that aren't going to happen. I told you why he stopped me after class, and the reason why I didn't answer was because I dropped my phone when he startled me." Her arms crossed over her chest as she finished her words.

Chan frowned, his arm dangling limply by his side for a moment before he huffed, "They're probably good people, I'm not saying that they aren't, but don't I get to voice my opinion on the matter? I already explained to you how I'm not upset and yet now we're starting to argue."

"I don't want to argue." She mumbled, kicking a rock with her foot, and his smile returned albeit more subdued.

"Then we won't argue. I'll hold my opinion, and treat them with respect when I see them. You can hold your opinion, and behave however you wish around them. Can we go eat now?" He whined, holding his stomach for extra measure and it worked as she started to laugh.

Her cackle brought attention to them for the second time in a day and she quickly stopped, turning red as she realized people were staring. Pomegranates cracked open, a wooden table, a candle next to them; she could see it all.

She could see everything but what was right in-front of her.

Chan rolled his eyes and grabbed her hand, yanking her to start moving as he went on about his class. The people soon left her mind as she listened to him complain about his dance instructor.

"He's always inconsistent with his teaching like one day, one day we teach Hae and the next he cancels class just because! Like did he not already get a break? He said today was going to be an easy day and just let us do whatever. I did not sign up for a class that I would be having to teach myself in!"

The next part went like this, "You don't get it. This one girl is all over me, constantly, and I have tried to let her down at-least seven times-speaking of seven! I learned Jungkook's new choreography for that, do you want me to show you later on?"

Then she had to gently remind him about the girl to which he groaned as he pushed open the cafe doors, "She's so-ugh! Why can't she understand that I am not interested in her? I want to focus on my dancing, my future career mind you, and she keeps getting in my space to try to ask me on a 'study date!' Who even goes on study dates anymore besides you!"

She hit his arm at his last words, reminding him that he also went on study dates with her so he didn't have much to use against her. Chan leaned against the counter as she ordered, still going on about study dates and how out of style they were, and she just nodded along.

He took a break while he was ordering and she walked off, sliding into a booth with her phone captivating her attention as she waited for him to bring the food out.

The polaroid burned in her palm when she slid it out of her phone case, and stared at it. Autumn didn't seem to ever be captured the way she imagined it, and it certainly wasn't ever how she wanted it to be remembered.

Her hand slid the polaroid back into her phone case right as Chan walked over, and she softly smiled at how he was resuming his rant on his instructor.

Something about how passionate he was could be related to how the sun always tried to warm up the earth during the winter even when it rarely worked. She mulled over how everything that was about him was always so bright until it wasn't, until it turned dim-dark, and so cold.

His arms were protective, and he was stand-offish but only because people would mistake his kindness for weakness. She knew how it was for him.

She didn't know how it was for Sunoo on the other hand. He did seem like a nice guy, and he had brought her stuff back to her even though she'd been avoiding him. Sunghoon hadn't made another appearance, much to her own disdain, so she didn't have a good read on him.

Could they become friends? Sunoo was akin to a shaded oak, and she could already imagine them being close enough friends that they could lean on one another. He seemed to have walls, layers, that had always existed but they weren't that high anymore. She wanted to become friends with him.

"Hae." She hummed, staring down at the phone in her hand that she'd been blankly staring at.

"Hae." Her attention popped like a rubber band, and she stopped focusing on the crack in her screen.

Chan shook his head fondly, and pointed to the sandwich in-front of her that she hadn't touched, "You need to eat, you know. I don't think you can eat by staring at it."

His hand pushed the wrapped food closer and she stuck her tongue out at him playfully, "I wasn't staring at it, I was staring at the crack in my phone. Honestly I think I should get a new screen protector since this one is very-"

He snatched the phone out of her palm and squinted at it, "There isn't a single crack in this though?"

Her brows furrowed, pulling it out of his hand and back into her's, as she inspected it. There wasn't any.

Then what had she been staring at for the past however long?

When she looked back up, Chan was looking at her with worry in his gaze.

"Are you sure you're ok? Did you hit your head or something? I can take you to the nurse if you want, you know I don't care about my next class." She knew he was trying to help, but she was fine. She knew that she was fine.

Maybe she could just be tired or maybe it was a hair on the screen?

"I'm alright, I think I'm just tired. I didn't hit my head on anything. Maybe it was a hair and it moved off when you snatched my phone out of my hand." Her tone made him sputter, and she took a bite out of her sandwich in retaliation as he tried to cover for himself.

This, this moment, was orange trees being hit by rain. It was perfect, and she wanted to be stuck in the middle of it for the rest of her days. With how fresh the world would smell, how calm life would be, and how peaceful her mind could exist: it was all she'd ever wanted.

"So tell me about how you feel about today. What pictures have you painted in your mind now?" Chan always knew, and she couldn't help but laugh at the knowledge.

They sat there, the sun rising higher and higher in the sky, as she went on about the visions in her mind.

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( a/n : just a small note, chan will be the only svt member who is still in school. the other svt members are in the fic! most will just be mentioned in passing, but the reasoning for chan being in school still will be known later on, and all I ask is for you to trust my judgement. comment, vote, let me know your thoughts about this rough introduction.