The Real You || Jung Sungchan

Chapter 8

Sungchan:

"Don't you have practice today, Sungchan? We all had our individual lessons for the past couple of days. What about you?" Jaeho asks and I nod, checking my watch.

"I'll actually get going now." I say, grabbing all of my stuff and packing it in my bag.

"What? You just got here." Byunghoon whines, I laugh at him as I finish packing my bag. I say goodbye to them and leave the café.

The real reason why I left early was because I wanted to check if Miyoung was at the river. Even though I saw her at the library earlier, there could be a possibility that she went to the river to cry. She was silent the whole day today, maybe she's like this all the time, but nobody has dug deep beyond her looks to even care about her personality. That's what I'm trying to do. I'm not doing this because I pity her, I mean I do pity her, but that's not the whole reason I care about all of this. She seemed really hurt over the way people see her. Most people would love the attention Miyoung gets, but she hates it and it hurts her yet nobody can cares about how she feels. But I do, I care.

I ran to the school and checked the river since my lesson is supposed to start in an hour and it takes me 20 minutes to get to the practice room. When I was getting closer to the river, my heart was beating. I didn't know if I could face her. There were so many thoughts and doubts in my head that she didn't want to see me or she wasn't there. The worst thing that can happen is that she tells me to leave her alone, then I'd leave her alone. But she opened up to me quite quickly yesterday, so I hope she won't push me away since I'm just trying to help her. I push past all the trees and leaves to the river and Miyoung was nowhere to be found. I sighed and took a minute to catch my breath since I was basically sprinting here even though it was like five minutes away from the school. I fixed my hair with my hands and fast walked to the bus stop to go to my individual lesson for today.

Once I got to the building, I went inside the locker room and changed from my school uniform to my practice clothes. Right now, I'm focusing on my training, but in the back of my mind, I'm wondering how Miyoung's doing.

"That's not important right now." I say to myself and shake my head. Once I'm done changing, I put my stuff from school in my locker and go to my practice room to meet my instructor.

— time skip

Before I go back to the dorm, I decided to make a short stop at the convenience store to pick up some snacks. Now that practice is over, I can spend more time thinking about how to approach Miyoung slowly without her running away or ignoring me. I walked from the bus stop to the convenience store which is the same one I was at this morning. When I walked in, nobody was working at the cash register. I looked around and nobody was in the store at all.

"Is it closed?" I ask myself. I shake my head and go back to picking my snacks.

I was looking at the jellies when I remembered what my friends said at the café. So Miyoung arrives to school earlier than everyone else and she leaves quickly. That means that after school she can be in the library or at the river. I can try to arrive to school early but I don't know if I can wake up that early. Many questions and thoughts kept popping into my mind about why she would arrive to school so early. She could either be getting extra sleep or she just wants to be there before anyone else and avoid the gifts and stuff. After she opened up to me a little, that's probably my best guess. I stop staring at the jellies and I pick out one that I've been eating since I was younger.

Then I make my way to the chips and more thoughts pop into my mind. I wonder if the people around her realize how much it affects her. They should realize that Miyoung is a human too and they shouldn't be treating her like a loose animal at a zoo. She needs her space just as much as we do and we should be smart and give her that space. I would try to protect her, but I'm not that close with her yet and I don't want to make her uncomfortable. Maybe once we get more comfortable with each other and she opens more to me, I'll protect her from the crowd of people. I nod to myself and my future plans and grab my favorite chips. I go to the ramen and quickly pick out the best one and go to the cash register. The cashier slowly pops up from the bottom of the counter and looks down the whole time, scanning my items. I crouched down to look at their face and it's Miyoung.

"Miyoung." I call her name softly, she looks up slowly and nods her head at me. That's probably just her way of greeting me.

"$12.90 is your total." She says with an awkward look on her face. I smile as I take out my cash and handing it to her.

"Here's your change. And your bag." She says, handing me my extra change and my bag full of snacks.

"Wait Miyoung." I stop her and she looks into my eyes.

"Yes?" She responds quietly. Is her voice always this quiet? When she was crying and venting to me, she sounded like she was going to yell any second.

"Are you okay?" I ask and she freezes for a second, then looking back down at her hands.

"I'm fine. See you tomorrow." She says, leaving the counter and going to the back of the store. I watch as she leaves completely and I smile to myself, leaving the store.

So she has a part-time job.

.