“___ noona I really like you and I-I wanted it know if maybe you like me too?” he told you in a shy voice. He was red in the face and he was scratching the back of his neck as he looked at his shoes. You swore you had never seen a cuter image but at the same time you could feel a pain in your chest because you knew what he was asking of you. And you just couldn’t give it to him.

“Kookie I like you too but I’m too old for you…” you told him in a small voice, trying to convince yourself as much as him though even to your own ears your words sounded empty and without meaning.

“Noona you’re only three years older than me, it’s not that much.” he said in an unexpectedly mature voice. For once it sounded as though he was the adult and you were the child. The role reversal only confused your feelings more.

“I’m sorry Kookie but I just can’t. I hope you can understand…” you trailed off while looking at your own shoes. This time you were the one not able to make eye contact with the other and though it hurt you to do this you knew you had to.

“No I can’t understand. I’m sorry too…” he said in a disappointed voice as he walked out the room without looking back.

You knew this was for the best but why did it hurt so much?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

You had been Jungkook’s English teacher for just over three months now and you absolutely loved your job. Since you were a foreign exchange student the hours fitted perfectly around your schedule and the job in itself was fun. You spent your time teaching a very eager Jungkook and watching him improve from speaking barely any English at all to being able to hold full conversations, was very rewarding. Of course there was also the fact that you kind of liked him that was making your job very enjoyable.

Although he was taller than you – you had to be honest, the boy was built like a man – he was still very much a kid. He loved to tease and play around and when he laughed you could still see that childlike gleam in his eyes but at the same time he was very mature for his age and you often found yourself having a genuine conversation with him during your lunch break. To be completely honest you were developing a crush on him which was absolutely unprofessional but also wrong. You were older than him. It was wrong.

Most of the time you were pretty good with telling yourself that you shouldn’t like him and that you should only look at him the way a teacher looks at their student. Sometimes you even believed your own words until he did something sweet like bring you lunch that he had cooked himself. Sometimes even something as simple as him calling you ‘noona’ got to you even though you knew how wrong it was.

At the very same time though, it seemed like your wildest dreams were coming true too. For just a split second, before the rational part of your brain took over, you felt butterflies in your stomach. Your fingers were tingling and you could feel a blush rising. He looked so cute and all you had really wanted to do was pinch his cheeks but then reality had hit you. Your heart broke as you watched yourself reject him but you knew it was for the best.

It had been about three weeks since then and you hadn’t had any lessons with Jungkook since he was busy with Bangtan’s follow up promotions. When he had confessed to you a couple of weeks ago, your worst dream had come true. You didn’t want to complicate your relationship with him any further and you didn’t want to lose your job but above all you didn’t want to lose Jungkook. You had accepted the fact that you should be nothing more than his teacher but to about the consequences this could have was too much. You were kind of glad you hadn’t seen him since then since it gave you some time to think about what to do. In the beginning you had thought about quitting your job or maybe switching places with one of the trainee’s English teachers but over the last few days you had decided to just pretend it hadn’t happened. You knew it wasn’t fair to Jungkook to do this but you were hoping that if you pretended everything was fine maybe one day you could get back to how things were before. So now you were on your way to your first scheduled lesson with him for the week feeling nervous as hell.

You gingerly knocked on the door and poked your head in when you were answered by a weird sounding grunt from the other side. What you were greeted with, however, was not something you had been expecting at all. Jungkook was sat at the table furthest back with his feet resting on the desk beside him. The entire room stunk of aftershave and upon closer inspection you noticed that Jungkook had an array of small cuts all over his face. He also seemed to be sporting some type of messy hair style though you had to be honest it looked more like bedhead. Overall it was a complete transformation from the cute and eager student you had grown accustomed to but you chose to ignore it.

You approached him warily and sat in front of him growing more confused at his behaviour. For the rest of the lesson he didn’t listen to a single word you had to say, which was so unlike him, and he barely participated. He hadn’t done his homework and he was refusing to do the classwork. As the end of the lesson approached you were ready to kill him and it was pretty obvious in your face but still he continued being insolent.

You had finally had enough when he blatantly ignored your numerous requests for him to remove his feet off the furniture. You threw down your pen and bumped your fist on the table, which caused him to flinch, before you looked up at him with murder in your eyes.

“Okay, what has gotten into you? You’ve not done your homework, you’ve refused to do the classwork, you’ve been giving me attitude all day and now you’re ignoring my instruction so explain yourself.” you said to him in an annoyed voice but he only turned the other way and kept up his silence which only made you angrier. “I don’t think you’ve said a single word today so speak up for yourself Jungkook.” you urged him and finally he seemed to react to your words. He spun his head around and looked at you. For a second you swore you saw hurt in his eyes but before you could analyse it further anger clouded glazed them over.

“Nothing.” he said in an uncharacteristically deep voice.

“Wh-what?” you asked, startled.

“I said nothing.” he repeated in his deep voice yet again but it ended up breaking towards the end. You couldn’t help but giggle a little bit which caused his cheeks to turn red. You grabbed his arm and dragged him to the seat directly next you before you forced him to sit down.

“Okay, tell me what’s going on Kookie.” You asked him in an understanding voice. You could see that something was troubling him and that maybe this was his way of dealing with it.

“I-I don’t know how to say it without looking pathetic…” he trailed off as he looked at his shoes.

“Just say it. You’ll never look pathetic to me anyway.” you encouraged him with a smile on his face, hoping to get to the bottom of his problem.

“Well I wanted to be manlier…” he admitted in an embarrassed voice.

“What do you mean by that?” you asked him, perplexed by his answer.

“After last time I started thinking of all the reasons for why you rejected me and you said that you were too old for me but I think the problem is that I’m too young for you noona. So I did all this to be manlier for you… so maybe you could see me as a man…” he explained in a small voice with the saddest look on his face. Your heart broke watching him talk himself down like this only because of you and your insecurities. Immediately you wrapped your arms around him and hugged him close to yourself before you began mumbling into his chest.

“The reason I said no to you is because I’m too old for you and not the other way around. I don’t deserve someone as amazing as you and I don’t understand what you see in me so I guess I was looking for excuses but Kookie please never think like that again. Never think you’re at fault again when it’s your noona who is being stupid, arrasso?”

“O-okay noona.” he said in a defeated voice as he unwrapped your arms from around him. He still had a troubled look on his face and your heart ached knowing that it was probably your fault again.

“Kookie what’s wrong?” you asked, again growing concerned.

“I-I just… You still haven’t…. this was all for nothing…” he murmured as he ran his hand through his hair in frustration and that’s when you understood what he meant. You leant across and grabbed him by the shoulders before you pulled his head towards yours and kissed him. It was only a small peck since you didn’t want to scare him off but it was enough to get the desired reaction. He turned beetroot red all the way to his ears and was avoiding eye contact with you again. You couldn’t help but giggle as you leant in and pecked him again.

“Kookie was I your first kiss?” you questioned him teasingly.

“And my second…” he admitted shyly. You couldn’t help but grin as you leant in and pecked him yet again. He wrapped his arms around you and pulled you closer than him as you leaned your head on his shoulder.

“I like you noona.” he said simply.

“I like you too Kookie.” you replied.