Characters: Kibum, OC, SJ
Rating: PG
Chaptercount: 6/36
Summary: Soojin meets a guy who turns her world upside down but then there's a few dozen others as well.
A/N: This is one of my most beloved novels (not that I wrote THAT many, but still) and I think I will forever cherish the characters in this. This story also helped me shape my view on the different members and is the first of few stories in which I used first person.
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Well that dream was crushed easily. I woke up the next day with a body full of sore muscles and the memory of a basketball game against Heechul, Kyuhyun and Shindong that we barely lost. Luckily Hangeng managed to score a nice two-pointer in the last ten minutes of the game after which Tae Woo and I ferociously defended our own goal, making the other team unable to score again. We then had an epic group hug that resulted in me nearly gagging because of the stench of male sweat and everyone deciding to go home for a shower. Since I had come together with Heechul, he sort of kidnapped me to his house and let me shower there in his older sister’s bathroom.
Later in the evening we went for a drink in a café where they seemed to pass by more often. I simply ordered a coke and spend my evening watching how Tae Woo, Minji and Heechul got themselves drunk with soju. Luckily, Hangeng was kind enough to drive all the drunk ones home and give me a ride as well. So I sat in the back seat of his car as we drove around, Heechul’s head resting on my lap, praying to all the Gods I could come up with that he wouldn’t puke on my pants. Somehow he didn’t and we managed to get to their home unharmed. I faintly remember insisting on helping Hangeng put Heechul in bed, tucking the latter in even and giving him a goodnight pat on the cheek before walking back out.
Moments later Hangeng joined me in the hallway, softly closing the door behind him. For a moment, I felt like I was babysitting some little kid with Hangeng that we finally managed to get to sleep, but then the image of Heechul’s face flashed by and I snapped back to reality. He might act like a little kid from time to time, but he was still older than me by a year. The idiot. Getting drunk like that and leaving us with no choice but to take care of him. I was set on giving him a major scolding the next day. Very major.
Hangeng drove me home despite the late hour and we talked a little on our way. I found out that Heechul being drunk was something which happened more often, but he usually didn’t get as wasted as he had been that day. Most of the times, he was still able to crawl into bed himself. I also learned that they did this kind of ‘basketball and then go for a drink’-outings more often, almost every Saturday even. All in all, it was quite a pleasant ride back to my house. Hangeng even got out of the car to open my car door for me and guide me up to the front door, where he waited until I opened it with my key. Only then did he go back to his car, waved and drove away. I fell asleep with a smile on my face that evening.
Sunday passed in a haze of sore muscles and an overly curious mother who wanted to know every little detail of my outing from the previous day. I wisely ignored her every question, planting my sore and battered body behind my computer to dedicate my whole day to The Last Call. Heechul appeared online at 1 PM as well and we spent the rest of the day playing together, with him occasionally complaining about having a headache. I wisely kept my mouth shut about the tucking him in part, not wanting to give him anything that he could use against me later on.
After that weekend, things still didn’t change much in school, though. I silently refused to really become a part of the popular group, but both Heechul and Hangeng kept occasionally dragging me into the group when they had breaks. They also asked me to go out on their Saturday afternoon basketball outings more often. Apart from that group, I started spending more time with Kibum as well. One time I happened to take a seat next to him and we talked a bit throughout the class, which was so much fun that I decided to sit next to him more often. He kind of became my regular classmate. That didn’t always work out, though, and it was during one of those lonely classes that I met Nerdy and Nerdier.
I had entered the class with a kind of gloomy feeling, totally not wanting to attend the lessons to begin with. When I didn’t spot Kibum on his usual spot, my mood became even worse and I listlessly sat down on a random chair. My normal spot was still taken by the new guy. (Well, he meanwhile wasn’t really a new guy anymore, but I still hadn’t been able to catch his name,
The guy was quite a view. The hem of his orange chequered dress shirt was carefully tucked in his pants, leaving his vivid red belt to be clearly visible. The flashy green suspenders that totally didn’t match his shirt immediately caught all the attention, almost making you forget about his hair that was carefully divided; one part combed to the left, the other to the right. Both parts stuck to his head in a way that made me consider the possibility of him having at least used one whole tube worth of hairspray to get it to stick like that. A pair of round, black nerdy glasses rested on his nose and he pushed them back up with a finger after putting down his stack of books. He looked up at me when he noticed my staring and flashed me a happy grin. A little baffled, I turned my head the other way, noticing someone had taken the seat on my left as well.
This guy was dressed in a white dress shirt that loosely hung over the edge of his pants, which was being held up by black and white striped suspenders. He had a black and gray chequered belt holding up his pants, which really made me wonder if maybe he loved the combination of black and white. Just like the guy on my right, he had a pair of back nerdy glasses decorating his face, but the size of his was just unbelievably huge. He looked like he was wearing two oversized jam jar lids in glass form. He pushed the gigantic thing higher up on his nose, just like the other guy had done and took out his books and pen. When he looked up at me, I quickly turned my head back to the front.
From the corner of my eyes, I could see the guy on my right grab his pen and get ready to follow the class. Something about the pen caught my attention, however, so I turned my head a little to be able to give it a closer inspection. It took me a few moments of mindlessly staring to realise that there was a turtle on the top. I frowned, turning my face back to the guy on my left, feeling a little uncomfortable in between these two weird people. My feeling was only made stronger when the face of Mister Creep turned out to be only centimetres away from mine. I quickly jerked my head back, letting my eyes slide over his face as he grinned happily at me.
Luckily, I was saved from any further attention by the entering professor. The auditorium went completely silent and both my neighbours turned all their attention to the guy up front, pushing their glasses better up on their noses and grabbing their pens as if to get ready for a big writing competition. Upon seeing the teacher, however, I suddenly realised that the class I was in, was history of the arts, where the teacher would just read us the book. That did explain Kibum’s absence. He probably was ditching class again, like I should have done as well. It was too late by then, though, so I had no choice but to stay and follow the boring lesson.
I focused on the teacher once he started talking and followed how he talked us through the whole bunch of papers. He did indeed say nothing more or less than what the papers said, so I didn’t even bother to take down any notes. My two neighbours, however, were writing stuff like crazy. I wondered if maybe I was missing something very important, so I nudged the guy on my right. He glanced up at me in surprise, but his hand kept flashing over his paper, taking down notes like it was going automatically. I stared in shock for a moment, before getting back to my senses.
“Hey what are you writing down, is the s-”
“Ssh!”
Surprised, I turned to my left, where the white-shirted guy was eyeing me with a disapproving look. He motioned me to be silent and pointed at my book, before continuing to write like crazy. When I glanced at his paper, I saw that he was writing down everything the professor was saying, word for word, which meant he was writing the exact thing standing in our book. I decided I would inform him about all those stuff standing in his book as well, so I started mumbling.
“You know that..”
“Ssh!”
My eyes shot to Mister Turtle on my right, who shot me an awesome deadly glare that could even surpass Heechul’s. I felt myself automatically sit back in my chair without uttering another word. They were both crazy. Seriously insane. Just my luck, sitting in between two major nerds who did nothing but write, write and write during class, while I preferred doing nothing at all. I sighed and decided to catch up with some sleep, really wanting to have skipped the class when I still had the chance. My eyes weren’t even closed for one second, however, when something poked me in the side. I quickly looked up, seeing Mister Creep on the left shake his finger at me, giving me another one of his disapproving looks.
“Pay attention!” he lectured me, pointing at the still monotonously talking professor to make sure I knew what he was talking about. I rolled my eyes at him, but immediately gained another death glare from Mister Turtle on the right. I decided to look at the professor to avoid more pokes or death glares. I was not feeling up to having an epic staring contest with this awesome turtle nerd on my right. I ended up listening to every word the teacher
When the class was finally over, I got up in a flash and gathered my stuff as fast as I could so that I could escape the auditorium to never attend history of arts ever again in my life. My way out, however, was blocked by Mister Turtle and Mister Creep, who both were still calmly sitting down, not leaving me any space behind their chairs to pass by. One of them would have to move first for me to be able to get out of the row, but neither of them seemed to be planning on doing so. I sighed and gently asked them to move, but they pretended not to hear. I didn’t really feel like making a fuzz over it, so I calmly watched other students leave, waiting for them to finish up. When the auditorium was as good as empty, however, they were still writing. Right when I was about to ask them once again to move, a familiar voice sounded up from behind me.
“I see you met my friends.” I turned around to see Kibum approaching. My eyes quickly scanned our surroundings to see which friends he was talking about, but the auditorium was completely empty apart from him, me, Mister Creep and Mister Turtle. I frowned as I turned back to Kibum, wanting to ask him who he was talking about, when suddenly life returned to my two neighbours. Mister Creep happily jumped up from his chair and reached his arms out towards Kibum.
“Bummie!” he exclaimed, hugging my friend over the row of tables and happily patting him on the back. It was only when they let go of each other that realisation hit me and my eyes grew wide when I looked from Kibum at the two nerdy guys and back.
“Wait.. Nerdy and Nerdier here are your friends?” I asked, staring at them in disbelief. Kibum grinned and nodded, whereas the two boys I just badly insulted simply started packing their stuff, not having heard my comment about them, or not caring. I turned to look at Kibum again. “Seriously?” I informed, wanting to have it confirmed once more as I still found it very hard to believe. Kibum chuckled.
“Hey, I never questioned you being friends with Arrogant and Even More Arrogant either, did I?” he retorted, making me blush ferociously as I averted my eyes to the ground. He had a point. A very good one for that matter.
As Mister Turtle started to make his way out of the row, I was finally able to get out as well. When I walked into the middle isle of the auditorium, I quickly hurried to the door that would lead me outside. Once arrived there, I immediately turned around and grabbed Kibum’s hand. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I realised that the popular kids’ wrist grabbing-hobby was apparently contagious and had now infected me as well.
“Kibum-ssi, please don’t ever leave me alone in history of the arts anymore with your two friends.” I begged, giving him the best sad look I could manage. “It felt much like being captured by my mom and forced to listen to her rambling on about the importance of going out and doing sports and how useless gaming really is for a young woman of my age that is in dire need of finding a boyfriend soon or she will never have a chance to get married and.. Yah, you get the point. Don’t ever leave me alone in there again!” Kibum grinned, patted my back and set for the door to the university’s campus.
“I’m sorry, Soo Jin, but when I saw you walking in, my only option was to ask the two of them to keep you company.” he replied. “Why so formal?”
“Because I am still in shock.” I replied, sighing deeply. “Couldn’t you follow me in to pull me back or something?”
“I was elsewhere occupied.” He flashed that gorgeous smile of his at me again and let his hand slide off my back. It was only then that I realised it had still been resting there. Before I had the time to wonder about that little detail, he already went on talking. “Hey, want to go out with us tonight?”
“Us?” I wondered out loud.
“Jungsoo, Woonie and me.” He nodded at Nerdy and Nerdier as he said the first two names. I followed his gaze and took in the two friends who were animatedly talking to each other. Mister Creep was drawing something in the air with his hands and Mister Turtle followed his every move, nodding thoughtfully as he mumbled some words. Suddenly the both of them looked up at me and flashed me a happy grin.
“Oh! That reminds me!” Mister Creep exclaimed, turning his head back to Mister Turtle. “Did you notice that when he was talking about the impressionistic paintings from 1860 to 1870, he was calculating the lactivity of the human brain while explaining the futile covulation of the three hundred and sixty-fourth bone in your left backside?”
Okay, so maybe that’s not really what Mister Creep told his friend, but they were talking history of the arts, why on earth would I understand anything of that? Besides, his words were not the point really, it was more the reaction to them.
“Oh yes!” Mister Turtle exclaimed, starting to grin widely already. “And then he said..” He chuckled a little, unable to finish his sentence because of it.
“Exactly! Did you hear the..” Mister Creep tried, but he also started chuckling, and then suddenly, as if on cue, they both burst out laughing. It was unlike everything I had ever heard. Mister Creep’s laughter sounded like a high-pitched, very loud ‘Ang ang ang’ kind of laugh, while Mister Turtle just went all out with the barking laughter. Put together they sounded like..hell on earth for my ears. With wide eyes, I turned my head to look at Kibum, who was happily grinning.
“They’re fun when you get to know them.” he said happily, nudging my side with his elbow. I flinched and blinked a few times, before I was able to answer him.
“What did you say their names were?”
“Jungsoo is the black and white one, Jongwoon the multi-coloured one.” he said, pointing at Mister Creep first and then at Mister Turtle. “We call him Woonie because that sounds a little like loony. I don’t think I have to explain why that name suits him, right?” I shook my head as if in slow-motion. “So, coming along tonight?”
And just because he asked nicely, I decided to cancel whatever plans Heechul had made for me and go out with Kibum and his two friends. Who knew what an evening spend with Nerdy and Nerdier would bring me? I had to admit that it did sound very interesting, to say the least.
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