Sunghwa Boys' Middle School, 1st Year, Class 6.

The classroom in the new semester was awkward, quiet, and somehow uncomfortable. In a silence so thick it felt suffocating, my eyes wandered aimlessly over the desk, having nowhere else to go.

That's when a boy spoke to me.

He was much taller than me, with bronze skin tanned by the sun. A boy who struck up a conversation as if it were nothing.

That boy talked to me during every break.

Asking where I lived, what I liked, telling me he came from the Gyeongsang-do area, asking if I had lived in Seoul my whole life.

I thought he was just a passing acquaintance. But before I knew it, he had taken a place right by my side.

Listening to music together at the record shop, eating and laughing at the small snack bar in front of the neighborhood flower shop, and even climbing over the school fence during lunch breaks with a strangely excited heart.

Those times were so vivid, such joyful memories.

When I became a third-year in middle school, I started thinking that I didn't want to remain just friends with him anymore.

Strangely, my heart would race wildly whenever I saw him, and my face would heat up for no reason.

Only then did I realize. That I liked him.

I felt that my feelings for someone of the same gender were a mix of something 'dirty' and a fluttering excitement.

Should I tell him? Should I just pretend I don't know? Can I live as if nothing happened while hiding these feelings?

In the end, I said it.

The boy's first expression was a blank face, and his second expression was— a face mixed with contempt and some inexplicable emotion.

And the boy didn't say a word in the end.

We still hung out after that, but the sense of distance between us had grown vast.