all the stars

03

Heejin walked into school determined. She had a goal for today and would stop at nothing to achieve it. She walked till she reached her Head of Year's office's door which had a "Ms.Yang" placed on it and placed 3 polite knocks on the door.
"Come in!.." a voice droned out.
She opened the door and immediately saw the once tired teacher drop into an even more exhausted face.
"Heejin if this is another complaint about Mr Sim please-"
"Actually I wanted to ask where I could get good work experience"
Her head of year's jaw dropped. The Heejin she knew would never willingly do compulsory work let alone voluntary.
"Well uhm...at school I would normally recommend tutoring someone"
The girl's fake smile faltered slightly. Tutoring? Meaning spending time with incapable people. Oh God.
"I'll do that"
Ms Yang's jaw dropped further. She swallowed before continuing.
"What's your most confident subject?"
"Chemistry"
"I'll look into it and get back to you when I find someone who needs tutoring"
"Thank you so much Miss"
Heejin began backing out of the classroom still smiling. This only shocked the teacher further.
"..no problem"
She left the room and closed the door behind her softly, her forced smile wiping off immediately as she marched off to her first lesson.

"Heejin"
Jake drew patterns on the table while looking at the girl's side profile as she wrote things down in her seemingly new notebook- he assumed it was new considering it's neat and non scruffy appearance, unlike her all of her other books.
She hummed signalling the boy to continue.
"I like your book"
Her eyebrows furrowed at the comment before going back to normal when she remembered the agreement of being nice to each other.
"..thanks"
Jake nodded while kissing his teeth.
"Are you uh..writing some sorta diary or something?"
Heejin side eyed him with a judgy face then turned to him.
"God no. It's a list of people who are hiring"
The Sim boy's eyebrows raised and he inched closer to her.
"Hiring? You're tryna get a job?!"
She bit back the annoyance she wanted to voice at his unbelieving words.
"Yes"
"..why? You're not poor"
Here we go again. Jake being an idiot for a countless time.
"I'm doing it for work experience..unis eat it up"
"Oh..right"
University. What did it mean to him? Pretty much nothing. Competing with Heejin at every given moment meant that his grades were decent(except for chemistry) but the girl had never really spoken about uni so he'd never thought about it. His future was already decided for him because his father was going to pass his business down to his son. But realistically he couldn't just go off of his father's teachings to own one.
"So where are you thinking to go?"
"Well there's this cafe-"
"No I meant like..university wise"
"Oh uh..snu..if I'm lucky"
"Damn. Fair enough"
The lesson began and he noticed how focused Heejin was through the whole thing. It was..kind of cute.. her taking notes and all. But above all it was geeky and nerdy and he was never going to see her that way. Unlike the paparazzi like boy sitting on the other side of the classroom. Sunghoon Park's eyes had not left Heejin once. She looked so attractive to him when she was paying attention to something. The girl next to him was about to destroy his gaze.
"Sunghoon what's your favourite colour"
"Sunghoon I like your shirt"
"Sunghoon you have nice handwriting"
Karina had been whispering compliments into his ear the entire lesson and all he had responded with was a lazy mutter of "thanks." It should've been boosting his ego if anything. But to him, a compliment from anyone but Heejin was invaluable. He still remembered the time he had gotten a different haircut-Jake wouldn't stop making fun of how short and choppy it looked. Heejin, on the other hand, said it looked "cute" His stomach erupted with butterflies even though at his gut he knew she just wanted to disagree with Jake. Nevertheless, he spent weeks replaying the moment in his head over and over, wishing for something similar to happen again.