10000 Hours | liskook

18| first love

❝First love never dies.❞
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Word Count:1870

»JUNGKOOK«

It was probably ten years ago when I met her. I was fourteen, a young mind trying to understand the adversities of the strange world. I've met hundreds and thousands of people before her, after her. Yet in my memories that I recount, her smile was the most beautiful of all.

The cold January breeze blew past my face, a tinge of nostalgia that I sensed from my schooling years. Here I stand in the school grounds where I once studied. The snow clad roof of the two storey building - that stood proudly hiding so many playful secrets and sweet memories in its inanimate walls. Although the weather was cold, the air surrounding me felt warm and welcoming as I stood by the gate. I could picture the myself in the kids who would rush out to play in the playground, right the moment the recess bell was heard.

"Sir?" My driver looked at me in confusion as I opened the rusted gates. I just smiled warmly, as he nodded understanding my gesture, before I walked in. Everything was so familiar - the huge tree that sheltered us after rigorous P.E exercise, the swings that lay opposite to it, in the corner, along with a staircase that led into the basement entrance.

Taking baby steps, leaving footprints in the snow covered ground, I walked over to the deserted building; I was the only one here. There was an eerie silence, which felt relaxing yet haunting the same time. The school had closed down about three years ago - yet it was incredible how the abandoned institution treasured memories of the wonderful past.

A walk through the corridors was just like taking a trip down the memory lane - a smile that swore to never leave my face as I encountered every single memory years back. I heard a smile of an innocent young girl - she gave me a beautiful smile. It was her, in that blue uniform, as she ran calling my name "Koo." With a dry smile, I waited for her to come towards me, though she never did - instead just waked past me as though she never existed. I turned back and saw her disappear at the end of the corner with another boy, the younger me.

I snickered remembering how she would often chase me around after I teasingly stole her tiffin at lunch, only to playfully smack my head before sharing her food with me under the tree. I took a few more steps ahead, my footsteps echoing in the silent hallway, amplifying the same feeling of warmth, the one that I met years back when I was seventeen, the last time I had seen this school and the girl. My fingertips faintly traced the glass tinted walls of the familiar classroom.

I stepped into the classroom, with dusty benches that looked untouched for almost a decade. I heard another snicker again - I saw her again. She looked a little older, nearly an adult, she would always occupy the seat just before me, always staring out of the window at the trees and the garden flowers. Her long black hair tied into a loose ponytail, the bangs that crowned her forehead as some baby hair found an escape to her face, which I'd pull behind her ear at which she would blush. I remember how she would move her slender fingers while talking, how she would stifle her giggles by by biting her plump tinted lips, how her doll-like eyes squinted every time she heartily laughed at my silly jokes. She never dressed up a lot, never considered herself to be pretty, but little did she know that she looked heavenly and was of course divine, inside out. I loved admiring her delicate features back then and which is probably the reason why I still love her too.

I remember how she used to get lost in her own world, completely drifting her focus to somewhere else. Mrs Hwang, our math teacher would often ask, "Where's your homework Lalisa?" to which she would lower her head down in embarrassment. "Come on, answer me." "I...I forgot it at home ma'am, I'm sorry." She would let out a faint whisper to which our teacher would frustratedly sigh. She excelled at studies, she would often tell me how she stayed up all night revising the notes - except math, because that was the subject she seemed to have difficulties with the most.