❝ figure me out ❞ park sunghoon

-2-

julie baker was attracted to sunghoon the day she saw him for the first time, in 2nd grade. it was art class and sunghoon was drawing a penguin with purple crayons in his notebook. julie was sitting right behind him and looking at his artwork instead of doing her own. then he turned and she could see half of his face. she thought his eyes were dazzlingly beautiful. then as if sunghoon caught her staring, he shifted in his seat. julie smiled to herself as she realised that she liked him.

then sunghoon's family moved in close to their house. julie was happy because she could see his room from her window. julie used to sit in front of her window for hours just to see one glimpse of him. but all she could catch were his shadows behind the closed curtains. he never opened his window, never stood in front of it to look over the city, to look over julie's room.

sunghoon was always a quiet kid. he had many friends because of his personality and his extracurricular activities. but he was never too close with any of them. julie always felt like he was disgusted by the idea of her. he used to turn down her proposals to hang out, never responded to her texts unless very necessary. he felt like she was hovering over her life like a bee hovers over a sack of honey. and he didn't like that.

when their families had to hang out together, he kept his distance from her. he never even looked at her when they were talking.

julie saw everything, but she still wanted to be friends with him. so she tried. she tried hard. but nothing ever worked out between them.

the truth is that, julie had a silly little crush on him. it was fun at first. but then it was not. it was just a big old problem in her life, that never went away. and the more he distanced himself from her the more julie felt this tight knot in her stomach. she felt like screaming when she saw him. but no matter how much she hated loving sunghoon she could never stop it. she felt like an attention-seeking pathetic piece of garbage when she talked to him, but she still waited after school for everyone else to leave just to catch one glimpse of him. it was weird, this feeling that she had for sunghoon. julie didn't like it at all. but she could do nothing to make it go away.