LOVE:ZERO

“Put your left hand out.”

Hunter, who is left-handed, hit a forehand with his left hand and served.

He looked at her suspiciously, then stumbled over and flopped down in the chair across from her.

He hesitated for a moment, then held out his hand. His fist was clenched tightly.

“Stretch it out, palm up”

With a short sigh, Hunter turned his fist and slowly unclenched his fingers.

His knuckles were callused from practicing so much. Hunter was serious about tennis, and Jiyu knew it.

She traced the letter J on his palm with her index finger.

“What, what are you doing? You’re tickling me!”

Hunter clenched his fist and tried to bite her hand, but she yanked it back.

“Listen to me, Hunter Hamilton.”

He glared at her, his face scowling, his breathing ragged. His shoulders heaved erratically.

“I’m going to write my name on your left palm because you’re left-handed, and it’s a very effective trick from a New York Times bestseller, so just open your palm again and ignore the tickle.”

Hunter, who was staring at her in disbelief, slowly unfolded his fingers.

Jiyu quickly wrote the rest of the spell on his palm.

“I, and then Y, and then a U. I was already done.”

She hesitated for a moment, then closed her eyes tightly and bowed her head over his palm.

For about a half a second, her lips brushed against his palm.

Ugh!~

I heard Hunter suck in a breath.

“Ji, now what…!”

Jiyu lifted her head and finished her explanation with a confident look on her face.

“Now, if you hold the racket with this hand, it will have the same effect as if I were watching your tournament.”

Then she gently guided his fingers.

“Now squeeze it tight, so you don’t lose it.”

“Please, though. Please believe.

Jiyu lifted her gaze, searching his eyes.

‘What if he gets mad at me for being stupid.’

Hunter stared at her with his mouth slightly open, his eyes narrowed.

She’d never seen him look so stupid before.

She curled her lip to keep from bursting out laughing, but Hunter balled his fist.

‘Hick. Are you mad?’

Jiyu’s shoulders hunched, contemplating running away down the slide, when she heard a loud swallowing sound.

“Jiyu, if this doesn’t work, you, Ju Parker, I’m not going to let you off the hook!”

The voice cracked in two, menacingly.

Hunter jumped to his feet, and with a loud clatter, the small chair went flying backwards.

He didn’t even bother to right the chair, just stomped to the entrance to the slide with a loud thud.

Then, as if he hadn’t even bothered to take the time to slide down the slide, he grabbed the railing above the entrance with one arm and leapt off the side of the slide.

“Throwing a temper tantrum”

Jiyu muttered timidly.

Hunter’s footsteps thudded on the stone floor of the courtyard, then faded away, followed by the sound of a heavy iron door slamming shut.

Jiyu shrugged her shoulders and stood up from her seat, leisurely sliding down the slide.

She’d gotten rid of Hunter Hamilton, who’d been pestering her about not going to her best friend’s birthday party, so she’d accomplished her goal.

Sunday afternoon.

Affection greeted Jiyu at the door.

Jiyu, who was curled up in a round swinging chair, reading a book, looked up in surprise.

Ae-Jeong waved her hand toward her.

“Jiyu, hurry up to the penthouse. Hunter and you have a playdate.”

“Now? All of a sudden what…”

“Oh, come on out. Your dad’s busy at work and your mom can’t come because she has a mani/pedi appointment, so you’re going to go play by yourself. Let’s see, do you want me to cancel the mani-pedi…?”

Ae-Jeong looked down at her nails and shook her head.

“Ugh, they’re so messed up, I have to go. Jiyu, don’t be lazy and get up.”

Jiyu, who happened to have a book to return, nodded good-naturedly.

It was also time to see what new books had been added to the Hunter’s playroom library.

The library received new books every two months.

“If only Hunter wasn’t at his house.”

Jiyu muttered as she left the house.

With Lauren’s permission, she sometimes stopped by the playroom to return books or borrow new ones, even when Hunter wasn’t there.

Lauren used to say that her reading in the playroom had a “good influence” on Hunter.

Every time Jiyu heard that, she got a strange feeling.

Hunter Hamilton was not a child to be influenced by anyone, especially not by “Jiyu Parker.”

Stepping into the lobby, Jiyu jerked her index finger up toward the microphone behind the concierge desk.

It was the signal to go up to the penthouse.

Mike no longer stopped Jiyu or Ae-Jeong as they entered and exited the penthouse elevator.

He nodded and punched the call into the intercom.

As soon as the elevator doors stopped at the family floor, the safety doors swung open.

Before Jiyu could stumble back, Hunter thrust something into her face with a look of triumph.

It was a shiny silver trophy.

‘Mayor Dinkins Cup Tennis Elementary Champion.’

Jiyu read the words on the trophy’s base and muttered dazedly.

“Oh no, you really won.”

Hunter’s expression changed when he realized she was a “championship jinx.”

He no longer treated her like a piece of built-in furniture in the playroom.

Whereas before he would have given her a sideways glance and stopped paying attention to her when she was in the same room, now he looked at her with a mixture of suspicion and curiosity that made his blue eyes feel overwhelming and she avoided them.

When we bumped into each other at the sports center we shared with Alton School, Jiyu would glare and pretend she didn’t see me, and when I didn’t say hello, she would slam her fist into the wall like she was on drugs.

She wanted Hunter to go back to the way he was.

It was so much more comfortable to have his gaze linger on her like he was looking at the beanbag chair in front of the library.

Worse, he summoned her to the tree house for every tournament.

He would often hold his left hand out in front of her nose, annoyingly urging her to write her name quickly.

But Jiyu drew the line firmly.

Unless it was a really important tournament, she wouldn’t jinx his win.

“Don’t try to jinx the championship, Hunter Hamilton.”

The moment the words left her mouth, goosebumps broke out on her forearms.

She wondered if she could get away with saying this to Hunter Hamilton, let alone anyone else.

She knew he wasn’t the kind of man to stand by and let things go against his will.

Instead, his eyes sparked with a fiery intensity.

Terrified, Jiyu’s pupils fluttered inexplicably.

Why did I say that, she wondered, already regretting it. Her shoulders slumped, and she braced herself for the recoil that would return a hundredfold.

Hunter gritted his teeth and pressed his molars together in unbridled rage.

His jaw burned. But he didn’t say anything to Jiyu. No, he couldn’t.

Because he was the one who desperately needed a ‘winning jinx’.

And as much as he hated to admit it, he wasn’t wrong.

At that moment, the seesaw, which had always tilted toward Hunter since they first met, tilted gently toward Jiyu.

Jiyu instinctively recognized it and held her breath.

The feeling of superiority was as sweet as cotton candy. She basked in the exhilarating feeling.

Little did she know how futile the tilt would turn out to be.

ꕥ

Twelve years old.

It’s that time of year when hormones overwhelm brain activity.

In the first semester of sixth grade, Astor School and Alton School put on a joint musical production of Peter Pan.

The musical, which all sixth-graders were required to participate in, was an extension of their English Literature class, and Drama.

Hunter said he hated dancing and singing, so he volunteered to play a pirate who only needed to hold a sword in his hand and go on a rampage.

Jiyu was also relieved to be assigned the role of the Kids of Neverland, a non-speaking ensemble.

After the musical, Hunter, along with Rex as Captain Hook, split the popularity of the sixth grade girls at Astor School.

At lunchtime, heated debates would break out at the cafeteria tables about who was the “cutest” of the two.

It was a bizarre discussion.

It was an open secret that Hunter had a crush on Sienna Reed, and it was bizarre to listen to him rant and rave about it, attaching great significance to every glance or word.