Title: Dance Partner

Characters: Jongin and Krystal (f(x))

Poster by Korpride

“Yah, Kim Jongin!!”

Ohhhh, great. Jongin would recognize that voice anywhere. That way too lively, too high-pitched voice would be recognized anywhere in the world by the people who knew her. She could be the most annoying or the most fun person to be with, depending on what mood you were in, and she also happened to be the only girl whom Jongin considered one of his real friends. And recently, she had also become the girlfriend of his best guy friend.

Standing in front of his locker with many of his books halfway falling out, Jongin turned his head to be greeted by the sight of his friend Sulli, basically dragging her boyfriend Sehun by his hand behind her, walking briskly in Jongin’s direction. It was a rather funny sight to see one of his best friends trailing behind his girlfriend like some little dog, but Sehun seemed to be all smiles and all rainbows, holding onto Sulli’s hand tightly, and giving Jongin a sheepish smile that obviously read, ‘I’m both embarrassed and happy at the same time because of my super hyper girlfriend’.

“You, I heard you were assigned partners with Krystal for the showcase!” called Sulli, her high-toned voice booming in the school hallway, unnecessarily reaching the ears of everyone who weren’t supposed to hear her.

“Yeah,” shrugged Jongin matter-of-factly.

“That’ssssss great! You guys are going to be amazing! Since you two are the best dancers in our grade… oh, I mean, other than you Sehun-ah,” pausing, Sulli turned to Sehun for a second to pat him on the hand she still held. “But!” she continued, “Try to be as gentle, and as lenient, and as nice as you can with her. She just broke up with her boyfriend a few days ago, and is probably really sensitive.”

“Okay…” Jongin grumbled, “Wait, I thought she dumped the guy. Why would she be sensitive if she ended the relationship herself?” He looked toward Sehun with furrowed eyebrows in a mostly useless attempt to get Sehun to be on his side. The look Sehun returned to Jongin, signaling, ‘Don’t drag me into this,’ proved that Sehun was in no way beneficial.

“That doesn’t matter! Whether she did the dumping or not, it’s still a hard time for her, so treat her well, because you know she’s one of my best friends,” said Sulli.

“How many best friends do you have, like ten?” Jongin jabbed sarcastically, eyeing Sehun up and down. Sulli glared at him.

“Yah! Sehunnie is my boyfriend. You, well, I guess you come pretty close to being a ‘best friend’, but Krystal is my one and only best girlfriend. Are you going to be nice to her or not??” Sulli nagged, clearly not caring what kind of attention she was drawing toward her.  

Jongin let out an impatient sigh. “I don’t typically consider myself a jerk, Choi Sulli. If you were my friend, you would know that. Fine, I’ll be nice to her. But I would have been nice to her without you ordering me to, you know,” he replied, narrowing his eyes in irritation at the passing students who were eyeing them strangely.

“Oh, I didn’t mean it like that, Jongin-ah. I just wanted to make sure you were aware of Krystal’s situation, since she wouldn’t have told you a peep herself, just boiled with it all inside her,” said Sulli, lowering her voice just slightly, as if she finally realized she was basically yelling in the school hallway.

“Okay mom, I’ll do what you say, I’ll bring her cake and ice cream and talk gossip with her instead of practicing for our performance!” Jongin remarked, a little more sarcastically than he had intended.

“I’m not your mom Kim Jongin!!” Sulli cried, placing her free hand – the one that wasn’t tied by an invisible knot around Sehun’s - on her hip. Jongin wondered as he always did when he had these encounters with Sulli, how they were even friends at all. All they ever did was bicker. And now that his best friend Sehun had joined in on all of the bickering, Jongin was finding himself at an aggravating disadvantage:  Sehun always either remained completely silent, or sided with Sulli, whatever the topic of argument was.

For once, Jongin decided to let Sulli have her way with this argument. “I know, I know. Don’t worry, I’ll make sure to be uncharacteristically nice to your friend Krystal. But I’m gonna tell her that you ordered me to do so. You’ve been warned,” he said.

“Okay!” Sulli answered, her expression brightening immediately, no trace of the hand-to-hip, angry-mother side left in her. “Sehunnie and I are gonna go practice for our showcase performance, then!”

“Wait, you two got partnered up with each other?” Jongin asked, again raising his eyebrows skeptically.

“Yupp!” Sulli practically leapt in the air as she replied, “I told Mrs. Ock that Sehunnie and I recently started dating, and she said we were too cute and let us be partners!! Isn’t that awesome?”

“No,” Jongin said flatly, not that Sulli was very interested. She was beckoning to Sehun to walk her to her next class, Jongin nowhere in her mind now that she’d accomplished what she’d come to him for.

Jongin stood and watched as his two friends turned their backs on him, interlacing the fingers of the hands they’d been holding. They looked at each other and shared soft, sincere smiles, before walking away, slowly, swinging their linked hands back and forth, back and forth, Sehun turning briefly and waving to Jongin with his free hand. It was disgusting to watch, but Jongin was very truly happy for them, nonetheless.

Tuesday at 10:20am, in the B Studio, was Jongin’s first given practice time for the showcase duet performance. He was the first to arrive in the spacious studio room, and he slung down his backpack carelessly against a wall as he checked his watch, making sure he was on time.

Five minutes later, the studio doors opened and Jongin’s partner scrambled in. She spotted him stretching in front of the mirrored wall, and called apologetically, “Sorry I’m late!”

Jongin nodded curtly to accept the apology, while the studio doors behind his partner opened again a second time, letting in a tall guy with darkish brown hair and puppy-dog eyes. Jongin faintly recognized the guy as being in his grade.

“Krystal!” the tall guy said, as soon as he burst in, “You can’t do this to me!” He didn’t even glance Jongin’s way.

Jongin resumed stretching at his spot. Out of the corner of his eye, he glimpsed Krystal biting her lip crossly as she turned toward the tall guy. “Hyungshik-ah, I’m kind of busy right now…” she said.

“This is more important!” The guy practically yelled at Krystal, “Why are you doing this to me!? We were the most perfect couple!!”

Krystal wrinkled her nose as she replied,“Hyungshik-ah, how many times do I have to tell you, we weren’t that great of a couple at all… but I really have to practice now, can you go?”

“This is my practice time too you know! But I don’t wanna be partners with that Miso girl, I wanna be partners with you!!” the guy continued to whine, despite Krystal’s insistence that he leave.

“Our partners are random,” Krystal said matter-of-factly, crossing her arms.

“Whatever. You know Mrs. Ock is such a pushover she’ll let anyone who comes asking her partner up with whoever they want,” the guy, Hyungshik, as Krystal kept calling him, shot back. Jongin hadn’t known that. It made sense though, how Sulli and Sehun had been so easily paired together.

“Well, no one is allowed to change partners after Mrs. Ock finishes the assignments; that’s a fact. Now, you need to leave. I MEAN IT.” Krystal demanded. Hyungshik’s puppy-dog eyes drooped in frustration, but Krystal retained her harsh expression, her crossed arms unwilling to budge.

“This conversation isn’t over,” the guy spat, finally leaving the B studio. Jongin stood on his left leg and grabbed his right ankle, casually stretching as if he’d been doing so the whole time.

“I’m really sorry about that,” Krystal apologized for the second time. She let her arms drop and walked over to Jongin. “Hi, I’m Krystal, by the way. I know you’re a friend of Sulli’s, but we’ve never really talked before.” She waved her hand at Jongin with a slight smile.

“Uhh, yeah, I’m Jongin,” Jongin said, “That guy can’t handle being dumped, huh?”

Krystal bit her lip, clearly uncomfortable. “Oh, um, sort of…” she muttered.

Jongin scratched his head, feeling bad for bringing up the unrelated topic. Sulli had ordered him to be nice and polite to Krystal… he had forgotten about that. He tried to compensate, saying, “Not that it’s my business… umm, do you need to stretch a little before we start? Should I turn our track on while you do that? I’ve listened to it a few times, but if you haven’t…”

“I’ve listened to it too, but I think it would be good for us to listen again since we’re here,” Krystal answered, stretching her arm over her head.

For the mid-year showcase, every pair of students was provided with one song, chosen by their teacher, with which they had to invent their own choreography. Jongin and Krystal had been given a song called “Icebox” by the American artist Omarion; Jongin had to look up the lyrics of the song and their translation, because he couldn’t understand the English.

Krystal stretched briefly as they listened to their track in silence. Jongin bobbed his head to the beat, occasionally moving his arms and legs as he felt and noting movements that might suit a duet performance to the song.

“So, do you have any ideas?” Krystal asked, as the partners now sat across from each other on the wood floor.

“Well we should try to stick to the meaning of the song…” Jongin muttered, racking his brain to try to remember the translations he’d looked up a few days ago.

“Okay, so… a guy suffering from heartbreak?” Krystal suggested.

“Did you look up the lyrics and translations too?” Jongin asked expectantly.

“Oh, no… I can understand English,” Krystal replied, holding in a chuckle.

“Ohh…” Jongin nodded. He couldn’t really recall the stuff he’d looked up anyway.

“How about we kind of do a little bit of jazz and a little bit of ballet for this? You know the teachers love it when you incorporate all those traditional dances in there. It’ll be really helpful for our grades!” said Krystal.

Jongin blinked, his mouth open, his eyes staring. He was just now starting to really observe Krystal, a good twenty minutes since she’d first come into the studio. She had very long black hair tied up in a long tail for practice, along with large eyes that stood out about her otherwise plain facial features. She did have a long forehead that suited her, and from what Jongin could tell, she was really well built for a thin girl.

It both pleased and caught him off guard to hear Krystal suggest jazz and ballet, two of his specialties. Jongin smiled to himself smugly, thinking that maybe this girl was different from most of the other girls at this school, who knew pretty much nothing about dancing. He liked to think so. If this girl was going to suggest jazz and ballet first, then he was more than willing to go along with it. “Great!” he consented brightly.

They agreed that the general theme of their performance would consist of a mixture between jazz and ballet, with a miniature background story outlining the male’s heartbreak. After that, Jongin suggested to Krystal a few moves he had thought would be appropriate for certain parts of their track, and again, Jongin was surprised. She was more than just a good dancer; she was better than any other girl he’d ever seen around school. Dance was his passion, one of the reasons why he attended this arts high school, so to find a girl this good and this quick to learn was a pleasant surprise he’d never expected.

In an hour’s time, Jongin and Krystal had roughly choreographed several bits and pieces of the track. Jongin always considered himself very serious, even unfriendly, when it came to dancing. However, he found that he could not retain from laughing, when Krystal would mention something funny she recalled from the dance move Jongin demonstrated, or purposefully made a dance move funny by acting goofy. She was still serious and diligent when it came to the real work. By the end of their first practice, Jongin had broken into a thin layer of sweat, but also had taken note of many things about his new partner – a lot of positive things.

“Great practice,” Jongin said as they left the B studio.

“You too! I think we’re gonna have a killer performance, don’t you?” Krystal responded.

Jongin cracked a smirk. “I’ll try to look up some traditional style jazz or ballet moves we can use for tomorrow,” he said. As he did so, a familiar voice shouted at them, or rather his partner, “Krystal!”

Krystal bit her lip again, eyes narrowing. “Oh, I guess… um, I should go… See you tomorrow…” she said. Jongin watched the guy named Hyungshik trot toward them from down the hall, his face crumpled into a half frown, half pout. Giving Krystal a simple nod, he decided to leave before the other guy got there.

As he walked away, Jongin couldn’t help but turn around once and look back at Krystal, now arguing again with the guy. She seemed tired, and Jongin had a feeling that it wasn’t from practice. Jongin didn’t like the way the Hyungshik guy kept following Krystal around. Not that it was something he had any business in. The one thing Jongin did take interest in, after his first practice with Krystal, was that he liked his new partner, a lot. He was looking forward to their next practice.

Advertisement Alert!

A Contest Entry Story I binge wrote called Abandoning Time, also starring Kai and Krystal. It's a fast-paced, sci-fi action romance; please check it out!

Also, if you're a fan of this Kaistal pairing, woobabylove0904 is the author of an uber sweet Drabble Collection all centered around Kaistal, called One Hundred Kisses. Did I mention I'm also a working co-author?

Thank you for reading!