[CONTENTID1]Tell Me[/CONTENTID1]

[CONTENTID2]Chapter Twenty[/CONTENTID2]

[CONTENTID3]

These past three weeks had been like heaven for Chen. He had gotten to spend a lot more time with Jakyung, and had gotten closer to her. At first, he had been very angry that he was so helpless. His wound made it so that any movement at all involving his waist was very difficult, even walking. He could barely even make it to the bathroom by himself. For someone who was normally very active, this was a huge deal.

“Don’t be a baby about it,” Jakyung had told him the first time she’d seen him sulking in his room. He’d had the covers pulled up to his chin and a scowl that seemed permanently etched on his face. The lights were off and the curtains drawn and there was an overall feeling of gloom in the room that had usually was always bright and happy.

“I’m not being a baby,” he’d said to her then. If he was being honest, he was sulking. Yixing and Suho and Kris had been scolding him to no end since he’d been brought back to the mansion. Of course he had been thinking when he went out and picked a fight. He just hadn’t been thinking about the consequences of it.

But if it meant that he could spend all this time with Jakyung, then he was willing to endure the pain.

He was surprising himself. When he had first seen Jakyung walk into his class, he’d thought she was interesting. She was quiet, closed off and didn’t say a word to anyone. She didn’t look like she wanted to be there, which only made him wonder why she was there. I mean, it wasn’t as if they were at a university for students who were stupid. If she was smart enough to be admitted halfway through the semester, then surely she’d wanted to be there.

He’d purposefully walked into her backpack on that first day in an attempt to hear her voice when she apologized. He had no such luck and she even ran away for him once in gym class and once in the parking lot. When he finally got to hear her speak at Elysia that first night, he was surprised with how naturally smoky her voice was. She looked like the kind of girl that would sound meek, but when she spoke, her words cut through you like a knife.

So when she told him to stop acting like a baby and try and get some work done, those words cut through him and made him realize that there were some pros to his situation (besides, you know, being alive).

Jakyung had offered to help him keep up with the work he was missing in class. It wasn’t much, but he was grateful for her diligence. He knew that she was doing it because she thought it was her fault he was bedridden, but he didn’t try arguing with her on that point. She was too stubborn to believe him, and he wanted to be selfish and have her to himself.

The first week was the hardest. She seemed distant and distracted, as if she couldn’t decide if she wanted to be there or somewhere else. On the third day, she’d even arrived in a rage and was silent the whole time she was there. On the fourth day, he’d heard Kai scolding Xiumin for something involving someone named Sooyoung, and Chen put the pieces together.

Jakyung was jealous.

Chen wouldn’t pretend to know what was going on between her and Xiumin. On the outside, it didn’t seem like she was interested in the older boy, but when Chen had seen them together, it was like watching a drama where the tension between too lovers was so thick you could practically cut it with a knife. It was in the little touches, the fleeting looks, the insinuated words. It was agonizing for him because he was the one Jakyung should have been having those things with. He couldn’t blame Xiumin – Jakyung was beautiful – but he knew his friend. Xiumin was a player, and a smooth one at that. Chen had only ever seen him with one girlfriend, and even then Xiumin had seemed like the girl was more of a buddy than anything else. He didn’t want Jakyung to be a buddy.

He knew he should have been more assertive about his feelings, and normally he would have been. Yet, Jakyung was not a normal girl, he knew and every time he thought about using his normal tactics to win her over, he knew it wouldn’t work. So he used his time wisely.

After the first few days, he was well enough to walk short distances with only moderated pain. The first time he complained about being cooped up in his room for too long, she’d offered her shoulder and together they made it down stairs to the living room. He’d begun to protest that he could do it on his own, but she wouldn’t hear it, and he wasn’t going to give up the chance to be that physically close to her. After the first couple of tandem trips to the living room, he learned that she preferred peach scented hair products, and almost always kept her hair tied in a ponytail that was set slightly to the left. She wore minimal makeup, but he found that he didn’t mind her skin’s small blemishes imperfections. She wasn’t perfect, and that was okay.

During the next three weeks, he could see her opening up to him. She would laugh at (some of) his jokes, she would playfully punch him (lightly) when he was being stupid, and she didn’t seemed to mind it when she caught him staring at her or when he purposefully held her hand when they navigated the stairs together.

Chen was going to make Jakyung see how great he was. He wasn’t going to lose to Xiumin. He couldn’t lose to Xiumin.

++

Jakyung laughed when she first heard that her father had been shot in the head.

She didn’t mean to laugh because she certainly didn’t find the situation funny. However, she couldn’t conjure the tears that were usually expected after receiving such news. Her mother had called her person