confess

chapter six

Monday came rolling by pretty quickly, and truth to be told, Jihoon was pretty excited to go to school today.

Actually, he wasn't excited to go to school, but he was just excited to see Soorin again. He skips out the door and hums a happy tune. Jihoon has a huge smile on his face, and all that is because he's thinking about Soorin.

As he was humming a song, he accidentally bumped into someone.

"Oh, I'm so-" Jihoon stops when he sees who was in front of him. "Oh? Rin! What-" he stops again when he sees the tears running down Soorin's face. He immediately drops everything he was holding to the ground and embraces Soorin in his hold. She wasn't saying anything to him, but Jihoon knows Soorin doesn't like to speak whenever she is in a bad mood.

Jihoon plops down onto the grass right next to him, still embracing Soorin in his arms. "It's okay, whatever happened before doesn't matter, okay? You take your time to tell me what happened."

"I-I don't know what happened b-but-" Soorin hiccups. "A lot of people were just staring at me when I-I arrived at school and I-I thought that it was normal b-but then they started whispering stuff to each other a-and I couldn't hear them b-but I got so overwhelmed a-and I ran away."

Jihoon's body froze. "There's no way that the whole school could possibly know about me liking her, right? Rinnie would look like a jerk if they do find out I like her because I've been pretty obvious about it."

Yes, Jihoon knows he's been obvious about his feelings toward Soorin. But Soorin was someone who was oblivious to her surroundings, and she has a hard time reading situations.

"Hey, Rin?" Jihoon calls out, and Soorin looks up at him. "You weren't too sure that they were talking about you, right?" Soorin shakes her head. "Then you don't have to be afraid! Let's walk to school together and we'll find out if they were actually talking about you, okay?"

Soorin hesitates but eventually nods. She places her hands on Jihoon and he squeezes her hand as a sign of comfort. As they get close to school, Jihoon stops, wanting Soorin to be able to be comfortable first. She lets out a shaky breath and nods at Jihoon to keep going. This shouldn't be a huge problem, but Soorin is pretty insecure about herself, so whenever she feels like someone is talking about her, she just runs.

When they walked in, everyone was normal and wasn't whispering anything or staring at the two of them, so Jihoon was confused.

"Nothing's wrong, Rin," Jihoon quietly says, enough for Soorin to hear. "Are you sure they were staring at you?"

"Y-Yes, I'm sure! Why would I be lying to you?" Soorin mumbles. "Th-There's no reason for me to be lying to you, you know?"

"I'm not saying you are!" Jihoon defended. "I'm just kind of confused why people are acting all normal when I'm here-"

"Oi, Jihoon! Soorin!" someone calls out, and both of them turn around to find Soorin's close friend running at them.

"Mina? What's wrong?" Soorin asks, sniffling.

"Is it true that you two got into a huge fight yesterday?" Mina asks, out of breath. "Everyone's been talking about it since this morning!"

"What?" Jihoon asks. "What do you mean? You know that me and Soorin never fight, right?"

"W-Well, I know that since I'm close friends with Soorin and she tells me-" Mina says, and Soorin gave her a glare to stop her from speaking more about that matter. "Anyway, the point is, everyone says that you both were fighting because of a misunderstanding and Soorin was in the wrong."

Jihoon furrows his eyebrows. "Uhm, we would never have that kind of fight. We understand each other very well, thank you very much."

"Soorin, could you cover your ears for a while?" Mina asks, and Soorin obeys. "Well, we clearly need to clear this rumor because Soorin is getting bashed on," Mina quickly says. "I don't want to get into detail because, well, you know," Mina gestures a hand at Soorin. "We need to find who was behind all of this."