Jinki was not alright. His face looked gaunt, with dark shadows beneath the eyes, and he wasn't looking at Taeyeon. His lips were parted slightly, but he wasn't speaking either. He was sitting with his hands lying on his lap, looking distant, even though they were only inches apart, separated by the wooden table on which Taeyeon's mug of hot chocolate was standing. Romantic ballads were pouring annoyingly out of the speakers, adding to the discomfort of their tete-a-tete. Taeyeon was supposed to do the talking, obviously, but her mind was numb. She was fidgeting with a button on the sleeve of her coat, staring at her drink (all the whipped cream had already melted down) and not knowing how to start.
She heard Jinki sigh as he checked his watch, and raised her eyes.
“This shirt suits you. Blues look good on you, you know,” she complimented him, stupidly.
He shrugged. (What else could he do?)
Everything was telling her that she should stop it with the small talk. Yet she cleared and went further:
“I don't think I've seen it before. Is it new?”
To which he replied, in a low voice:
“No, it's not.”
The look he gave her was so heavy that Tae had to look away for a moment. There was no choice but to cut the crap.
“Do you think that maybe we should talk?” she suggested timidly, and the boy sighed again.
“What's there to talk about?”
Tae frowned. Even she couldn't answer that question for sure.
“I don't know... us?”
“There is no us,” Jinki replied, pushing his glasses up his nose.
“But...”
“There's you and Eunsook. And there's me. Our paths are parallel lines that don't cross.”
“But I don't want it to end like this... with bad feelings...”
“I don't think there can be any good feelings on my part at the moment,” Jinki argued. “Although I do understand that you want some kind of closure so that you could move on happily without your conscience hurting much.”
That made Taeyeon feel uneasy. He was right.
“Well… I want the same thing for you!”
“We are not ending up at the same place, though. You got out of an inconvenient relationship and began a new one, and I got out of everything that was making me happy.”
Taeyeon had not expected the quiet, soft-spoken Jinki to be so candid. Her eyes prickled.
“It wasn't inconvenient. I was happy, too... But also unhappy because I didn't know my heart.”
“If you weren't sure, you should've never accepted my feelings.”
“But I'd never been sure about anything!” Tae cried. “I really wanted to love you, but instead I made you suffer... You had to wait for me, take care of me, catch a cold for me... Now that I look back, I can really see that it was unfair, so I understand your feelings, but...”
Jinki cut her off:
“You understand nothing. Waiting or catching a cold was not a problem, since I did that on my own will and believed that you cared for me, too. So don't make it sound like I am complaining about my wasted time. That belittles me and the pain that I'm feeling.”
Jinki's clenched his jaw, looking at the window. He was probably wishing he wasn't showing so much of his real emotions. But it was too late, and he wasn't finished.
“I always wondered why the heck you had chosen me out of the sea of rich lads pining over you... But then I started thinking, maybe you are like me. Maybe you just liked me for no reason... But I had no idea that it was such a huge step down for you that you had to try so hard to love me. Hell, if I had known you were forcing yourself into this, I would've set you free right away!”
Taeyeon's cheeks flushed.
“I'm not saying that I didn't love you at all!” she exclaimed, drawing some attention from a couple at the next table. “I'm saying that I was trying to love you the way you deserve to be loved! Unconditionally, without any scruple!”
Jinki shook his head, making Taeyeon even more flustered.
“I always found you charming and interesting, and thought very highly of you. With you I could feel safe and, unlike other guys, you respected me and never made me feel inadequate, and…”
Jinki chuckled.
“Why would I. Obviously it was me who was inadequate the whole time.”
 “I liked kissing you and always looked forward to seeing you, I was really fond of you,” Tae continued. “I am still fond of you! The moments that I shared with you will only belong to us two... I can't be with you, because there is another person that I loved for a really long time, and... I finally realized that I'm just totally not into men. It's not the same as leaving you for another, richer guy!”
“Sounds like I should be grateful,” Jinki muttered.
“Don't be nasty. What I'm saying is, I can't be completely happy with any man. And I am not sorry for any fools that I ditched before. But leaving you is... hard...” Taeyeon's voice broke, tears glistening in her eyes. “Because you are not like them, and I'm gonna miss you. Your jokes, your care, your science talk... And I know that you're too damn proud to be friends after this, even though I wish we could... Knowing that I betrayed you makes me feel terrible, and your words make me sound like a heartless , and it's awful… so stop pretending that you're the only one hurting!”
Tears were rolling down her cheeks by the time she stopped talking.
“You're not a heartless ,” Jinki argued, quietly. His eyes were moist, too. “But you claim to understand my feelings, and yet when I said that you wanted closure to feel relief, you said you wanted the same for me. The problem is…” He sniffled. “I'm not ready for that yet. I am heartbroken and crushed, and defensive. I'm in no shape to give you a blessing and let you go with a smile and a handshake. You should respect my grief and just leave me alone for now.”
“Jinki...” Tae whispered. The pain she was feeling in her heart took all the other words away.
“To be honest, I can't even look at your face right now, and it would be better if you left. I'm sorry.”
With those words he stood up abruptly and went to the bathroom where he could vent his tears without witnesses. One more moment with Taeyeon would be a torture.
She sat there a little more, wiping her tears with a tissue and feeling bad. Still, she understood his feelings and accepted them.
Before she left, Taeyeon moved Jinki's phone farther away from the edge of the table. She had seen him knock it over by accident so many times before. She wasn't feeling relieved for now, but also knew that talking to him had been the right thing to do.
Now, all she wanted to do was to wrap her arms around Eunsook and forget about the world for a moment.

When Jinki came back, Taeyeon was gone. He sat down on his chair limply, his eyes focusing on the mug of chocolate she had never finished. She had taken one sip, though, and there was a mark left by her strawberry lip gloss on the edge. Jinki reached out to trace his finger over it, smudging the pink outline.
Then reality came crashing down upon him again, and he put his face on the table, covering his head. He wasn't crying – just drowning in the pain and misery.
Someone hit him over the head with a heavy book. When he, surprised, raised his head, he saw that the heavy book was, in fact, the latest issue of Cosmopolitan, and the assaulter was, of all people, Choi Minjung.
“Oh, that disappointed look,” she said in her deep voice, sipping her smoothie across the table. “Did you expect her to come back for more insults from you?”
Big sunglasses were sitting on the tip of her nose, she was wearing sophisticated manicure, and overall it appeared that she was doing fine.
“Another victim of Lee Eunsook…” Jinki said with a sigh, rubbing the top of his head. “Was I really that harsh with her?” he added in a quieter voice.
“Mmm...” Minjung thought a little. “You were not exuding gentleness, that's for sure. But it could've been worse... Well, to tell the truth, being a victim of Lee Eunsook was the luckiest time of my life.”
Jinki frowned.
“But what is it about her? I just don't understand.”
“She is just... ”Minjung crossed her legs and stared at the window dreamily. “She is free, unique, charming... wild... She is afraid of nothing, but she's gentle. She makes stupid jokes, but cracks equations like walnuts. She is messy and hurts herself all the time, but she's thoughtful and considerate of others...  She is like everything at once. Being with her is like hugging the universe.”
“Is that so?” Jinki asked passively.
“Yeah... And much, much more...” Minjung took a pause, remembering, perhaps, the joyful days they had spent together. “Anyway, it was brave of you to even try competing with her… I mean, I don't get the reasoning behind your persistence, but I still admire it in a way.”
“If there was any competition, I wasn't aware of it. I had no idea that my girlfriend was planning to leave me for her gay girlfriend.”
Minjung chuckled.
“I get that your fragile male ego is sore over the fact that she left you for a girl, but it's time for you to see that the world does not revolve around your needs and sense of entitlement.”
“It is not about my ego or sense of entitlement,” the boy argued firmly. “It has nothing to do with the fact that she left me for a girl, and everything to do with the fact that I have lost someone I love, and I'm sad. I wasn't going out with her to prove anything to myself or others. I wanted to be with her, that's all. I wasn't given a chance to try fighting for my love one last time. I'm allowed to be sore.”
Minjung sighed, putting her drink down and pulling her chair closer to the table.
“There will be enough situations in your life where you will have to fight. But this is not one of those situations, and you need to accept that. When I was with Eunsook, I was thinking like you. Thinking that I can fix everything by simply loving her, but one day I looked at her and realized that she was suffering in silence. She knew that her feelings for someone else were hopeless, but being with a person she didn't love was also hard for her, and she was just too kind to break up with me, because she thought I deserved a chance. In the end, it was my decision to part.”
Minjung saw that now she had Jinki's full attention. He listened to her without interrupting.
“Just like you are wondering about Eunsook (even though that is just because you're stupid), I will never understand what she sees in Lee Taeyeon. But still I understand that they are meant to be. And when two people are destined to be together, it's like... like an express train running full-speed. Even if you try to jump on that train...”
“…you will end up under it,” Jinki finished pensively. “So, where are you now? Still lying on the railroad, broken and bleeding?”
Minjung smiled.
“No, I'm moving on. The ambulance came.”
Jinki raised his eyebrows.
“Is it someone from school? Does she like you back? ”
“She's not from our school. She is my music teacher, and a little older, and, well... I'm working on that.”
“Well... Good luck. I guess.”
“Thank you!” Minjung chirped, throwing the strap of her bag around her shoulder. She stood up to leave. “And good luck with your own personal growth.”
“That morning... you asked if I was Eunsook's brother. Do we look that much alike?”
“There is a similarity,” Minjung admitted, giving him a meaningful look. “But it's not strong enough to be the sole reason why someone chose to date you.”
Jinki nodded.
“Thank you for saying that.”
Minjung patted his shoulder.
“Have you ever thought of dating a guy? That might open new opportunities.”
The boy thought for a moment.
“No, thanks.”
Minjung giggled. The last words she threw over her shoulder as her heels were clicking away were:
“Blues do look good on you, you know!”
Jinki watched her leave before mumbling to himself:
“What the hell?”

Studying usually made him feel better, so, after playing a game on his phone and getting angry at it for no reason, Jinki went to a park and sat under a tree with his books. Physics was always his answer, his escape.
Today it made him even angrier.
“Who even thought of this stupid thing?!” he cried pointlessly.
He dropped his face on his hands, but hit himself too hard doing so, and his glasses dug into his skin.
“Aw, . Aw.”
His phone vibrated again in his pocket. Just when he wanted to be left alone...
Jinki checked his Kakao. Five messages, from the same sender. All asking either where he was or what he was doing.
He put the phone back into his pocket without answering. Just when he closed his eyes to snooze for a while, it rang.
The boy groaned. Apparently he was not getting any peace today.
“What?” he grumbled as he picked up. 

“Hyung! Why are you not answering my messages?” an eager voice on the other side of the phone asked.
“I wrote earlier that I can't meet today.”
“But why, hyung?”
“I'm in no condition for doing your homework right now.”
“But it doesn't have to be homework! We can walk around and have fun!”
“I'm in no condition for fun either,” Jinki said gloomily. “In fact, I'm sick and lying in bed at home.”
“But I've been to your home, and your mom said you were out.”
He shut his eyes, biting his lip. .
“She lied.”
“Oh, no,” the voice disagreed. “She traced your location on Facebook and told me right where you are. In fact, I'm almost there.”
“You're what?!”
“See you in a moment, hyung!”
“Wait, no! You-”
But the call was already over, and he stared at the screen of his phone in disbelief and exasperation.
Isn't it too many betrayals for one day?!
He thought about the boy who had called him and his innocent audacity and felt even more furious.
“Dammit, Lee Taemin!!!” he yelled, throwing his phone on the grass. “Burn in Hell!”
Someone laughed behind his back.
“Only if you are there too, hyung. Have an ice cream while it hasn't melted away.”
“Is it a chocolate one?” Jinki asked without turning around because he was mad.
“Sure, hyung!”
He could hear the smile in that annoyingly excited voice.
“If you call me hyung one more time, I'll punch you,” Jinki murmured, snatching the ice-cream out of Lee Taemin's hand.
Taemin laughed.
“Yes, hyung.”
“What do you mean, ‘yes, hyung’? ‘Yes, I'll stop’, or ‘yes, I'll keep being annoying’?”
The younger boy watched Jinki tear the paper off the cone and sink his teeth into the crunchy top.
The evening sun was shining right into Taemin's face, and he was smiling.
“No, it means, ‘yes, punch me, hyung’.”
Jinki choked on the ice-cream.
“What's going on in your head?!” he cried.
Taemin chuckled, taking a pack of paper tissues out of the side-pocket of his bag.
“Nothing much. But I'd like to know what's going on in yours.”
Jinki wiped his chin and fingers and handed the crumpled tissue back to Taemin.
“It's a long story.”
“I have all the time in the world for you, hyung.”
Jinki pretended not to hear, but somehow he was glad that the other had said those words to him. They made him feel less lonely.
“Let's go see a movie or something,” he mumbled, giving up.
And Lee Taemin, the impossible kid, patted his shoulder with a shameless grin, because he finally got what he wanted.

Jjong could swear that working in the supermarket was the worst job in the world. Why? First, the money. His so called ‘pay’ was a joke that made him want to cry.
“Just because you're a schoolkid doing part-time, it means that the bastards get to exploit you?!” he had lamented more than once, dropping his fist on the table, to the Japanese girl he had befriended on the job. (She was a pretty mild person and carried a bunch of Kit Kats wherever she went.)
Second, treatment of employees. If the supervisor was in a bad mood, for them it meant being picked on, shouted at, disrespected and, well… it meant bad mood for everyone.
And the third... The third terrible thing about that job was the human factor. That was the reason why he was standing in the snack aisle, staring at the floor in utter disgust, fighting with his pride and everything he stood for. Someone had puked there. Puked. And since the supervisor hated his guts, he had to clean it. He had to clean the puke.
There was nothing to be done.
He could almost hear Eunsook's voice asking why he was doing that to himself, telling him that he deserved better.
He often heard the sound of her voice in his head anyway. Calling his name, conversing with him...
“Jjong! Jjong, where are you?!”
Here it comes again.
He sighed, dipping the mop in the bucket of water.
“Jjong, where are you, you little worm?!”
It somehow seemed that the voice was actually there this time. He looked around, wondering if he was ultimately losing his mind, and heard the steps hurrying closer.
The boy opened his mouth to call Eunsook's name when she herself appeared, flushed, agitated, her hair flying about.
“I talked to her, Jjong, I talked to her!” she cried, speeding towards him like some space rocket. “I told her I love her!!!”
“Oh,” Jjong uttered, his eyes wide. His brain was still confused by having to shift focus from the plight of part-time workers to the puke on the floor, to Eunsook in his imagination, and now to the actual Eunsook running to him. Everything was happening too fast.
She stopped in front of him and grabbed the sides of his face.
“And do you know what she said?!” she cried, shaking the boy.
“N-no.”
“She loves me! She loves me, you idiot!!!” And she kissed him full on the mouth, which escalated into the fiercest make-out session he had ever experienced, initiated entirely by the girl. He had barely recovered from the shock and closed his eyes when Eunsook pushed him away and yelled:
“I was such a !”
Then she laughed and scooped her friend into a rib-crushing hug.
“Oh my god,  Jjong! You were right! You were right about everything!”
“I am... glad...” he mumbled faintly.
“You should be,” she said, smiling, before she let him go. “Actually I have to run now 'cos I'm supposed to be in a completely different place and my is so getting kicked.”
However, she looked like she was no less than happy about it.
“Let's go for a burger when you're free! Byyye!”
Her hair hit the overwhelmed Jonghyun in the face as she her heels to run back wherever she came from. However, she had almost reached the end of the aisle, when she spun around suddenly and came back again.
“Is that puke?!” she cried in disgust, staring at the floor.
Jonghyun had forgotten all about the puke. He actually had to look where she was looking to see what she was talking about.
“Unfortunately, yes,” he sighed.
Eunsook put her hand on his shoulder, gazing at him compassionately.
“You deserve better, my friend,” she told him softly, pecking him on the cheek.
“Thank you...”
“See ya later!”
She hurried away again, and disappeared again, this time for real.
Jjonghyun stood, staring blindly in the direction of the corner behind which she had vanished, his mouth still pink from the violent kissing, the look in his eyes dreamy and completely disconnected from reality.
The supervisor, looking perplexed and angry, appeared from behind Jonghyun's back with his notepad in hand and demanded:
“Kim Jonghyun! What was that?!”
“A beautiful storm,” Jjong answered pensively.
“This is unacceptable! Is she a friend of yours?!”
“Never saw her before in my life, sir.”
The boy turned his head slowly and remarked:
“You're standing on the puke, sir.”
While cleaning the offensive puddle, he had to listen to the cursing and the grunting of the supervisor, and everything was turning into the same old mess that he hated to the core of his heart, but, instead of boiling with anger, he was smiling to himself.
He finished all of his work that day, hung his uniform on a hook, and told the manager he was quitting.
“It's too far from home,” Jonghyun told her, and that was true.
Still, he kept the real reason why he was leaving, to himself. Those people didn't need to know that he deserved better. They wouldn't understand anyway.