Taemin stared at the girl from a distance, she was presently talking to her friends about who knows what, not more than twenty seconds later, she laughed, gracefully throwing her head back, covering with her hands, closing her eyes in glee.

Taemin remembered the first time he saw her.

Taemin was entering his class on his first day of school after the vacation, he ignored the various sighs and compliments from the opposite that greeted his entry and instead located his best friend Kai.

“Hey.”

“Hey,” Taemin casually responded as he sat down next to his friend, no further exchange was needed as he and Kai hung out during the summer, leaving no need for a long reencounter.

All of a sudden he heard a quiet yet clear, tinkling laugh that caught his attention among the loud excited chatter of the first year high school students.

She was there, with long straight black hair, and big bright eyes, she seemed like the shy type as her friends around her kept talking about their summer without any interruptions by the beautiful girl aside from the rare nod in agreement or quiet giggle.

She was not the exact ideal type for Taemin whose attention was only ever only captured by foreign actresses with alluring smiles and y curves, however her tall and extremely slim body carried a certain model-like grace that piqued the young boy’s attention.

“Who are you looking at?” Kai asked as he put his head next to Taemin’s in an attempt to see where he so intently looking at seconds before.

“Nowhere, I was daydreaming” Taemin answered a little too quickly, however Kai shrugged it off, unable to imagine that his friend who had remained aloof from girls for so long would suddenly be interested in any particular girl, at least not one from Korea.

But as time went by, Taemin found that he was developing a small crush on the girl, who he soon found out was named Son Naeun, a name that he felt represented the unique and feminine girl. Gathering as much information in small doses to avoid suspicion, Taemin discovered that his dream girl was more aloof than even he was. This discovery was particularly strange to Taemin as her friends were boisterous and loud, popular with the boys in school, however Naeun always stayed in the background, rejecting any brave boys who would courageously approach his “impenetrable girl”, both a blessing and curse in Taemin’s eyes as his hopes were kept alive and crushed with every rejection. How would he approach such an innocent and cold girl?

The year went by quickly and Taemin found himself in second year still without having ever introduced himself, let alone speak a word to his beautiful girl, that is until one day their new teacher assigned him to help the vice president collect, sort and return some cameras the class borrowed during the absence of the president.

“Hey, umm... I’m Taemin... I don’t think we’ve ever formal introduced ourselves.”

“Hi, I’m Son Naeun,” she replied shyly as she bowed. She looked at the box full of cameras at their feet and stretched her arms down about to pick up the box, when quickly Taemin understood her intention and beat her to it.

“Don’t worry, I’ll carry it,” Taemin said as he smiled brightly at her. Taken aback by the warm treatment of the famously aloof Lee Taemin, Naeun blushed.

They walked to the storage room where they began meticulously check every camera for any damage and make sure they had them all. Taemin seeing his chance, also tried to initiate conversation, feeling a bit awkward as he had never put this sort of effort in talking to someone, his terrible jokes that everyone hated slip out of his mouth.

Waiting for her eventual “ehhhh...” that everyone would respond with whenever Taemin would spout his terrible jokes, Taemin looked down and braced himself. At that moment, he heard a bell-like laugh ring throughout the room, when he looked up he was pleasantly surprised to see Naeun cover and throw her head back, her classic laugh. Laughing along with her, Taemin fell harder for the girl, she shared his terrible sense of humor.

Too quickly for his liking, they finished and they returned the cameras to the office, they headed back to their classroom. A few steps away from the door, Taemin stopped Naeun.

“Wait Naeun-ah,” Taemin was extremely nervous but rejoiced in his progress of being able to call her informally.

“Yes Taemin-ah,” Naeun looked at him curiously as she cutely tilted her head to the side.

“Take this,” Taemin nervously replied as he held out a polaroid picture in his hand.

“What is this? Did you just take this right now?” she giggled surprisedly as she took the picture of Taemin flashing a V to the camera. Seeing Taemin looking at her expectantly out of the corner of her eyes, she studied the picture, even quickly flipping the polaroid when something caught her eye.

“Oh, what’s this?” she asked as she flipped the photo to look at the ‘Call me Naeun!’ followed by what the girl assumed was Taemin’s cellphone number.

Taemin just flashed her a grin when she looked up before entering the class ahead of her.

“Can you please stop drooling over her and help me finish this math problem?” Kai harshly whispered as he brought Taemin out of his memories. “You act as if she ever had plans to actually call you that time she accepted your number.”

“May I remind you that I was the first boy whose number she actually accepted,” Taemin responded proudly.

“More like you gave her the card and ran away before she could reject it,” Kai replied as he remembered his friend’s flustered face that day a little more than one year before.

“Yah! It doesn’t matter-” Taemin was genuinely getting frustrated before he felt a light tap on his shoulder, interrupting him.

“Oppa,” Naeun said almost quietly, not sure of herself as she saw her boyfriend getting angry.

“Oh, Naeun-ah” Taemin quickly calmed down as he saw his pretty girlfriend looked at him worriedly.

“Here’s your mp3 player back. Eunji-unnie is getting angry with me for always listening to your music, she’s introducing me to girlier songs like ‘NoNoNo’ and ‘Bubibu’, so instead I downloaded it onto my phone secretly,” she whispered the last part in his ear as she giggled mischievously, again covering .

“Is it good? Here download it onto my phone,” Taemin smiled as he gave her his phone, covered by a soft gelled rubber case that resembled a blue polka-dotted bow, a perfect match for the yellow-bow case that surrounded his girlfriend’s phone.

“As long as it’s not that ‘Duo’ guy, I’ll listen to it,” Taemin said to her teasingly.

“Oppa! I like his music, I admire him as an artist, you shouldn’t be jealous,” Naeun replied shyly as she unlocked his phone to the picture of her, from one of the two polaroids that she gave to him a little less than a year ago.

Naeun walked back to her desk with Taemin’s phone searching for the song, Taemin turned back to his friend who was trying to figure out the complex math problems.

“Like I was saying, it doesn’t matter that she didn’t originally mean to call me, I won her over, she did and now she is mine,” Taemin shot back to his friend as his cheekbones rose to the sky, proving his happiness at finally winning over Naeun, the impenetrable girl, the girl perfect for him.