Characters: Kibum, OC, SJ
Rating: PG
Chaptercount: 3/36
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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After that faithful day of going out, there were only 2 more days left of my holidays which passed peacefully with me playing my game and Heechul being the same old Kaykay again. We didn’t mention a word about our partly forced outing during our occasional chats that happened throughout playing together and I liked it best that way. It had been nice to meet him, but as I thought back of the things that had happened, there were too many shameful moments, so I’d rather forget about it all. I did find myself looking forward to going back to school and continuing my life-old routine..
..but God wasn’t that kind to me. The first thing that was off about my school routine, was that my usual seat was taken by someone else. Someone else whom I had never seen before. Not that that was such a big surprise, as I usually didn’t pay any attention to other people, but mostly people did look a tiny little bit familiar. He didn’t. Not at all. Before I could go up to him and ask him to move from my seat, two or three other girls already went up to him. Judging from the way they blushed and stuttered, I was utterly convinced of the fact that they liked him. Or at least they thought him cute. Cute..? Him..?
He looked up at them with a very self-assured smile that came close to arrogance. As they asked him if he was new, I could see him nod shortly, turning his head back towards the front. The girls doubted a moment before going on with their questioning. I stood too far to rally get everything, but I was able to catch some of his answers. Of course, I missed the most important parts, because God still wasn’t being kind to me. So as far as I heard, the new kid introduced himself to them as being mumblemumble, coming from Mumble and hoping that he would mumblemumble. He was majoring in mumble, which made the girls hold back excited squeals, but did also minor in mumble. With that information gathered and the girls continuing their questionnaire, I decided to simply go and find myself another chair to sit on, because it was obvious that I wasn’t going to be able to get him to move.
When I had settled down next to one of the more nerdy guys, who eyed me in surprise when I took the seat next to him, I couldn’t help glancing up at the new kid once again. He had dark brown hair that had a slight curl in it, a pair of dark eyes no doubt and a tall and slender posture. His body was nice, all in all, but something seemed a bit off about him. Pulling his image through my mind once more, I realised that he looked a little like one of those nerdy guys who would get the best grades ever, but something in the way he sat contradicted that.
My feeling was confirmed, and explained, when the teacher got into the classroom. The girls hurried to go and sit down and in a matter of moments the whole hall was covered in silence. The teacher greeted his students and then started the class. When I glanced at the new kid for a moment, I saw that he had stretched his legs, crossed his arms and closed his eyes. Judging from the way his head was falling to the left he was sleeping. Sleeping! In class! More importantly; in ENGLISH class! If ever any teacher would rip off his head for sleeping in class it was the English one. Of course, Newbie first had to be discovered for that to happen and apparently he was one lucky boy, because he was still soundly asleep and unnoticed when everyone started leaving the classroom again. I walked past him, glancing down at his face, but not even for a second considering to wake him up. If he wanted to be a moron, that was his problem. I wasn’t going to help the person who stole my seat.
Once outside, sitting on my usual bench to enjoy my home-made lunch, the second horrible event of that day happened. It wasn’t ten minutes into my break when I already found myself surrounded by people. I had been peacefully eating my lunch, minding my own business by reading an interesting book, when suddenly the sunlight had disappeared and I had looked up to see a group of about five people standing around me, Heechul’s happy grin beaming at me right in the middle. The others all gave me interested looks that made it obvious they had no idea why their friend had come to bother me. They had simply followed him because.. Well, knowing Heechul the way I did, he was probably the popular gang’s leader. In a matter of moments, my cosy lunch break was ruined as Heechul pulled me up and squeezed my upper body against his in what I learned later was his version of a hug. I don’t call lifting someone’s feet off the ground a hug, but well.
“Kim Heechul!” I protested, hitting his chest so that he would put me down again. He only grinned widely as he hugged me even tighter, before finally letting go. He then smiled at me so sincerely that I felt my anger die away, yet I scowled anyway and gave him a second hit on his shoulder. “Kim Heechul, what do you think you’re doing?” I snapped in his direction, immediately waving a hand at his friends who still surrounded us. “And who are this?” Before anyone could reply, someone made his way through the crowd and I was scooped up in a second hug. Without really thinking about it, I angrily yelled a loud “YAH!” Half of the campus was probably staring at us after that and I ended up falling on my butt quite painfully when whoever had hugged me let go of me in surprise because of my scream.
When I looked up to see who had been so un-gentlemanlike, I looked right into Hangeng’s surprised face. He stared at me in shock as I climbed back on my feet, unable to do as much as help me up, because of his surprise over my yelling. I sighed and looked around at the mess of food I had spilled on the ground as I got hugged by those two morons. As I took in the sight of my scrambled rice, my dirtied kimchi and the squeezed sushi I had landed on so graciously, I felt anger rise up in my body and the urge to kick some popular kids’ butts was growing with the minute. I took a deep breath, before lifting up my head and turning my attention towards Heechul again. He was smiling at me as self-assured as ever.
“Yah you shitty piece of popular mumbo jumbo!” I cried out, launching myself at him to grab him by the throat and strangle the life out of him. A few hands grabbed my arms and shoulders, however, so I was unable to accomplish my goal, but that didn’t keep me from throwing some more insults at him. “Look what you did to my lunch! I was supposed to eat that! Do you know how much good food you just wasted, you retarded rhino buttocks!? Someone should take your head and stuff some sense into it. Or wait, there’s probably no room left anymore with all that bullshit taking up space there. Did you really think you could roll into my life like that and turn everything upside down? Aish, you really are one big pile of useless human cells.” After those words, I pulled myself free from the hands that held me back, grabbed my backpack and stalked away, leaving a stunned group of popular kids behind as I made my way through the staring people.
I wasn’t really mad at him about the food or about wanting to spend time with me during schooldays - although he could have watched out with the food, that was my mom’s best homemade sushi after all - but it pissed me off that he brought all his popular friends along with him for our first real life encounter in school. Because, seriously, sneaking up on me like that and pulling me into a hug - something I really didn’t like doing - right in front of all his to me unknown friends, wasn’t really my idea of a nice way of introducing people. Especially not when the person in question - which would have been me at that time - almost got a heart attack out of your ‘happy greetings.’ With those thoughts in my mind, I stomped off to the only place I knew I would be able to lose some anger in the last thirty minutes I had before classes started again.
When I arrived at my university’s basketball field, I was happy to see that there was no one there. I dumped my backpack in a corner, grabbed a ball out of the rack and immediately started dribbling calmly, running a few rounds around the field to warm up my body. After four or five of those, I went for the kill and shot the ball towards the net with a clumsy, out of practice lay-up. The ball totally missed, flying against the fence behind the goal and bouncing back to me. I caught it in mid air and dribbled away again, to have another try at scoring moments later. The same scene replayed itself over and over, until I finally threw the ball away in a burst of annoyance, only to freeze in shock when it headed straight for someone’s face. The guy luckily caught it right in time, before it crushed his nose.
“I guess they pissed you off real badly, huh?” the strangely familiar-looking guy said, dribbling the ball in front of his feet for a moment. I huffed and kicked a stone away, without replying. My reaction seemed to have been enough of an answer for him, however, as he gently threw the ball back at me. “Want to play?” Right as he asked that, the
Without hesitation, I turned around and took another shot at scoring a goal. Of course I missed once again. No way life was going to let me look good for once. Not that I needed to in front of this guy. He had been in the same class as me all the way from kindergarten up till high school, but we had never really talked or gotten to know each other throughout those years. Not that I cared, and it wasn’t like he seemed very remorseful about it either. For some reason we had apparently ended up at the same university as well. Seeing me yell at the university’s popular kids, he decided to walk up to me and have some small talk, I guess. Whatever his thoughts, he caught the basketball again and nicely threw it right into the net from where he was standing. When he looked up at me, he flashed his two rows of pearly white teeth at me in a happy smile. It was that sight that made me throw out every last bit of doubt about not going to class.
“You’re too tensed, you know. Scoring won’t work when you’re all scrunched up like that.” he called out to me, passing me the ball once again. I gave him a sour smile as I caught it.
“You would be tensed as well when all you really want to do is kick some sense into a certain person called Kim Heechul without being able to.” I then retorted, flinging the ball back to him with a little more strength. I felt strangely satisfied hearing the loud thud as he caught the ball against his stomach. Served him right, silly little intruder of my beloved basketball field. I made a mental note to apologise before leaving for any hurt I might be causing him later on.
“I probably would, but I wouldn’t be getting it out on innocent bystanders. What did I ever do to you?” he wittily replied, throwing the ball back at me again. I was growing a bit tired already of this silly ball-throwing game. He asked to play, right, so why didn’t he?
“You smiled that smile of yours in my general directions a few times too often and now I can’t stop thinking how cute it is.” I replied to his question, before throwing the ball back at him again. I nodded at the net. “You wanted to play, then play. If you’re only here to throw a bunch of nonsense at me, then I could just as well have gone to class after all.”
My words seemed to have awoken his competitive spirit, for he immediately took off with a dribble, setting for the basketball net. I responded just as quickly, moving closer to him to steal the ball or keep him from scoring at the very least. After a few minutes of playing, I had already realised he was good. Very good. Impressively good even. I only managed to steal the ball from him once or twice, while he scored some amazing goals from quite far away. In the end, the game of basketball left me with a refreshed mind, a sweaty T-shirt and a newfound respect for this lifelong classmate of mine. That’s why, when I decided to call it a day, I turned to him before leaving and eyed him curiously.
“Thanks for the game.” I said, taking a few steps closer and reaching out a hand to him. He looked at it in surprise for a moment, before slowly taking it and giving it a short squeeze. I was a bit surprised by this kind of handshake, but somehow it seemed to go well with him.
“Thank you too. You were a good opponent.” he replied, showing his cute smile once again. I remember wondering why I had never noticed it before, but realised that I probably had never wanted to notice it. When he let go of my hand again, I set for my backpack and threw it over my shoulder. “Soo Jin-ssi.” he called after me, making me look back. I was surprised because he knew my name, but then I realised I knew his as well. Being in the same class for years does that to people, right? I grinned over that thought.
“What?” I then called back, pausing in my movements towards the exit. He nodded his head to the basketball net and showed me another smile.
“Want to give it another go tomorrow?” he asked. “It looks like you’re improving as you play. I think you used to be much better than you are now.” His words were true, but that didn’t make it less of an insulting comment.
“You just wait, Kim Kibum, tomorrow I’ll kick your butt.” I replied, walking out of the basketball field. His amused smile haunted me all the way back to the school building.
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