➞ TW nothing that i know of! lmk if i miss something
episode three — past + present
♫ when i come around - green day
that secret was quite tempting, if you were something, it was nosy. you pick up your phone and for a moment heeseung thinks you’re about to leave him. however you sit and type something out quickly.
y/f/n
is your knee okay?
i think it’ll be best if you do the interview with someone else
im sorry
heeseung’s eyes are carefully trained on you, making sure his eyes don’t accidentally drift down to take a peek at what you’re typing on your phone.
“do you have to go somewhere?”
“hm?” you jolt up. facing your phone down as you finish sending the texts to jake. heesueng looks at your with wide deer-like eyes and you shake your head. “no.” you look away, still holding your phone when you ask “so what’s your secret?”
heeseung smiles and motions for you to come closer, you hesitantly come closer, turning your head to the side.
“this isn’t the first time we’ve met.” he whispers. your lips part in confusion. retracting yourself away from him, you turn and ask “huh? what does that mean? we’ve met before…?” heeseung smirks, motioning for you to come closer once again so he can tell you.
you lean in closer to him. “thats..” he breaks off “a secret!” heeseung begins laughing to himself as he gets up from the floor. your small smile drops and a face of disbelief dawns over your features. you shut your eyes tightly before getting up and shoving him lightly.
heeseung makes a run for it outside of the dance studio and into the hallway with you following closely behind him. despite his laughter, you try to keep up with him. upon nearing a staircase to ascend on, heeseung takes two steps at a time, curse his long legs, but manages to hit his ankle on one of the steps as he flies up them.
hearing the wince, and seeing him falter, his hands coming in front of him to break his fall you frown. heeseung immediately shakes his head as you stare at him, coming to a complete stop at the bottom of the stairs.
“you..” your voice trembles. heeseung stands up, a smile adorning his face as he dances on his feet, a quick move. “got you!” your face falls yet again, breathing out slowly and playfully glaring at him.
“don’t do that.. you scared me!” you tut at him and he flies up the stairs yet again with you following, attempting to take two steps at a time but unlike heeseung, your legs were far shorter. heeseung was already up the stairs and running away before you could even look up to see where he was.
you get up the stairs, hating that it was a literal workout just to chase this guy around. when you reach the top, you prepare to bolt after heeseung as you see him walking leisurely down a hallway, laughing at you and your pace. however you nearly walk into someone, more like, you nearly walk into someone that was all too familiar to you.
you tense up, freezing in your spot, non really discreetly looking at the dark headed boy before you train your eyes to the ground and then make a side eye towards heeseung who is now watching this awkward exchange of looks happen in curiosity.
you could almost remember all too well the features of this boy. the dark hair, a slight undercut with trimmed sides, his sharp jawline. more concerningly, you saw the few cuts and bruises adorning his face. and you feel your stomach drop.
–
you sat on the bus going home from school, it was dark out and the only people left were you, another student from a different school, and some old drunk man that was talking to himself and the imaginary people around him. obviously freaked out, you sat still and silent as he spewed incoherent words.
a few seats behind you was this boy, you didn’t really get a good look at him but he sat glaring outside the window with a busted lip and a bandaid poorly plastered onto his face as if that would cover up the fact that there were other bruises and cuts on his face.
while you were terrified out of your mind, this random guy staring at you from the lower front section of the bus, you tried your best not to look back at him and pretend to mind your business. the boy sitting a few seats behind you had other ideas, carefully looking between you and the guy before getting up and sitting beside you.
you look towards him, neck craning up slightly to accommodate his rather taller figure as he sits. he doesn’t say anything, though you find it better than sitting alone. the drunk man goes back to looking at anything other than the two of you, continuing to talk about random politically concerning things and before no time, the bus reaches the station, dropping the two of you off while the drunk man gets off and begins to shuffle away, still cursing under his breath.
you and this random student stand a few feet away from each other despite the few minutes of sitting so close to one another before. you wait until the drunken man is out of sight before you turn your back on the student and prepare to make your voyage home. the weather was beginning to nip at your skin around this time of year, despite it still being manageable, there were snowflakes beginning to cascade upon the city.
you could see your breath as you wrap your blazer closer and tighter around your body and you begin to walk towards the direction of your neighbourhood.
“hey.” you freeze, assuming the worst in the appeared delinquent whom you figure is talking to you. you don’t turn to face him though.
“do you wanna get some street food?” you look at him, wondering if was talking to you, there was no one else there anyway. who else would he be talking to? the student nods towards a few open street food carts and vendors just the ways down the sidewalk.
when you don’t reply and he begins to walk past you, you assume you’d pissed him off but he stops after walking a bit further and looks at you to make sure you’re following him. he gives you an expected look and you begin to follow him to the food stands down the road.
upon arriving to the cart, the hot food produces steam in the cold chilling nights. you come up next to him in the stall and look at the food the vendor is selling.
“can we get one serving of spicy rice cakes please.”
you watch as the student pours a cup of water for you, he slides it towards you. “here,” the vendor hands him the paper container of rice cakes “thank you.” he sets it down between the two of you and hands a skewer for you to use.
“can we also get the seaweed roll please?” you ask the vendor, he nods with a smile. the boy looks down at you, a tinge of a smile appearing before he chuckles softly. “give us a seaweed roll too, please.” he reaffirms. he goes to pick up a rice cake and tries to eat it before wincing as the food was too hot for him.
“ah..” he sighs, you crack a smile and laugh at him.
–
jay looks down at you as you avoid his eye contact by staring at the floor before you instead. you can practically feel his eyes boring into you, deep breaths escaping his mouth as well. jay hasn’t changed a day since you last saw him. funnily enough, the first time you met him he had gotten into a fight, and from what you’re looking at now, jay hadn’t changed his tendencies and habits as he was still littered
with cuts and bruises. fresh, you’d assume. you’ll probably hear something about a fight later on with the week.
“it’s been a while.” he says, voice didn’t change either. it was still deep and smooth. you look up, guilt striking at your heart as you stare at him. to others it would be hard to see but jay has a small smile on his face when seeing you again. albeit in these horrible conditions, he didn’t want you to have bumped into him this way just after he was just being thrown around in the tarmac behind the school.
“have you been well?” you let out an awkward laugh. “yeah..” he nods. lugging his backpack over one shoulder he brings it back up as it had been slipping down his arm. his lips press into a thin line and he looks down at his shoes. “i’m glad.”
“did you transfer?”
“i transferred.”
you two talk over each other, laughing awkwardly when he just shuts his mouth to let you speak. “i transferred here yesterday.” he hums to himself, shoving his hands into his pocket and again, avoiding eye contact with you. “i see.”
“i gotta go.” you tell him shuffling in your spot. instead of continuing towards heeseung who was still watching from afar, you return back in the direction of the dance studio. jay watches you leave with a solemn heart.
–
sunoo continuously holds up a very well drawn and detailed portrait of you as he and jay waits outside of your school. well what they thought was your school. they were just about 100% sure because the girls exiting wore the same uniform jay saw you in that night he met you on the bus and treated you to food.
jay leans against the school gates, exhausted and slightly embarrassed as sunoo who was more than eager to find this mystery girl that his friend was oh-so “in love” with for the past week. jay has tried taking the bus at the same time he saw you, waiting at the bus stop you were dropped off at, even asking the vendor if he had seen you again. but to no avail, it’s like you disappeared and jay didn’t even know your name. let’s say sometimes it slips his mind that students wear name tags to school.
so he did what he does best, draw. upon drawing you from memory, to the best of his ability. he was destined to find you yet again. and thanks to sunoo, who had tracked down the school from the description jay had given him, he was able to find the school that he was sure you attended.
jay argued that it was creepy to show up unannounced but sunoo affirmed him that it was romantic and cute and not creepy at all. jay hid his face as sunoo quite literally held the picture up against every girl that exited the school.
“hey, i said let’s just go.. this is a waste of time.” jay grumbles, bringing his phone out of his pocket and checking the time.
“i told you to just stay put.” sunoo argues “this is why i’m the one standing here and looking at everyones face while you hide in the corner.” jay groans, head hitting the fencing behind him as he shuts his eyes and wishes this major headache would go away.
“i’m certain this uniform belongs to this school.”
“what have we been doing for the past couple of days? this is… borderline insane.” he retaliates, admittedly, sunoo had dragged jay to the school for the past three days in search of you.
“if a teacher sees us they’ll think we’re creeps or something. do we really have nothing better to do?” this was sunoo’s claim to be the very last resort. “we really, really, really have nothing better to do!” the bleach blonde boy tells his friend. jay really wanted to find you, but after three days of searching there was quite literally no hope and he was beginning to accept that.
“who even told you to draw this kind of thing anyway. do you have anything more important to do than find her? what about… i don’t know, let me think. SCHOOL?!” sunoo comes waving the drawing of you in jay’s face. frantic, and frustrated at his friend who seemed so love-struck for the past week and desperate to find you, and now becoming this depressed lug who gives up on humanity.
“we might as well print out hundreds of these and attach your phone number on it and just spread it around the city.” sunoo says sarcastically, jay looks anywhere else than his friend who continues to throw a tantrum. “if she doesn’t call you after seeing this.. i mean who would even call, this is actually kind of creepy–” jay grabs the drawing from sunoo’s frantic movement.
“i said stop it.” he tells sunoo sternly. sunoo gives him a stank face, huffing out and crossing his arms over his chest.
“you’re suffering because you couldn’t even ask her for her name or number.” sunoo is relentless with his words sometimes, but he’s also honest and right. “you can’t do anything without me.” he puffs his cheeks out and jay might as well submit and agree because without sunoo jay would be drowning in a ditch that he created himself.
jay stands up and plants his weight into his feet now, looking past sunoo and straight at you. he could recognize that face from anywhere. he quickly hides the drawing behind his back as you recognize him too, a grin appearing on your face as you walk towards him and his friends. it might seem like at this moment, jay is kind of hiding behind sunoo.
–
even a year later, you still kept the drawing he so shyly hands over to you that day he finally finds you and asks for your name and number. despite it being over a year since you last seen it. it was stuck in the back of your mind since you had bumped into him today.
when you arrive at home, you go for a search for the drawing, staring at the unkempt shelves you’ve had for years, knowing that it was stashed somewhere in them. you remember a certain cube that you hid it in. upon seeing it again, you’re sent down a path of reminiscent memories.
–
you rip out a sneeze in the middle of class, disrupting the lesson, somehow all the heads turn to look at the cause. almost immediately, the girl sitting in front of you and the few students to the side of you move their desks and chairs forward in an attempt to avoid whatever radius your sneeze had reached. they couldn’t risk catching whatever you were floating around school with.
“see, now i’m glad jake didn’t come to class today because he had soccer practice.”
“is his knee really okay?”
you look up through your lashes, curiously, head still kept down because you feared getting caught listening in on the conversation the girls in front of you were having. you can help but sniffle, the cold you were suspecting to have, it’s symptoms coming to ambush you from out of nowhere.
see now math class was boring, the teacher was half asleep trying to teach the class as well. however upon hearing his students talking whilst in the middle of the lesson, he turns around furiously, sudden all the life seeping back into him.
“quiet, this is going to be on the test tomorrow.”
you yawn quietly, head turning to the left naturally as you drift away from the attention to the board. you look outside to the courtyard, almost instantaneously, you find heeseung standing dead centre of the window you were looking out, phone in his hand, pressed against his ear, and suddenly your phone is ringing in the middle of class. again, and disappointingly, disrupting the class once more.
you want to die, or at least pinch yourself. because this seriously can’t be happening. you must’ve forgotten to silence your phone before coming to class. and now you were awkwardly shuffling and fumbling with your phone to silence the ringer.
heeseung, from outside, you see as he merely stands there, almost cluelessly. you sigh, closing your eyes, hoping that the staring and stifling laughter of the students would just shut up.
“y/f/n.” the teacher calls out, not turning, continuing to write on the chalkboard at the front of the class. your head shoots up and stares at his menacing figure, back still turned to you. “yes?” you nearly stammer as one word has your voice shaking. “go outside.” he says.
your eyebrows knit together in confusion. “pardon?” you’re almost in disbelief. how does he know that heeseung was waiting for you outside? you slowly stand up from your desk, fully believing this teacher would just let you go outside to meet your friend. “i said you can go outside.” he turns around, workbook in his hand, and a chalk in the other.
“really?”
“of course.” he gives you a genuine smile “you can go outside and put your hands up.”
curse the world. perhaps this was how it was always going to be after all. dejectedly, you begin to walk out the classroom, sliding your phone into your pocket. an embarrassed laughter sprouts up amongst the students in the classroom and you frown.
your footsteps are as awkward as ever, the silence was loud. sunghoon watches as you exit the classroom and just outside, you stand with your arms up. your fisted hands appear through the windows that line the classrooms.
a few minutes later, a familiar tall boy begins making his way down the hallway and he begins to walk with a spring in his step and a smile spreading on his face when he sees you down the hall with your arms up as a punishment for your in class outbursts.
you groan softly as you look up after hearing him call out for you, he stops in front of you and you frown at him. “your phone call caused this.” you tell him, arms still weakly held up in the air. heeseung smirks as he looks down at you.
“maybe if you had silenced your phone…” he says it in a mocking singing voice. you roll your eyes at him. “maybe if you hadn’t called knowing i was in class.” heeseung lets out a tut, hands stuffed into his uniform pockets as he assesses you.
“you weren’t gonna do much ‘paying attention’ in that class anyway.” he points out, you stay silence at that, perhaps proving his hypothesis to be correct. “is that why all you do is cut class and dance?” you ask expectedly, wanting to fight back with at least something. you wondered why heeseung was never in class anyway, every time you saw him he was probably the furthest away from a classroom that he could possibly be.
he lets out a chuckle “well of course!” he was shameless about his horrid habit of skipping class. “there isn’t enough time in the day to dance.” you never understood heeseung, sure, he loved dancing yet when you looked at the several portraits taken of the dance team from the past year, heeseung was nowhere to be found. but you figured you shouldn’t question it.
you put your arms down for a moment as heeseung fleetingly walks around light-footedly in front of you, somehow dancing to some step combo he made again. always dancing. “don’t you get bored standing here all day?” he teases, leaning down, getting real close to your face before you swat him away.
“this was because of you!” you shout quietly after him, he begins walking away, a smug smirk plastered on his face. you have the urge to follow him and so you did.
“i didn’t do anything actually, i was just being a good friend and trying to take you out of that horrible class.” upon following him down the hallway, the bell rings and you curse under your breath, speed walking back to the spot outside the classroom before your teacher could suspect you to have left.
however as you’re speed walking back, your teacher walks out with stacks of paper and work books in his arms in search for you. your heart nearly skips a beat when he doesn’t say anything but the vein popping in his forehead is enough to scare you to stand back in your spot with your hands jutting up into the air as fast as they can.
your teacher says something under his breath before walking away, shaking his head disappointedly.
following him after exiting the classroom is sunghoon.
“ahhhh, you're causing even more trouble even after getting punished?” sunghoon laughs, teasing you as you give him a stank face. you breathe out slowly, a hand coming to your chest as it begins to ache slightly, looking at sunghoon.
“i think you should go rest in the nurse’s office after lunch. i’ll tell our teacher.” even despite all the trouble you cause, sunghoon still looks out for you. it was clear and evident that your cold was starting to kick in. you shake your head at his proposal. “no, i’m fine.” however sunghoon brings one of your arms down and gives you an insisting look. and you admittedly cave.
heeseung looks back after walking to the end of the hallway, ready to walk back to the dance room where he spends more of his lunches with his dance team friends.
heeseung’s grin slightly falters when he finds sunghoon’s hands on your shoulders, leaning and twisting you in different directions as if to look and assess whether you were okay or not. he sees sunghoon mouth something to you, he was too far away to hear it. your friend presses the back of his hand to your forehead, checking your temperature. feeling his heart slightly clench, he shakes his head, hands coming
to the rested headphones around his neck, and putting them on before returning on his walk back to the studio.
–
heeseung sits quietly on the side of the dance room, watching as his teammates practice a piece that was going to be used in an upcoming club showcase for the school. he knows the piece by heart, doing the arm movements in sync with the group however altered because he was still sitting on the ground and watching.
however, commotion breaks lose when one of his teammates, niki, decides to take a breather on the floor, deep breaths escape his lips as he bows his head down in silence. practices have been rough for the dance team since the showcase was inching closer and closer. when the other team members call for niki to get up, the boy can seem to look up, nor get up.
“are you okay?”
“niki? what’s wrong?”
frantic questions are being thrown among the members and heeseung gets up to check on his friend. niki had a tendency to overwork himself, despite knowing his limits fully well, the boy still chose to go above and beyond. that’s how much he cared about dancing. even if niki was younger, heeseung swore up and down that his drive to pursue the life of dance was admirable. heeseung could never be able to push himself like that, at least not like he used to.
a trip to the nurses office later, heeseung and a few other members come to watch as the nurse, instead of giving a tiny bit of help towards the burnt out dancer, scolds and lectures niki on the importance of not exerting himself.
heeseung sighs as he leans against a wall. niki being pampered and tucked into one of the bed by the nurse as she rambles on about what he has to do now in order to rest. she ends it soon with handing him a bottle of water and an apple to eat.
“... but i have to practice.” the nurse whips around and stares daggers at the younger boy. heeseung nearly retracts at her sudden speed. “practice? come to your senses! how can you practice when your body's stress response is trying to save you from shutting down?!”
“ma’am, to be fair he hasn’t learned about that in biology yet…”
“also there isn’t much time left before our dance performance…” intak tells the nurse desperate to find another solution to their friend's circumstance.
heeseung speaks up, pushing himself off the wall and coming to spectate. “this isn’t much, he’ll be alright after taking some painkillers and resting a bit.” heeseung didn’t take biology either. he has no clue what he’s talking about.
niki sighs. “heeseung’s injured too… and now i got hurt. we can’t afford to lose another member!”
“he’s getting better.”
your ears perk at the mention of heeseung. you lay in another bed beside niki’s, covered by curtains and wooden walling to separate the beds in the nurses office. if sunghoon hadn’t dragged you all the way here… you wouldn’t even know or be curious at all to whatever is going on with heeseung. something that you didn’t even know happened.
was heeseung sick? if he was he had a great way of not showing it. he was happy and dancing all the time, and he was busy trying to cheer you up when you were down, you didn’t even try to figure out if he was going through something either.
“i’m fine! why are you guys being so serious all of a sudden!” heeseung chirps. you recognize his voice. niki refuses to lay in bed so intak and the nurse help bring him back to the dance room where he asks to be brought, insisting that he would rest, knowing fully well that he would probably hop back into dancing.
“nothing’s gonna get better if he keeps worrying about me like that… i’ll heal in no time!”
“lee heeseung!” you call out, once hearing the door to the room close.
you hear a few footsteps before the curtain at the foot of your bed spreads open.
“hey, it’s you!” heeseung walks into the secluded makeship cubicle, sitting on the bed adjacent from yours. he grins down at you despite your upset demeanor. you furrow your brows at him, tucking a hand between your hand and the pillow.
“you’re injured?” you ask slowly, not making eye contact with the dancer. he grins sheepishly and scratches the back of his head whilst looking away. “looks like i got caught…” he snickers cheekily. you frown at him deeply.
“why didn’t you say so before?” you huff at him. eyes flickering up at him again as you sit up and pull the blankets over your legs. “because there’s nothing i can’t endure.” heeseung smirks at you. ushering you to lay back down instead. he sits back down on the bed and throws his legs over the edges.
he maneuvers onto his side and lays down facing you, while on the bed adjacent from yours. you stare at him in slight confusion. “you know i didn’t get injured because of you right?” heeseung murmurs, looking at the way you stare at him with reluctance. “really! it’s because-”
“y/n..” light shuffling footsteps stop outside of the curtain as a door. the voice made your heart race.
“i’m sorry i didn’t meet with you that day,” jay elaborates as he stands a fair bit away from the curtain. you tense on the bed, sitting up again and staring at the curtain to decipher the faint figure standing behind it. heeseung tilts his head at you in confusion, opting to stay quiet as you and jay seem to have some weird dynamic going on.
“i didn’t mean to break that promise.” jay adds quietly. “can we talk?” he asks.
you look back at heeseung, who is eyeing you with a frown now. something that looks unfamiliar compared to his usual smile. you stare into your lap, considering whether to open the curtain and leave the infirmary to talk to jay about those unsettled feelings. or stay with heeseung and ask more about heeseung’s injury.
ᓚᘏᗢ aj — this has been sitting in my drafts for OVER A YEAR. and now its finally coming out. i am trying to write more just because i have so many ideas in my head!!! also if u read authors notes tell me ur favorite enhypen song!! mine is attention please if it wasn't obvious hehe. thank you for all the support my writing has been receiving, i promise i will start writing more!
➞ TW mention of blood, slight violence, lmk if i'm missing anything
episode two — who is park sunghoon to you?
♫ lowkey - niki
“i can’t!” you tell him, you watch as his smile slowly drops “i have to go somewhere right now. i’m really sorry.” you lift yourself off the floor, your knees nearly buckling from underneath you as you had been sitting on the floor for a long time.
“okay, bye.” heeseung stares flatly at your leaving figure, leaving him in the dance studio alone.
–
you speed up as you begin nearing the boys locker room. stopping abruptly when you nearly walk into one of the soccer team members, still dressed in their practice uniform. you blink a few times, backing up and remembering how he yelled at you earlier for being on the soccer field during practice. he almost recognizes you immediately and his eyebrows raise at your appearance yet again.
“stop bothering jake, or the entire team actually. he’s already having a shitty season because he hasn’t been his usual self. you being around is just going to make it worse. understand?” he towers over you.
“understand?” you nod “okay.” you tell him simply, he passes by you. beginning to walk the other way. you wait for him to get out of sight before entering the locker room slowly.
jake sits on the bench, alone in the locker room with his knee situated on the bench. jake struggles to wrap his knee, he cluelessly stares at the sports tape beside him. not really knowing where to start. despite being an athlete he had no clue how to tape injuries, tend to injuries, that entire sort. he was just there to bring the thunder and let his physician and doctors deal with all the limits he had pushed on his body.
jake looks up to see you standing a fair ways away from where he was seated. you turn to your side, sparing him a side eye while you inch towards him cautiously.
“what are you doing?” he sighs, you sit on a bench across from him, still turned to the side, yet face turned towards him but not fully looking at him. “you have to help me.” he tells you. pointing at his knee and grabbing the tape and long bandages from the bench.
“oh, no i can’t do stuff like that.” you weren’t entirely lying. you knew how to tape injuries, you remembered your parents teaching you stuff like that because of how much you got injured, plus your younger siblings weren’t doing much better with their level of clumsiness. you said you couldn’t do stuff like that because you couldn’t risk being near proximity with him again.
“then should i not treat this injury? i don’t know how to tape.” jake ordered people around like it was nothing. part of you thought it was fair because of the injury you caused but sakura wasn’t kidding when she said his head ass was kinda far up his ass most of the time. you wondered how his girlfriend, the pretty girl you had seen earlier on the field pampering jake, would be able to deal with someone so… snobbish. perhaps it was kind of judgemental of you to assume the worst out of jake.
you get off the bench and approach jake who lifts himself up for you to begin working on taping his knee. you struggle as you try to tape his knee from a short distance. throwing the tape roll behind his knee and trying to catch it from the side, all while trying not to get close to jake.
jake quite literally can’t believe what he’s watching, he stares down at you, a captious look causing his eyebrows to furrow and his jaw to go slack as he watches you do the most ridiculous thing. “what are you doing?” jake inquires, you stop what you’re doing and stand up straight from your awkard and uncomfortable crouching stance.
“what if you get hurt because of me again?” jake looks away from you and towards the bright lights in the ceiling. “i never got to apologize. i’m really sorry this all happened because of me.” jake grumbles, growing frustrated at you and he shuts his eyes, a hand coming to rub the tiredness out of them.
“did i say it was your fault?” he’s back to looking at you, arms crossing over one another. his glare makes you want to shrink, perhaps you understood why the broadcasting team avoided him most of the time. he had a bit of an attitude problem.
“and i heard that you haven’t been doing well this season too… because of me.”
“can you stop saying that?” jake quips at you. you look to the side, still holding the roll of tape that was stuck poorly and folded over itself and stuck to jake’s leg. there’s a small moment of awkward silence, him looking down in realization as he had raised his voice at you. and you looking to the side again, not really knoiwng where to look.
“and who the hell said i wasn’t doing well?” you bite your lip, looking towards the entrance of the lockeroom. head hurting at the circumstance you were in. when jake texted you to meet him in the locker room, this was not what you were expecting at all. you knew a scolding was guaranteed.
“the guy that was standing in front of you.” you tell him, thinking about how he was standing at the goalpost, a few metres away from jake who was practicing his kicking. “in front of me? where?” you draw the shape of the net with your arms, and stand in between the imagined drawing, imitating the way the goalkeeper had bent his knees and prepared to stop the ball from flying into the net.
“the one that stood like this in front of the net and stuff.”
“keeper?”
“ahh, so his name is keeper.”
jake’s head slowly turns to yours, after pondering and looking around the room, his head turns to you at a loss of words at you being able to “connect the dots”
“yes, keeper said that.” jake lets out a stifled laugh. “oh my god, seriously.” you frown at him, what was possibly funny about that? was telling him the wrong move? was keeper going to be thrown off the team? was jake going to beat him up?
“just tape my knee properly this time.” jake says, the smile leaving his face quicker than it appeared. jake didn’t look half bad when he smiled, in fact, it was a toothy grin, like a puppy or something. you tear the tape off his knee and examine it. closely looking at it this time, you notice the bruises that were beginning to appear, as well as the swelling. there was no way it was broken, if it was jake wouldn’t even be standing up.
jake notices your staring, knowing that it looks bad, he can’t help but assume what you’re thinking. he was in pain because of you. but that wasn’t how he saw it, he thought it was just a coincidence, injuries happen all the time, jake was particularly restless that day, and he was also overworking himself to an extent. it was barely even you’re fault, the only time he would begin to blame you for the injury was because you were distracting him with your big ass eyes watching him all the time.
“you might be out of commission for a few days because of me.”
“you need to do my chores for me while i’m resting.” that was understandable, it was the least you could do, you were so guilty for the injury you would do anything to help jake get back up on his feet, literally.
“... okay.” you tell him, not really hesitating to agree to whatever he needed. jake laugh at this, a chuckle leaves his lips at your willingness to do things for him. you finish taping his knee, pulling your notebook pen out of your pocket and drawing a small star on the side of his knee, finishing off the tape job with a small ‘ta-da’ coming from you.
jake laughs fully because of this, you pout, thinking jake was making fun of your small touches to his tape job. “did you just draw a star?” jake asks, bending over slightly to see the star on his knee, it was fully coloured in with small lines around it as if it were shining.
“yeah?”
“jeez, you drive me crazy.” jake’s head lolls back as he whole-heartedly laughs at the gesture. “you’re cute, you know?” feeling your heart beat faster, the heat travelling up from your neck to your face, you look away from his knowing gaze.
“can you draw a puppy next time?”
–
sunghoon sits atop a faded cube jungle gym. sitting at the very top he stares out onto the main road that leads to the school. he remains on the lookout for you, he had the routine of waiting for you at the park since you lived in the same apartment complex nearby. the park was one that the two of you would always play at when you were younger.
sunghoon remembers how he would stare at the jungle gym in fear, fear for himself but msot of all, his fear for you as he would watch you climb up all the way to the top at the young age of 7. sunghoon was lanky and short as a child, whereas you were tall and lanky. the difference, that you were able to use your long legs to your advantage.
“sunghoon, you can climb up here right?” you ask, shouting from the very top of the jungle gym.
sunghoon nods, despite looking terrified for his life. that leads you to believe that park sunghoon can climb up the jungle gym.
a voice snaps sunghoon out of his little recollection of your past. “sunghoon! what are you doing up there?” you ask, sunghoon can hear the tiredness in your voice as you call out to him. sunghoon begins making his way down the jungle gym, hopping off a bar near the ground and walking towards you.
“why are you still waiting for me? it’s already late.” you tell him, one of your hands gently massaging your forearm as it was beginning to ache.
“i got worried because you weren’t texting me back.” you playfully roll your eyes, scoffing at the reasoning. “surely you were worried.” you tell him, almost teasingly. sunghoon’s hand comes to ruffle your head again, messing up the hairdo you had. you try to swat him away or move out of his line of target but it’s too late. instead of a suspected ruffle, he comes to pat your head instead.
“you really don’t know how your elders feel huh?” sunghoon smirks, knowing you hate it when jokes about how he’s older than you by just a month. even in that case, when you talk down to him informally, he would tease the ever living hell out of you and scold you.
“stop calling yourself that, it’s weird. plus we’re the same age, just a month apart!” you try to swat at his stomach but you narrowly miss as he moves with fast reflexes. “y/n, you have to tell me when things get hard, alright?” you squint towards him, almost feeling confused as to why he suddenly became so forward and insisting towards you.
“i’m fine? so don’t worry about it. what about you?” you knew sunghoon had a tendency to overwork himself. usually not really having time for other things other than school fucks with someones mind.
“i’ve been having trouble sleeping these days.” sunghoon falters, hesitating, before he grabs your hand. bringing it to his chest and resting it there.
“and this keeps pounding.” you can clearly feel his heartbeat. and he was right it was pounding.
you never really knew when sunghoon got so tall. so much taller than you were now. just when you two were kids, he had always been the shorter one, his growth spurt scared you. but in realizing his height now, as he towered over you, whilst feeling his heart pounding in his chest. made something in your brain click. you almost begin stuttering when you try to talk.
“hey!” he gives you an innocent look “hm?”
“you drank coffee! right?” sunghoon grows confused. “i told you not to drink that stuff.” you say, gently hitting him and attempting to put him into a harmles headlock. you had to jump in order to swing your arm around his neck to pull him down to your level. “you’re still a child! why are you putting that into your system?” you and sunghoon were infact, not children anymore, just two 17 year olds who were more than capable of handling a coffee or two.
“alright alright! i give up!” sunghoon struggles in your headlock. despite always being the victim to your torment. you never really did any damage to sunghoon. even as you were the more playfully wrestling one, and sunghoon was the playfully bantering one, you’re strength was not compared to sunghoon. sure, sunghoon quit skating a while back, but he was still strong and lean in other ways. you strength was not keeping up with sunghoon at this point. he was just always pretending to be weak just so you could have at him.
“give up?!”
“yes! i give up!”
i’ll date you if you become this much taller than me.” you tell him, going up on your tippy toes, arm extending all the way to the highest it was able to go (which was truthfully not that high) at that age, sunghoon stared at that height and thought it was not achievable in the time that he was hoping to start dating you as soon as possible.
yet. he nods, wanting to remain optimistic because pursuing you was his ultimate dream, at the time. he holds a freshly picked bouquet of dandelions from the field beside the park and holds them out to you, to which you accept them smiling at him.
sunghoon finds himself smiling yet again, but now, you’re standing in front of him, whining about why he was spacing out. wondering if something was really going on with him, leaving you feeling concerned for his mental wellbeing.
“what’s with your face?” you glare at him pointedly as he smiles at particularly nothing. “nothing. what’s wrong with your face?” he mocks, he points his tongue at you. you begin waddling away, hands bringing your straps down and fixing your backpack. sunghoon follows behind you.
–
the following days, sunghoon watches as jake carelessly nags you around constantly. sunghoon and jungwon are talking near the shoe racks on the second floor when jake and a few ther soccer players come walking past them.
“what’s taking you so long?” jake turns to the staircase. sunghoon wants to say something as he stares at you struggling to climb the stairs with his bags of his equipment. ever since sunghoon sent you on that little mission to get an interview from jake, you began to stick around the athlete more. you barely told him what had happened that day, only sparing him the detail that jake’s knee was injured but he would still be able to walk, as well as your new found duties to help the soccer team. even if the soccer team had only accepted your help after jake insisted that you wouldn’t be causing some trouble.
and perhaps seeing you get dragged around by jake, whatever what was happening between the two of you, sunghoon was beginning to grow skeptical… or maybe confused?
again, the following day, you and sunghoon would always eat lunch together, however today he found you trudging across the field every time some soccer team member would use a ball to practice this net shot drills. evidently enough, they were dispensing soccer balls faster than you could run around and bring them back, making the drill go slower than usual, but more entertaining than usual.
glaring pointedly at the scene, sunghoon stomps across the field, beginning to help you collect the balls. as you bend down to pick one up, sunghoon is able to grab it before you. standing up straight, sunghoon takes the balls from your arms and it leaves you to relax your shoulders from all labour you were doing. the drill ends at that, practice ending for the team as you’re left to collect all the remaining soccer balls left on the field.
“do you really have to do this much just for some interview questions?” sunghoon questions. you attempt to grab the balls from his arms but to no avail as he turns away from your prying arms.
“it’s not much, plus it makes me feel better about hurting jake’s knee. i said i would do this for a couple days anyway.” you begin walking in the direction of the other stray soccer balls. sunghoon returns the balls to the basket and follows suit after you. “i’ve got it.” he says, walking past you. looking past sunghoon, you watch that same girl leaning on the fencing of the field with jake. you watch from afar, it looked as if the two were quarreling about something, the girl using the towel to lightly hit jake as he attempts to deflect and dodge the weaponized towel.
“i guess couples that look good together have issues to work out too.” you mutter to sunghoon you walks back to you, head tilting at your out of the blue intrusion. he turns around swiftly, looking at what you were staring at. that green monster bubbles up inside of him again when he lays his gaze upon jake.
the two of you watch as the jake and the girl laugh loudly, joking around most likely, jake still hitting the towel away everytime she comes close to hitting him with it.
“get your own water jake, this is literally mine.” lily scowls at jake, tightening her grip around her water bottle as jake tried to grab it out of her hands.
“you’re literally the manager of the soccer team. shouldn’t you be looking after the players?” jake rolls his eyes, copying the mannerisms in lily’s speech. attempting to grab the bottle again, lily begins hitting him with the white towel draped over the walls of the field.
“i thought they would be the type to be content and happy with seeing each other everyday. turns out they fight too.” you tell him. sunghoon turns to look at you now. a small glint in his eye when he see’s how infatuated you have become with the athlete.
—
again, you are stuck having to clean up after the soccer teams mess. you drag the wheeled cart around you as you collect each ball that is conveniently spread out against the big field. your back was beginning to hurt, even knowing how the sun was beginning to set, you would get back home when it’s night time. leaving you little time to study, eat, and then get ready for bed at a reasonable time so you would be energized for tomorrows school day.
jake comes walking out of the players bench box, watching you walk around the field. despite his knee, he wheels in a full cart of collected soccer balls and begins throwing them out back onto the field.
with the sound of a thud on the faux grass, you look up to see a smug smirk painted on the athletes face as well as a soccer ball rolling your way. furrowing your brows and giving jake a look of dismay. he merely shrugs. though he bites his lip and reaches for the cart.
he makes sure you’re looking when he grabs an armful of balls and starts scooping them out of the cart and onto the floor.
“hey… jake what— are you serious?” you grab a ball from the ground, throwing it at his direction only for it to embarrassingly miss his head. you didn’t want jake to run around, at least not in the state that his knee was in, you couldn’t have him hurt his knee any further. but seeing as he was fleetingly jogging around the field as you tried to throw the soccer balls at him, his knee was getting better, and fast.
“you have to pick these up!” jake shouts at you, laughs emitting from him as he ran, attempting to make the gap between the two of you bigger. but to no avail, throwing was not your strong suit in sports.
“you have to help me!” you shout back, beginning to get tired form running around after jake. even with an injured knee, the boy was still faster than you. and not or jake to say that he enjoyed spending time with you, even if that meant getting attacked like that.
jake returns to the bench after helping you collect all the soccer balls. you left momentarily to wheel the carts back into the storage room. jake couldn’t help but peek over when your phone began to buzz. jake knows he shouldn’t be looking, especially since he barely even knew you.
a few texts were flooding in with increments of a few minutes in between each one being sent, park sunghoon, the culprit. he asks you where you are, with the use of a very specific nickname that causes jake to scoff lightly. jake quickly swipes to the left, deleting the message notification from your lock screen. you return a few moments later and walk over to jake sitting beside your backpack whilst he scrolls on his own phone.
–
sunghoon leans back in his chair, reaching for his phone yet again, it had been an hour since he last texted you and you didn’t reply yet. you would rarely not text sunghoon back, or give him a late text back either because it simply wasn’t like you. of course it was different if he knew you were at home already, but you had told him you were busy after school so he was wondering if your late response had something to do with that.
why am i hovering over her? sunghoon silently scolds himself for acting like such a helicopter parent.
he stares at the last text he sent you, hesitantly thinking about what to type out next.
lets meet at the playground. he types out carefully before confirming and pressing send. he grabs his backpack off the empty chair beside him and begins shoving his things inside before zipping all the zippers onto one side. the last thing sunghoon wanted was the zippers falling slowly to the sides, opening the back unknowingly to him. he smiles at the thought of your backpack always doing that, he told you to zip them to one side so it wouldn’t happen again but you always had a habit of bringing them to the middle.
sunghoon checks his pockets, checking off the mental checklist in his mind especially since he had a habit of forgetting things and misplacing them. he also had to start doing it for you too, knowing you would leave important papers behind, or your phone, or your wallet.. as it had happened before, constantly.
he begins walking out of the library, nodding goodbye to the librarian. he was always the last student to leave the library, knowing his prowess for his studies was a bit of an inconvenience to the librarian who never wanted to bother his hard studying but did it anyway. especially when it was time for the library to close.
–
it had been two days since jake’s knee was injured, he was surprised at how fast it was healing. he didn’t want to think that it was because you magically healed it with your constant care towards it but yeah it was nice to think of it that way. jake approaches you in the storage room as you clean up stuff and organize things for tomorrows morning practice.
“i filled everything out.” he tells you, handing you your notebook opening on the page that had the interview questions written down on them. you turn to him, smiling as you reach for the notebook with a smile, a gasp leaves your lips. does that mean your labour was finished? he crosses his arms in front of you with a small smile. “thanks…” you trail off.
“you don’t seem to mind the rumours about me…” you bring up carefully but he cuts you off with a knowing face. “have you heard about my rumours too then?”
your face contorts into confusion, head tilting to the side.
“i mean… if someone tries talking to me on my game days, the team would lose. it’s kind of a bad comparison to yours but… i just use that excuse so that people won’t talk to me. also… if the team lost that day, the burden of losing would be on me and not on anyone else.” you scoff at his rumour. you had a feeling he was just trying to cheer you up.
“what if the team was just playing really bad? or the opposing team was really good? have you ever thought of those possibilities? not everything should be shouldered on you, you know?” maybe you misunderstood, perhaps his way of viewing defeat was constantly surrounded around him.
“yeah those definitely are the more probable contributing factors to losing a game. i like to think i’m very selfish for making up my own rumour so people would avoid talking to me.” you roll your eyes at him, jokingly. not understanding his reason for telling you this. “are you saying it works everytime? that people don’t talk to you and then you win every game?”
“no! that’s why i’m saying its a rumour!” his hands come up in defence, you nod your head, laughing at the story now. it was kind of stupid, even you had to admit it. there was no way not one single person talked to jake on a game day. surely coaches, managers and teammates came to talk to him.
“and i’m saying regardless of whether someone talks to me or not, i win every time.” he winks. your face scrunches up at the comment. you shake your head, laughing. “that’s ridiculous, soccer is a team sport. you can’t carry an entire team.”
“what i’m saying is… you didn’t hurt me.” jake returns to a serious and genuine tone of voice. “it was just my mistake.” he tells you, eyes locked on yours. “anyways, thank you.” he breathes out, as if it were his first breath of fresh air upon stepping outside.
“this was the first time i really took a break after i started playing soccer. which was a long time ago. i honestly wanted to rest.” jake tells you smiling. he combs his hand through his dark brown hair, looking between his knee, now in a recovering knee brace, and you.
you smile at his authenticity in his words. “i’m glad you finally got to rest.” you tell him honestly. you look down at the notes in your hands and tuck them under your arm as you continue to rearrange and organize the storage room. jake can’t help but let his eyes linger on your hard working figure. you don’t need to be an athlete to be strong.
“hey yn?” you look towards jake’s direction, his hand comes to brush your hair back, tucking it behind your ear. “follow me.” he tells you, walking towards the door, expecting you to follow him.
you stand still in your spot, flustered from the sudden act of affection, you tuck your hair back behind your ear and unknowingly follow him.
jake leads you to where the robot keeper machine is stored. used for soccer players who want to practice their shots in soccer when they have no keeper to practice with.
jake brings one soccer ball with him and leads you up to a boxed in space with face grass. and an open field just before a fake machine robot with a cutout of a guy in a soccer uniform stands in the center of the goal posts.
“if you shoot three goals into the net within 30 minutes, you can stop working for me.”
that was not an opportunity you were gonna miss out on. despite getting closer to jake within the week that you were helping him out with his soccer chores and his knee, you also missed out on several other important things such as studying and broadcasting club. everyone had pretty much doubted you from getting the answers to the interview questions since it had taken this long and you were just eager to show them that you had in fact done what they deemed impossible.
plus, how hard could it be? shooting three goalies with a stupid robot goalie?
“and… you can get the answers to the interview questions.”
hard, it was hard. you were shooting at this thing for the past 30 minutes and even despite jake’s instructions and guidance with how to kick a soccer ball, you had not gotten one in at all. you were pretty much slumped. you knew you were not the most athletic person out there in the world, but you knew there was no way this stupid machine could out smart you.
jake snickered to the side as he watched from the side. each time the goalie blocked you, he watched as your face fell from disappointed to absolutely mortified. after a few more minutes, jake decides that he has had enough of torturing you and he goes to the setting screen on the wall of the practice room and switches the difficulty setting back to beginner. he comes up behind you. one last time, he would try helping you out.
he guides you through the steps of kicking a scoring shot and alas, he leaves you to your devices before letting you try to score the shot for yourself. he watches as you carefully think about how you approach the ball. the look of focus plastered on your face makes him coo since you were trying so hard to get at least one goal.
and when the robot goalie finally misses the block completely and the ball its the backboard of the fake goalposts you let out a gasp, almost screaming out that you managed to finally score one goal.
“FINALLY! what the hell? that machine is probably on hard mode or something.” jake purses his lips. smiling at your excitement.
“you’re really good! maybe you should’ve joined the girls soccer team.”
“i don’t
—
sunghoon finds himself sitting atop the square jungle gym yet again. phone in hand, checking the time every few minutes out of anxiousness before he finally decides to climb down and head home.
—
sunghoon’s head begins to hurt when he overhears the girls in his class snickering about you. he watches from his peripherals as they get up from their seat and crouch down with a paper written with something on them. the girl plasters the paper to the bottom of your desk and sunghoon decides that he has had enough.
standing up from his desk, he walks over and rips the paper off your desk with a swift motion and begins reading it. his eyebrows furrow at the horrid words written on the paper. crumpling it up, he grabs the other paper from the girls hand silently.
“sunghoon, don’t tell me you like yn..?” the girl asks in a matter-of-factly tone. “she’s a literal curse.” she snickers. sunghoon places his hands on either side of the page and tears it right down the middle with a scoff.
“don’t call her a curse.” he tells them with a stern voice. the heat rising up his neck as he begins to lose his composure. the girls give him a side eye before returning to their seats.
“give it to me!” he whips around at the volume of your voice. you run past the classrooms, he sees you through the overhead windows lining the classroom.
you’re chasing after jake who is adorned in his usual school uniform instead of the soccer teams practice uniform that people would usually see him in. he holds your notebook behind your back as you try to grab it from him. despite not being that tall, jake holds the notebook above his head, much further above your head too. you jump in attempt to grab the notebook from his hand but to no avail.
jake runs away from you, a little further down the hallway and past the classroom sunghoon was in. stepping out, his legs wobble as he watches you two banter playfully. sunghoon can’t take his eyes off the scene. he feels his stomach drop, his head begins to hurt even more. what the hell was going on during those… practices that had you wrapped around jake sim’s finger? was it a bad idea to get you to retrieve those questions from jake in the first place? sunghoon should’ve known that jake was trying to pull some shit.
he doesn’t know what’s going on but he had a bad feeling about it and it leaves him angry.
—
jake is alone on the soccer field, stretching out his legs to see how bad the pain scales from as he prepares to do a light jog. he wants to make sure he’s not overextending himself that would cause his injury to get worse… those he assumes it wouldn’t be so bad since he would have you there to help him again.
jake slows down his pace as he watches an unknown figure enter the field and begin to approach him. he breathes out slowly, not minding the random person, and his hands come to his knees to catch his breath.
when he straightens himself back out again, he is faced with sunghoon who punches, swinging his right arm, fist colliding between his cheekbone and nose. the unexpected violence causes jake to stumble and topple over himself, wondering what the hell this guy he didn’t even know was trying to stir some shit with him.
hunched over, jake’s hand comes to his nose to find red blood seeping out slowly and smearing onto his hand. looking at the reason his nose was currently bleeding, he looks past his eyelashes with semi-closed lids and stares at the familiar face of a certain broadcasting club president.. also the guy that seemed to follow you around everywhere.
sunghoon looks down at jake angrily, fists balled at his sides. steam practically escapes through his nose and ears as if he were a cartoon character.
“when the hell are you going to stop playing around with yn?” he seethes through his teeth. perhaps it was a bad move to try and rock an athletes shit. but how could sunghoon possibly be threatened by someone a head shorter than he was. that was besides the point, but sunghoon was certain that maybe on a good day he would be able to take jake on.
jake winces, unable to focus on whatever sunghoon proceeded to tell him because of the pain the punch inflicted on him.
“she wasn’t the reason you go hurt so why are you toying with her so much, hm?” sunghoon attempted to sound as intimidating as possible. in reality it was just frustration and confusion, he had no idea what the hell was happening but he did not like the feeling it left sitting in his stomach.
jake begins to frown, eyes narrowing towards sunghoon as he straightens himself up after making sure his nose had stopped bleeding. he approaches sunghoon slowly and carefully, causing anxiety to spike in sunghoon, he is tempted to step back however he stays planted to his spot.
“regardless of whether i’m toying with her, or we enjoy spending time together,” jake pauses momentarily, eyes meeting sunghoons and sunghoon’s stomach drops. he takes a deep breath and jake stops just before him. “why would you get involved?”
sunghoon could come up with a million reasons as to why. one, you’ve got your head up your ass, two you playing around with her is probably just a form of bullying, three, you’re stupid and ugly and this egomaniac. but none of those vague reasons were the truth about why he felt the way he did. but no one had to know that. sunghoon bit his lip. why did he have to get involved? what does that even mean? don’t try to fool around with his best friend and then expect not to get some sort of warning from him? violence was not sunghoon’s strong suit, no, he was studious and well kept.
so when he had punched jake, the pain was delayed for him due to the adrenaline and his knuckles began to hurt with a striking pain. he unfolds his clenched fist and aired them out, whooshing them out beside him as he winced at the unexpected pain.
sunghoon gulps, realizing jake’s questions intentions. “w–what?” his face softens momentarily and his voice falters. “we?” jake scoffs “yes, we” a hand comes up to his hip as he tilts his head to the side. he al;most stares at sunghoon as if he has him all figured out.
“why? do you like yn?”
sunghoon lets out a staggered breath, one that he was unaware that he was holding. the tough and flexed posture he was holding up for show breaks and he relaxes, visibly deflating in his stance. he blinks multiple times, the words jake uses to somehow make him feel like shit, and feel like he’s soaring, at the same time, makes his brain short circuit as he looks away and stares at anything but the supposed mockery on jake’s face right now.
sunghoon lets out a final breath of hot air before facing the athlete yet again who had been staring at the sudden realization that clicked in his head just now. sunghoon decides that if he was going to say anything, it was going to be the truth. saying no, or attempting to get out of face of this confrontation would be the furthest thing from the truth to sunghoon.
“yes…” god, did he like you. forget the caffeine, another lie that was used to distract him from the fact that it was you. “so stay away from her.” he drawls out. nostrils flaring as he straight back at jake. jake carefully squints. breathing out water vapour as the temperature drops from the spring time during soccer season begins to rise gradually again.
“so what are you gonna do?” the soccer player questions, eyebrows raised, “cause she’s gonna go out with me.” sunghoon wants to feel defeated but he’s so sure jake was just saying things out of his ass.. as per usual, at this point. sunghoon knew you, you wouldn’t go out with someone so careless and self-centered! right?
jake knows he scared his classmate into coming to terms with his feelings. but regardless of what park sunghoon felt or not, you were most definitely falling for jake. and sure, he could blame that on whatever ego and pride he had especially about his confidence in being able to swoon girls, but his feelings were so true and right about this particular girl.
“what’s going on?” the two boys know your voice well enough to know you’re approaching with caution to whatever the hell is going on between the two of them. the tension in the entire soccer field was undeniably so hard to ignore.
“sunghoon. what are you doing here?” sunghoon tears his eyes away from jake for one moment, they immediately soften after he trains them on your figure. “is it true that you two are really going out?”
“what?” you’re bewildered at the accusation. jake’s eyes widen at the way sunghoon words it. he’s so sure sunghoon misunderstood what he said. but at this point, there’s no point in trying to reiterate what he meant to say. especially now that you were here.
“what the fuck is this guy saying?!” you blink at the way sunghoon raises his voice at you, it was not a sight usually directed towards you, sure, towards bullies that would poke fun at you, sunghoon would have your back. but no, never towards you. your lips part as you look at sunghoon with such guilt and confusion. you haven’t technically been the most truthful with him. you can’t help but tear up at his vulnerability, sunghoon never cried in front of you, through tearful talks on your part, sunghoon never cried in front of you. but seeing him with tears welling up in his eyes was more than enough for you to realize what this meant to him.
“be straight with me.” your eyes now flicker over to jake to takes your attention away from sunghoon.
“who is park sunghoon to you?”
“i…”
do you be honest with your feelings about sunghoon or do you deny your feelings for jake?
ᓚᘏᗢ aj — chat... imma be so honest. I WAS GONE FOR A MORE THAN A YEAR AND I FEEL SO BAD. anyways, little update in life, moved out of my house for university and im in my second year now!! i started this series just as i finished high school so lets just say a lot of time has passed. i'm so so so so sorry that this is only coming out NOW (my last update said that it was coming out in the next few days, IM DEAD).
“really? surely you guys are just exaggerating. even the food poisoning incident?”
“we’re not exaggerating. she was in charge of serving lunch that day.”
“even at the schools athletic competition last year, when she passed the baton to her teammate. she tripped and broke her nose…”
“that’s why you have to be careful around her, getting near her or even touching her can cause you to–”
“this can’t be true.” ms. park cleared her throat. hands clasped together on her desk as the other teachers gossiped around her. “those are probably just rumors that got out of hand.” she chuckles nervously. her coworkers give each other that stare before turning their heads back at her.
“but it’s true.” mr. choi says, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “you have to be careful!”
–
you stood smiling beside your new homeroom teacher. more enthusiastic than she and her students appeared to be. she had barely even looked at you as soon as you approached her on your first day at the school. you aimed to be optimistic about your first day at your new school. a childhood friend of yours attended the school, he was the one that recommended you transfer there in the first place.
“hi, my name is y/f/n. it’s a pleasure to meet you all. i hope we can become friends fast.” you bow, coming up and raising your hand to wave at the students who looked at you with such blatant discontent, no one responds to you except for the loud and eager clapping coming from the class president, park sunghoon. the mentioned childhood friend. he stops soon though, noticing no one was joining him as well as the look of embarrassment swarming your face. he ducks his head down and stares at his desk table.
ms. kim laughs out loud, albeit, a little obnoxiously, before she ushers you to sit in an empty seat in the far back corner of the classroom. you politely bow towards her, though she slightly stumbles back in avoidance towards the gesture.
despite moving to a new school. you knew word travels fast. sunghoon knew it too as he stared at you manuvering throughout the classroom. the students in your class were already whispering amongst each other. “the rumors must’ve reached ms. kim too, huh?”
upon walking down the aisle to get to your seats, the students around stopped talking to each other, not bothering to spare you a glance. your eyes flick towards the ceiling, swallowing thickly and taking in a breath before you glued your gaze to the floor and moved quickly to get to the back seat. sunghoon frowned, knowing that your first day had already been spoiled by a bunch of irrelevant people who didn’t even bother to get to know you first. he looks over at you, eyes softening as you take your seat in front of the opened window. wind slightly coming in and making you shiver. your eyes meet his as you adjust to your new seat, aka the banished corner in the classroom where you can’t see the board at all.
you send your friend a soft smile, pursing your lips slightly. the brunette offers a bright smile back, his snaggletooth grazing his lip. he gives you a small wave.
–
you find yourself looking at the several honor award certificates and pictures dedicated to the students in a display shelf in the hallway. most of them depicting sunghoon shaking hands with a principal whilst holding the framed certificate in one hand. you get startled when someone comes up behind you, hands coming onto your backpack. you swivel around to find sunghoon.
“stay still will you?” you wriggle a little bit in your spot, still confused at what he was doing. only to hear the sound of your backpack zipper. you stand still before sunghoon gives a grunt signalling he had finished closing your backpack for you. turning around to face him, he towers over you with a signature toothy grin.
“do you come to school just to get awards?” you question. “me being smart is nothing new to you. plus, why are you mentioning this just now? haven’t you noticed sooner that i was awesome?” he questions. bragging about his high grades and excellence. you click your tongue and scrunch up your face in response. “it’s been too long since i smacked you, huh?” you ask in retaliation. lightly hitting his shoulder to which he responds with an over exaggerated ‘ow!”
“you should drop by the broadcasting room later.”
–
perhaps if sunghoon had told you where the broadcasting room was sooner, you wouldn’t be wandering mindlessly through the school hallways in search for the studio. when the announcements began and you could hear sunghoon through the intercom system. you began to walk faster in search before the segment ended.
but to no avail, it had been a few minutes, and you were still searching for the room labeled with a broadcasting club nametag on it. luckily, you find in on the floor you’re currently on. though the announcement was already beginning to end. you quietly enter the room, head peeking in to see if sunghoon was anywhere to be found. instead you find jungwon and a few other members inside. jungwon nods at you to enter as he points at sunghoon who is talking to a microphone inside the recording room. he spots you through the glass, despite the room being dimly lit and you wave at him, he returns the wave.
“everyone needs to be heard. do you a friend who is willing to listen to you? it’s a monday afternoon that reminds me of a precious friend of mine. lets listen to music.”
you watch as jungwon slides two fader knobs up, you begin to hear the music fade into the announcements and the ‘on air’ sign turns green to fully off. jungwon gives sunghoon a thumbs up and sunghoon stands up from the chair and table, and walks out of the recording room. he approaches you first. a hand landing on top of your head to ruffle your hair gently.
“you’re here.” he beams. you nod. he turns to the other members of the club. “this is yn, she just transferred to our school. she’ll be joining the club.” sunghoon says. sunghoon was the broadcasting club president as well. nothing falls short when it comes to sunghoon and his commitments. he was the class president, part of student council, on top of that, an honors roll student and the broadcasting club president.
“i’ll try my best to pull my weight.” you tell them kindly. sunghoon smiles down at you as you try your best to introduce yourself to your new club members. taehyun and sakura stand with their arms crossed, jungwon, being the only one giving you a welcoming smile. any friend of sunghoon's is a friend of his.
“you haven’t even asked us if we agreed on letting another member join.” taehyun brings forward slowly. sunghoon’s brow twitches and he shoves his hands into his pocket. “we’ll we’re understaffed anyway. plus she’ll do really good here.” sunghoon says, attempting to convince his club members. you look to the ground again, staring at the carpeted flooring now.
“yeah but you have to think about our safety too.” sakura tells sunghoon. his face falters slightly. though he regains his composure so that you wouldn’t feel discouraged to join. “it’s not like she’s an ordinary girl either.”
sunghoon looks down at you, still unable to meet eyes with the other members. “how could you say that sakura?” she looks away as sunghoon had just called her out. sunghoon looks around. eyes landing on the whiteboard that contained most of the announcement schedules and plans coming up. written in red ink, ‘interview soccer player, sim jake’
“we still have to interview jake so–”
“you’re not thinking on making her do the interview, are you?”
“who else is going to do it?” sunghoon looks at taehyun. “taehyun?” taehyun shakes his head. “no no, i can’t! jake gave me a death glare when i tried talking to him this morning.” taehyun says.
“sakura?” sakura slumps over. “he’s so conceited. he thought i was one of his fans so he gave me his autograph and left.” she says, rolling her eyes. “jungwon?” jungwon remains silent for a moment before speaking slowly. “... he told me he’d beat me up if i showed up again.”
sunghoon lets out a huff. “if y/n can get jake to do the interview, you guys will let her in the club, got it?” sunghoon says firmly. you had never seen sunghoon so commanding before. you itched the side of your head, transferring schools meant that you started from scratch, allegedly. that wasn’t the case for your reputation. but you still had no clue who half these people were. usually there was a hierarchy in schools. popular girls and boys.. that type of stuff.
“...but who is sim jake?”
–
you walk into the indoor soccer field, a notebook in your arms as you go in search for the so-called star soccer player. as sakura described, he had dark brown hair, a strong nose, and looked like a puppy. it was kind of hard to understand what she meant by that but you figured if you saw him, you’d immediately recognize him.
the field was surrounded by rows of bleachers and chairs for games and onlooking students and parents to watch during their kids’ games. it was far bigger than the simple soccer field you had in your old school.
upon walking inside, you can hear the sounds of the game, personal and individual practice going on as you see several tiny broken up groups of the soccer players together. in one far corner a group of three girls stand in the bleachers, arms crossed over the safety bar, watching a brunette haired boy practice his shots one on one with a goalie. you begin to walk over.
jake lets out a deep sigh, hand coming to his forehead to wipe off the accumulating sweat. he stares at his teammate, a goalie standing inside the wide opening of the soccer net. running forward, he lurches his leg forward to kick the soccer ball in front of him. aiming it for the top right corner of the net. jake watches the ball completely miss the wide ranged net, flying over the top just by a hair.
he hears his goalie teammate hit his gloved hands together, looking up, his teammates hands are rested on his hips, staring at jake in a slight disbelief.
“jake, do you need to take a break? what’s wrong with your shots today.”
exhausted, jake shakes his head and receives the returned soccer ball between his feet. a dark haired girl with short hair comes walking over to jake, handing him a dry towel and a gatorade waterbottle. jake fans at himself as he grabs the rag from her hands and pats his forehead and neck dry. as well as taking a swig of water. your head tilts slowly to the right as you watch her return to her seat on a bench behind the border walls of the soccer field. she was really pretty, you thought it was a little too selfish of you to think that even a little too pretty for jake.
ready to practice his shots again, he looks over at his goalie, instead finding you standing a little too close to the net and not even behind the protective wall.
he frowns at you, stopping the dribbling of the soccer ball.
“hey! move, get out!”
you look at him cluelessly, looking at the goalie who is staring at you with wide eyes. your eyes avert back to jake who is staring directly at you. he has a pained expression on his face as he points at you. voice raising a little higher now. “i’m telling you to get out of the field!” he yells.
“hey! he is literally talking to you!” the goalie shouts, he pulls his gloves off, beginning to walk towards you. you take a few steps backwards. eyeing him before realizing that jake had been yelling at you the entire time. you tense at the sudden acknowledgement, knowing you had already embarrassed yourself and your chances in getting this interview was slim. you walk towards the door of the field wall, unlatching it open and taking a seat on the bleacher. not far down the seat was the girl that had approached jake earlier with a dry rag and his waterbottle.
jake sighs at you, watching as you leave the field, still taking a seat down at the bleachers, though no longer watching him practice.
–
“hi.. do you have a little time to spare?”
jake leans his head back on the players bench. eyes shut, gripping a stress ball with both of his hands. you lean over the wall of the players box, on your tippy toes as you try to talk to him.
“no, i don’t.” he says clearly. still refusing to look at you. “i’m in the same class as you, do you mind doing this interview?” jake’s eyes shoot open, leering over to you with a side eye. head still not leaving the bench as he relies on it for support on the strain his body has on him right now.
“same class?” you don’t reply to him, only staring at him with big eyes. “oh… you’re the transfer student.” he straightens his back, lifting himself off the bench only to stare at you when he comes to meet your eyes yet again. you shuffle to bring the notebook in front of you.
“the first question is,” you watch as jake barely pays attention to you, his hands are trying to relieve the pain in his shoulder, soon his hands travel down to his knees and calves where he looks to be in pain as he winces when he comes to massage them gently. “you must be really tired right now, huh?”
jake lets out a small chuckle. “is that the first question? gotta say, that’s pretty creative.” he jokes. though you see through his little coping joke and shake your head. jake cracks a smile at that.
“this won’t do.” you sigh. “i’m gonna go, sorry to bother you during your rest time.” your hands lower to your sides. standing back on your feet and beginning to walk away. jake watches as you walk away slowly. relaxing in his seat before he calls out to you again. he leaves the players box, coming out to meet you on the field.
“suddenly, i really want to do this interview.” he tells you, you turn around to face him with a grin, a grin that he can’t help but smile at. a contagious smile at that, you found his smile to be quite endearing.
“jake! we’re starting a scrimmage.” the coach yells loudly not too far away. the smile on his face is quickly replaced with that of disappointment. you pout slightly at the opportunity that was handed to you on the platter right then and there. thinking you had just missed your chance to get the interview done and over with just so that you could leave as soon as possible. getting the questions meant that the club would finally let you become a true and honorary member!
“sorry. could you maybe wait till it’s over?” you nod, feeling compelled to just stay there until you get the answers to the interview questions. “actually, just write down your number and leave it in that bag over there.” he says, pointing towards a dark blue nike duffle bag on the players bench.
you watch from the outside of the walls of the field. this time carefully watching how the soccer team would play. how jake would play. you definitely understood why he was called a star soccer player now. despite being awful at his shots earlier, it wasn’t really showing when he passed and snuck his way through the defensive team. you assumed jake always got the most goals in his entire team.
it wasn’t until one faulty crossover against the opposition teammate caused jake to take a fall. a nasty fall that you though he was able to recover from quickly, but seeing as he had laid on the ground, not getting up, and clutching his knee to his chest. you figured your bad luck had seeped its way into the people around you yet again.
his teammates crowd around him in concern. shouts and hollers being scatter across the field as coach comes jogging over. standing up, you know that familiar feeling. it was guilt. you had caused this… supposedly.
you can’t really remember how you became so unlucky. things were just always going wrong for you. for others, a tricky and bad day brought down moral, and most of the time people didn’t always have a bad day, not to your degree where it was everyday and for the rest of your life. you hated seeing your bad luck affect those around you. for some, like sunghoon, the first person you thought of, your bad luck never affected him. unless it did and he was just hiding it really well, but for the most part, your luck didn’t manage to penetrate whatever golden shining barrier he had sealed around himself.
you make a beeline straight off the bleacher and out of the field, exiting into the hallway where you find a secluded area, heart pounding in your chest. did that really just happen? you hated seeing jake in pain, even if he was a proclaimed snob, you knew he was overworking himself in soccer. you hated seeing anyone in pain.
but the word spread fast, that you being around caused jake to fall and hurt his knee, if you thought that word getting around of you being a bad luck charm had gone around fast, somehow this had gone around faster. especially with the soccer teams important tournament coming up, and jake quite literally being the face and honor of the school especially in the athletic community… you knew that you were definitely going to be receiving some looks and comments tomorrow.
you put your head in your hands, groaning, before raising it again, slapping your cheeks gently. you stand up, legs a little wobbly from all the hard over-thinking that you just went through. you march your way towards the soccer field, hoping to find the right time where jake was alone just so you could apologize to him.
seeing that the field was empty, you walk towards the boys locker room, nearing it, you hear the vicious scolding from the soccer coach.
“you’re an important factor to the game jake. how could this happen?”
“actually, it was that transfer student. the one that brings her bad luck everywhere. she came to practice today and talked to jake earlier.” you stood peeking into the boys locker room, knowing that if anyone had walked in and saw you, word would probably get around that you were a pervert as well, which you weren’t! you could see jake sitting on one of the benches, one of his legs resting on the bench with an ice pack laying on a towel on his knee. his teammates stood around him as the coach towered over him, glaring pointedly at the team of boys.
jake looks around the room, narrowly missing all the different looks his teammates are giving him. but his gaze lands on you as you crack your face through a sliver of the doors opening. he wants to laugh at that moment, but chooses not to.
“she can’t be around here anymore. she can’t be around you, jake. no, she can’t be around any of you on the team. she’s dangerous. we can’t afford to lose more players.”
jake feels bad, he can understand that it’s not your fault. he was the one playing soccer, it’s not like you came up to him and purposely broke his knee. sure, jake believed in superstitions, but there was no way that this was completely true. things would surely just happen because of pure coincidence.
he felt sorry that you had to listen to all the shit that the coach had spewed on about you. it wasn’t even your fault. and that made him feel a bit guilty. through all the dirt his coach and teammates were saying about you, he didn’t even have the courage, not energy to speak up about how it was also his fault. jake slouched over on the bench, knee hurting, now back hurting.
your gaze finally lands on jake, who is still looking at you. and you can’t help tear up. that’s when jake looks away. he looks towards his hands, his fingers fumble and fidget together as he tries not to look back up at you. or even worse, he might try to get up and talk to you. but it wasn’t like he had much leeway to get up. his knee was in pain and he would limp and not get anywhere with trying to get to you.
—
and you were right, word had spread even after you left the field building and returned on your way to the school building. despite girls trying their best to seem subtle about their looks and words towards you, you grew self conscious about yourself. even if you seemingly did nothing wrong. in your eyes, and probably those of the people around you. doing things wrong is all they could see in you.
you found yourself in a studio, a dance studio with mirrors lining two walls that faced each other. you were alone in the room, the dimly lit lights lighting up only portions of the room. you sat in front of a mirror. not quite tapping into the tear ducts just yet.
unknown to you, the door behind you opens slowly, revealing that of a high school boy with a tall stature, dark brown hair, and stripped of his school blazer, leaving him in a short sleeve white button up and his pants.
he looks at you, though he’s sure that you haven’t noticed that he had seen you. his brows are slightly furrowed at first. wondering what a random classmate he didn’t even know was doing in the dance studio. surely it was a free space, but he had never seen you before, more concerning, he was wondering if you were crying.
approaching you with light steps, he comes around to your side, looking over and checking if you were crying. surely, you were hunched over, sitting criss-crossed, you didn’t look fine.
he looks over looking at your face and not noticing any tears and he sighs, relieved.
“oh good, you’re not crying.” he says, a small smile reappearing in replace of the concerned frown that he was previously showing. you flinch, startled at the disturbance in the room that you were isolating in. of course someone had to come in when you were on the verge of tears and very embarrassed.
“who are you?” you question, turning a little to face your back towards him, he was very handsome. his attractiveness caught you off guard and you were shy to be seen in this state of mental distress.
“i’m lee heeseung,” you turn to face him at the exposure of his name. you scan for his nametag, not finding it because it was clipped to his blazer that was being carried in his arms. he looked at you with a sort of expectancy. “i’m y/f/n.” you tell him. knowing that the name would probably cause him to stumble back, or even cause him to just leave in general. but heeseung stayed in his place, bending down slightly as he talked to you. you felt your face heat up at the distance.
“ahhh…” you interrupt him with a pained knowing look, “i know you.” he simply says. straightening up and jutting a hand forward for you to grab. “you can trust me.” he says. you stare at his hand. “or i can sit down with you that’s fine too.” he says. taking a seat down in front of you. you twist around fully to face heeseung.
“i just transferred here yesterday and i’m already causing so much trouble for those around me…” you frown, huffing out and putting your hands on your knees. slightly swaying left and right. unable to look at heeseung. “i wanted to make friends.” you begin feeling the tears well in your eyes and soon enough, they are beginning to cascade down your cheeks. “now all these rumors spread around the school.” you are overwhelmed with the sadness hitting you. heeseung doesn’t really know what to do in that circumstance but he feels his heart ache for you.
“you feel better after crying, right?” he asks softly. a soft smile still adorning his face. looking at him, you wipe your tears with your sleeved wrists and sniffle. you nod at him and he nods.
“i know how to cheer you up.” he tells you, shooting up from the floor and scrolling through his phone for something. a song begins to play, you’re unsure at what he’s doing but as he begins to playfully dance around. you don’t know how to react, but it makes you crack a smile when you see heeseung try his best to bring a smile to your face.
heeseung wasn’t a bad dancer either, you’re quite confused as to what he was doing, going through all of this just to make sure you were okay. but you appreciated his efforts. heeseung lowers the volume of the song, deciding he was finished serenading you.
“you know i have horrible luck. aren’t you scared of me or something?”
heeseung shook his head, face contorting to that of a doubtful one. “not at all.”
“are you lying?”
“no,” heeseung pauses and crouches down in front of you. “i didn’t even recognize you at first until you told me you were the new transfer student. i just thought you were a pretty girl in the dance studio that was feeling down…” your cheeks flush pink, struggling to maintain eye contact with him as he gives you a soft smirk. “jeez… don’t say things like that.” you joke half-heartedly, thinking that this was heeseung trying to cheer you up again.
“say what? say you’re pretty? i’m saying it because you are.” he chuckles, looking down momentarily before looking back at you. he licks his lips, breathing in deeply before speaking.
“do you want me to tell you a secret?”
before you’re able to reply, your phone begins to chime in your pocket. grabbing it, your mouth falls slightly agape before reading the message displayed on your phone's lock screen.
unknown number
hey its jake
come to the locker room right now
you sigh, contemplating whether you want to answer jake’s texts and go meet him at the locker room, or stay with heeseung to hear what his secret is.
do you stay with HEESEUNG or do you meet JAKE at the locker room?
ᓚᘏᗢ aj — first chapter! i hope life is treating everyone good. i've been exhausted but there's just about 2 weeks before i graduate! sorry for the long wait for the chapter, school has been very heavy on my shoulders and i am horrible with time management so aaaahhhh. the chapter following heeseung and jakes route will be posted tomorrow hopefully! ALSO I AM SO SORRY BUT THIS IS NOT PROOFREAD.
TAGLIST open! comment or send an ask to be added! | @yourmomni @tlnyjoong @bucky-wears-dogtags-in-tfatws @dianzed @iamliacamila @astrae4 @mxlachai22 @mora134340 @renaishun @nokacchan @puppysjy @abdiitcryy @catzwonie
if your username is crossed out in the taglist it means i was unable to find your tag so i'll reach out to you in dms instead!
➞ BEFORE YOU READ if you don't understand the premise of click your heart. you are able to choose the path you desire when it comes to which boy you want to pursue the heart of in the story. there are four different endings, you'll have to navigate through the chapters in order to get the path of the member you want. or if you'd like, you can read through each members path!
➞ SYNOPSIS jake sim is a star soccer player, popular and loved by many, but stuck-up and stubborn. park sunghoon is the senior class' top student and a childhood friend who has always been there for you. park jay acts like a cold hearted delinquent but has a soft heart for those who earn his trust. lee heeseung is an ex dance team member who struggles to find a reason to keep dancing. which boy will capture your heart?
➞ GENRE fluff, slight angst, romance, comedy
➞ STATUS ongoing
➞ TW profanities
ᓚᘏᗢ aj — this is heavily inspired from the 2016 webdrama called 'click your heart' which features a few SF9 boys. a lot of this series is going to follow the storyline of the original webdrama. i recently rewatched it with a friend. watching it made me think of the enha hyung line. ALSO thank you so much for the love towards the current stories out, especially attention, please! IM SO GLAD EVERYONE ENJOYED IT.
EPISODE MASTERLIST
episode one — bad luck charm
episode two — who is park sunghoon to you?
episode three — past + present
episode four — well played
episode five — butt broadcasted
episode six — = future
episode seven — just a girl
taglist will be open for anyone who wants to join! please comment or click this TAGLIST link to sign up!
➞ synopsis : sunghoon, your ex boyfriend, claims that he is over you yet he finds himself keeping up with your skating career three years after you break up. he figures that watching your competition will help him find closure.
➞ angst??????????
➞ word count : 3.7k
➞ tw : nothing i dont think, lmk if im missing anything
ᓚᘏᗢ aj — life makes my head hurt
there are several videos of sunghoon skating online for most of enhypen’s fans to watch. including the videos posted of sunghoon and his former pair, y/f/n, aka you. despite sunghoon moving on from skating and becoming an idol, you remained on the ice. moving on and leaving korea to train in canada. moving on and becoming a famous competitive skater to represent south korea in just a few years, even making it to the olympics to compete at such a young age. moving on with a different partner. his fans sometimes refuse to believe that he competed in a pair with someone at your level, often engenes wondered if he remained a skater, would he be competing in the olympics with you.
sunghoon was admittedly watching your competition videos in his room, at night, with a blanket draped over him and the screen brightly illuminating his face. fans commented on his lives often, bringing it up on weverse. asking if he still keeps in touch with you, even asking for collabs like that of his collab with cha junhwan, another one of his former skating friends.
in reality, it had hurt sunghoon to be reminded of you everywhere he went even two years after he stopped. he loved skating, even if by the end he wasn’t happy on the ice anymore. if there was one thing about being on the ice that made him happy, it was going through everything with you. the one truth suspended from enhypens fans was the fact you and sunghoon used to date. his last competition before he left for iland concluded with an outstanding gold medal for the best skating pair award, along with the gut wrenching feeling of having to tell you that he was going to be leaving and quitting skating to pursue his dream of becoming an idol.. not to mention the break up that he was in in tears after telling you. you couldn’t even be upset that he was leaving either, you respected his decisions even if that meant you two were going to be apart. if becoming an idol was truly what he wanted to do then how could you possibly get mad at him for that? the break up was understandable, yet messy, something not uncommon for two teenagers navigating their first relationship. if something tore him apart, it was probably that he was parting ways with both his first loves.
he was wondering if you were watching him through a screen the same way he was with you. he’d watch you glide across the ice and perform tricks that his 12 year old self couldn’t imagine doing. he’d watch as your long time assigned partner would get to be with you 24/7, how their hands would circle around your waist and holster you up on the ice with such effortlessness and grace. sometimes he wishes he could say that that should’ve been him. but he feels different now, he’s no longer the figure skater that he once was, he was sunghoon from enhypen.
sunghoon rubs his eyes, tired, he had an early schedule in the morning yet here he was watching the videos he swore he would shut off when jay came in and scolded him for not resting yet.
you were sunghoon’s number one fan and his biggest supporter when he began his training to become an idol. though it clashed with skating practices, you were understanding. then, he told you about his admission into the survival show, i-land, where he was hoping to debut to become an idol full time. meaning leaving you behind. you were upset at the time of the break up, any sane person would be. especially if you loved the person. you continued to support sunghoon throughout i-land, watching the show and voting for him. you remembered his mother calling you and asking you to write a letter for him to read, despite sending a letter for him to read, his reaction was not added to the aired episode and you assumed that the show had either cut out the reaction or the letter wasn’t added to the list of mail in the first place. you never bothered to ask. after his confirmed debut, you congratulated him, and after that, you left to go to canada where you would be training with junhwan, the other figure skater that you and sunghoon were friends with. you were so occupied with practice that your calls and texts to sunghoon lessened and soon halted entirely.
in the earlier days, you would watch enhypen’s comebacks, even staying up at ridiculous hours just to watch the release. you would contemplate shooting sunghoon a text telling him about how his comeback was great but you never managed to garner the courage to actually send it to him. as the months pass, you are swarmed with practice and schooling. reports of you and sunghoon in the past are replaced with you and your new skating partner and it's plastered over every form of social media that you have.
you return to south korea after two years of training abroad in canada. you continue practicing in the rink for hours, though now you are a student in yonsei university in seoul. you and your partner become aware of your eligibility to compete in the 2022 olympics in beijing.
–
“i’m going to have y/n and sunghoon pair up for this next competition.” you and sunghoon’s eyes widen in unison, your coaches almost chuckle at the sight of dismay written all over your faces. even the other members in the club you were in were shocked that sunghoon was competing in a category outside of individuals. but for good reason. sunghoon had never ventured out of individual performances. sunghoon liked being alone, he had never performed with a partner before. he knew of you, he knew you were one level higher than him but you still qualified for the junior category your pairs skate would be judged under. you on the other hand, never switched partners before. sunghoon was in the practice block before yours, you would arrive 30 minutes earlier to get dressed and then stretch, in those 30 minutes you would watch sunghoon dance on the ice. you were enamored and spent more time gawking than stretching. though you were positive that he never knew.
the other members of the club scattered, their respective coaches giving them more detail on the pieces that they were assigned to be doing. you and sunghoon still frozen and your coach standing in front of you with her clipboard in her arms.
“i know you’re not used to it yet but we are just trying something new. we promise if this doesn’t end up working then we can switch you back after the competition.” she tells you two. you both nod shyly, your hands clasped behind your back.
an hour later, you and sunghoon take a break to get water and just rest. but it’s still incredibly tense. you were beginning to miss your old partner, the two of you had competed in multiple competitions together, wins tethering from between first place gold and second place silver. you were thinking that things really weren’t going to work out between you and sunghoon.
“you know, it’s going to be really hard to win first place when we can’t even talk to each other.” you tell him. his back is turned to you as he sets his bottle down on the rink wall. he doesn’t say anything in response so you continue. “you want to win right?” you ask. sunghoon turns around to look at you.
“of course i want to win.” he tells you blatantly. “then why don’t you talk to me? we can’t be like this if we are partners.” you place your hand on your waist and look at him expectedly. “i didn’t want to be partners.” you roll your eyes at the 15 year old boy. “and you think i wanted to be partners? i want park jihoon back.” sunghoon hates park jihoon. hate is a strong word, he doesn’t hate jihoon, he just mildly dislikes him. he’s loud and annoying, and he disrupts the peace in sunghoons head.
“why?”
“why?! i don't know, he’s better than you!” you want to raise your voice, but knowing the rink, voices are amplified in there. “no he’s not, i’m so much better.” sunghoon understands he is far too old to be acting like this but he was getting frustrated trying to convince you that park jihoon was a menace and the bane of his existence and that park sunghoon was the better skater, he’ll show you.
you thought that your plan to talk to sunghoon had immediately backfired with how much sunghoon expressed that he hated your former partner. but it in fact did help you get closer. within the month leading up to the competition, you and sunghoon had gotten so much closer than you and jihoon ever were. you were sure that sunghoon was going to be going up a level after this because of how hard he was practicing. you would arrive to practice and sunghoon would already be there.
what you thought was your last performance with sunghoon turned out to just be the very beginning. after getting first place during that competition, your coach asks if you guys want to stay partners for the next competition coming up and the two of you agree that you should remain partners.
–
sunghoon remembers watching your skating performance in beijing on his phone during his break while practicing in the dance studio. he remembers watching you go on for the competitive pairs category, and then the singles free skate. he watches through the camera that follows you as you explore the big rink. you’re smiling. a big, bright, vibrant smile. your smile makes his heart clench in a hot pain. you were always very particular when skating, something that made sunghoon initially ticked off and bothered at first but he realized that was what made you such a disciplined and perfect skater. you were so confident in your strides. despite being the other half of a pair, you always seemed to stand out more than your partner. he remembered that as teenagers, you told him you never feared getting injured because you were careless and naive as a child and that helped you lose the fear of falling and getting hurt. sunghoon probably witness your naivety while practicing more times than not. sunghoon thought that he wasn’t very confident, his coaches would often point out his lack of motivation and confidence, which to outsiders from the skating community may seem harsh and unnecessary jabs, but to sunghoon it was normal because you had to have confidence to survive in figure skating.
–
“are you alright?” you immediately glide over to sunghoon as he currently takes a fall after not being able to complete a spin. sunghoon brushes your concern aside and gets up nodding. he swipes the ice shavings off his pants and tells you to run it back one more time.
“i think we should take a break.” you tell him worriedly. sunghoon shakes his head. “i’m fine. we can keep going.” you sigh at his persistence. “we’re taking a break, i’m calling it.” you grab his hand and begin leading him towards the door of the rink. you jump onto the cushioned floor, sitting on one of the hockey players benches and tap at the seat beside you for sunghoon to sit down and join you. he follows your lead, sitting beside you but a fair inches apart.
“have you been getting enough sleep lately? are you feeling alright?” you barely give him space to talk before placing the back of your hand against his forehead. sunghoon feels himself reddening. he wants to swat at you to stop and he wants to complain about you pushing your boundaries again. but he doesn’t say anything as he lets you continue on with your alleged prognosis.
“you don’t have a fever, i don’t think you’re sick.” you conclude, sitting back down but continuing to look at him. he feels weak under your suspecting gaze. he doesn’t want you to think somethings wrong with him when obviously nothing is wrong with him. just the undeniable feeling of his stomach doing acrobatics and his heart racing whenever you get close. at first sunghoon thought that perhaps he has fallen ill. but why does that feeling only bubble up when you’re around, or whenever he thinks about you? when he lays in his bed at night and stares at his ceilings until you start coming up in his mind and then he goes to kick his duvet off because he becomes a blushing mess. or when he has to hold your hand in the routine and suddenly he has to keep letting go because he has to wipe his hand on his training sweater before grabbing your hand again. or when he instinctively brings his arms out whenever you attempt to do jumps just in case you hurt yourself when you fall. or times where he has to remind you to put your blade guards on because of the amount of times you’d forget and have to buy a new pair. or when he would be at school and you text him dumb pictures of yourself at school since you two attended different schools. or when both your parents would be late picking you up from practice so you would go buy snacks at a nearby store and just talk.
sunghoon is 16 years old and he is sure that he has feelings for you. it's an indescribable fuzzy feeling that he can’t seem to get rid of. he shakes himself out of his small recollection of memories, his vision clearing and seeing you again, curiously looking at him, semi bundled up in your training gear.
“do you want to go to the store after practice? my treat.” he suggests. though his knees are wobbling as he proposes the idea to you. you give him a confused look and then nod, looking away from him and out to the rink, watching the other skaters around. sunghoon sits and stares at you with a soft smile, breathing in and out deeply.
“you never treat me.”
“just this once.”
–
your nerves always spiked before competitions. like any sane person would. in the back of your mind, you’d always remember how sunghoon would talk you out of your nerves and it would work because he always knew what to say. somehow sunghoon would never show his anxiousness to you, he’d only help you overcome yours.
you and your partner are warming up on the ice after the short intermission after the individual category had finished up. you and your partner were the first pair performing. as you’re skating around, as if it were another normal day in the arena. you look up to look amongst the people. your eyes scanning the bleachers promptly before returning to your warm up routine.
sunghoon watches from the bleachers, hidden behind a cap and a mask. a bouquet of flowers and a penguin plush in his lap, he gently grips the paper covered stems with one hand and his other hand lays on his knee as he trains his eyes onto your figure. you practice some loops here and there, you mainly focus on stretching out your legs and making sure you can maintain your flexibility. you haven’t changed much, physically, you had grown a tad bit taller, your hair coloured remained the same colour it had been since you were younger. he understood there wasn’t much leeway with hair colours in the industry. neither of you were teenagers anymore.
as the performance started, the lights around the rink dimmed and were replaced with much softer lights, along with two spotlights, one for you and one for your partner. somehow you were even more graceful, your technique had improved drastically, there was no way you couldn’t improve when you train with former olympic champions. he watched as you and your partner danced so fluidly on the ice.
he hoped that coming here would finally give him closure. he confesses that he is not over you. not after three painful years of not talking. not after the break up that he initiated for his sake. as the performance comes to a close, you and your partner return to the center of the rink to collect hollers and praise from around the arena. cue the multitudes of flowers and plush toys being thrown onto the ice for the maintenance crew to clean after. sunghoon stands up, hoping that the height would give him an advantage of getting the bouquet and the plush of a penguin onto the rink, close enough to you, for you to see.
you clasp your hand into your partners and bow gratefully for those who cheer your performance. you decide to pick a plush among the rest, eyes landing on a giraffe a few feet away and skating over to grab it. as you come closer to it, a stuffed penguin bounces its way over to you and slides just by the tip of your skates. there is a ribbon around its neck and a small card attached to it that has a name written on it. you tuck the giraffe under your arm before bending down and crouching to grab the penguin plush.
the staff begin ushering you and your partner off the stage but you move with their prodding words. sunghoon’s name is written in black ink on the card and you look up in attempt to find the familiar face. your eyes land on someone standing on the bleachers, ready to get up and leave, he stares back at you, the flowers in hand, before stepping down the steps.
you quickly skate off the ice, uncomfortably waddling down the hallway trying to reach the lobby where you think he would exit. as you round the corner and push the double doors open to expose the cold arena air conditioning air. you find who you think is sunghoon walking towards the door, flowers still in hand.
“sunghoon?”
sunghoon turns at the sound of your voice. a hand coming to his mask to pull it down. you’re still in your costume getup and so obviously freezing as the adrenaline from the performance starts to wear down. sunghoon begins peeling his jacket off, worried you would catch a cold when he knows that you can’t afford to miss a day of practice. you bring the plushie to your chest, hugging it tightly with both arms. he walks with fast steps, his jacket ruffling as he comes to drape it over your shoulders.
–
you sat down on one of the benches outside the girls changing room, sunghoon stands in front of you, head down, occasional sniffles coming from him as he struggled to get the words out his mouth. you felt helpless, watching your boyfriend attempt to grapple with the words he needed to convey the news he dreaded telling you.
your hand comes to grab his, your thumb rubbing over his skin as you patiently wait for sunghoon to voice out his thoughts.
“i’m not gonna be skating for a while, i’m going to start focusing on becoming an idol… i feel it would best benefit us if we took some time apart from one another.”
sunghoon begs you to say something through the painful silence it takes for you to comprehend what he has just said. he feels awful just dropping the bomb on you right there. a day so glorious, rewarding and memorable for the both of you was just ruined by his need to tell you.
“i don’t know what to say… i’m really proud of you sunghoon.” sunghoon knew you would be understanding. he hated that you weren’t mad at him. he wished that you had yelled at him, told him you hated him, anything to break his heart even more, something to seal and confirm that you didn’t love him anymore. but you were just happy, smiling, supportive as per usual. he had counted on you to push him in his skating career since you two were kids, now that he was pursuing his idol career, you were still there supporting him.
you tell him you’re a bit bummed out that he had to leave, that he thought breaking up would be the best idea because it would cause less pain on both ends.
sunghoon still received the letter you had written to him when he was in i-land, he received it in the lunch box his parents sent him, though he didn’t read it until he was hidden way from the cameras and the other occupants of the house. tucked under his blanket in the shared room, he read your letter. for the first time in the show, for the first time in a while, he had cried.
–
“hey.”
you and sunghoon sit beside each other on the loveseat of the lobby lounge room. you still have his jacket over you, the penguin squished into your lap.
“it’s been a while.” you start, he nods, you watch as he plays with his fingers. “why’d you come here?” you ask him, adjusting the ribbon tied around the penguin's neck.
“i had to see you,” he admits quietly. “i… don’t understand.” you whisper back. he looks at you, eyes glassy.
“i wanted to say that i’m sorry,” he breathes in deeply “because i never moved on from you. and i was the one who ended us in the first place. you made skating bearable for me, you made me happy and when we broke up i thought that i was doing alright until i continued to keep up with what you were doing and suddenly i started missing you.”
“but you don’t love me anymore?”
sunghoon sits there, mouth agape for a moment, thinking as if he had to calculate an answer.
“i’ll always love you.”
butterflies didn’t erupt, not like they used to. of course you still loved sunghoon. but you were two different people at this point. you had your entire career ahead of you and sunghoon was the same.
➞ synopsis : jay asks your best friend what your type is because he wants your attention
➞ fluff fluff fluff
➞ word count : 10k
➞ tw : mention of throwing up, if i missed anything pls lmk
ᓚᘏᗢ aj — this has been in my drafts for the longest time and i kept on restarting it BUT yea pls enjoy
jay thought that this indifference in attitude towards him was just you playing hard to get. until he scrambled his way to your best friends, desperate to find out what your deal was. why you weren’t batting an eye towards him, nor his friends. despite the invitations to the several parties being thrown, as well as the basketball games that he has invited you out to. the answer to all these tactical ways to start talking to you were thrown out the window. something was always seemingly coming up. though half of the time they weren’t even excuses to not go to said event, you were actually busy.
in a way, jay was angry. a bit upset at you, how you were so casual with him. jay was used to girls and boys alike, messaging him, flirting up a storm with him. jay didn’t have a problem with the attention per say. but when you, his nonchalant class president, didn’t bat an eye towards his sudden strikes of flirtation. an arrow shoots through his heart, though it feels more like a challenge when he feels the need to have your attention on him too.
so when jay finds himself walking to sunoo’s workplace, the convenience store down the street from jay’s apartment building. he stands in front of the store, kicking the gravel on the sidewalk. he swears to god that he is doing this for the sake of teasing you. that he just needed your eyes on him because it would take a toll on his pride if you didn’t.
sunoo stares at jay from inside the store. he makes a face, frowning with his brows furrowed as he wonders what the hell this guy is doing. was the store about to get robbed? sunoo uncrossed his arms and stood up, hands leaning onto the edge of the table.
“HEY! ARE YOU ROBBING THE STORE BECAUSE IF YOU ARE… WE HAVE CAMERAS AND I KNOW WHO YOU ARE JAY.”
jay flinches before shaking his head, not realizing the person he was searching for was already staring at him, and even worse, assuming that he was about to steal from the store. the dark haired boy stumbles through the door, the door jingling and sunoo is about to scream, feeling as though his suspicion is about to come true.
“why would you think i’m trying to steal from you?” jay questions him, beelining straight for the cash register at the end of the store while the aisles lay vertically. sunoo sits back down on his chair. squinting at the upperclassmen.
“because you were just standing there staring through the window. it was creepy.”
“i’m actually here looking for you.”
“oh? and what for?”
“what kinda guys does y/n like?”
there is an awkward silence between the two boys. sunoo looks down momentarily before raising his head to look up at jay again.
“who’s asking?”
“me!”
“... why? oh my god, do you like her? that’s actually insane–” sunoo begins laughing hysterically, thinking about the several ways that you would respond. he was betting on an incredibly disgusted face, or something more reactionary.
“no. i don’t like her man– whatever! just don’t say anything alright?” for a moment, sunoo feels bad for him. for one, you had never really talked about liking boys like jay, so realistically he had no chance in the first place. two, jay seemed sincere. but he knew otherwise than to trust someone like jay. he had heard so much talk about the way he had behaved and he knew you’d be absolutely repulsed with the way he acted. but the genuine look on his face seemed like this was something more than wanting to play around with you.
“i don’t know how to help you. the only person y/n has liked is the drummer from that one band that played at the school festival last year… uhhh what was their name? oh! kim jaehyun from class 3-C. they were together for a little bit last year but it didn’t really last long,” sunoo pauses, waiting to see what jay has to say. sunoo knew jay was the furthest thing from a musician, he was a big bulky athlete, and so he continues as he sees jay’s slightly dejected face “yeah.. from the look on your face i can tell you’re disappointed. so why don’t you drop this? there are plenty of girls out there to pester– HEY!”
jay is already leaving the store. his footsteps are heavy as he begins to fish his phone out of his pocket. he doesn’t know why he feels like he has something to prove. he can most definitely pull, he knows that. but he can most definitely pull you too. he did feel this stirring feeling in his stomach. he was treating this as if it were a game. and why was your heart the one that jay park was so eager to capture?
jay is quick to pull up jake’s contact page first. a couple of rings come through until jake groggily asks jay what’s up. jay rarely ever calls, it’s always a matter of texting the group chat whenever he has something to say. it also ends with him being seenzoned by all his friends.
“did you just wake up?” jay asks in disbelief, asking as if he hasn’t slept like a log after school.
“yeah what the hell do you need?” jay can hear jake shuffling around in his bed, followed by yawning.
“we need to start a band.”
—
the following day, jay begins to pick up his pace as he glances at his wrist watch momentarily. he was going to be late to first block yet again. the teacher already had something against jay and his tardiness, he knew coming in late would result in him kneeling outside the classroom with his hands up in the air. if it wasn’t his poor time management it would be his inability to wear his school uniform properly. it always had to be something, whether he accidentally left his name tag at home, or if he didn't button up his polo shirt correctly either.
he stares down the crosswalk lights, watching as students are already running into the school gates and past the security guards as well as the uniform teacher inspector who is stopping students every now and then. jay looks to his right, noticing a familiar head of hair.
you stand beside jay with a pair of headphones on, though you wear a nervous expression on your face as you’re watching the students get stopped by teachers for being late and for breaking the dress code. jay’s eyes flicker onto you and then onto other people. however he can’t help but think how cute you are as you slightly bounce your head to whatever song you are currently listening to. you weren’t wearing your usual uniform, the proper blazer was replaced with a light gray cotton sweater, you were still wearing the school button up and the skirt. you were also missing your name tag.
the green stop light flicks red, and the big red X indicating that pedestrians may not cross is now depicted a white silhouette of someone walking. the rush of other late students walk past jay, who is still staring at you. you walk with the rest of the teenagers, as if you were being swept away with a current of bodies that are rushing to get to school. jay begins walking too, eyes remaining on your walking figure ahead of his.
whilst the others are bolting it through the gates, trying to dodge the inspector. jay doesn’t lose sight of you among the other students. though he watches as you calmly walk past the inspector, attempting to play off the fact you weren’t wearing your name tag. the inspector recognizes you though, knowing you were an honour student, as well as a class president, the inspector flashes you a disappointed look before telling you to stand to the side with the other kids as he writes down your name on the paper attached to the clipboard. jay passes through inspection in a flash. he quickly unclasps his name tag from his blazer, stuffing it into his pant pocket before joining the line where other classmates of his. he joins you in holding your bag above your head, the punishment that the dress code inspector has instructed you to do. finally, you turn your head to meet jay. though your eyes avert up slightly, to look into his eyes.
jay feels his heartbeat quicken and he nearly drops his bag when he feels his knees buckle slightly from underneath him. he wants to say something, but he knows by the way your headphones can’t contain the volume of your music that you can’t hear him.
“your headphones are really loud. that’s bad for your ears.”
you remain stoic faced, furrowing your brows slightly before letting go of the bag above your head with one hand and coming to remove one headphone muff from off your ear to hear what he had said. you look at him with a slight expectancy. jay feels the heat rising to his cheeks as he awkwardly repeats what he said to you.
“i said your headphones are really loud, listening to music that loud is bad for your hearing.” he tells you. you give him a blank stare. “oh… yeah i know.” though that convinces you to remove your headphones fully and you pause your music.
“then why do you do it?” jay asks you. you look at him as if he had asked such a stupid question when you didn’t think of it in that way. “i don’t know.” you answer bluntly. you don’t really know to how answer that. “i think it just blurs out the rest of the world's noises.” you admit to him. jay looks down at you with a glint in his eye, yet he doesn’t know he is subconsciously starting to smile.
“do you not listen to music at a loud volume?”
“i do. but i’m more of a play it out loud type of person. or you know, blast my amp when i play guitar type of guy.” jay doesn’t know what’s coming out of his mouth, he most certainly plays guitar, though not in the way the band sunoo claims you like does. the rest of the school doesn’t know about his little hobby either, they only really know his athlete side.
jay averts his eyes to his shoes before they flick back to you. you have softened, become more calm and less tense around him. “you play?” jay presses his lips into a straight line. again, averting his eyes anywhere but your trained gaze. he nods and you crack a smile. jay thinks that sunoo wasn’t joking when he told him that you were into musicians. but then again, why would sunoo lie?
“cool. me too. i’m guessing you play electric?”
“i play both, but i enjoy the electric more.” you nod attentively, jay wants to keep talking to you but the inspector had begun his scolding towards the students irresponsibility for being both late and for breaking dress code. you hear jay snicker from beside you, wondering what he was laughing at, you crane your head to look at him with a questionable gaze. he nods to the inspectors toupee peeling off the side of his head and you nearly let out a loud snort before controlling yourself and letting out an stifled giggle instead. you and jay stand by each other giggling quietly to yourselves until the inspector finally finishes his lecture and lets you and your classmates leave to head to class.
jays arms ache, and while he thought you were waiting for him, he looks up to already see you far ahead of him, making your way up the school stairs and into the school's main doors.
—
“jay were you serious when you said you wanted to start a band?” jake questions his friend, jay and his friends spend their lunchtime outside on the field in front of the school. his friends and a couple other students play soccer together. jay sits by the benches on the perimeter of the grassy field with a drink in his hand. jay doesn’t really have any other extracurriculars other than soccer and basketball, but both those seasons were over already and spring was coming in hot.
jake takes jay’s silence as a yes and he slumps down beside him on the bench, he fans himself from all the heat his body garnered after running around like an excited dog for the past 15 minutes playing soccer.
“i mean i wouldn’t be opposed to it. you know i can play bass pretty well.” jake tells him. jay nods, knowing fully well he and his friends were able to pull it off. he had thought about it whilst laying in bed the night sunoo told him at the store.
“and sunghoon knows how to play the drums, heeseung could sing.” jake adds on.
“i mean if the others are down… count me in.”
jay spends the afternoon rounding up the members for his band. sunghoon was a bit skeptical at first, he had been trying to balance his figure skating outside of school, his studies and now the band was beginning to get a bit too much for him. however heeseung was just happy to be there. however, as jay began to expand more on why he wanted to start a band, sunghoon was beginning to warm up to the idea.
jay finds himself daydreaming in class already. if he hadn’t paid attention before, he certainly wasn’t paying any attention now. the following days consist of jay begging the music teacher to let them borrow the music room after school to practice, and jay enlists the help of jungwon, yet another honors roll student, to sign them up for the spring school festival. you were friends with jungwon because you were both on the student council. jay would’ve gone to you, but because he was late on signing the band up he feared that you wouldn’t even let them perform.
“your band is going to be opening for the senior class band. i’m sorry i couldn’t get you a full set. most of the spots had be taken up by other performances.” jungwon apologizes. as he was part of the student council that was responsible for the spring festival events, he was able to talk with the other performers to squeeze in jay’s band since they were late on signing up for the festival. it didn’t matter to jay, it’s not like he would be in the band for any longer than a year, it was something on the side, and plus it was to harness the attention of a certain person.
as if jay hadn’t struggled to talk to you enough, it didn’t help that you pretended he doesn’t even exist. does that little bonding moment in being late together not mean anything to you?! obviously it had meant a lot to jay because the moment of laughter together left feelings of swarming butterflies in his stomach every time he thought of it. usually this ended in himself pinching himself, any possible way to get him back to the real world because there was no way he was falling for you when it should be the other way around. he was the woman woo-er. and his plan to get you to finally fall for him was just so that he could look you in your face and say “i told you you’d fall for me” though realistically the amount of effort going into this truly meant he just wanted you to look at him and fall for him period. and to be fair, if you looked at him he would instantly crumble and shrivel from timidness.
jay’s train of thought gets cut off when three girls approach him at his desk. he pauses his song writing and closes his notebook almost immediately before looking up at the girls.
“we heard you signed up for the spring musical festival. we didn’t know you could sing and play guitar. that’s so cool.” gyuri has a way with sweet talk. her long dark hair cascades over her shoulders and her eyes twinkle as she maintains eye contact with jay. just past gyuri and her friends, the classroom door slides open and you and sunoo walk in. sunoo is talking about something whilst following you to your desk while you listen patiently to your friend.
“hello?”
jay gets up abruptly, flocking to your desk which was on the other side of the room near the back door. he stands to the side of your desk and sunoo stops speaking as he watches jay meander wordlessly. you turn towards your friend, wondering why he had stopped talking but sunoo is instead staring at jay with a blank expression on his face.
“my friends and I signed up for the spring festival.” he tells you, rocking from the balls of his feet to his heels. “could you please move, i can’t reach something in my desk.” you ask, jay apologizes, shuffling backwards as his hand comes to the back of his neck and he itches. sunoo sticks his tongue out teasingly towards jay but his sour expression quickly changes to a sweet smile when you rise up from checking the inside storage compartment of your desk.
“it’s really not here sunoo, i think i have to stop by the stationary store when he go home today to get a new one. gosh that is so annoying, i won’t have that much money from my allowance anymore.” you frown. jay’s face contorts to that of concern. “what are you looking for? i can help you find it.” he suggests. giving you a soft smile.
“it’s just my name tag. i think i lost it.” you tell him dismissively. your hand swatting the air as you’re ready to walk off. “and i heard, word gets around if you hadn’t noticed.” you motion to the three girls that are giving jay the stank eye for ignoring them.
—
“hey, you’re coming to get food with us after school right?” heeseung questions. watching as jay places his indoor shoes in his respective cubby. “yeah, but you guys can go on ahead, I have to go to the store quickly.” he tell him. heeseung nods before the end of the day bell rings throughout the halls and kids begin flocking out their classrooms and flooding the halls, eager to get out of the school.
jay walks to the nearest stationary store, walking up to the front counter with long and quick strides.
“hi there, what can i do for you?” an old man asks him, recognizably he was owner of the store that jay had been going to when he ordered his other name tags throughout the years of his schooling.
“i’m looking to order a new name tag.” jay says, searching for his wallet out of his bag.
“of course. what’s the name?” he asks. jay is busy rummaging through his bag to hear the jingle door opening behind him. you recognize jay by his voice but his back is towards you when you emerge through the door.
“it’s [y/f/n].”
“can you write that on this slip of paper. it’ll be done in just a few minutes.” he kindly tells jay. jay nods, taking the paper and writing your name on it. you cheeks grow flushed as you realize the act of kindness jay was doing for you. you can’t decipher the reason for your heart's rapid beating. part of you was thinking you were just hearing things. jay could’ve said another name similar to yours. yet what are the chances this similar named person also lost their nametag and needed a replacement. afraid he would see you, you leave the store in a hurry. grabbing sunoo by the wrist and dragging him far away from the store and beginning the trip to your neighborhood.
jay hears the jingle of the door this time, and he turns around expecting someone to be there yet he finds no one except for the door closing on its own. a chill runs down his spine before he swishes around to proceed with the payment of the name tag. within a few minutes, the name tag is put into a small mesh drawstring bag and handed to him. to which, he stores in his pocket. he thanks the owner before leaving the store and beginning to make his way to the restaurant where his friends were eating.
—
jay has never felt more embarrassed in his life. he has no reason to be embarrassed. but all the eyes on him, for once in his life, he can’t stand the staring. classmates watch the interaction between you two. jay hadn’t expected a hoard of students to enter the classroom at the exact moment he started to converse with you. the pair of eyes he’s always wanted on him are now staring at him and he can feel the slight wobble in his knees.
“jay?” you call his name and it brings him out of a trance.
“everyone’s staring, what are you doing?” you scan over your classmate, wondering if he was feeling sick. but you had a feeling you knew why he had approached you in the first place. jay places the pink mesh drawstring bag on your desk quickly and he looks as if he is about to implode, his ears have become so red that he simultaneously looks like he had a violent allergic reaction to something as well. the both of you can feel the pressure from the several students watching, and the whispering that was so obviously about you and jay caused you both to turn absolutely red.
“you told me you lost your nametag so i got you another one.” he tells you quickly. you don’t really know what to tell him except the pounding beating of your heart can tell it all. jay’s hand rests momentarily on the edge of your desk, though he fears that if he takes his hand off your desk, a sweat imprint of his hand would be left behind and jay becomes queasy at the thought so he retracts his hand quickly and wipes him on his jacket.
you grab the small bag and pull the nametag out. inspecting it before clipping it onto your blazer. jay doesn’t miss the way you smile softly up at him. he can’t help but smile down at you too. you forget for a second that everyone’s eyes are on you.
“thanks jay. is there any way i could repay you?”
“come watch me and my friends open for the spring festival?”
—
it was one little favorable way of repaying jay. that was the only thing you had to do. just watch him and his friends open the show. it couldn’t be that bad. not bad in a way that they were going to be bad. but bad in a way where you had to stop yourself and watch yourself from catching any feelings.
though jay had been so kind to you lately. you were always a self-guiding hand to yourself though. always quick to stay away from relationships and boys like him more importantly. you knew how others perceived him. while you heard about the way he would treat girls, something about the jay that was being so respectful to you made you assume that he was adapting, either that or he was genuinely a changed person.
it’s not like you didn’t know that his band was performing, you didn’t even know he had a band until sunoo showed you a new advertisement poster for the spring festival that include a new band that you hadn’t heard of. turns out, it was jay’s band.
you were mostly attending the festival because sunoo loved going to them, not to mention your little delusional “crush” on that upperclassmen drummer who played in the school festivals all the time. you weren’t entirely delusional, you knew you had no intention in seeking a relationship with him anyway, it was just a fun way to stay grounded. you had crushes like this all time, little minor infatuation flicks with people you thought were cute.
you were so good at ignoring jay at first. ignoring him was easy, he was barely in class in the beginning of the semester, either that or he was constantly sleeping. you would never know why he started trying to talk to you. it started with asking you about homework that he had missed, to asking you if you were going to parties that you weren’t even invited to, not that you really cared. to asking you if you were going to sports games. admittedly, you knew why girls would fall at his feet, he was attractive.
but you were extremely stubborn, you were guarded, that’s just the way you usually were. people only really came to know you as this high achieving honors student that was conveniently the class president. everyone was tense around you, everyone walked on eggshells around you because obviously as someone who would study constantly you would never have time to go out right?
for the longest time, you learned how to be independent, how to protect yourself from disappointment. even if that meant setting up impenetrable walls. of course the little sunshine sunoo had used a pogo stick to jump over said walls. and now jay park. the little weirdo comparable to the jehovah’s witness people that would come to your door every day. somehow jay had pried his way into your heart. perhaps he had scaled the walls.
after several accounts of rejection to his offers, which you come to soon realize were offers that didn’t make you feel like an outsider to the rest of your classmates which you had ultimately rejected because of your fear. when you had accepted his invitation to watch his band open for the spring festival. it almost didn’t feel like a favour.
—
“you’ve written a song already? i’m surprised you’re so invested in this band thing.” sunghoon scans over the chicken scratch notes scribbled down as jake and jay’s “sheet music”.
“dude… are you in love with someone? these lyrics are about wanting someone’s attention.” heeseung laughs. jay turns to his friends, jungwon sits on the bleachers by the side of the music room with an amused smile. jake lets out a snort. fingers turning his bass guitars tuning keys. “isn’t it obvious. he wants yn’s attention.”
“that’s not what the songs about!” jay defends himself. the familiar feeling of heating resurfacing to his face. “oh yeah? then what’s it about?” heeseung smirks. jake wiggles his eyebrow at his friend as sunghoon lets out a holler. “all this effort just for a girls attention. looks like we have to do this so jay gets a girlfriend.” heeseung lets out a joking sigh.
“i don’t want her to be my girlfriend, i just want her to fall for me.” jay admits aloud. frustrated that his friends just were getting it. his friends halt their laughter as they look at him with doting stares. they all look at one another, sharing the same type of communicating look “… because you fell for her too, right?”
feeling as if he had to sit down after standing up abruptly. jay recalls all his signs of attraction. he doesn’t believe in love at first sight, though he does believe in attraction at first sight. when had jay first laid eyes on you? it must’ve been the grade 10 open house. upon being introduced to their home room classes, jay saw you. no drastic changes since then. you are a little shorter than you were now. sunoo was still your very best friend among those days, he often wondered how you came to know the boy. did it date back to when you guys were still in middle school? elementary even? he wondered how sunoo was the only person allowed in your personal circle after distancing yourself from everyone.
when going out with his girlfriend at the time, jay had spotted you waiting at the bus stop alone at night. you were still in your school uniform but you looked tired, or it could’ve been the poor lighting of the street lamps illuminating sides of the road that casted dark circles upon your eyes. the next day at school, he noticed you weren’t there and had grown concerned that perhaps you hadn’t returned home last night. he overhears sunoo talking to his other friends at the canteen during lunchtime that you had just fallen ill and he is glad nothing had happened to you.
jay and his friends walk into the convenience store that sunoo works at and there you are sitting behind the counter with sunoo. he notices you’re preoccupied with your homework, though he can’t help but notice the way you twirl your pencil in one hand whilst tilting your head to the side, as if looking at it from another angle would help you understand it better. he thinks it’s cute.
if he was already feeling his stomach twist and turn before talking to you in any instances in the past, then seeing you now would definitely have his stomach folding in on itself. he wants to hit himself for not being the smooth talking jerk he was when trying to talk to other girls.
you were no better. sunoo is busy retagging items to be put on the shelves. you are sitting behind the cash register counter with your face hot and red, leaning back on an office chair with your arms crossed over your body.
“when i walked into the stationary store i overheard him ordering the name tag for me.” you tell sunoo, your hands come to your face. hiding the blush bleeding onto your cheeks. “dense much.” your friend says, your brows furrow at the blonde headed boy, neck nearly snapping as you stare daggers into the side of his head.
“how am i dense?”
“he obviously likes you. how far has he gone for other girls? sure, paid meals are one thing but being as thoughtful as ordering a name tag so you don’t have to go through the hassle? he’s making your life easier for you.” it surprised you with how much sunoo knew about this type of stuff, to your best knowledge, sunoo had never been in a relationship. you gawk slightly at his thought process.
“so, do you like him back?”
–
you quickened your pace, hoping to make it on time to the music room to see if jay was still there practicing. you hold two apple juices in your hands before. curses for whoever made the school so incredibly long because why were you running a whole 3km race just to get to the room you wanted.
by the time your hand reaches out for the door frame of the music room, the door slides open and jay walks out, almost body checking you with his guitar bag barely missing your face. you don’t know why your breathing so heavily, it was just a very fast paced walk from across the school. jay wisps around to apologize to the random person he almost hit. though his mouth contorts open, nothing comes out when he sees you standing there a bit frazzled.
“sorry, almost hit you there.” jay apologizes, not stopping himself from smiling as he looks at you. his eyes glaze over you.
“i was looking for you.” you completely ignore what he says, not really caring if he had smacked you with his guitar or not. your words has his mind racing and his stomach doing teeny flips.
“are you alright?” now it’s your turn to simply melt at his words. you want to scold yourself and tell yourself to get it together. your knees turn wobbly and for a moment you lose your balance but you catch yourself, jay’s arm juts forward at your flinching and this small gesture has you looking between his arm and his face. god, his handsome face. it was so punchable and some days you wanted to do just that.
“i’m fine, i’m just here to say thank you, again.” when jay looks at you, he doesn’t see the uptight class president that presents herself to everybody. he’s grateful for your thankfulness, but he doesn’t want a thank you. he wants you. but for now, he’ll just have to keep it in, at least until the festival. he retracts his hand but before he does you shove the apple juice drink into his hand. the mere feeling of your fingers brushing against his even for just the split second leaves tingles that don’t subside until he watches you turn your back on him and begin speed walking away.
“you’re falling for me, aren’t you?” your steps falter, wondering if he had really just said that. jay doesn’t believe it himself. you don’t really know how to respond but jay begins walking to come up beside you with a cheeky smile.
“you’d like that, wouldn’t you?” your eyes fail to meet his, you’re scared you might actually fall, quite literally, this time.
“i wouldn’t be opposed to it, no.” jay cracks open the apple juice drink and begins drinking from it.
“how’d you know i liked this drink?”
“i didn’t know, it’s just my favourite drink.” wrong, sunoo told you what drink jay comes in to buy the most. you weren’t necessarily lying when you told him it was your favourite drink either.
“oh my gosh, we’re meant to be.” jays cheeks hurt from smiling, he knows he’s going to go home and lay in his bed all night thinking about this. “yeah right. just because we like the same drink?”
“meant to be.” he says in a sing-song way. this makes you laugh. jay likes it when you laugh. he likes it when he makes you laugh. not really a sight he sees often, but he’s glad he’s one of the people that can evoke such a happy emotion from you.
when you two reach the front gates of the school, you expect to part ways with jay, considering he would always walk the opposite way from you. but when he stands there wondering why you were just staring at him, he tilts his head slightly.
“you think i’m letting you walk home alone?”
“go home jay.” you smile softly. jay shakes his head, he chews on his bottom lip and your eyes don’t leave them. “you can walk me to that lamppost over there.” you point towards an old lamppost two blocks away and jay takes that over nothing. the walk there is painstakingly slow. though within those two blocks you two talk, and laugh, make banter. jay almost doesn’t want to make it to the lamppost because he knows he’ll have to leave you. you’re thinking the same thing. you weren’t that paranoid about walking alone in the night but having jay there, someone to talk to, helped you feel at ease. jay liked being with you, he liked when he was around you. and not in the way where his hands would feel sweaty.
“how about that lamppost instead?”
and this continued until you got home. you stood a fair distance away from your house. the chilling night air was nipping at jay’s face now, but that was alright.
“ok it 's really time for you to go home now.” you tell him. his smile drops and he frowns exaggeratingly.
“thank you, again.” you finish. you look so good to him. whether it be in any type of lighting it doesn’t matter. jay catches himself as he feels himself leaning forward, though he plays it off as if he was just rocking back and forth on his feet. you don’t seem to notice though.
“you probably owe me another apple drink tomorrow.” he tells you. you can’t tell if he’s joking or not but you’re ready to come to school prepared with a bulk case of the drink if he really wants it.
“get home safe, alright?”
jay watches you exit into your house and then he begins his traverse back home. thinking about everything that had just happened. now that he had begun to realize his feelings for you, the feelings were beginning to hit him like a ton of bricks. he couldn’t stop his heart from racing. his mind was constantly flooded with memories of you tonight.
–
a suspectedly good night was spoiled with a mere text from someone you had least expected.
3 notifications from kimjaehyun
kimjaehyun
hey yn
we havent talked in a while…
are you dating park jay?
the member of the band you had a tiny little crush on had texted you. not that you really had a crush on him anymore. something happened between the two of you last year after the spring festival. just a small situationship that didn’t work out. for upperclassmen, kim jaehyun was immature. everyone said that teenage boys were stupid but you hadn’t realiize, this stupid.
you scrambled to turn off your read receipts to see if jaehyun had really said what he said. not even a hello? or a hi?
y/f/n
no… why do you ask?
you bite at your nails awaiting his response. shutting off your phone you feel as if you were still a younger version of yourself throwing your phone across the room in fear of what his response was. after a few minutes you hear the ping of your phone. followed by another few more pings. wondering if he was just texting you a bunch, you climbed off your bed and sat on the rug opening your phone to see.
2 new notifications from kimjaehyun
parkjay sent you a friend request
you click on jaehyun’s texts first. why was he wondering if you were dating jay?
kimjaehyun
oh thats a relief
can we talk after school tomorrow?
–
you wait inside jaehyuns empty classroom alone. wondering where he is. two bottles of the apple juice drink jay likes reside in the opened bag beside your desk. you wonder what jaehyun has to say. especially after the way you two drifted apart and ended things last year.
jaehyun steps into the classroom, wandering eyes searching for you. kim jaehyun has not changed since you last saw him, you rarely see him around considering he is in his last year now and has classes on the uppermost third floor where all the seniors are. his light brown hair lays untouched and shaggy, he was still sporting the mullet he has had since his first year. and he still smiled the same. striking you in your heart.
“what did you need to talk to me about?” you ask, wanting to get to point. you had told jay that you were doing something. you told him you were dropping by the music room to drop something off.
“as you know, my band and i are performing during the spring festival. our set was cut short because of the addition of jays band. i was wondering if you could give us back our set time by.. i don’t know, maybe getting rid of their performance altogether?” he flashes you a grin. how you used to perceive him with such adoration and respect but that had just been thrown out the window.
“your band can’t hog the entire night, jaehyun.” you tell him, irritatedly wanting to get out and leave the classroom already. “it wouldn’t be fair to them either.” jaehyun’s grin falls at your words. his arms cross together as he places them on your desk and gives you a pout. your brow twitches. still the same old, immature, jaehyun.
“don’t give me that face, they’re only doing one song and opening for you. you’re being selfish. if that’s all then we’re done here.” you tell him, grabbing your bag off the floor and getting up from the desk. jaehyun stands up in unison to you.
“wait no don’t go, that’s not all,” jaehyun blurts out. you had already reached the door and was about to step out the classroom. you’re tempted to hear whatever he has to say out.
“i’ve been thinking about you lately.” your back is still facing him. you shake your head and wonder if his words are laced with sincerity. you haven’t thought about jaehyun in a while. he was the one exception to your “no people allowed through” rule. and upon breaking that, he caused an aftermath of chaos and emotions for you. you try to ignore his statement as you leave the classroom, shutting the door in the process and making your way out the school instead. you forget all about the plans of heading to see jay. jaehyun’s request had turned your mood a whole 180.
when you arrive home, you open your phone to see messages from both jay and jaehyun. jaehyun has been thinking about you lately. what the hell does that even mean? why does his relapse in feelings come around the same time the two of you were talking last year. safe to say, sunoo receives a call that night. and he appears at your front door with snacks and face masks.
parkjay
wya?
wheres my apple drink :((
u didn’t stop by
r u ok?
kimjaehyun
i hope i didnt scare u bc of the sudden confession
but i was honest w what i said
you don’t respond to jaehyun after that. only leaving him on delivered. you respond to jay though. mustering up some lame excuse as to why you couldn’t stop by. something about your parents asking you to come home. jay had bought the excuse, following up with a couple of texts asking if it was anything serious. sunoo sleeps over that night as well. the two of you falling asleep in the middle of a drama series, and waking up the following saturday morning forgetting which episode you left off on.
–
jay grows more irritated as the week leading up to the spring festival arrives. advertisement for the spring festival was put up all over the school. announcements were made of the several bands and dance groups performing. a lot of student made stalls were being set up in the front lawn already. jay was being asked by several students everyday about his band. despite only playing one song, groups of girls and boys have already made it known to him that they were attending just for his band and that they were excited.
you pry jay to let you hear the song that they are going to be performing, you even ask jungwon to give you a little sneak peak of it as well. upon hearing that it was an original song written by jay, your fascination grows.
“c’mon let me hear it.” you and jay are walking along the front quad during lunch. jay started inviting you to watch him and his friends play soccer. even inviting sunoo to join them in their games to which he accepted out of competitiveness.
“no no no no. you’re gonna have to wait just like everyone else.” you hand him one of the apple drinks. the drinks have become a staple in your everyday routine except you both alternate giving each other the drinks instead. half of the time it’s sunoo letting you rob the store and take drinks for free because he knows you’re trying to save money.
“plus, i’m kinda nervous to show you.” he says, looking down and staring at the pavement. you scoff. “if you’re nervous in front of me what makes you think that you can perform in front of all these students?” jay wasn’t scared of performing in front of crowds, he has done it before but in a different sense, in basketball he has performed in large gyms in front of a lot of people. he wasn’t nervous in front of people, he was nervous in front of you. and for good reason. you played the guitar, he wanted to impress you.
“hey yn!”
you and jay turn your heads in unison. jaehyun stands a few feet away with a hand in his blazer pocket and one waving at you. jay’s eyes fixed on the unknown guys name tag. he thinks back to the time sunoo told him this was the guy you had eyes on during last years spring festival. jay’s eyes fall back onto you, you grin fell into that of an unknown expression. jaehyun approaches you two and you plaster a fake smile in greeting him.
“jaehyun, hi.” followed with a curt nod, jaehyun doesn’t really look his age. he looks older. he’s about the same height as jay. but he notices the fleeting glint in jaehyun’s eye as he looks at you. he notices the smirk playing on his lips. but he takes the most notice in your disengagement in the conversation with him. almost straying away from jaehyun as he approaches. you move towards jay, but he’s all too familiar with that look you’re now giving him. jaehyun’s playful guise drops as his eyes follow yours, landing on jay.
“you must be jay.”
jaehyun was the so-called ex sunoo mentioned to him the first time he asked about you. jay doesn’t quite know what to say to jaehyun. but from the way he felt as though jaehyun was coming onto you again. jay felt uneasy. he wanted to say something to get you out of the situation, taking into account the disturbed look you had on your face.
“yeah, jaehyun right?” jaehyun nods. “you’re opening for us the night of the festival right? man, i did not expect you guys to start a band at all. i only really thought you played sports.” he says, a hand coming to his hair, combing it back to get it out of his face yet his bangs still topple over his forehead. jay doesn’t really know how to respond to that.
“i guess i just have other talents to show.” he shrugs. jay wonders what you found attractive with this guy. were you into his face? did you like his hair? should jay start growing out his hair for a mullet too? he wouldn’t be opposed to a short mullet. or perhaps it was just because he could play the drums. jay could play the drums too. albeit, not better than sunghoon but he can definitely learn if that’s what you wanted.
“i’m looking forward to the festival jay, i’ll see you two around.”
jaehyun begins walking away and you let out a deep breath. “that was weird.” jay comments. turning to you and checking if you were alright. “me and jaehyun used to date.” you tell him quietly. jay hears you perfectly fine though. he was well aware you had some kind of crush on jaehyun, but dating was something he never really thought of because you were just so closed off. at the thought of someone else being able to swipe you off your feet, jay grew kind of cold and a chill ran through his body. he wonders why you decide to tell him right now.
“i’m sorry i just had to tell you because he talked to me for the first time in a year last friday. and he was being a jerk, and that ruined my mood because i was so excited to go and see you but then no, he had to ruin everything and then i went home and cried into my pillow.” you tuck your hair behind your ear, looking down at your shoes. you don’t know why you’re being so emotional, especially out in the open. jaehyun kind of scares you. and watching jay and jaehyun first meet was like two worlds colliding for you. you feared that jaehyun was going to do something that would hurt jay’s feelings to make it look bad on you despite you not doing anything in that sort of way.
jay’s hands came to either side of your arms and held you straight. you looked up and he almost felt his heart tear slightly when he saw the tears springing from your eyes. “why are you sorry? you didn’t do anything wrong.” he consoles you. his hands are arm against your blazer. you’re not sure what complex you to hug jay first, he doesn’t expect it either. here you are, in the middle of the school quad hugging jay because you didn’t want to show your startled tears to anyone. you also didn’t want jay to know that him telling you that you shouldn’t be sorry for something that wasn’t your fault, affected you this much.
jay’s hands travel to your back while you hug him. unbeknownst to him, it had gone unnoticed that his heart was hammering against his chest. and you, being the neighbor to his heart right now could hear it thumping. “it’s unfortunate he made you upset. i can beat him up for you.” you laughed at his suggestion as you pulled away from him. you felt all warm inside. you played it off as your endorphins fucking up your body but lets be honest, you really knew why you were warm.
“yeah okay sure. you can try.” even in tears with puffy under eyes you still look absolutely stunning to jay.
“what?! i totally could. have you seen me?”
–
the night of the festival, students were sent home early to get ready while others stayed at school to keep working on their stalls. other students volunteered to run games and other fun stands. the stage was set up for the performers and the groups were just going through dress rehearsals and practices. there were many firsts for jay, but this was the first time he would be performing a literal call for attention to a girl that he really likes, that he’s not 100% sure likes him in front of a lot of students so yeah, a lot of firsts for jay!
“you look like you’re about to throw up.” jake tells jay who stares at himself menacingly in the bathroom mirror. sunghoon and heeseung take a few hefty steps away from jay who looks pale. “what are the chances that yn doesn’t even get the point of the song? i think that would be hilarious.” sunghoon asks. fixing his hair in the mirror.
“don’t say that.” jungwon comes walking out of the bathroom stall in some casual clothes. he flattens his shirt out with his palms and slides in between jake and jay in need of the sink. “she’ll understand. i’m pretty sure. as if the lyrics weren’t obvious enough.”
“‘standing at the crosswalk, i can’t move an inch’ i think it’s cute.” jungwon says while reciting the lyrics jay was so shy about showing his friends. jungwon moves away from the sink, grabbing a paper towel to dry his hands. “you think everything is cute, jungwon.” sunghoon says rolling his eyes jokingly. “i don’t think you’re cute.” jungwon says in a matter-of-factly tone. sunghoon mimics him with his tongue sticking out and jungwon does the same in return. the other three boys roll their eyes in response to their childishness.
“are you going to dedicate the song to her like all those cheesy romance movies?” questions heeseung.
“no… should i be?” jay questions, at first he was opposed to it. but if that’s what his friends think he should be doing then maybe he should do it? jake and heeseung shake their heads ‘no’ with distasteful expressions on their faces. “i think you should just leave it up to her interpretation. like how literature teachers make you do it.” jake inputs. jay leans against the wall of the washroom now. staring at himself and then his friends. sunghoon and jungwon continue to joke around with each other.
“there’s a possibility she would just leave and then boom, i’m heartbroken. or she would come find me backstage and happily ever after.”
“why are you thinking so negatively? this isn’t like you man. you always work hard to get what you want. you threw away all those nasty habits of playing around with girls. yn literally changed you and now you’re scared?” jungwon asks, pausing his playful fighting with sunghoon to lecture jay. jungwon was right, jay’s friends nodded in agreement. jay was never one to back down from a challenge, and he rarely ever let things get to his head, not in the way this dilemma did.
“i think i’m just scared of fucking things up with her. i really like her.”
“that’s what we thought. if you really like her you wouldn’t give up on her. no chickening out.”
by the time you and sunoo arrived, a lot of students were in the quad. some playing the carnival games that were set up. some were eating the food that students were responsible for serving. music was playing from the stage, but the concerts didn’t start until 8pm, it was only 7:30.
sunoo proceeded to drag you around, though you were just searching around for any sight of a dark haired guitarist. sunoo tried to shake the nerves off you too, knowing full well you were just here because of said guitarist. it ended up working because for the next 30 minutes, you were preoccupied with the large amounts of food sunoo ordered, as well as the games. even after playing for all that time, you and sunoo were not very lucky with anything that include throwing, catching or shooting. leaving you empty handed from the plethora of plushies that the game vendors were offering.
“don’t be upset, sunoo, i’ll ask jay to win me a couple and you can have some.” you tell your friend, he laughs before checking the time on his phone. “jay is gonna be going up soon, we should go to get a good spot for the show.” sunoo tells you. you nod, letting him lead the way. sunoo finds a spot not too crowded with people and he claims the area as yours. while waiting you take your phone out to see if anyone has texted you.
2 new notifications from parkjay
parkjay
hey are you already at school?
when u see this can u come meet me at the right backstage stairs a few mins before the show starts?
your heart flutters and you tell sunoo you’re going to use the washroom really quickly. sunoo tells you to hurry before the crowd gets any bigger because he doesn’t want you getting lost. you tell him you’ll be quick and you fleetingly speed walk your way to the right hand stage stairs where jay said to meet.
you round the front of the stage and find jay sitting on the stairs while looking straight ahead. he looks nervous and he fidgets with his fingers before ultimately deciding to stand up but you say something before he gets a chance to leave.
“did i keep you waiting?” you ask, jay whips his head around and his features soften when he see’s you. he awe’s at your outfit, finding your fashion sense impeccable. something else that he likes about you. jay shakes his head before he steps down a few more flights of stairs and smiles down at you. you meet him at the bottom while he still stands a few steps higher, making him look over you.
“i didn’t see your text until earlier. me and sunoo were preoccupied with the carnival games and we lost track of time. we didn’t even win anything but we lost a bunch of money.” you tell him laughing. your story makes jay chuckle. “talking to you makes my nerves go away.” he tells you honestly. you’re hoping the sun is setting quick enough to hide the red tinge creeping from your neck to your ears.
“don’t be nervous, i know you’re gonna do great.” you tell him. you reach for his hand and he lets you take it with no hesitation. you tug jay down a step lightly, he’s only a bit taller than you now. you feel yourself shaking, hoping it’s not obvious with the way your hand tremors slightly. jay seems to understand as he bends down, your lightly glossed lips meet his cheek, leaving a red-ish tint to his cheek. jay stands up straight after you retract from him and you give him a small shy smile.
“good luck!”
–
the concert begins shortly after you return to your spot where sunoo is busy taking pictures with the beautiful sunset lighting in the background. the concert announcer blaring through the speakers bring an influx of students to the grassy field where the concert is taking place.
you watch as the host of the concert takes a place in the middle of the stage and begins introducing jay’s band. you hear students screaming and cheering left and right before the lights dim down and jay walks out with his members. it really was as if you were at a concert because jay and his friends had fans around the school. girls and boys liked them a lot, so when they appeared it had the audience screaming.
“this is an original song.. dedicated to someone really special to me. so, enjoy everyone.”
the lights change into that of a red and orange colour, though there is a spotlight placed onto each of the members and then the song begins.
you had to admit that jay really was a talented person. from sports to playing guitar, to even his voice. you were a fan of music. and jay looked great on the stage. heeseung and jay’s voice had a lot of screams from the audience and it frightened you a little bit. but sunoo was beginning to piece together the lyrics of the song instead of jumping around with joy like the other students that were watching. he looked towards you, you seemed to be enjoying yourself as well. you were happy and smiling.
you begin to really listen to the lyrics of the song. wanting attention, panic, standing at the crosswalk. you didn’t want to believe that this song was about you. but at this rate, who else was it about. you were the only person the entirety of the school has seen with jay other than his friends for the past two months and it was unavoidable. you would’ve felt terrible if the song was for someone else and you had kissed jay on the cheek prior to the performance. there was no denying it. you had your attention on jay.
sunoo realizes that it had clicked in your head. you can barely hear your thoughts with the volume of the concert and the singing voices of the other boys. you never take your eyes off jay though. he wasn’t looking at you at the time but his eyes scanned over the crowd frantically whilst he strummed his guitar. he was looking for you. when he finally found you, you were already looking at him. he couldn’t decipher the look on your face but you were smiling at him. your smile was contagious, jay couldn’t help but smile as he sang.
as the song came to a close, you left earlier than most of the crowd. sunoo followed you out of the mosh pit of students. jay is the first person off the stage when the song ends. his eyes never left yours until the end and when he sees you bolting towards the right stairwell to the stage he knows he has to meet you there.
when you reach the stairs, jay is already on the last steps and his sweaty palms are back, his heart is ramming against his chest yet again and the butterflies in his stomach are basically a rampaging zoo at this point. you almost pounce on jay when you see him. wanting to hit him, yet kiss in at the meaningful gesture. you bury your face into his chest and he rocks you side to side as he envelops you in a hug.
“you wrote that for me?” you ask, wanting reassurance, that this was real, that his feelings were real, that you were the one. “if it was about someone else i wouldn't be hugging you right now.” jay tells you. you lift your head to look up at him and his hands come to your cheeks. jay pulls you in and pushes his lips to yours. he parts from your lips, foreheads still touching before you two erupt into laughter.
➞ hockey!au, inspired by the 90s love by nct u mv !!!
➞ synopsis : jay plays against your ex's hockey team
➞ fluff????
➞ word count : 1.6k
➞ tw : jay kicking ass semi-violent fight moment, swearing, just an itty bitty mention of blood
ᓚᘏᗢ aj — LOLLL took me so long to acc publish anything on here. if she sucks lets just pretend she doesn’t. smth short for tonight bc this is all i’ve been thinking of recently. enforcer refers to a player that deters and respond to violent play by the opposing team by starting fights w them. ALSO HAHAH I KNOW NOTHING ABOUT HOCKEY.
jay’s vision blurs momentarily as he gets shoved into the side panels of the rink. he regains his balance quickly though, and he brushes off the aching pain in his shoulders. he looks up hoping to get a glimpse of the jersey number that had just body checked him. he stomps on the ice, breezing past his teammates and the opposing team alike. he scans the ice for the puck and finds an open spot, and he watches his team fall back into a defensive position when they fail to shoot the puck into the opposing team's net.
that stupid number 10 was getting on jay’s nerve. he wore his jersey proudly as he strutted the ice with such toxicity. he was a bad player. he had been playing dirty, and the refs weren’t calling any of it. they turned a blind eye to it. he was known as one of the enforcers for the opposing team. now, jay was in no way the enforcer of his team; that was left for his other teammates. jay was the center of his team. jay was warned about number 10. not by his teammates nor his coach, but by his girlfriend.
"jay whatever he says or does during the game. just ignore him."
jay wanted to ignore him so bad. jay could tolerate the rough play on the ice; the shoving was all part of the game, and that game, jay could play. but the comments were much worse to tolerate. not when they included you. number 10 was your ex, jang jiwook. the stories you had a hard time opening up to jay about made jay hate his guts, despite not knowing the guy at all. upon hearing about the things he had done to you, jay just had to know what he looked like to at least keep an eye out for you when in public. throughout the entirety of the first half of the game, jiwook had been throwing comments left and right to jay about you, his beloved girlfriend. the misogynistic name-calling was enough to get steam blowing out of jay’s ears as if he were an animated character. while jay was good at keeping his temper in check, he couldn’t keep ignoring what jiwook was saying about you. jay wanted to listen to you so bad. he didn’t want to upset you first and foremost.
jiwook skates past jay again, briskly brushing past his shoulder. jay manages to skate into an open spot where he steals the puck away from the current holder and is able to turn the game around from there. upon rounding to the blue line nearest to the opposing team's net. jay looks to his right, finding jiwook coming in with such speed that he is sure he is about to come in and bulldoze jay. and so he passes the puck to another teammate, hoping they will be able to finish the play and score for their team. his teammate is able to make the score, which leads to a chorus of cheers from their school crowd.
jiwook skates up past jay with a smirk playing on his lips. jay’s irritation begins to grow.
"i heard you were with yn? have fun with my leftovers." and with that, he skates away. jay can hear him chuckling under his breath. jay breathes out for a moment. the cold arena makes his hot breath come out as a white fog. eyes averted to the clock and then back to the game. jay’s eyes watch carefully as his teammates skate with such vigour; he can hear the calls from left and right, yet as sunghoon calls out for jay to pass to, before he can even receive the puck in the bill of his stick, a body comes smashing into his side, sending jay toppling over.
the audience falls into a frenzy, some cheering, some complaining. jay’s teammates turn their heads in concern for his condition. jay feels jiwook’s heavy weight lift off him, and jiwooks teammates are hitting their sticks against the boards of the rink. despite the heavy hit to his head, jay can still see straight, and all he wants to go for is the big blue jersey with the numbers 10 stamped in white letters plastered on the back.
sunghoon approaches jay; he asks him if he’s okay. but his words just sounded slurred to jay, who begins catching up to jiwook. sunghoon looks towards the student section of the audience in search of you. fully knowing what’s about to happen next.
jay can hear the shouts of his teammates in the players box, and he is sure his coach is mixed in there yelling about not following the play. but he simply shakes his white gloves off and rips his helmet off his head, proceeding to toss it to the side. his right arm comes to tap jiwooks shoulder, who spins around on his skates only to be met with jay’s cold fist to his face. the crowd's roars intensify after the first hit.
the first hit is enough to get the helmet twisted partially off jiwook’s head. but the second left hook knocks the helmet clean off. leaving a defenceless jiwook to jay’s assault. jiwooks arms come to either side of jay’s bulky arms, and he quickly rips his gloves off in an attempt to retaliate for the violence. jay is full of rage; he is already burning up under all the equipment layered on his body.
"don’t fucking talk about yn like that," jay tells him. hair disheveled. jiwook struggles against jay who throws the last punch before the refs tear the two boys apart. jay comes back to his senses upon being scolded by the referee as he gets ushered to the penalty box. jiwook is skating with crimson blood slowly dripping from his nose, it drips onto his chin and onto the neck cut of his jersey.
jay refuses to look at jiwook from the penalty box, but when he cranes his neck to look at the spot where you reside among the other watchers in the arena, he fails to find you. but he knows you are probably upset at him for acting out. despite your warnings for jay, he never promised you that he wouldn’t hurt jang jiwook.
after five minutes in the box, he returns to the players box, where his teammates cheer him on and praise him for being able to square up to an enforcer despite being a center. fighting wasn’t jay’s job, at least not on the ice. but fighting for you? it was his job, and he takes his job very seriously. his teammates send him to the locker room, and jay wholeheartedly expects his coach to be in the locker room, where he would get scolded and lectured for not waiting on an enforcer on his team to take the damage for him. that wasn’t what entirely plagued his mind though.
upon reaching the changing rooms, he pushes them open and expects to face his rugged and scary coach. but as he prepares to feel his coach’s wrath rain down on him, he finds you instead. your purse dangling by your side while you stand with your arms crossed. you wear jay’s jersey with pride, regardless of his new reputation on the ice and the several stares people gave you when you began to make your way to the change rooms to talk to jay.
"look, i’m sorry—"
"you fucked him up good, you know." you told him, and jay lets out a breath of relief. you weren’t that mad. at least if you were, it wasn’t really showing. "he was saying shit about you. what did you expect me to do?" jay asks you, crossing his arms over his chest to mimic you.
"didn’t i tell you to ignore him?"
"how ‘bout you try ignoring my ex when she calls me her leftovers?" jay argues, huffing out in annoyance. jay sits on one of the benches, exhausted and with his head still spinning. you stop your movements. "he called me his leftovers?" your expression morphs to that of amusement. "well now i’m glad that you kicked his ass." you say. maneuvering past the other benches and duffle bags scattered over the floor. you take jay’s head into your arms and stand between his legs. he lays his head on your chest automatically. jay’s arms come around your torso, hugging you closer to him. a hand rests on one of his shoulders while the other tangles in jay’s hair.
"and to be clear, if your ex said anything bad about you, i would fight her too." you laugh softly. you can hear jay’s muffled chuckles. "i think i've got to go before your coach actually comes and scolds you." you tell him softly. he lets out a whine, his arms circling around you tighter, refusing to let you go.
"you still have a game to play, jay." you tell him sweetly, hands coming to his shoulders. he parts from you. looking up at you with such a yearning gaze. his eyes are soft. contrasting the way his eyes sharpened when he looked at jiwook with such fervour during the game. you bend down to press a kiss onto the corner of jay’s lip. when you pull away, jay follows your lips. his eyes fluttered closed and not realizing what he was doing. a small smirk appears on his lips as he looks away from you and refocuses his gaze onto a different corner of the room out of a sudden burst of timidness. jay would do anything for you, even if that meant getting benched for the rest of the season because your loser dickhead ex boyfriend is salty you found a better man.
"park, you’re supposed to be attacking the net, not the opposing players." you and jay jump at the voice of jay’s coach booming through the locker room.
“you’re supposed to be attacking the net, not the opposing players”
attention, please!
jay asks your best friend what your type is just so he can get your attention
click your heart
⤷ jake
click your heart
⤷ sunghoon
the exit
sunghoon, your ex boyfriend, claims that he is over you yet he finds himself keeping up with your skating career three years after you break up. he figures that watching your competition will help him find closure.