Chained Heart (EXO Xiumin)

Chain 4

Yeri's POV

School becomes even more of a torture exercise although I would have not imagined it possible because he was added to the mixture.

Sitting next to Minseok in Photography is the worst, because he always sits and greets me as if we were friends.

Almost everyday he's surrounded by others, and, either he is completely oblivious to his appearance when he acknowledges me, or he just doesn't care.

I know what he's trying to do because it is not exactly a new game. He is just better at it than others who have tried it before.

Getting the phenomenon think you are her friend, so she can get a greater humiliation.

I did not learn it at first, and I was deceived the second time, but I haven't fallen into that trap again, and I won't do it now.

Never before, however, it had seemed something personal in some way. I know that the others don't think about me as a real person, so even though it hurts, it is not the most devastating thing.

This is worse because he had been my friend once, maybe even more. I have to admit, that part of this is why I thought he was much better than the rest. But it is a painful reality to see that it is not.

In Photography he sits, sometimes trying to start a conversation, but I keep my back facing him and I refuse to be dragged, ignoring him firmly, keeping my hair between us.

Even knowing what he wants to achieve, I can't help it but feel drawn to him, despite myself.

Because of our history, I guess.

So I slyly observe him, only his hands, first, while they drag a pen across the page, while taking detailed notes.

His hands are large, forming a neat handwriting and not the messy scrawl that most teenagers do. His hands are strong, with long fingers and his nails are trimmed and clean, a small scar on the back of his right hand. He is left-handed, but doesn't write with his hand in an awkward angle as I've seen in other lefties. Rather, he holds his hand in the same angle as any other person that is right-handed, only in reverse, although he almost turns the page 90 degrees to write.

Sometimes, I even let my imagination run wild and I imagine his right hand healed, reaching mine and wrapping it in his.

I wonder if they will be hot or cold, soft or rough with calluses. I can not remember how they felt all these years. I have not been touched in a friendly way by male hands for as long as I remember, probably since the last time he held my hand, though I'm sure there was a time when my father touched me with love.

The most disturbing this, is the fantasy of the goodness of him. Then I remember what Minseok is proposed, that goodness has died, and those hands will never touch me with nothing but the purpose of humiliation, or worse, with revulsion.

Every day after school I go out of the room and the building as fast as I can, waiting until I'm beyond the school boundaries to slow down.

---

The first days of school passed, and although Minseok has stopped trying to start a conversation, he still says "Hello" every time he arrives.

I never answer, but when he doesn't do any more movements I start to relax and do not sit as far away on the edge of my seat.

He hasn't made any joke on me, at least not that I know, and has not tried to publicly humiliate me.

Curiously, it seems as if the other students, who once enjoyed tormenting me, are losing interest in the game too. Not all of them, of course, but some of them.