what jinhai grows to learn is that mandarin is hard for non-native speakers.
granted, it’s hard for native speakers too but there’s just an extra bit of difficulty for those who haven’t grown up with it. which is why he’s patient with the chunghwa boy as they sit in the library, books sprawled in front of them on the large table and earning a dissatisfied look from the librarian. ( she hisses a quick ‘you’re putting those back you know’ as she walks past them and he can’t blame her. )
there are books on mandarin 101, mandarin intermediate, mandarin beginner and it’s already been a few hours so he can feel his brain frying at the thought of another few pages of grammar and the five different ways to pronounce a word. he’s never given it much thought, chinese, but everything reminds him of when he first tried learning korean - except heejun was actually good at mandarin - and god knows those were a dark few months.
“ yeah, you just need to remember the irregulars. try forming the sentence: i studied hard yesterday so i could play today. ”
he shoots an encouraging grin at heejun, sparkling with the words ‘you can do it!’ irregulars aren’t easy with mandarin and they’ve been trying tenses for a while now. he leans in, wide eyed and waiting as the other begins to form the sentence.
he’s doing well … and then he finishes off with the correct verb and jinhai can’t help but leap in joy because they’ve gotten way further than he thought they would have.
he claps his hands and darts in to press his lips to heejun’s cheek in a short, one second proud kiss. ( did they do this in korea? probably not, but jinhai’s chinese so he can’t really find himself to care that much. ) “ that was so good, you did really well! ” he exclaims, maybe a little too loudly.
because the librarian gives them a steely glare and hisses at them to get out.
“remember this when you are queen,” he whispered hoarsely. “i moved the earth and the water for you.” ― catherynne m. valente
she notices him first, actually. there’s nothing special about it. no heart-stopping, lungs contracting, gravity defying moment when her eyes first lock on to his slight, wiry frame. he’s not extraordinary to her. not when there’s ladders to climb and towers to leap from and shrines to build out of little crystal blocks. she only thinks, for a moment, that oh, maybe he’s lonely, by himself on the edge of the world. and then when he smashes her nose with a misplaced kick she notices him again and thinks, oh, maybe i can make him not lonely anymore.
“yaaaaaaaah, kang! hee! jun!” she’s nine, pretty as a dove, graceful as a swan ― though not innocent, not anymore. the stretches aren’t working, because she’s nine but heejun’s still as tall as her, even though she can touch to the heels of her feet and he can’t. she won’t complain now, though. not when she needs to ask him a huge, ginormous, life-saving favour. little hands circle his own, pull his attention away from his own work. “yah, stop ignoring me! one last question. what’s three hundred divided by twenty?”
eleven year-old yena’s got her hands on her hips, head cocked to the side, lips creased into a deep, dark frown. it’s the first time she’s ever looked so severe in her entire life. the other boy is pallid, eyes boring holes into the ground. she gives him a look; he flinches, retreats into himself like he’s crawling back into a shell. he says he’s sorry ― she doesn’t give a (sorry, dad) fuck. “you don’t use him like that again. not for your stupid pranks, not for me, not for anything. scum,” she says the word like unleashing a death sentence, “should stay scum. remember that.”
she’s selfish. she is. the girl had skin paler than ivory, eyes like half-moons. she was poised, and pretty, and spoke with grace. i think heejun’s really nice, do you think he could like me in the future? yena’s selfish ― a horrible, awful selfish ― when she looks over the girl, smiles like the devil, looks away like she’s having fun all on her own. you’re not quite his type. but you could try. the girl doesn’t.
some days after she’s back for good, she arrives on heejun’s doorstep in her wire-frames and fleece-lined sweatpants. she spends the entire day with him, wearing his blanket like it’s her protection against the world, asking him to teach her his games, makes him talk to her about the big bang theory and the death of a star over and over again. he asks her, finally, when the sky is black and she’s still in his room, on his bed, wrapped in his blanket, if she wants to talk about it. she doesn’t, not today, but he tells her it’s not her fault anyway.
he lets her take all the blankets when she sleeps, curled into herself like a small, scared girl. he holds her hand the entire time.
SCHEDULE: Korean A2, Science A2, Math A1, Mandarin, Computer Science, Marketing
EXTRACURRICULARS: Swim team, debate team, honors society
CHUNGHWA SCHOOL NEWSPAPER, 05.06.17: New student Kang Heejun has officially joined the second year class! Heejun is seventeen years old and has been reported to be benevolent, dedicated, eloquent, and polished but also blunt, petty, egocentric, and resentful. His personality will take him far as a member of the swim team, debate team, and honors society. Let’s welcome Heejun to the school and wish him a good year!
OOC!
Name and pronouns: ivy, she/her
Other muses: -
Time zone: gmt +2
IC!
Muse name: kang heejun
Birthday (or age): 1 april, 1999
Faceclaim: kim jinwoo
School: chunghwa int. academy
Grade: 2nd
Desired clubs: swim team, debate team, honor society
Positive traits: benevolent, dedicated, eloquent, polished
Negative traits: blunt, petty, egocentric, resentful
Proficiency: heejun is truly a polymath - his interest in everything (and the need to avoid his family) has made him proficient in both sciences and languages alike. still, he prefers sciences and would be inclined to take math and sciences at the most chalenging levels available as that would be useful later in his astrophysics studies. because languages are not as important to him, he’d take it at high levels, though not so that it would stress him out needlessly. he wouldn’t want to be stuck ‘learning’ a foreign language he already knows, so instead of english, he would prefer mandarin.
Electives: computer science and marketing
BIOGRAPHY!
at age seven, heejun learns that if things can go wrong, they’ll never go right.
he comes home to find his parents yelling at each other in the kitchen. they don’t notice him, he’s too small (too unimportant) to be noticed. his mother holds a knife, though it is a mere coincidence, and heejun finds himself choking back a shriek. he doesn’t recognise the feeling yet, but it’s the first time heejun realises the world is much cruel than one would expect.
he finds his father’s alcohol cabinet half empty a few days later - he finds it restocked a few days after that. the process repeats. the cabinet’s empty, then it’s not again. his father’s eyes glaze over, they rarely go back to normal. heejun doesn’t know what it all means and for a while, he’s okay. until he’s not okay. heejun finds his parents arguing much more often, he sees his father less and less with each passing they. he finds his father passed out in the office far too frequently.
when he’s ten years old, he asks his father why. heejun’s mother is a devil in disguise. she’s smart and she’s beautiful, and she’s more successful than his father could ever be. i didn’t want her to be better than me! i don’t deserve that! but she is better than him for she continued to love the man that couldn’t allow himself to love her.
on his eleventh birthday, he wishes for mommy and daddy to stop fighting, he asks daddy to stop drinking. that autumn, he learns that his father would break faster than he would bend.
at the age of twelve, he finds a coping mechanism. heejun picks up enough after school activities to barely make it home by 10pm. his grades skyrocket, he joins a swimteam, a dance club, an art class. he struggles to keep up with everything and drops activities and interests along the way, but he doesn’t see his parents often, and as long as there’s money in his pocket, he doesn’t feel the need to remember they exist.
when he moves to canada, he remembers what it’s like to breathe freely again. when he’s back in korea, he’s suffocated once more.
but this time, heejun learns how to be perfect. he learns how to talk freely even when he has nothing to say. he learns how to put a smile on his face when he wants nothing more than to resent the world. no longer is he the strange quiet kid that obsesses over everything and everything just to avoid facing something nobody quite gets. now, he is the little prince of the school that is kind and right, and adored by most. he is the one that has no faults, no matter how hard people try to find something.
he is now a person who can smile and laugh while his mind counts down the days his father has left to live.
at age eighteen, he learns that if things can go right, they’ll find a way to go wrong.
ADDITIONAL FORMS!
CLUB INFO:
Starting or joining: joining
Club name: swim team
Additional Notes: -
WRITTEN:
heejun has been swimming since middle school. he joined the swim team to distract himself from what was happening at home because he figured swimming would take a lot of time and energy out of him. as soon as he started, he quickly fell in love with it. though over the years he was on and off again with swimming, after enrolling at chunghwa, he decided that he would stay dedicated to the swim team, and has been successfully swimming and winning competitions for almost two years now.
in retrospect, it is jihoon’s fault. after all he had decided to crash heejun’s party yet again.
he had had a couple of drinks but not enough for him to be drunk but yet jihoon still decided on going into the pool which heejun owned. he felt like swimming is what his brain told him and other people seemed to be having fun in the pool too. and with, his now absurd, thoughts he stripped his down and decided to swim.
it’s not not like jihoon was a bad swimmer but he wasn’t exactly olympics ready, so he had his eyes closed for a good minute in fear of the irritation from the water. but he should’ve opened his eyes for just a little bit because now he had just come into contact with someone in the worst way possible, with their lips.
after the pair’s short-lived “kiss” jihoon opened his eyes, despite the burning sensation the water gave him and swan back to the surface. he had kissed heejun, the owner of the pool itself, jihoon’s face turned bright red and he apologized more than needed. after his string of “sorry’s” he ran out of the pool and grabbed his clothes with him, trying to find the fastest way to escape heejun’s house.
i remember how we first met, seeing as that was not an ideal first impression. but i respect you since you’re actually able to taunt me (and i thought no one ever could to be honest), since i mentioned that- i think you’re worthy of debating with the president himself. he’s actually the only one who could leave me speechless like that, so, why don’t we try sitting down for a brief session with him? what do you say?
anyways, i’m sure that you’re highly aware of my situation. and it’s the same with you with daldal, i hope you’ll take good care of her. i’m asking you this because i trust you, maybe we can go out sometimes. and we need to finish those video game matches too.
i shall look forward to your glory days ahead, debating prodigy.
RANDOM KISS ASKBOX MEME : currently closed ! ↪ number nineteen – forceful kiss.
°☆.。.:* — IT happens because of a game.
of course it does, it’s always because of their online games. if people thought junhwan was fiercely competitive during basketball games, no one has truly seen him during one of heejun’s and his tournaments, furiously typing away on their keyboards while screaming complete nonsense towards each other.
( but boys will be boys, right? )
junhwan almost slams his laptop down in victory ... the first time he takes a win that evening out of the five other rounds they have played and junhwan is smiling, wide and bright, as he begins to stand tall in the middle of heejun’s living room.
“i won! heejun-ah, your winning streak is over,” junhwan babbles before taking a seat beside the male on the crowded couch that can only seat one of them ... so lanky and awkward limbs pile against each other but junhwan doesn’t care because he doesn’t suck at video games after all. his losing streak is finally over. “did you see that –– ? how i went around the map and dodged all of your minions and even your dragon –– i beat your dragon! i have to be at least level fifty now, right –– ?”
hands begin to flail with his words and he might look a little crazy but he doesn’t care because that was honestly probably one of his proudest achievements and he’s so excited right now ... he could kiss heejun for letting him win that match.
and so, he does.
his blabbering stops as hands reach over to plant themselves on either sides of heejun’s face, pulling in for a quick peck, lips touching briefly despite the other’s attempt to move away before junhwa’s already pulling back, smile never once flattering before the basketball captain is already up from his seat on the couch and standing tall and proud in the middle of the room, once more.
“ –– so do you think i can finally get that summoner armor from the villager?”
