Magnetic Eyes || NWJNS x F! Reader

０３： （Ｗｅ＇ｒｅ） Ｎｏｔ Ｆｒｉｅｎｄｓ

The next few days rush in by a blur, altogether leaving a collective mess of work suddenly piling up and new unexpected acquaintances–or friends? Depends on how you look at it, really. Either way, you're stuck developing a thesis for your history essay at three in the morning to reach a deadline set by an excessively demanding teacher. To put it simply, you hated history as a subject and wrote all sorts of gibberish for the sole purpose of just trying to finish the assignment.

Ever since you agreed to one dinner with the members of NewJeans, they'd constantly cling, latch onto you within and outside of school hours. Naturally, rumors started to circulate when everyone in the entire district caught sight of the five girls following you–from waiting in the mornings to going home with you after school. It became apparent that the members were attempting to court you, though when asked by a paparazzi of students they didn't exactly give them an answer–they just smiled and went about their day.

You thought that was enough to satiate the fans; however, that made everything ten times worse and the hope of having a tranquil high school life was no longer within your reach. The number of gifts you receive from students in different grades, the girls and guys that aggregate and surround you in dense groups, or the full attention you've been granted by well-known groups that also attend the same school. This was all happening a few days after the beatdown with Woojin, and all you wanted to do was crawl into a hole and never come out of hiding.

"Why am I in the spotlight? I'm not an idol, nor am I famous; I'm just a regular girl trying to fulfill the dream of her friends."

Nothing mattered when you couldn't sleep anyway. There is nothing new in it, of course. After years of attending school as an obstinate student, it is simply something you've grown used to–getting to know different people, building your own invisible circle, doing good work and catching some late hours of sleep. Rinse and repeat–a boring cycle of life.

They say that time dulls the memory, but you've given it all the days–months–to lessen and dampen the pain of your deceased friends. It certainly takes a while to get some footing on life once again, but it's the kind of thing that makes you think about the way you live and how you cope.

You've had former classmates, relatives, and even your own parents tell you to brush it off. From their perspectives, feelings were only an obstacle because the only thing that counts in life is studying. Your parents were jealous of their brothers and sisters because they always bragged and showed off the successes of their children; thus, they coerced you to take extra classes (both in the day and night), do extracurricular activities like martial arts, and had you do part-time jobs to earn your own keep.