WRONG NUMBER | NIKI

1 - One Wrong Digit

HANA'S POV

The neon glare of Minji's phone screen illuminates the cramped space of the school library's back corner, casting sharp shadows over the stacks of textbooks we're supposed to be studying. Minji is leaning in entirely too close, her eyes glittering with the kind of chaotic mischief that usually means trouble for anyone in a five-mile radius. 

With a triumphant flourish, she taps her screen and slides her phone across the scuffed wooden table, a brand-new contact card glaring back at me with a name that makes my heart do a violent, erratic flip. 

It's Jungwon's number—the quiet, effortlessly charming junior who sat two rows ahead of me in AP Chemistry and completely dominated my thoughts, though he barely knew I existed. I stare at the digits like they belong to a live explosive, my breath hitching in my throat while Minji grins, clearly thrilled by the sheer panic radiating off me.

"I dare you to actually use it right now, Hana, and I don't mean sending a boring 'hey' like a coward," Minji whispers, her voice a sharp, teasing hiss that pierces through my sudden paralysis. 

She leans over the table, her fingernails tapping a rhythmic, torturous beat against the wood as she lays out the terms of a challenge I'm entirely unprepared for. Her dare is insane, a reckless push to send him something completely out of character, something risky and bold like a cropped photo in my new lace bra to utterly shatter my good-girl reputation in his eyes. 

My brain screams at me to refuse, to laugh it off as one of her usual unhinged jokes, but the suffocating weight of my long-standing crush mixes with a sudden foolish burst of adrenaline, overriding my common sense. 

I snatch my own phone, my fingers trembling so violently I could barely type as I copy the number into a new, unsaved chat, deliberately masking my caller ID settings in a desperate, last-minute bid for plausible deniability if things went south.

The bathroom mirror is spotted with dried water droplets and smells faintly of industrial lavender cleaner, providing a profoundly unglamorous backdrop for what I'm about to do. Standing inside the locked stall, my heart hammers against my ribs like a trapped bird as I unbutton my school blazer and loosen my crisp white shirt, exposing the delicate edge of the black fabric underneath. 

I lift the camera, carefully cropping out my face and the name tag on my school uniform, leaving only a shadowed, breathless glimpse of collarbones and lace that feels entirely detached from the real me. My thumb hovers over the blue arrow for what feels like an eternity, my vision blurring with sheer terror before I finally force myself to tap the screen. 

The satisfying whoosh of the sent message echoes in the quiet bathroom, followed immediately by a cold, crashing wave of reality that leaves me leaning against the graffiti-covered stall door, gasping for air.

My phone vibrates so violently against my palm that I nearly launch it into the bathroom sink. Every muscle in my body seizes at once, and for one horrifying second I become convinced Jungwon has somehow tracked down my home address, informed the principal, and scheduled my public execution before sixth period. Instead, all that stares back at me is a single message sitting in the center of the screen with the casual confidence of someone who has no idea they've just detonated my nervous system. 

Who is this? Four words. Four harmless, ordinary words that somehow manage to shave ten years off my life expectancy.

"Oh my God," I whisper to absolutely nobody, already typing a reply with fingers that have forgotten how the alphabet works. 

Guess :) No. Delete. You'll find out. Absolutely not. Delete again. Wrong person lol. That somehow feels even more suspicious, like something a serial killer would text before disappearing into the fog. I let out a sound that can only be described as a dying kettle, pressing my forehead against the cool bathroom mirror as my brain begins drafting seventeen different escape plans, three of which involve changing my legal identity before lunch.