'By My Side' Chapter One - Up all Night
We're all born beautiful. The greatest tragedy is being convinced we are not.
This, to most, is by no means the love story we tend to find in books or movies, I'll tell you that now. I'm Wooyoung by the way, or well, I'm his internal monologue. I'll be here to guide the story when needed so, get used to me. But anyways, I'm sure you want the actual story. Let's go back to where this story started.
~Cue comedic, yet annoying, tape rewind sound~
"Wooyoung! It's nearly three in the morning, why the fuck are you still awake?"
The boy groaned in response, used to the routine by now, "I can't sleep. I really feel like you should know that by now, it's literally been–" The ringing in his ears and a sharp stinging pain throbbing in his cheek as his mother slapped him made it impossible to finish the sentence.
"Don't you ever talk to me like that again, you ungrateful little shit. Do you know how much I've given up for you?"
"Yes ma'am," he replied as if it's second nature by now and sat his phone on his desk.
'Get some sleep Wooyoung. You have school in a few hours." He nodded and tossed the blanket over his head waiting for his mother to leave the room.
After a few minutes, he reaches for his phone and notices someone replied to his Instagram post he made a couple of hours earlier. He had been messing around with his makeup and had posted his setup as well as the finished look.
"Pretty!," the comment read, "you should really do your makeup more for school^^."
Wooyoung smiled a little and liked the comment, although he didn't immediately recognize the account. He doesn't typically get comments praising his work, quite the opposite actually. He checked who the account was run by, but it didn't have any posts of the person or their name. He shrugged it off and went back to his post.
"Aaaa TY!! I might actually today, heh I can't sleep so I have time", he responds and looks over at his desk, his products still sprawled all over it.
He reached over and turned his lamp on before getting out of bed. He walked over to his closet carefully looking through it to see what catches his attention. Despite his wardrobe being mostly black, he has a few brighter pieces. A baby pink sweatshirt he had cropped caught his attention and he grabbed a pair of light ripped jeans to go with it. He pairs it with a simple black belt, some rings, a couple of necklaces, and white Converse. A few final adjustments later and he's satisfied with his outfit.
"Now, what to do for my makeup." He sits down at his desk and starts scrolling Pinterest for inspiration, eventually settling on pink and blue clouds for his eyeshadow, and everything else being fairly neutral.
After finishing his makeup Wooyoung grabs his phone, checking the time and decides to just relax until he has to leave. He opens up Instagram to check other comments on his post and gets a text. It's the same account that commented earlier. He checks the account again and realizes they follow him now.
"Hii^^ I know this is weird, I just think you seem cool." Wooyoung smiles and hearts the message as it isn't uncommon for him to get messages from people who follow him.
"TY!! By the way, you said I should do my makeup for school. So, do we go to the same school?"
"Mhm, you'll figure out who I am later, I think I'm actually gonna talk to you today." Wooyoung laughs slightly and again likes the message.
"Well then, see you in a bit I guess, mystery man(?)."
"Yes, man. Also, we have the same lunch, I'm sure we can talk then if I don't see you before^^."
"You definitely don't sound like a stalker at all. But, oddly I trust you...enough to agree to this anyway. I gotta go though ttyl."
Wooyoung backs out of the conversation and goes back to the person's account. Having a few minutes before he needs to go downstairs for breakfast he looks through who's following the account. Sure enough, it's people from his school, mostly popular kids though.
"Wooyoung! Breakfast," he hears his mom shout. He quickly puts his phone up, grabbing his headphones, keys, and wallet as well before heading to the kitchen. "Sleep well?" she asks as he enters the room. He nods and sits down at the table.
"Thank you, Mom," he says, taking a few bites of the pancakes in front of him.
"I see you," she pauses, "dressed up.
"A school friend asked if I could do my makeup, so I wore something that goes with it," he quickly responds, trying to shut the conversation before it starts.
"I see. Well, I need you to drop your little brother off. I have to go to work early and I can't," she says gathering her things.
"Yes ma'am, I wish I was woken up a little earlier then. You know I prefer getting to school early."
"You need sleep, Wooyoung. You can't keep doing this to yourself. You look absolutely exhausted," She messes with his hair and kisses him and his brother on their foreheads, "Call me if you need me. Or if you need to come home, I'll call the school and have your father come get you."
"Yes ma'am." He finishes his food and walks over to the sink and washes his plate off. When his mother leaves he calls for Kyungmin to come downstairs so they can leave as well.
"You're gonna be there a little early okay," he says, messing with the little boy's hair and Kyungmin only nods in response. They head outside to Wooyoung's car and start making their way to school.
After dropping his little brother off he gets to the high school just a few minutes later. Luckily, a spot closer to the front is still open so he parks there and makes his way into the building.
"Wooyoung!" he hears as he's about to leave the main hall, "wait for me!" For one reason or another, he pauses and looks around for who's calling him. After a few seconds, a kid comes running up to him. San.
No way he thought to himself it couldn't have been his account could it?
As the other boy catches up to him he says, "See, I told you I'd talk to you today." He laughs a little and smiles.
Wooyoung pauses for a second and blankly stares at San, "Huh? Wait, that was you?"
"Guilty as charged. I uh, didn't know how to come up to you without you thinking I was gonna be like my friends. So uh, I texted you." He awkwardly smiles again, his face being noticeably redder than it was before.
Wooyoung backs up a little towards the bathroom, "Yeah, well. It didn't really help. You seemed nice over text but–"
"Wait. Wooyoung," he reaches out and grabs Wooyoung's sleeve, but almost immediately lets go. "I'm not here to make fun of you or hurt you. I said you seem cool because you do and I wanna get to know you."
"I don't think you understand. You and your friends have a," he pauses for a second, "reputation. I have no reason to trust you."
San sighs but nods, "Come here," he says, grabbing Wooyoung's sleeve and dragging him into the bathroom. Without pause, San hugs him. Pulling wooyoung into the point he's resting against Sans's chest.
"W-wa–? Let go of me!" Wooyoung pushed himself off the other and backed away again. "What was that for?"
"Look I needed a way to convince you I wasn't gonna hurt you and that was the first thing I thought of," he looked away slightly, "I'm sorry."
"It's- it's fine. It just scared me," Wooyoung replied, "I'm gonna go to class now." San nodded and moved to let him out.
Wooyoung quickly left the bathroom and tried to get to his class as quickly as possible. He was the first in the room. He sighed and sat down at his seat before putting his earbuds in. He just barely heard the first bell ring as the class started filling up.
He sighed but put up his earbuds and started getting out his things for class. When he looked up from his bag he saw a small piece of paper on his desk.
Opening it up the note read, "He likes you. Don't just ignore him." Wooyoung looked around the room trying to find who left the note. When he looked over at the door he saw Seonghwa, one of San's friends standing there. Seonghwa nodded and walked off after noticing Wooyoung was looking at him.
He put the note in his pocket and tried not to think about it too much. This is the class he does worst in and he needs to focus after all. The second bell rings and the teacher walks into the room, shutting the door behind himself.
"Alright, is everyone here, let us see," the teacher starts mumbling to himself, "good, glad to see everyone could make it today. As you all know by now, we have our midterm tests in a couple of weeks," the class lets out a collective groan, "I know but, we still have a unit to finish before then. Let's get started."
He makes his way to his desk and grabs a stack of papers, "Wooyoung, would you mind helping me pass these out?"
"Yes sir," Wooyoung mumbled, making his way to the desk.
Vocabulary, great he thought to himself, looking at the paper as he passed it out. When he finished passing out the papers he handed the extras to the teacher and went back to his desk. He grabbed the textbook from under his chair and flipped to the back, immediately starting to look for definitions.
He felt his phone buzz and looked at the now lit-up screen. It was a text from San. He stopped and pulled up the notification, reading it from there.
"Hey, can you come to the bathroom in a few? I wanna talk." Wooyoung turned off the screen and went back to the worksheet in front of him when his phone buzzed again. "Please, I won't do anything like what I did, I promise."
He sighed and put his pencil down, picking up his phone and opening the conversation, "When and which bathroom?"
"A few minutes or whenever you finish your work. You're in History, right?"
"Yep, three pages of vocabulary. I'll text you when I finish this page." He smiled a little, though he didn't know why and put his phone down. He rushed through the definitions, abbreviating and cutting words out whenever he could.
When he finished the page he raised his hand, "Mr. Kim, may I use the bathroom?"
"What page are you on?" The teacher responded, starting to walk his way.
"I just finished the first page."
"You may. Hurry up though, this is due at the end of class."
"Yessir," Wooyoung said, grabbing his phone and heading towards the bathroom.
"Hey, I'm on my way." He text as he rounded the corner to the main hall. He opened the door to the bathroom to see San already there.
San smiled a little and then looked away, "Seonghwa told you, didn't he?"
"Oh, you wanna talk about that? Yeah, he did. Kinda, he gave me a note." Wooyoung said, making sure the door is shut behind him. He rests against it and just looks at San. "Why? You don't even know me. Also, I could have sworn you've made fun of me for being gay."
"Heh, not my proudest moment. I uh, didn't know I was too when that happened. Or well I did but–"
"It's fine, sorta. I get it at least. But, you didn't answer my first question."
San's face seemed to get a little red, "Well honestly, I'm not sure. Like, I know I think you're attractive and I know I get super awkward when you're around but I don't know why." Wooyoung nodded slightly and moved a little closer to San, who was still almost completely across the room sitting on a changing bench.
"I'm the first guy you've liked aren't I? How about this, we talk for a while, get to know each other and all. We can hang out outside of school and stuff, then I ask you again in a couple of weeks. If you know why in two weeks, we can see where things go from there. Okay?"
San nods slightly, "You are and like, I don't know. It's different. I'm not like this at all with girls," his voice trails a little.
"San," Wooyoung said as he moved over to the bench and sat down beside the other, "have you ever had a genuine crush on a girl? Sorry if it's too personal, I just."
"I don't know, well. I at least haven't liked a girl in the same way I like you. Like, it's just so different. With girls I'm all confident and stuff but," he pauses for a second, "I don't wanna talk about that."
"It's okay, give it time. You'll figure it out. I'm here if you need to talk about it okay?" Wooyoung smiles and slightly rests against San without much thought.
"Oh um, we better get back to class. I'll text you okay?" San says, slightly pulling away from the touch.
"Yeah, okay, I'll see you later." Wooyoung gets up and slowly starts back to class.
Two souls collide in a whirlwind of self-discovery and forbidden love. Wooyoung and San, both navigating the complexiti...
