To that very Moment

"Are you stupid?" he asked.

"What?"

I remembered clearly when Leeron and I first met. I wouldn't say it was a good meeting in the least. If I remember correctly, it was during middle school when I first ran into him. Leeron was an exchange student from Korea. Though I'm not really sure if he's really korean, that confuses me a lot ngl.

I thought he was the easygoing type but I was wrong, and he managed to completely infuriate me within a span of five minutes.

During our second semester of our 6th grade year. We had been assigned to the same clean-up committee on the first week of school. Back then, Leeron was already exactly who he is now- the calm, composed, ultra-mature kid who always got picked to be the class leader and representative. He was organized, he never raised his voice, and he treated every single classmate with this polite, easygoing friendliness.

Except for me.

I don't even know what I did to set him off, or if I just existed wrong in his presence. While he was cheerfully helping the other girls carry the heavy water buckets and smiling at their dumb jokes, he walked past me like I was a piece of the classroom furniture. He didn't offer to help me move the desks. He didn't even say hello. He just gave me this short, indifferent nod and went right back to being the perfect, helpful student leader for everyone else.

It drove me absolutely insane.

I've always been the type to snap first. I couldn't handle the fact that this guy, who was supposed to be Mr. Nice Guy to the whole grade, looked at me like I was just an annoying chore he had to deal with. So, naturally, I tried to do everything myself to prove a point. I grabbed three heavy wooden chairs at once, trying to stack them on top of a desk, even though my arms were shaking like crazy.

That was when he walked over, took two of the chairs out of my hands without even breaking a sweat, and set them down calmly. He looked down at me with those cool, unbothered eyes, let out a tiny, exhausted sigh, and dropped that line.

"Are you stupid?" he asked.

"What?" I fired back, my face turning bright red from a mix of exhaustion and pure embarrassment. "Who do you think you're talking to? I had it covered!"

"You clearly didn't," Leeron replied, his voice completely level, not even sounding angry--just genuinely annoyed that he had to stop what he was doing to fix my mess.

"You're going to drop them and hurt yourself. If you can't carry them, just ask someone. Or better yet, just go clean the chalkboard and stay out of the way. I don't have time to deal with you getting hurt."

He didn't wait for me to yell at him. He just picked up the remaining chairs, stacked them perfectly, and walked away to go talk to the teacher.

I stood there by the desks, my fists clenched so tight my short fingernails dug into my palms. I hated him. I decided right then and there that Leeron was my absolute worst enemy.

Our middle school years ended on a bad note, but looking back, it was a bad note in a good way. We spent three years constantly bickering over the stupidest things. If he was the head of a committee, I would join just to vote against whatever he suggested. If he said a project should be done one way, I'd argue for the exact opposite. He never yelled back; he would just debate me calmly, using logic and facts that made me look ridiculous in front of the class, which only made me want to follow him around and argue even more.

Deep down, even back then, I think I was just desperate for him to look at me the way he looked at everyone else. I didn't realize it at the time... I thought I just genuinely loathed his guts. But looking back, the frustration was already there. I was a little middle school girl throwing tantrums just to get a calm, composed boy to notice her.

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