Fascinating

You are fascinating to me.

I remember walking in through the door to my house and seeing you tutor my little sister, which made me feel really stupid, by the way, because we were the same age yet I was incapable of tutoring my little sister myself, but that’s beside the point. You greeted me with a simple hello, but you didn’t smile, and I found that so peculiar. Your face was blank and not another word was said to me that day.

“Rude”, I remember thinking. Because you didn’t smile, because you didn’t make small talk with me, I labeled you as rude. I would pass by you in school and see your bright blonde hair that just screamed for attention, the impassive look on your face, and your whole image just left a bad taste in my mouth.

Of course, I know now that you aren’t. You’re anything but rude. You are probably the sweetest person I know.

Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating just a little bit by saying you’re the sweetest, but this is only because I like you so damned much. I don’t even think you realize how much I like you, do you? Well, I do, I really do.

I asked around about you after that, and I learned about your nickname, ice princess. I understood why they called you that. It was just in the way you presented yourself. It gave me a really bad impression of you to be completely honest. I fell into the pit of rumors that told me you were this snobby, uptight, rich girl. Not only was my impression bad, but it was also false, not that I knew it at the time.

I asked Yoona about you, figuring she would know more, considering you tutored her and all. She told me you were a little scary at first, but you turned out to be really sweet. I was shocked to hear those words to say the least. Yoona was a little upset to see that I had fallen for those ridiculous tales that people spread about you and told me I should meet you. I wanted to trust Yoona, I really did, but this image I had of you back then was so deeply engraved into my head that I had a hard time comprehending that you were anything but what I had constructed in my mind.

Then when you came over to tutor Yoona one day, I watched you two closely. You seemed normal enough, patient and understanding, even. Even so, I was afraid to approach you. I was intimidated of you, for some odd reason. Then, when Yoona left to go to the bathroom, you noticed me.

“Are you okay?” you asked me, and all I could do was nod dumbly and walk away.

And that was when I realized the reason why I constructed this evil ice princess version of you in my head.

I liked you.

I secretly admired the way you didn’t feel the need to smile at everyone and how you always cut straight to the point. You weren’t worried about pleasing everyone, and you didn’t care about all those labels everyone gave you. You knew who you were and you stuck to that. There was just something so real about you.

Plus, you were gorgeous.

Don’t get me wrong, I still pretty much thought you were a rude know-it-all, but there was something about your nonchalant demeanor that captivated me. And I really couldn’t deny that you sort of had this ethereal beauty about you.

I entertained the idea that I actually had a crush on the so called ‘ice princess’ in my head. I was young, naïve, confused, and – most importantly – afraid. I kept asking myself why that was so, and I could never come up with a coherent answer. It all seems so obvious now, though. There were just so many implications that came with liking you in that way.

First and foremost, you’re a girl, and I’m a girl.

That fact alone was enough to frighten me.

I really couldn’t comprehend it. I had always thought that I was a pretty liberal person compared to most people in Korea, but I couldn’t accept the fact that I could possibly be crushing on a girl. I asked myself so many questions. If I liked you, did that mean I was gay? If I was gay, would my family accept me? Would my friends accept me?

Then, my mind wandered over to a question that completely threw me off guard.

Would she ever like me back?

I can recall feeling like I didn’t know myself anymore and that I felt like a completely new person.

So, I did the easiest thing to do and deliberately avoided you for the rest of the school year. It was kind of hard, what with you being in my house twice a week and looking as irresistible as you did. I figured after the year was over you would stop coming by to tutor Yoona and be gone from my life, and I could just forget about the whole thing.

Because that’s what I thought it was, something that could go away. I told myself it was just a fluke and that I was just going through one of those awkward teenage phases.

I didn’t really consider that you and Yoona could’ve become close friends, but you guys did and one day Yoona asked me for a favor because I still owed her for her covering for me when I ditched school a couple times.

“Unnie, could you teach Sica unnie how to swim?”

To this day, I still don’t know what I was thinking when I said “okay” without any hesitation. I was still trying to get over you and I’m not exactly sure what possessed me to agree to such a thing. Maybe it was because it had been a little over a month since I saw you and I missed you. But I refused to believe that I missed you, because to say that I missed you was to admit that I had actually felt something for you and that was just simply impossible.

Looking back at how I was, I can’t help but see all the obvious signs. I guess it’s just like that with everything though, isn’t it? It’s so easy to judge something in hindsight, but in the moment it’s just as easy to fall into denial.

Do you remember our first lesson?

You came to my house and after a shy and awkward greeting I told you to change in the bathroom and meet me at the pool in the back. You came out wearing what I can only describe as an extremely flattering bikini. Not really knowing how to act or where to start, I asked you why you wanted to learn how to swim.

“Yoona felt like she owed me since I tutored her for free, and I mentioned that I didn’t know how to swim…and here we are.”

I let out a generic “oh” before we got into the pool. While you were trying to learn how to float, I decided to try to strike another conversation with you by asking why you tutored Yoona for free in the first place.

“We’ve always been close,” you told me, which came as a shock to me at the time. I never knew you two were close beforehand. “She’s like a little sister to me.”

I stared down at you, shocked. My hands that were keeping you afloat jerked away, and you quickly grasped the ledge when you realized that I wasn’t supporting you anymore. You screamed rather loudly, to my surprise. I didn’t know your voice was able to reach such a high volume. I apologized profusely before trying to get you to float again. You looked so scared, and my heart ached at the sight. The whole rude, spoiled, ice princess image I had of you was completely gone, and instead, I felt this overwhelming urge to protect you. I pulled you away from the ledge and told you to trust me.

And, surprisingly, you did.

I ended the lesson a few minutes after that, not really sure my heart could take any more time with you. I bolted out of the pool and hid myself in my room, not even bothering you show you out.

That was when I finally admitted it to myself. I liked you.

Despite the turmoil that came with that realization, I still thoroughly enjoyed my lessons with you. I never understood the metaphor of having butterflies in your stomach until then. Every lesson, those damned butterflies would be inside me fluttering around madly. I was secretly glad that you weren’t a fast learner because that just meant I got to spend more time with you. We were still pretty awkward with each other though, and that was probably what hindered the learning process so much. You got frustrated on the ninth lesson, feeling like you were never going to get it. I told you that you’d get it eventually, and that I’d stick with you until you did. You looked at me and smiled one of those rare smiles.

“You know, I tried to learn how to swim before,” you muttered quietly. I raised my eyebrows at you and you continued without me asking you to. “My boyfriend tried to teach me.”

I realized you were starting to let your walls down in front of me, and I wasn’t really sure what to make out of it. I asked myself if I could handle being friends with you with these feelings inside of me. The answer to that question was simple: no. I knew my emotions would get the better of me if we grew any closer than how we were, but with you looking at me like you were, I really couldn’t resist the chance to get to know you.

So, instead of doing the rational thing, I foolishly followed my heart and asked you why your boyfriend stopped teaching you.

I couldn’t ignore the jealously raging inside of me when I saw how red your cheeks got.

“We got…distracted a lot,” you answered to my dismay. “It was kind of uncomfortable, really.”

My jealously subsided when I heard those words and my curiosity got the better of me.

“He always got kind of touchy when he’d try to teach me, you know?”

I told you that I wasn’t surprised and you asked me why that was. I remember blurting out that you were gorgeous and that any sane guy would have to exercise an extreme amount of self-control not to touch you if they were put in that position. You gave me this weird look and I ended that session abruptly, leaving you alone in the pool once again.

The lessons from then on started to get a little weird. Sometimes you would just talk about your boyfriend and then you’d get quiet and just give me this weird stare, as if you were expecting something out of me. You weren’t exactly the best at being subtle now that I think about it, but being the oblivious person that I am, I didn’t get the hint.

To be honest, that little thing you were trying to do back then? It worked.

I was completely and insanely jealous of the guy.

On the twenty-first lesson, I finally had enough and screamed that you deserved better and that all he wanted was to have with you and that you should break up with the guy. I stormed out for the third time since I started giving you lessons.

On the day of what was supposed to be our twenty-second lesson, you came over early. You aren’t really one to beat around the bush – one of the reasons I admire you so much, actually. So, you got straight to the point that day and asked me if I liked you. I remember a lot of mumbling and stuttering coming out of me. I’m still not really sure what my reaction was, but I’m sure that the only thing coming out of my mouth was complete and utter gibberish.

“I broke up with him a few weeks ago,” you told me with a completely straight face.

You waited a good five seconds – and I know this because I literally counted the seconds – before you kissed me. It was just a small peck and barely lasted a second, but I can still recall how dazed I was and how I could feel the insides of my stomach doing flips.

“Yuri…why do you like me?” you asked.

I dumbly stuttered out that I didn’t like you and you only rolled your eyes and kissed me again, longer and slower than the first time. You pulled away and looked at me with pleading eyes and asked me the same question.

You didn’t believe the words that left my mouth that day, and you still don’t, do you? Well, I’m here to tell you again that you fascinate me.

I first knew you as Jessica Jung, the ice princess. I lied to myself and fed myself more and more lies about you, but there wasn’t one moment where I actually believed all that. It was my way of coping with my denial and it was a stupid way, really. My words then are still relevant to this day. You still amaze me with the fact that you don’t feel the need to smile at everyone you come across and that you don’t care about what others think. It’s just so mind-blowing to me because I’m the exact opposite of you. I have always felt the need to please everyone, to make everyone happy, and to never turn down the chance to help someone. I put everyone else’s needs above mine. While I was commended for that and even awarded for it a couple of times, there was an obvious price that came with doing what I did every day. I thought I was being selfish by wanting to spend more time to myself and wanting to just say ‘no’ for once.

Just like you, I had a reputation of my own.

But, unlike you, I hated mine.

I felt so fake. I was a manufactured product that had been born out of people’s expectations. Yet, people admired me anyway.

And then there was you, someone who was so content and true to themselves that everyone despised.

It wasn’t even that you were rude. You were just a tough nut to crack. You weren’t exactly one to warm up to someone easily and behind those glares and that conceited aura was a warm – albeit, a little shy – girl. It was both odd and amazing at the same time how beautifully our contradictions clashed with each other.

And so, when you asked me why I liked you there was really only one way I could describe it.

You fascinate me; how you are so incredibly gorgeous, how you are both fragile and strong at the same time, how you wear your heart on your sleeve, how you aren’t afraid to tell the truth, how you are both blunt and shy at the same time, and most importantly how you are so true to yourself despite the opposition.

That, Jessica Jung, is why I liked you back then and why I love you today.

You are endlessly fascinating to me.

I am here to ask you today, Jessica Jung Sooyeon, if you would like to continue to fascinate me, Kwon Yuri, for the rest of my life.