The Road Not Taken

MyungYeol One-Shot Collection

 

so um basically I really really really really wanted to update this (BECAUSE OMFG DID YOU SEE I HIT 93 SUBS LIKE /CRIES OMFG DICAKDHLFAHJCK), but the morse one I was writing was getting on my nerves and it's like reallyyyyyyyyyyy long but I didn't know what to write.
...so get ready for another poem-based one. 

Why,” Sungyeol groaned, throwing his head back as he hit it on the desk behind his. “Why. Why. Why. Whyyyyyyyy.”

                “Why what?” Myungsoo asked, though he didn’t really want to know. He just kept staring at the clock, wondering when detention would end and the teacher would let them out of the classroom.

                “The stupid poem project,” the older boy stifled from inside his arms, to which he’d thrown his head all the way to the front to do.

                “…Oh, that? I told you that you’d have to do it sooner or later. I just chose sooner.”

                “Why does it have to be American poetry, first of all? As if Korean poetry wasn’t bad enough!”

                “International experience.”

                “That doesn’t make sense!” Sungyeol kicked the ground once again, flinging his arms everywhere. “Why do I have to do this!”

                “I did it to, if it makes you feel any better. Me and, oh, I don’t know, the entire sophomore grade?”

                “I’m special,” Sungyeol huffed.

                “That doesn’t amount to much here.”

                Side-glaring at his boyfriend, Sungyeol stuck his tongue out at the piece of paper in front of him. “’Apply it to your life’. Like, what kind of bull is that!”

                “I dunno,” Myungsoo shrugged. “I just said that I saw a creepy raven outside my window once, and I got full credit. It’s not that hard.”

                “Hey, do you think I can –“

                “No.”

                “I didn’t even finish!”

                “The teacher’s gonna know if you used mines,” the younger boy said. “And especially if you used something as stupid as that.”

                “Oh, so now you admit you’re stupid?”

                “I’ve always been stupid, I’m just a lot smarter than you are.”

                Rolling his eyes in frustration, Sungyeol just looked back at the directions sheet filled with a buttload of information that he wasn’t even reading.

                “And besides,” Myungsoo added, “you couldn’t use that. Your poem has nothing to do with ravens.”

                “I could make it have something to do with ravens! Hey, how about this, you go cover the door for me; I’m gonna go and change the poems list for class –“

                “No, Sungyeol,” Myungsoo hissed. He leaned over, grabbing the paper and looking at the teacher’s handwritten message on the bottom. “You have to do this one. No matter what.”

                “But it makes no sense!” Sungyeol protested. “Have you even tried reading it? It’s about some, like, some creepy guy with roads and ! And he’s super racist.”

                “…What?”

                “You see right there?” Sungyeol elevated his body a bit to point at the first word in the poem scribbled at the end of the page. “‘…in a yellow wood’. Dude’s totally being racist towards Asians. You can just feel the hatred.”

                “…Sungyeol, I honestly don’t know why I’m even going out with you.”

                “You’re lucky you’re going out with me.”

                “No, I could be out hooking up with some super hot chick right now –“

                “Oh, so now you’re going become straight all of a sudden?” Sungyeol accused with hitched eyebrows.

                “Well, duh, look where being gay brought me.” And just to prove his point, Myungsoo turned to look at his boyfriend and flicked his forehead.

                “Pshh, everybody’s straight; it’s no fun. Being gay’s like –“ Sungyeol stopped himself, eyes widening as he brought the paper up to his eye level. “! Myungsoo! I figured it out!”

                “Figured what out?”

                “My poem!” Forgetting their earlier bicker, Sungyeol fell forward to squash little Myungie with his arms. “Thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou! I love youuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu!”

                And Myungsoo was left softly patting Sungyeol on the back, still not to sure of whether he was supposed to push the guy off or hug him back harder.

 

The next day in class, the teacher stood up from her desk to stand before the class and the chalkboard.

                “Okay, students, we’re having the rest of our poem recitation life-comparisons today.” She turned her head a bit, coughing. “Actually, no, we’re just having the last one that refused to go yesterday.”

                Another evil glare, and the woman said, “Lee Sungyeol, please come up.”

                Like a dash of lightening, Sungyeol was up in front of the class and grinning as wide as he could, a paper clenched between his fingers.

                “I’m ready!”

                “I can see that,” the teacher observed with wide eyes, obviously surprised. “Uh, class, Lee Sungyeol, please…prepare yourselves.”

                Sungyeol just smiled again, then set the paper down on the woman’s desk and turned to his awaiting peers. His eye caught Myungsoo’s, who sat in the front row (Sungyeol sat in the back, inevitably, because he was an awful student), and his smile only seemed to grow wider. Myungsoo, on the other hand, simply, bit in lips in extreme worry and scrunched his eyebrows together in fright of what was going to happen.

                “Okay, so all of y’all, my poem is ‘The Road Not Taken’ by Robert Frost.” Sungyeol beamed again, took a quick glance at his paper, then started talking with immense fluency.

 

“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

 

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim

Because it was grassy and wanted wear,

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

 

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I marked the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way

I doubted if I should ever come back.

 

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence;

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.”

 

                As he wrapped up the poem, Sungyeol rocked on the heels of his feet and announced, “Now it’s time for my life comparison!”

                He turned to the blackboard and grabbed a piece of chalk, slyly asking the teacher if he could use it. She just nodded, though slightly afraid of what he was going to draw.

                “Okay, so basically, I’m gonna do the first stanza.” Sungyeol started at the top of the blackboard, then drew a diagonal line towards the left. From the same starting point, he drew a diagonal to the right. Then, he drew a smaller backwards V in the larger one that he’d created.

                “So this one,” Sungyeol began explaining, tilting his head to write in the left space between the two backwards V’s, “is a girl.”

                He drew an terrible stick figure in it, letting straight lines fall from the top of the head.

                “And this one,” he continued, turning the other way to do something with the right space between the side of the two backward V’s, “is a boy.”

                Likewise, he drew a horrific blob with sticks.

                “And this is me!” He drew a circle with three dots and a smile on the top where the starting point was.

                “So let’s say this is the yellow wood. And obviously, it’s split (or diverged, whatever) into two symbolizing two roads, am I correct?” The class nodded, and Sungyeol kept talking, “So here I am, conflicted.” He tapped the chalk onto the picture of “him” at the top. “I just stand there and decide, should I be straight or gay? Because girls are hot, but they’re naggy, yet guys are just as hot and they understand you.”

                Myungsoo’s eyes fell open as he shook his head, his teeth chattering. NO, no, no, NO, NO, NO, no, no, no, no, no, no. Sungyeol couldn’t be doing what he thought he would be doing, would he?!

                “And I can’t be both, because it feels weird to be biual,” Sungyeol shrugged. “Then the guy says some weird stuff about bending undergrowth but that made no sense to me so, meh, we’ll just skip that for now.

                “The next stanza’s just as confusing as the last line of the other one, but I’m pretty sure I got it.” Sungyeol cleared his throat, then settled the piece of chalk down. “He says that both roads look equally used. Both of them look the same, both of them look as…scary to walk through as the other.”

                The talking boy played with his fingers, then looked back up. “Same thing in my life, I don’t know which way to go. If I go one way, I’m going to be stuck with a girl that would probably nag at me, a girl that might not like me at all because honestly, I’m not that likeable. We’d get tired of each other, she’d divorce me. Same old, same old.

                “Then there’s the other one, which if I take, I’d be judged for what seems like the rest of my life. But I’d probably be happy because the other person is willing to get judged along with me and stay by me no matter what.”

                The class aw’ed for a second, and Myungsoo felt his heart shrivel up just the slightest.

                “So then the next stanza. The author chooses a road to walk, not knowing which one it is. But then he claims that he’ll go to the other one some other day, but we all know very well, along with him, that he isn’t going to come back after he takes the first road.

                “Then to me. I didn’t know anything, so I just randomly took one road and…well, truthfully, just tested it out, saying that I’d try going out with a girl someday. Even if I knew that I would never go back to them anyways.”

                The smile that seemed to fade away through the last few minutes of the presentation found its way back up on Sungyeol’s lips, and the teenager let all his teeth show wide. “And I ended up…”

                He turned around, grabbing the chalk and scribbling something on the board. When he stepped away, there was a large X right atop the writing “girl” and that…horrendous picture.

                “…Taking the road less traveled by, like Robert Frost did.” And for the first time since he’d come to the front of the classroom, Sungyeol caught Myungsoo’s eyes and his lips pursed a bit to contain his excitement. “And that’s made all the difference.”

 

“Sometimes I don’t think I give you enough credit as you deserve,” Myungsoo murmured, his fingers playing around in Sungyeol’s hair.

                “You don’t,” Sungyeol agreed, though his eyes were glued on the television screen as he took a piece of popcorn from his bowl and brought his hand up, allowing Myungsoo to eat off it.

                It was Friday, right after school and right after Sungyeol’s drastic poem recitation. They were having their usual movie night-out at Sungyeol’s dorm with the older boy sitting loosely on the ground and Myungsoo sitting above him on the couch. Sungyeol always claimed possession of the popcorn, and if Myungsoo ever wanted any, he’d have to wait for his boyfriend to agreeably feed him.

                “You’re a pretty good boyfriend, you know that?”

                “I’m very well aware of it, just been waiting to hear you say it.” Sungyeol’s hand instinctively went up to whack Myungsoo’s away from his hair, but the younger boy just giggled a bit before returning to play with it.

                “Thanks. For that.”

                “It wasn’t for you,” Sungyeol said in a monotone way. “It was for the rest of my boyfriends, too.”

                “…But I’m your only boyfriend.”

                “Glad you caught on to that, Sherlock.”

                Myungsoo pouted a bit, letting go of Sungyeol’s hair before turning the other way and hanging off the couch upside-down, the top of his head leaning on Sungyeol’s right shoulder.

                “You do realize that if you do that, the blood’s all gonna flow to your brain and your face is gonna end up bright red.”

                “Oh, since when did you get so smart?” Myungsoo played, poking his finger at his boyfriend’s cheek.

                “Never. You just got stupider.” Sungyeol sighed, stuffing some more popcorn into his mouth. “This movie is so boring.”

                “Then let’s do what I was planning to do originally, excluding the blood-flow-to-my-brain thing.”

                “What’s that –“ and just as Sungyeol turned his face to look at his Myungsoo, the younger boy’s lips were on his and everything just felt so right.

 

I'VE BEEN DYING TO SAY THIS SINCE I READ THIS POEM BUT LIKE 'THE ROAD NOT TAKEN' BUT ROBERT FROST IS TOTALLY ABOUT GAY PEOPLE.

no I'm kidding guise don't flip out lol. 

so life is like failing me right now and I have to do a project for this Holocaust worldwide competition thing, meaning that I have to watch this 3 hour testimony from a Holocaust survivor (WHO WANTS TO DO IT WITH ME. IT'S DUE IN LIKE EIGHT DAYS.) and I'm literally falling asleep watching it and she keeps crying but I have too much respect to say anything bad about it so I'll stop there. But honestly guise. HELP ME. IT'S THREE HOURS. THREE HOURS. I HAVEN'T EVEN GOTTEN THROUGH HALF AN HOUR YET ASDFGHJKL. but my friend's is like five hours so muahahahahahahahaha for her.

OKAY SO HEY GUISE CAN YOU DO A HUGEEEEEEE FAVOR FOR ME. LIKE HUMUNGOUS. HUGE. HUGE. HUGE. do you guise mind browsing through the old oneshots, the other thirty (holy crap you guise I'VE WRITTEN OVER 30 ONESHOTS OMFG) and tell me what your favorites are. or like the ones you didn't go "um...evie...what?" after reading. if you even have any. please? please? I wanna compose a list to put on the forward so that anybody that wants to read a quick oneshot doesn't have to scroll through like 28 ty ones.<3 I'll love you guise for life<3

SO UM HAVE A GREATTTTTT WEEK~<3 and omfg thankyou so much for the 6 upvotes I'm literally sobbing right now like TEARS. STREAMING DOWN MY FACE. but I'm never letting you guise go ever so I'm not gonna finish the song.

Crazy Love, anybody?<3

[[c:8]]

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NeverlandParadise
two death fics in a row except this one isnt angst but someone stop me

Comments

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Sumayeol #1
Chapter 32: Ow yeollie so cutee
Sumayeol #2
Chapter 13: I like this one
hanafinite
#3
Chapter 1: I don't know if you're reading this or not, but I had always want someone to write MyungYeol with TopYeol/BottomMyungsoo. Since your writing skill are so much better, could you please write them? For everything sake? :D
very_ship_them #4
Chapter 1: Omg XD I read all these shots like 4 months ago and I came back
You are AMAZING author-nim
toobiased
#5
Chapter 50: but dongwoo has the best what the hell

okay so i looove this one this is probably my favorite cause you didn't just end it with the game but there was sungyeol's thing with school and myungsoo being myungsoo and just <3333 i haven't been reading infinite fanfics for a while and now i'm all nostalgic to start reading again <3 (once i finish studying for exams otl)
cyd4294
#6
Chapter 50: ouh wait, best in infinite goes to dongwoo aint it?
kkk
cyd4294
#7
Chapter 50: omg i love this one!

and the question XD
wintersugar #8
Chapter 50: I remember playing paranoia when i was little (I asked the most boring questions though haha) and this story is super cute :> I really loved this!
KuroiDaiyamondo
#9
Chapter 50: YESSSSS this story makes me HAPPY !!
I don't know the game! It's an interesting one! One that definitely will make you paranoid of what was being asked about you (if you were called out) .__. Awww poor MyungSoo, but seeing the smirk from SungYeol must have made him even more wondering what was being asked (I agree with SungYeol's answer to that question, damn MyungSoo some nice you have) SungYeol being straightforward by saying he wanted to spend time with MyungSoo, be it in Soo's house or his own house (live across the street wth so great for the future kkk) The straightforward confession, wow SungYeol you are really going for it! I liked it all! Thank you Evie once again, I love your stories!