Jungkook wasn’t always a target. When he first came to this school, people only thought he was shy — the quiet boy who read too much, doodled in his notebooks, and sometimes hummed under his breath without realizing it. For a while, he blended in.

But by the second semester, the cracks began to show. He didn’t always get jokes. He hated loud lunchrooms. He’d stim — bouncing his foot, fiddling with his sleeves — whenever the noise overwhelmed him. The label “weird” started to stick, and from there, it was open season.

Still, he had his bright spot.

The very first time he noticed her was in literature class. She sat two rows ahead, answering the teacher’s question about a poem with so much confidence and light that Jungkook felt something snap awake inside him. It wasn’t just her smile — though that smile made his chest feel too tight — it was the way she seemed fearless. Where he shrank from the world, she stepped into it.

He started watching her in small ways: the way she tapped her pen when thinking, the songs he overheard from her headphones, even the way she tied her hair up absentmindedly. He memorized everything, because it made the loneliness softer.

When he found one of her hair ties left behind in the classroom, he picked it up before anyone else saw. He kept it wrapped around his wrist ever since — a secret comfort. A piece of her, always close.