Innocence // STRAY KIDS' Han Jisung

eighteen

In which there's early mornings, teasing and dancing.

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Somewhere around the early hours of the morning, Mirae woke up.

She rolled on her bed from one side to the other, unable to fall back to sleep. She thought it might be due to heat so she removed the blanked off, but it didn't take long for her to cover herself back as the room was cold even in the beginning of summer.

She gave up on trying to fall back to sleep and lay upwards, her eyes on the ceiling. She realized it was the first time she was really listening to the silence of the early morning, and it somehow gave her a sense of calmness. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, enjoying the sensation of being the only one awake at the moment.

That feeling disappeared when she felt her nose getting filled in mucus.

She pulled herself up with a small groan and blindly looked for her slippers, deciding on not taking the risk to squeal if the floor was cold. Once she put them on, she walked in the dark towards the bathroom and made sure to close the door before cleaning her nose.

She washed her hands and looked at her reflection in the mirror, letting a surprised gasp at the sight of her puffy eyes. "How am I going to face Jisung with this face?"

Ignoring the redundancy of her words, Mirae looked for the cleaning kit her sister gave her a few months back and cleaned her face, moisturizing it and trying to make it less puffy with creams and special soaps. She softly patted her cheeks and forehead before saving back everything she had used on its corresponding place.

Going back to her bed, Mirae's thoughts drifted back to the conversation she had with Jisung. She let out an airy laugh at the memory of their ridiculous fight over flu while she covered herself up with the blanket.

While she had watched Inception, Mirae couldn't stop thinking about her own feelings. She tried to remember every single time she had been with Jisung, making sure to get into detail on how she had felt during those moments and what she had thought when looking at him. Despite it only making her more doubtful about herself, it helped her to exercise her mind.

But having a good memory was no use when she didn't know what was going on in her mind.

As she remembered the day of the competition, she found herself picturing the charming smile of Mingyu, the tall boy she met and later found roaming around her school few days back. He was charming and attractive, she had to admit it, and it terrified her; she found herself comparing what she had felt whenever being with both of them and immediately felt guilty.

But there was no way she could've developed feelings for someone she met the previous weekend! She had been knowing Jisung for a couple of years now, but even if they had only started to be close over a few weeks, there was no way she could have any type of feelings towards the almost-unknown Kim Mingyu.

But, as her father told her, one might fall in love over little things.

Just then, she remembered the presentation Mingyu had invited her at the Soda Fountain-which was just an auditorium with a beautiful fountain at the front park that looked like it was soda that belonged to a small but well-known dance academy called Pledis Arts and Performance. Mirae had received a message from an unknown number that turned out to be Mingyu's, where he had asked if she was going and where the performance was going to be.

She had already said yes, and she wasn't the type to just let people waiting so she knew she somehow had to ask her parents for permission.

What might Jisung say? She thought but instantly shook her head, wait, what does it matter? I can go wherever I want with whoever I want... as long as my parents agree.