They're Made of Glass | SEVENTEEN

17 | the flightless prince

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[ HOSHI ]

The cut on my fist from where my knuckles collided with Jihoon's tooth is bleeding all over the otherwise spotless floor of Miss Jung's classroom. Instead of worrying about bleeding to death or something, I stupidly worry about how I'm gonna get it all cleaned up.

Already the blood's making its way into the grooves between the floorboards. My imagination runs wild and I think back to that time mom took me to see some specialist who claimed I had an overactive imagination. It's running now, my mind. I can see red against the smooth tan of the wood and then suddenly I'm thinking about her again and how she's like a stain, I can't get rid of her. I force myself to look anywhere but the floorboards to try and get my mind off of her. I look at the walls, the desks, the clock, and then I'm staring at nothing.

The last time I saw her, she was talking to some lady in the halls. God, she looked so pretty. Standing there, just standing and living and breathing and just being her. There I was, standing like an idiot while clutching three cans of strawberry milk because Seungkwan asked me to bring some drinks and they were getting all warm because I was just staring. Staring the way I am now, into practically empty air, because when I blinked and then I strained to hear what they were whispering about, I realized I hadn't heard wrong.

Eunji was going on a date with fucking Hansol.

"Kwon Soonyoung."

I grimace as a fleck of spit flies and lands on my cheek. My hands are itching to wipe it off but Miss Jung is watching me like a hawk. Anything I do now will only frustrate her further, which will probably make whatever punishment she has in store for me a thousand times worse.

For now, I just fold my hands together behind my back and stand straight as a board. Nothing wrong with that, right? Teachers like students who are respectful and got good posture. Take Mr. Club President for example. Jun's always painfully polite and just about the nicest guy I know. The teachers all love him and all the girls in our class have a thing for him and not Hansol (surprisingly). My mind wanders again and I think back to the seconds before she was whisked away by that lady she was talking to.

I remember that our eyes met for a split second, the briefest moment ever, yet I felt the impact. Her gaze was startling and focused like she was trying to tell me something with her eyes. She looked terrified, guilty almost.

I want to know what's going on inside that head of hers. Jesus Christ, I'm fucking sitting here in the presence of one pissed Miss Jung and all I can think about is how her hair falls in deep chestnut waves over her shoulder blades, how she gets this little dimple in the slopes between her eyebrows when she's worried or thinking hard about something, how there's no word to even describe how I feel when she looks at me like that, like I mean something to her. Everything she says is pure genius and when she smiles, it's so high-voltage, I get lost a little every damn time. Lee Eunji is magnificent.

But sometimes I can't help resenting her wonderful laugh and her poised, confident body and her beautiful, bright brown eyes, because the only guys she ever notices are assholes like Chwe Hansol and Lee Jihoon. It's driving me insane how the two of them managed to snag her interest...shit, and now I'm starting to sound like Nana.

Speaking of Nana, I sure hope she doesn't catch wind of this. No doubt if she does, she'll go racing to mom and dad about it. She's desperate and calculating which means getting in trouble with the parents is something I just can't afford, not with break coming so soon. With break comes the stupid talks with dad's advisers and with the stupid talks come those stupid pamphlets. There was that one time over winter break last year when I was trapped in an hour long session with some professional dad hired. All the guy would talk about was Harvard. He wrote me up a list of all these extracurricular activities I needed to start participating in to make it past the application process to get in and then expected that I would race out and immediately enroll in all of them. Yeah fucking right. There's no way I would ever join competitive cheerleading.