a montage of love / mark lee [preview]
genre: college!au, acquaintances to lovers!au, fluff, a bit of angst if you squint
pairing: mark lee/female reader
summary: High school was a time in your life you didn’t like to think about, especially when the present days were the best ones you had ever lived. But when Mark Lee shows up in the form of blast of the past, you’re left with emotions you never planned on experiencing.
High school was a period of time you weren’t particularly fond of.
It was just a clustered mess of stillness-infused events happening one after the other, never having anything really good coming out of it; it was either neutral or downright disastrous and embarrassing, so sometimes you pretended it either didn’t exist or it was a foggy, distant memory in the back of your mind. Everything had been just plain, normal, detached, never good enough to think of it fondly.
You supposed being the new kid was probably one of the causes that made your attempts at fitting in with the others fail miserably. The people you hung out with were the type of people you knew your friendship wouldn’t stretch further than the last day of high school: you relied on each other for convenience, and that didn’t hurt you at all because it was something you did too. And it wasn’t like you were the best version of yourself back then.
The best came when you entered college.
College you was the person you had always dreamed to be. Liked by people who genuinely cared for you and your wellbeing, with whom you shared good and bad moments. Carefree in the sense that you were no longer afraid of sharing your opinions and being yourself yet carrying all the same struggles every other college student did. This was your peak. You were at the top of your game in every aspect possible. And even if you were still flawed, like you would always be, the life you lead was still worth it.
However, not everyone shared the same path as you. Some people really just had it all since the beginning: they were consistent in the way they presented themselves to other people throughout the years, and consequently that in itself appeased the masses no matter the environment they inserted themselves into. It really didn’t help at all if they were truly nice people, which was the case.
You weren’t sure why the fact that Mark Lee was as loved — if not even more — in college as he was in high school surprised you, but the truth was, it did.
Going through a blast from the past was something you were expecting, seeing people from your old school navigating through the halls of a place you really liked became a second nature. You saw Sicheng every once in a while, the Chinese guy you had to become acquainted because the both of you had transferred to your high school closely after each other. You saw Dahyun who was from your Math class though you never really made an effort to be friends, neither did she. You saw a variety of faces with whom you had shared tiny speckles of basic interaction.
But Mark Lee wasn’t just any person.
Mark Lee was the cool guy who looked like he had everything without even trying or working hard for it. He had friends, good looks, good grades, recognition and respect from pretty much everyone surrounding him. You were sure there wasn’t a soul capable of hating or so much as even having hard or negative feelings towards him. And rightfully so, for while Mark looked like someone who breezed through life without a scratch, he was severely passionate and strived hard for good results on whatever he put his mind to. To top it off, he had luck on his side.
You couldn’t hate the guy, you’d give him that. He was too much of a good person.
It was nearly the end of the first semester of your second year of college when you had seen him for the first time after you ended your senior year. With Mark being younger than you by one year, you were swept away out of that hellhole before he was, but as luck would have it, you were back to sharing an education facility with him. Not that it bothered you that much, except you had to be shocked not only by his presence, yet also by the happenstance he was talking to one of your best friends with whom you were supposed to meet up fifteen minutes ago.
You were the one who was late, of course. So many years had gone by and you still weren’t able to be on time whatever the circumstance was. And when you tried to be responsible and leave your dorm early, the universe seemed to be against you. It remained a mystery why public transportation would fail you on only those specific times.
At that moment, being late was the least of your worries because there, in front of you, stood two people who represented completely different times of your life colliding with one another, while you watched in the sidelines and wondered why something like this was even happening to you. It truly felt weird to you seeing the out-of-reach Mark interacting with completely-approachable Jungwoo.
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