Get her name and phone number

“Guys, cut it out. It’s not that funny, really.”

Jiwon’s attempts at convincing his friends fails miserably as they do the exact opposite of cutting it out, they laugh even  louder than they did before. He rolls his eyes and took another bite of his sandwich, glaring at his supposed friends and wondering whatever happens to their ‘bros for life’ oath that they took at the first day of their freshmen year. They sure aren’t acting bro-like right now as they continue to laugh at his unfortunate library incident.

“Jiwon, I told you from the very beginning, don’t do it. Then you did it anyways and look what happened?”

“Kim Hanbin, how many times do I have to tell you, all you did was warning me about the senior guys. Not once did you say anything about me ruining the library!”

“Honestly, why should Hanbin warn you about that anyways? Clearly you can conveniently take care of that all by yourself. Swag all the way, man.”

Sometimes Jiwon wonders why he befriends Junhoe, knowing how annoying that kid can sometimes be, especially when he says stuff like that. Jiwon doesn’t even respond and only throws a balled up sandwich wrapper that hits Junhoe square on the forehead. It does nothing to stop the laughter though, as Junhoe throws it back at Jiwon.

“Whatever. You all can shove our ‘bros for life’ oath up all your asses okay. Goodbye.”

They laugh yet again. Jiwon can only shake his head as he stands up from the plastic chair in the cafeteria, opting to head to class early instead of listening to his friends endlessly making fun of the fact that he pretty much destroys half the library and makes an out of himself in front of the girl he’s trying to impress.

Jiwon’s mind wanders again as the thought of that girl hits him, and he realizes that he hasn’t seen her around campus again after that day. A few times he thinks about going to the library again to see if she’s there but walking into that place again is still too traumatizing for him so he decides against that. He shivers as he remembers the murderous glare the librarian threw at him that day.

That girl’s reaction that day still amuses Jiwon until today, how she just looks at him and the chaos he’s caused and then goes back to reading her book as if nothing happens. He smiles to himself as he realizes that her reaction somehow makes her ten times more attractive in his eyes. He’s dying to know her, to talk to her, to see if she’s as interesting as he makes it out to be, but he really has nothing to go on. He doesn’t know her name, he doesn’t know which major she’s taking, and all he knows is that she’s a senior. That literally does nothing to help him.

Jiwon’s mind apparently has wandered off too far because as he turns left on the corridor he’s walking on towards his class, he doesn’t even realize that someone is walking towards him and the inevitable happens. They bump into each other, sending both Jiwon and the person’s books flying all over the place. Jiwon can’t believe his bad luck, but a little voice inside his head tells him that in both cases it does involve a lot of his lack of awareness of his surroundings.

He apparently has bumped into a girl who’s now on her knees, cursing under her breath and busy gathering her books. His instincts kick in and he starts helping the girl gather her books, apologizing profusely for not paying attention. When they both have stood up and Jiwon’s about to hand over her books, it takes everything in his power not to drop those books back on to the floor as he sees that he just bumps into the girl he’s been thinking about just minutes before.

She extends her hand to receive her books back from Jiwon, but then she looks at Jiwon and her eyebrows furrow as if she’s trying to remember something. At that point, Jiwon hasn’t said or done anything because his mind is racing at a million miles a second, trying to find something clever to say or do. A look of realization washes over the girl’s face, and Jiwon’s palm starts to sweat. She must’ve remembered him by now.

“Hey, you’re that library guy, right? Wow, you do seem to have the tendency of knocking over books. Do you have anything against them, or something?”

Jiwon’s mind is screaming at him right now ‘say something!’ but for the love of god he can’t think of any. The only thing he can think of right now is how prettier she is up close and that her thick-framed glasses can’t hide the fact that she has the deepest pair of brown eyes. He’s never liked girls with brown eyes before but god help him, this girl is clearly an exception.

“I like books.”

That’s the only thing Jiwon can manage, and he really wants to kick himself in the head if it’s physically possible to do so because ‘I like books’? Really? He’s been standing there like an idiot for at least a minute and that’s the only thing that his stupid mouth can come up with? She apparently finds it amusing though because she laughs lightly at what he says as she takes her books from Jiwon’s hand.

“Oh you do? You have a really weird way of showing it though. Anyways, please stop knocking over books. They’re precious, you know.”

Then she walks away before Jiwon can so much as ask for her name. This is clearly an 0 – 2 situation, the first time they met he knocks over a shelf full of books, the second time he knocks over the books in her hands, and both times he doesn’t even succeed as getting her name. Jiwon is completely aware that he’s been single for awhile now but man oh man, he doesn’t know that his game is so rusty that the only thing he can do in front of the girl he likes is embarrass himself. He heads to class with his head hung low, sits on his desk, and has no intention to follow whatever it is the subject that day because the horror of what happens before still haunts him.

He arranges his books half-heartedly, and it’s then that he realizes he has more books than he’s supposed to have. He takes one book out of the pile and examines it, finding it to be a book by some Japanese author that he doesn’t know. Haruki Murakami? He’s never even heard of that name, clearly that book isn’t his. 

As soon as he opens the cover of the book, a wide grin is immediately plastered on Jiwon’s face. Things are looking up for him, finally. On the back of the cover, there’s one of those ‘if you find this book return it to’ stickers stuck there, and it has both her name and phone number.

Call or text her, engage her in a fun conversation

Jiwon has been staring at his phone for the last two minutes, straining his brain cells to come up with a text to send her, and letting her know that he’s taken one of her books by mistake. It’s obvious that his happiness of finally knowing her name and her phone number at the same time earlier today has been premature. The horror of sending that first text is so real Jiwon almost wants to give up on it altogether.

He’s been locking himself in his room for at least half an hour now, phone in his hand, and still no texts sent. It’s not like he doesn’t try, there are now probably a dozen texts saved to his draft ranging between a casual ‘hey I have your book with me’ to ‘yooo it’s the guy who likes books and apparently I like them so much I took yours by mistake’, and none of them seems to be casual enough to be sent. 
Jiwon groans and rests his head on his wooden desk. He can’t mess this up, not after the disastrous first two meetings with that girl. This time, he has to be clever, interesting, and manly at the same time. The trick is how he can portray all that that in a text message. To Jiwon’s surprise, his phone vibrates and signals that he’s just received a text message. He sits back up and picks up his phone to find a text from… her number?

“Library guy, is this you? Why did you send me 17 different texts about how you have my book?”

As soon as Jiwon reads the text, chills run down his spine as he scrolls up the entire conversation and realizes that the texts he thinks he’s saved to his drafts… have all been sent to her. Well, the manly-clever-interesting part is surely out of the window by now. 0 – 3, 0 for Jiwon, and 3 for his bad luck.