Goodbye’s the new hello; Naeun + Jinki
The atmosphere of organization and discipline that reigns over a classroom full of well sat students taking their annotations in silence fills Jinki with an odd sense of power. He takes his own seat after scribbling the solution to one of the most complex calculations in the exercise book, running his eyes over the classroom behind the rectangular shape of his glasses, hands layered over the desktop.
The faces are all turned down to the notebooks sat on the numerous smaller desks that are aligned in short rows that faced him. He catches the movement of their hands, the sound of pencils grazing over paper faintly audible from where he stands. The neatness of the scene comforts him from the disarray his personal life has slipped into at a moment in the past he can’t exactly pinpoint. And the most recent piece tossed in the mess of his puzzle sat among those students.
He pretends not to catch the glimpses she would throw at him, her eyes so bright and full of something that is entirely foreign to a person such as Jinki. It becomes so easy to block out the shy curl of lips that comes from the girl, much like it had come from a few other bright girls such as herself, he would pause at times and ask himself when he’d turned into this person that found relief in a class of working students of all things. It could have been during the first touch on the shoulder, the first innocent compliment underlying thoughts a teacher shouldn’t nourish towards a student – it’s been so long since he doesn’t feel like himself that he’d just stopped caring altogether in the rush of days.
Jinki had decided four days ago, over the weekend, when he had Son Naeun in his arms, when all the touches and compliments had culminated in the satisfaction of his most primal, heinous need, that the interest he once had in her had perished along with his afterglow. He prays to himself, repeating a methodical mantra, that it’s not so bad – Naeun is a smart one, isn’t she? He hadn’t made an effort to contact her through the texts they’d been exchanging for the month. He’d ignored all of hers, too. He’d avoided her gaze in the corridors, when he would once flash her practiced smiles whenever they crossed around the school. They were teacher and student, she couldn't possibly have imagined this would go on for long.
Naeun is smart, and he’d made a clear case. This is not so bad, it really isn’t. He is not so bad.