THE TRACE OF LOVE // 양정원

제 16 과

I tried to persuade Daisy into coming to the boys locker room with me.
But she denied willingly, saying she wanted to but was unable to miss the few unique classes she got to see Jay in person.
I tried taking someone else with me to no avail.

So nevertheless, here I am, striding alone, partly dashing, partly anxious toward the boys locker room placed at the opposite wing of the girls', which is now waiting for me silent and dead, chilling as I may bizarrely conjecture.

I don't know if I'm really going inside so I halt before the door of the room and contemplate.

Doesn't he have any extra shirts?

What did Sunoo mean by saying Jungwon was angry?

And why am I even here for God's sake?

Taking a deep breath, I glance around the empty hallway and I finally push the door open.
To my surprise, someone promptly comes out of the door bumping into me.

I instantly back away at the sight of twisted eyebrows and a pair of hard dark-brown eyes.

Aside all things, one thing I know is that he isn't shirtless.

"What are you doing here?" Jungwon sounds confused.

Equally complexed, I respond, "Sunghoon told me to give you this."

I hand him the shirt which resembles the one he's wearing at the moment. Taking it, Jungwon checks it, then, in a sense of realization, he exhales as if all of his recent frustrations.
Consequently dissolving into a smirk, Jungwon looks up with the good dimple in his left cheek.
"Were you really going to enter inside the boys locker room?"

As if.

I shake my head and chuckle, "not really."

"Really? Then why did you open the door?" He taunts.

"To see if Sunoo's right in telling me you're all alone. And if so, to call you out." I'm known to have a readiness of good defense at best times—to my own judgement.

Nodding in a somewhat form of giving up, he closes the door behind him. I nod the same and start walking up which makes him follow up to be side by side with me. At the gym, he has to dash toward the coach who has all the guys gathered around him while I head for my best friend found sitting at the usual edge of second row, her face showing a shade shadowed with dole and displeased paint.

"Are you okay?" I sit next to her and inquire.

"I'm fine." She answers curtly, looking around the gym sullenly.

"You don't look fine. Did something happen? With Jay?"

Daisy isn't someone to get mad at things easily. But when it comes to her love interest, she is sensitive. Scanning casual Jay in the crowd and Daisy's irked face, not knowing why, I suddenly hark back to one time in our eighth grade where she had a small crush on a guy in swim team then sulking the whole day when she found out he had got himself a girlfriend.

Daisy shares every matter with me. Every matter that is listed 'happy'. For the contradiction, she never solves the knot upon her lips once.

Now, she has the exact type of annoyance upon her face that she had back then.

Even though knowing she won't tell, I don't expect to hear anything productive but to let her know I'm there to help her vent.

For a while, she acts as usual, wondering her eyes away with a tight lipped. And I take it as it is.

Until my head turns at her at the unexpected sound of her voice after a few good seconds.

"When I went to Jay after you're gone, he acted like he didn't know me. As if we've never even spent some time together before. He seemed uninterested unlike last time." She bitterly says.

I flit my eyes at the guy in her mention.

He's found sharing a laughter with his friend. Let alone looking like a guy who would act like a jerkass to a girl without any reason. Right on the moment, Jay happens to drop his eyes over us.

Weird enough, he lightly lifts up his chin toward me with a smile, greeting me.
There, my confusion roots; Why did he act what he acted toward Daisy when he's greeting me with a smile?