uneven ground || lee mark

chapter 5

a week of summer classes had passed, and ellie was glad to say that mark lee had not approached her a second time.

the problem wasn't that he wasn't good guy or anything. no, everyone knew that he was a model child. the kind of son all parents wished to have as their son — or in-law.

ellie was very glad that her mother would surely never get introduced to him, or else she'd probably ask him to marry her daughter right away.

as to how the classes were going, let's just say that she could think of at least ten different things she'd rather be doing instead.

the fact she was actually being forced to use her brain in the summer — the time when she prefers to stay stupid so she can get some rest — was just sad, really.

and not to mention that the fact that she had forgotten half of what she had learned in the past three years over the short part of the break that she had been able to enjoy.

"haeun, are you really not going to put those books away?"

dahye looked at her friend, who was sitting opposite of ellie and her, staring at the textbooks laid out on the desk as if they were infested with some sort of virus.

"no?"

the maroon haired girl threw her head back, groaning.

"come on! even ellie is here today, you can't possibly be studying!"

"oh, i can! it's still school, even if we're technically on a break. and ellie, darling, i love you, but i'm gonna have to prioritise this right now. my family has high expectations."

when dahye had dragged her over to the empty library to spend the free time they had from 10 am until lunch, ellie hadn't necessarily expected to end up on the giant orange sofa she would always study, with dahye basically laying on top of her as she kept whining about how haeun should join them.

"why are you like this? we'll barely see eachother once the actual classes start again because you always leave us for your younger friends! at least let us have you now. and you know what, in a year, we'll all be out of here and may never meet again, so i think studying can wait."

and as much as ellie agreed, she completely understood where haeun was coming from.

sure, her own parents never put much pressure on her when it came to academics, it was a great achievement for her to be able to study at NSOE without them being able to contribute much financially.

and while we're at it, let's clarify that ellie's family wasn't struggling with money either, they were just a regular, middle-class family. it wasn't just that Neo School of Elements was no ordinary school for regular, middle-class kids.

but back to the previous discussion.

as she was saying, there was no pressure from her parents' side whatsoever, yet that didn't mean that there was no pressure at all.

no, ellie managed to take care of that herself.

despite having learned quite early in her time at NSOE that maybe she had set her expectations for herself a little too high, she somehow still wasn't always able to be satisfied with what she accomplished.

so for her, it was completely comprehensible that haeun was using her free time to study.

apparently, dahye didn't share that opinion — not that ellie had expected anything else.

dahye was the kind of girl who rarely ever studied.

now you might have expected me to say that she gets top grades anyways — but she does not.

she simply settles for the barely passing ones. ellie admired her philosophy, it mmost surely saved the girl of a lot of stress and suffering, but she doubted she'd ever be able to adapt it herself.

"alright, fine, have it your way. but ell and i will go to the cafeteria, far away from your stanky, academics-obsessed ass."

oh, and did ellie already mention that she was abnormally childish?

because she was convinced that her friend stopped maturing back in elementary school already — mentality wise, that is.

but of course, she had no choice but to obey when dahye pulled her up from the couch and pushed her towards the exit, waving at haeun in the process.

ellie on the other hand sent the studying girl a destressed look, to which she only got a reassuring smile, telling her that that was exactly what haeun had wanted — to be left in silence.

dahye pushed her taller friend all the way to the cafeteria, finding it to be a suitable place to kill time.

ellie disagreed, especially once she saw that it wasn't empty.

she groaned and tried walking back to the library, being stopped by dahye grabbing her arm.

"there's people in there..."

"so?"

dahye had never sided with her habit of dodging human interaction before, and she didn't seem to want do so now either.

"it's mark lee and his friends, i'm sure they're nice!"

'yeah, but that's the exact reason why i don't want to go in there!' is what ellie would've liked to aswer, but she was already being pushed into the hall, not getting any time to disagree.

'eun dahye, you are so dead.'

"well, we don't have to inter-"

"hi guys!"

not often in her whole life had ellie felt the desire of being swallowed up by the ground,  but in that moment, she wanted nothing else.

her overly extroverted bestfriend was now approaching the table of boys, dragging the protesting ellie with her by the sleeve.

"can we join you?"

ellie's eyes searched for help in the group, trying to tell them that she did not feel like doing what dahye was suggesting.

she carefully avoided mark lee's eyes though, not feeling like having a second awkward interaction with the boy.

to her dismay, nobody noticed her mute, desperate cries for help, and they all smiled at the duo.

"sure!"

a boy with pink hair gestured his friends to scoot over and make some space for the two girls to sit down.

ellie cried internally as she sat down on the bench next to her best friend.

and of course, when looking up, she found herself looking straight into mark lee's warm, chocolate eyes. he had such a welcoming aura to him that almost made her question why she had acted so dry towards him just a week ago, but then again she knew exactly why she did.

she didn't like his kind of people.

"so..."

'oh god, here she goes...'

"tell me about yourselves!"

'haeun, couldn't you just have stopped studying for a minute?'

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a bit late with this one, but hope you enjoy it anyway