I Still...

Chapter 1

He's here. Dammit. Of course, he's here. They already told me he's coming.What am I gonna do? Natural. Act natural. No. That's not right. Act like you don't care. Of course, I don't care but I have to get that point across.Why is he here? If he even approached our table, I'm gonna kill him.

Dara is standing rigidly in her seat with a rigid smile while pretending to listen to her classmate in high school drone on about something her mind is not fully equipped to comprehend yet as she is too busy having an internal monologue as soon as she caught sight of her ex-boyfriend. Kwon Jiyong.

"So I told them that they they need to lower the price they are offering if they wanted this project..." Her classmate—or former classmate—continued.

"Hey! There's Jiyong!" The guy on her left said and Dara turned to give him the evil eye which, unfortunately, gone unnoticed by the recipient as he was too busy waving at the guy she Is planning to to do everything she can to avoid. She didn't turn to watch him stride towards them with his arrogant gait even if the people on their table had gone silent.

Silently watching her and Jiyong since they all knew what transpired in their history.

And it wasn't pretty.

"Hey, 'sup?" She heard Jiyong greeted Taeyang with a fist bump, the guy who had waved at him. He sounded so jovial and cheery it made Dara feel slightly at a disadvantage. "I see everyone's here."

Dara forced a nonchalant smile on her face as she looked at Jiyong's direction while everybody on the table greeted him. "Hi," she forced herself to say when Jiyong's eyes fell on her.

He grinned widely. One she used to really love to see him with. Now she just wanted to smack him for looking like he was taunting her.

"Hey," Jiyong told her. "I didn't know you would come."

Dara smile was still in place but her eyes turned scathing at they pierced Jiyong. "Oh, that's funny. I thought you wouldn't considering how successful you must be now."

"Are you keeping tabs on me?" Jiyong asked at the mention of his successful career, his wide grin getting even more wide if that is even possible.

Dara just couldn't understand how Jiyong still have the power to really annoy the hell out of her but she didn't lose her cool. "Sorry, I've been too busy to even waste my time on minute and insignificant information." She delivered the response as what a pampered princess should say to a lowly peasant.

Dara thought she saw Jiyong's jaw ticked but it must've been his imagination as he had chuckled. "Right, of course."

It was only then that Dara realized that the table had gone silent and they were just watching their exchange. CL, the one seated closest to her, looked like she was fighting off a smile and the others looked a little awkward.

Hell, this wasn't her fault! She returned her smile at Jiyong to prove to everyone she's cool about this. She definitely doesn't want to look she was still bitter. "Why don't you sit down? Let's all catch up. After all, it's been, what? 20 years since we got together like this? Our school didn't host our high school reunion just for us to be awkward with each other." She gave everyone her most winning smile like she always give even when they were in high school. Exactly the smile of the well mannered princess she was brought up to be.

"Hey, there's Jiyong!"

Dara immediately shoved the photo she was ogling for an hour now inside her bag as she returned in sitting primly by the bench by the school's courtyard pretending to be busy watching the birds in the trees and the leaves falling on the ground during their lunch period. She wasn't really interested—who would?— but she had another reason for being here. CL, her best friend, kept on nudging her like she hadn't heard her exclamation of Jiyong being present in the vicinity.