unedited: 160324

I am a typical Korean teenager, and as such, the only thing I have looming in front of me like a strange little doomsday device is the prospect of college entrance exams. Unfortunately for me, I wasn’t enrolled in a prestigious art school that would let you skip as many classes as you want as long — with an entertainment company is there to back me up. I am enrolled in a normal school, with unnecessarily tense teachers and hours longer than the average office worker, there wasn’t a day where I hoped and wished to go back to my midtown public school back in America, Grades weren’t sacred, and getting into Seoul University wasn’t the collective hope of a household. Of course, my parents being who they are — patriotic would be an understatement — I knew that it was only a matter of time until I was shipped back to Korea to finish my education. Most of the time it’s the other way around, isn’t it? 

Sure, my birth certificate does say ‘Mount Sinai Roosevelt Hospital’, but I still eat kimchi on a daily basis, go to Korean church every Sunday, and grew up crying over DBSK and Shinhwa like the rest of my generation in Korea. When I step out of my apartment to go to school, I still have to greet the ahjumma running the grocery store down the street with a little bow before leaving— she’s in my mother’s weekly go stop group, unstoppable, apparently — and sometimes stop by the restaurant next door after school so that the auntie could spot me a little bowl of rabokki before going home. I didn’t indulge this information to any of my classmates of course, they all still think I lived in a high-rise somewhere, a few floors away from Paris Hilton.

Sure, I said. That’s totally how it was.

[ kkt 11:23 ] Kim Jongin : what are you doing? 

[ kkt 11:24 ] Shin Yura : what do you think i’m doing?

[ kkt 11:24 ] Kim Jongin : what did i ever do to deserve this kind of treatment? 

[ kkt 11:24 ] Kim Jongin : you’re doing nothing right? come down

[ kkt 11:26 ] Shin Yura : i need to study, idiot

[ kkt 11:27 ] Shin Yura : I don’t have a free pass to graduate and a set career unlike some people 

[ kkt 11:27 ] Kim Jongin : shut up

[ kkt 11:28 ] Kim Jongin : i’m downstairs, come get ice cream with me

He was crazy. It’s mid-November and more than just a little chilly out, and he wanted ice cream? 

Of course, I was downstairs — a hoodie pulled on hastily over my ratty house-shirt and ripped jeans— in about five minutes. I can’t really say no to him. That boy and his darling eyes. 

“You have a year to go, I don’t get it.” 

He has a snapback jammed on top of his messy strands, hands deeply stuffed into his coat pockets as he squinted down at me with a little frown on his face. Of course Kim Jongin wouldn’t understand, he has his dream all set and loaded with his immense talent to back it up. Unfortunately, I do not have an innate ability to do something so well that I could build my life around it, he’s lucky and doesn’t know it.

“I’m so stressed out, Jjong.” I whined, not obnoxiously - I hope - as I bumped my shoulder against his. “Some kids are already with tutors and studying their asses off while I’m out here with you - eating ice cream in November.” 

“You can’t say no to ice cream, Yul.” 

Jongin raised a hand to pat me on the head, and my heart burned uncomfortably. It was his offhanded way of comforting me, and it was his little glances that sent my feelings reeling over itself, I didn’t like how my entire being could react so quickly and impulsively to his. I’m not his, but at this moment, with Kim Jongin’s hands gripping my shoulders t