I kept trying to ignore my feelings.
"It's just a crush."
"It's probably just her beauty."
That's what I told myself. But no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't take my eyes off her. It felt like my eyes were magnets—drawn to her without reason.
I kept reminding myself: Study first.
Then the exams came, and they were tough. We had to check each other's test papers. By some twist of fate, I ended up with hers. I didn't know her name back then, but now I do.
Let's call her Mae.
I was surprised—my classmates' scores were pretty solid, but Mae's score was… low. When everyone started asking what scores we got on the papers we checked, I accidentally said it a little too loud.
She heard me.
She didn't say anything, but her expression said it all. Cold. Disappointed. Maybe even hurt.
Later, in our first computer task, we were coding. I picked it up really quickly—and like a true jerk, I let it get to my head. I became arrogant, judging other people's code.
"Why did you put the code like that? That's harder."
I thought I was helping, but I wasn't.
Eventually, one of my classmates had enough and yelled at me. That was the moment I realized:
I was being an arrogant ass.
Even when Mae showed me her second exam score, I almost laughed. It was so low compared to mine and others. She looked at me with that same cold stare. And honestly… I deserved it.
I told myself, "Stop being arrogant. You're just annoying."
Despite all of that, I started gaining friends.
Even Mae—despite everything—somehow became one of them.
Looking back, I didn't realize it at first… but my old crush from before? She was also in this class. But I chose not to dwell on it.
Then came our first MAPEH performance task. We had to sing and dance to a Japanese song. Mae was in my group. I led the group, dancing like an idiot—it was honestly hard to watch in my head now. But somehow… we won.
That's when I also met someone new. A classmate. A girl.
Let's call her Anie.
She was fun to be around. We laughed. We teased.
There were 38 of us in class, but only 12 boys.
So naturally…
People started shipping us.
To be continued...