Nari wondered if the thought of meeting the boys made her a lot more paranoid, because she hadn't even made it halfway to her second-year classroom when someone tapped her on the shoulder and she turned around, fully expecting it to be either Beomgyu, Taehyun or Kai.

Instead, she was met with the smiling face of a girl she seriously didn't expect to see, for real. "Ryu Sohyun!" she exclaimed, face lighting up immediately. "How have you been? I missed you!"

"I've been doing great!" she beamed, throwing her arms around Nari. She pulled back and studied Nari's face. "You, on the other hand, look sleep-deprived."

"I am," she admitted, her hand going to touch the bags beneath her eyes. In her haste and anxiety, she had forgotten about covering those up, but she supposed it didn't matter much. "Just an overflow of assignments and working overtime. What allows a beauty like you to look so flawless?"

"Here's a secret: makeup and tricking my fiancé into making breakfast for me so I don't have to wake up earlier than I want to," she said conspiratorially in a loud whisper. "He's an angel."

"Oh, wow, congratulations! You've always scored the boyfriend material guys before I do, haven't you?"

"Thank you, but you mean to tell me someone as attractive as the lovely Kim Nari is still single?" Sohyun asked in disbelief. "Why?"

"I don't know," she laughed. "But I may or may not be taken in a while..."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"There's this guy I knew when I was younger," she said, embarrassed. "We kind of fell out but today we're meeting up to work things out, I guess. I'm not sure how, but we're trying...?"

"This guy better be cute," Sohyun declared. "An enchanting girl like you deserves a boy just as enchanting."

"Trust me, he's adorable," Nari grinned, imagining Taehyun's pouty scowl if he heard her say that.

"Sohyun, we'll have to hurry up and go soon," a man came up behind her and slung an arm around her shoulder. "Your mother wants to talk to us about the wedding. Something about making it prettier than your plan."

"That woman," Sohyun grumbled, looking at Nari, who was standing frozen. "What?"

"Uh..." was all she could say as she stared into the handsome face of Choi Beomgyu. "I'm...hi?"

"Wait a minute, Kim Nari?" Beomgyu exclaimed. "Is that you? Oh my god, it's been so long! How are you holding up?"

"You...I mean, aren't you supposed to be mad at me?"

"You were twelve years old," he said dismissively. "It's not important."

"But I continued to ignore you," she persisted. "I said as much in my letter, and I know you got it. It's just—I was being stupid, over...oh, dear, now you know."

"I'm so lost," Sohyun announced. "What is going on? How do you two know each other?"

"We were childhood friends, when we were around twelve years old," Nari said quietly, "and I ended up being a horrible friend to him. I sent him a letter to...to apologize, I suppose."

She glanced at Beomgyu, who didn't contest this. "And I told him I would meet up with him here. I did not expect for you two of all people to be engaged."

"Wait, is Nari the girl who started to ignore you for no reason?" Sohyun cried. "Kim Nari? She's so not the type to do that!"

"But I did, with a reason, however stupid it was," Nari said. "Sohyun, would you mind leaving us alone for a while? We need to talk about it."

Sohyun hesitated, and Beomgyu said, "go on, meet up with your friends. I'll catch up with you later."

"Alright," she relented. "See you later."

When she was gone, Beomgyu exhaled and turned to Nari with a sad expression. "Nari, if I'd known why you ignored me, I wouldn't have resented you so much," he said. "If I'd known they were torturing you so much, I would have done something about it..."

"And what could you have done, Beomgyu?" Nari challenged.

"I could have talked to them—"

"You know they wouldn't have listened. Or pretended to and gone behind your back and continued right on."

"I could have—"

"Told the teachers?" she asked. He fell silent. "We were twelve and thirteen, Beomgyu. There wasn't much we could do if even they, the teachers didn't care enough to put a stop to it. You know my parents and I have our problems, but do you know it got bad enough that my mother got into a screaming match with the principal? Once by herself and again with my dad backing her up?"

"Wait, what? They were shouting at him? The man was terrifying!"

"Not to them," Nari said grimly. "When that didn't work, I made the choice to abandon the hellhole. It got so bad that I—"

She stopped herself, unsure if she wanted to say it, but Beomgyu had seen the strange expression that crossed her face, and said, "what, Nari? What happened?"

"It wasn't just because of that, it was also because of the drama in my family," she said, her voice trembling slightly, "but...it was the start of my depression and anxiety."

Beomgyu's eyes went wide. "Oh, Nari," he murmured, pulling her into a hug. "I didn't know you went through so much pain at the hands of people I thought were my friends."

"I know we were kids," Nari said, fighting back tears, "but I let my fears consume me, and I was a horrible friend..."

"No. Stop," Beomgyu said, and Nari got the eerie sense of déjà vu. Me and Soobin earlier. "You made a mistake, simple as that. We all do stupid things all the time and you were scared and hurting, Nari, and you were a kid, not knowing how to properly handle things like that. What's important is that I'm not upset with you anymore and I would be more than glad to be your book-buddy again."

She looked up at him. "Really?"

"Of course," he said.

"Well, then, book-buddy," she said, fishing out the pen she used to mark students' books from her bag, "here's my number. Call me sometime. I told Yeonjun I want an invite for his wedding—he's proposing to his girlfriend—and I want one to yours too."

"I can talk Sohyun into letting you be one of her bridesmaids," he suggested.

"Please, you don't even need to say it," she scoffed. "Your fiancée loves me too much to not make me her very first bridesmaid."

"Is it just me, or are you more confident than I remember?" he squinted at her.

"I was always confident," she said. "Just that sometimes, it wasn't real confidence, just a mask to hide my terror and anxiousness, especially when I was with you, even talking about Harry Potter, back then."

"You don't need to wear it around me," Beomgyu promised. "Not ever again."

***

Nari was walking towards her third-year classroom in a kind of daze, having met three of the boys in almost rapid succession. It was kind of disconcerting that neither Soobin nor Beomgyu was mad at her, or even upset with her in the least. Not even Sohyun, who said she would keep her nose out of their business.

"Why?" Nari had asked. "I mean, he's your fiancé and I used to be close to him. I'd expect you to be at least a little suspicious."

"I trust Beomgyu, and I trust you," she said, squeezing Nari's hand. "Beomgyu would never cheat on me, and I know you would never get involved with someone in a relationship. Besides, what about the guy you mentioned earlier?"

"Oh?" Beomgyu grinned wickedly. "And who this guy?"

"Nobody, no one, see you later!" she yelped, then zipped off, only stopping to yell, "I'll personally hunt you down if you don't call me within the next seventy-two hours!" leaving the couple laughing behind her.

Now, she paused outside the classroom and spotted Nayoung again. "Hey," she said, coming to stand beside her friend. "Are those kids in there?"

"Yeah, an extra class," she said absently, leaning back against the railing lining the open-air corridor. "Wait a minute, you literally just talked to your ex! How did it go?"

"Well enough," Nari said with a sigh. "I also talked to Soobin and Ryu Sohyun, who's apparently engaged to Choi Beomgyu, the guy who swore at the teacher for picking on your cousin."

Nayoung's cousin had once been picked on by a teacher. He had a bit of a short attention span and often got distracted. One such time was the time the grade had gone to that field trip to the edges of the forest, and he was distracted enough to not notice the teacher passing out forms, and the woman retaliated by not giving him the form on purpose, saying naughty boys like him didn't deserve chances to have fun.

While the entire class just stared in disbelief, Beomgyu had been, according to the rumor, the only one brave enough to stand up for his classmate but had taken it a bit too far by cursing out the teacher. While it landed him in a whole lot of trouble, rumor also said the boy regretted nothing. Nari had long since decided she wasn't going to ask him about it.

"Hold on, what?" Nayoung squinted at her. "You know Choi Beomgyu? Why didn't I know about this?"

"We were kinda friends when we were like twelve, that's all," she said simply. "Now, why are we waiting out here?"

"Because I didn't want to go anywhere else without you," Nayoung said with a slight sulk. "Our plan was to visit our classes together and go see if the library was still the same, and then on to the gym to analyze the differences, as you put it."

"I know, I know, so let's come back later," she sighed, slipping her arm into Nayoung's and beginning to pull her along. "We can't just—oh, sorry!"

She apologized as she crashed into a tall figure, backing up and bowing a bit. "I wasn't looking where I was going –"

"Nari noona?" the boy squinted at her. "Is that you?"

"I'm—wait, Kai?"

✧✧✧

WORD COUNT: 1716

A/N: can you sense the quality of these chapters slowly deteriorating i like the letters a lot more thanks :")

the next chapter (I actually like it) is a try not to cry challenge – I failed it <3