The Keeper's Destiny

CHAPTER 1 | LEATHER

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You grumble to yourself as you grasp the sides of your 10-page essay; the handwritten red ink still fresh.

An impossible amount of coffee and several bags of chips from the vending machine only resulted in a scraggly 78, perched in the corner of the paper and glaring at you resentfully.

Your grumble turns into a small growl as you shove the paper violently into the back of your folder, praying the pile in front is enough to conceal it. Before you can lock it away for good, another paper is in front of you, with a delicate hand gripping its side.

"This was too easy," says a tiny voice, a dainty girl accompanying it. You hesitantly glance at her paper - an elegant 93 sits happily on it. Your eyes widen and you desperately snatch the sides of the paper, gaping at the tiny figure in front of you. 

"This is ridiculous," you say as you bite back a line of complaints. 

"I write a paper dedicated to the art of poetry with a wide variety of references, and you write a biased paper on how you thought Romeo from Romeo and Juliet was a pervert."

The tiny girl rolls her eyes at you and retrieves the paper from your hands. She delicately places it into a sheet protector in one of her folders. 

"He is a pervert. It's not my fault the professor agrees with me," she says, shrugging.

You turn towards her desk and scrunch your eyebrows together. 

"This doesn't feel fair at all." 

She scrunches her nose back at you. "Fair is fair, sucks to suck," she utters, tucking her paper in her bag.

Contrary to popular belief, Sungji is older than you. By a good number of years, too.

As best friends go, she's the best. You're more than thankful for someone to struggle through life with, personally and academically. There's no biological relation between the two of you, but you like to entertain the idea once in a while.

It helps that you're similar when it comes to style and music, but there is a contrast when it comes to personality. You tend to be impulsive and emotional at times, but Sungji quells your anxieties and presents the logical side of things. You have your differences but nevertheless, you balance each other out and the small things you can share together are the cherry on top.

You glance up at her as you finally relax your eyebrows, and you look into her eyes. 

"Yeah, I get it," you mumble. She smirks at you and plops down into her seat. 

With that, the professor begins her lessson. Your mind starts to wander, as it tends to do during this class, and you begin to mentally organize your day into a checklist:

Homework? Check.

Studying? Yup.

Cleaning? Maybe, if I feel like it later.

Somewhere between deciding to do laundry when you get home and whether you should wash your hair, your mind runs back to your strange encounter with the guy from the other day...

Has it only been a few days?

You sort through the memory again, backtracking through each moment. 

From opposite sides of the room, there was a small chance of him locking eyes with you the way that he did. There were several other people in the library at the time - he could have looked at any one of them. It's as if he had already known where you were, and intentionally looked in your direction.

In the hopes that you aren't suffering from stress-induced hallucinations, you shake your head and decide not to dwell on it further.

There's no way he knew...

Right?

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At the end of the day, Sungji texts you and asks you to come hang out at her place. You enjoy having some free time to spend with her, considering you are swamped most days, so you immediately agree. You double check your stuff and secure your bag over your shoulder.

Exiting campus, you've parked on the side of the school, the walk to your car now a familiar route down a set of small stairs that lead to the parking lot. 

You carefully begin your descent, but somehow, the third step of the stairs seems to completely disappear from under your foot, and your brain doesn't register that you're falling until you've hit the ground, landing right on top of something...

Or, someone.

You open your eyes, not remembering when you even closed them, and look down at a groaning lump of... leather?

Oh, a leather jacket. OH.

You scramble to stand up, softly pushing up from the person's chest.

"I am so, so sorry," you embarrassingly babble, grasping at the person's arm to help them up. 

"Are you okay? There was a step, and then there wasn't- I'm not really sure what happened, to be honest." You try to make small talk as the person brushes off the dirt from their jacket, their face concealed by long, brown bangs as they look down.

The moment he finishes what he's doing and looks up at you, you can feel your heart stop.

Those eyes again.

His stare felt like it was drilling holes through your skull. His eyes; a worm hole luring you in.

"Are you okay?" the eyes seemed to ask.

You stand immobile, mesmerized.

"Hello?" 

A hand waves quickly in front of your face, making you flinch. 

"I asked if you were okay," says a soft voice. Its owner stands confidently with one eyebrow arched up and arms folded in front of him, unconcerned with your daydreaming.

You play with the strap attatched to your keys, a small diversion. 

"Ah, yeah. I guess I wasn't looking where I was going," you say, returning your hands back down to your sides. 

"Sorry." You force an awkward smile, just for good measure.

He only continues to look at you. You watch as his eyes look you up and down in an almost cautious gaze. You're feeling more nervous as every second passes, so you grasp the dangling keys and break the silence. 

"Well... I'm gonna go now. Sorry again." You dash past him, your feet zooming you towards your car. You can feel his eyes burrowing through the back of your head. 

With a sudden feeling of being drawn back, you turn around to look at him halfway through a stride, and almost stumble over nothing as a wave of confusion hits you.

He's gone; just an imprint of his shoes in the dirt from where he was standing.

You stop dead in your tracks and look around.

There's no way he could have walked off that fast. You're only a few strides away from where you were standing, so you should have been able to see him walk away, or at least have heard him leave.

Did you scare him off?

You mentally face palm at yourself and continue trudging towards your car. 

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