It was another normal day, like all the others before it. And like the ones to come, Jongin thought as his sneakered feet stepped onto the grass and crossed the lawn once again. Some people hated the idea of routine and rote, but Jongin took comfort in knowing what everyday would be like. Where others saw boredom, Jongin saw stability. 

9 AM on a Tuesday. It was time for History class. East Asia through Modernity. His least favorite class. He had fallen into the trap of letting himself be seduced by the intriguing syllabus and course description only to find himself stuck in a monotonous lecture for 2 hours three times a week. Jongin walked into the building and made his way into the classroom. As he looked around at the other chronically-early students, it was apparent that he wasn’t the only one who fell into the trap.

“Good morning, Jongin!” said a sprightly girl in the back row. Jongin nodded in acknowledgment. She attempted to reason with the boy sitting next to her to move down one spot so Jongin could sit. He was aware that the poor girl had a crush on him, but it was more to avoid conflict with the currently-seated boy than to avoid leading her on that Jongin politely declined and walked to the front of the room instead.

Jongin dropped his bag onto a desk and slid into the seat. 9:03 AM, and Haru was seated to his left, as usual. 

“Did you study for the map quiz?” he asked, folding his arms across his backpack and then resting his head on his arms, facing Haru. Of course she had studied; Haru was arguably the smartest girl in the room, but asking about her study schedule was also routine. Jongin stood by, waiting for her to turn to him and pretend that she hadn’t. 

Haru didn’t say anything, however. 

The girl was staring straight ahead. Not at the blackboard or the posters pasted on the walls, though. She was staring straight ahead at nothing at all with a worried expression on her face. Jongin raised an eyebrow. 

“Haru?” he said. He laughed. “Aren’t you quiet today? Damn, you really must have not studied, then. Guess we were both screwed on that one.”

Haru didn’t look at him. She stared blankly ahead, fidgeting with the bracelet on her wrist and her lips moving slightly, as though she were whispering something to herself. Her brows were knit and turned into a frown. Her eyes looked like they were trembling in their sockets. Jongin became seriously concerned now. Over the two or three years he’d known Haru, he’d never seen her like this. Jongin knew that she had problems here and there with family or friends or just dealing with the stress of school. She had told him as much. But this was the first time he was actually seeing her look troubled. 

“Hey, you okay?” he reached out and put a hand on her forearm. Haru’s eyes went back into focus and she stopped fidgeting when he touched her. She looked to Jongin and raised her brows in a questioning manner.

“Huh?” she asked. Jongin smiled nervously.

“You looked kinda worried there,” he said. “Something wrong?”

“No, I’m fine,” Haru said with barely any time between the asking of his question and her answering. Jongin wasn’t convinced. Haru could see that he wasn’t. She smiled, just to reassure him. “Honestly, I’ll be okay,” she said.

Jongin pursed his lips. He liked Haru a lot, as a friend, but he was often frustrated by how little of herself she revealed to him. Friendships grow when people share the struggles of life. But with Haru, it was difficult. She was a fantastic person, to be sure. Smart, kind, beautiful, brave, and honest. But there had to be more than that. Jongin was sure that beneath that good-girl act, there was a complex, broken, flawed girl who was tired of keeping up with this facade. That was the girl Jongin wanted to meet, if only Haru would let him. Their friendship was nice, but it felt stagnant, like he was supposed to be far closer to her than he was at the moment. There was another step to take, whatever step that was.

“You know,” Jongin said, rubbing his eye a bit. “You’re not convincing anyone that you’re okay with how you’re acting.”

“Jongin, just leave it,” Haru said, flipping her notebook to a blank page. “It’s not that important.”

Jongin sighed. “Remember when we first met and I told you about how my sister and her husband were gonna split up?” Haru shrugged.

“Yeah, why?”

“Do you also remember the time I told you I confessed to Minah that I liked her and wanted to take her on a date and she flat out rejected me?”

Haru sat still for a second before shrugging again. “I remember,” she said.

“Or what about the time my dog died and I called you at, like, midnight?”

“Where is this going?” Haru asked, finally turning to face him full-on. Jongin sat up.

“What I’m saying is,” he said. “When I have a problem or when something bad happens to me, you’re always the first person I share it with. Because I trust you that much. It just frustrates me that I can’t be that person for you, too. I thought we were friends, but you’re always hiding from me!”

“Shh! Lower your voice!” Haru said. At that precise moment, the door opened and their lecturer walked in, dumping her bag on the desk at the front. Jongin still kept his eyes on Haru, staring her into intimidation. Haru huffed her breath at him.

“Fine,” she whispered. “I’ll tell you what happened. But not now, we’re still in class. After!”

“That’s all I wanted,” Jongin whispered back. Haru playfully rolled her eyes at him. Then, they both sat back up with empty notebooks and prepared to take notes.

“Alright, you promised,” Jongin said. He swung his backpack onto his shoulders and followed closely behind Haru as they walked along the path leading to the dining hall. Haru adjusted a strap on her purse and walked quietly. Jongin nudged her with his elbow. “Start talking. Lay it on me, I wanna help.”

“I don’t think you could,” Haru said. It was autumn and the wind was starting to get colder. The two friend purposefully chose a path with more sunlight in order to keep themselves warm. Jongin shrugged.

“Maybe not,” he said. “But I could listen. I’m great at listening, I wanna listen. So what was wrong today?”

Haru began fidgeting with her bracelet again, and she looked anywhere except at him.

“It’s my mom again,” she said. 

Jongin’s mouth formed an “o” shape as he nodded in understanding. Haru had let on before that she didn’t have the best relationship with her mother. 

“Is she here?” Jongin asked. He hopped up onto a bench and kept up with Haru this way. Haru shook her head.

“No, thank God,” she said. “But she did call me this morning. Apparently, she paid a hacker to find out my log-in information on the school portal website.”

“What?” Jongin asked, genuinely astonished at the lengths her controlling mother would to in order to keep tabs on her daughter. He’d heard of helicopter parents before, but Haru’s mother was in a class of her own. “Why would she? That’s crazy.”

“I know!” Haru said, raising her voice and finally looking at him. There was fire in her eyes now. “Ugh! She just frustrates me so much because she’s still treating me like a child! And an untrustworthy one, at that! I’m a college student, for heaven’s sake, I just want to get away from her and her controlling ways. She called me this morning and asked me why I hadn’t joined the Model UN team yet. How would she even know that, you ask? She was snooping around on my online accounts, that’s why.”

“Why haven’t you joined the Model UN yet?” Jongin asked, jumping down from the bench. 

Haru crossed her arms. “I don’t want to join the Model UN precisely because she wants me to join it,” Haru said. “If I join that club, Mom is going to think I did it because she wants me to, and I don’t want her to think that she can just tell me what to do with my time.”

“Do you want to join Model UN though?”

“Of course I do,” Haru said. “It’d be a great resume builder, but of course, she just has to go and ruin that for me, too. And then I told her to stop hacking into my account and to give me some space. And then she tries to guilt-trip me by saying that I’m just being a bad daughter and trying to push her away. Which I’m not! I love her, but that doesn’t mean that I like her. I just… want to do things on my own. I want to make decisions for myself. Mom has good ideas, too, but I want my ideas to be mine, not hers!”

“Have you tried telling her?” Jongin asked. They were passing the quad and had to walk around a group of students rallying against hikes in tuition. Haru shrugged again.

“No,” she said, still simmering in her righteous fury. “If I tell her this, shell just guilt-trip me again. She’s manipulative that way. God, this woman.”

Jongin laughed. 

“What’s funny?” Haru asked.

“It’s just funny ‘cause I’ve never seen you lose your cool like this,” he said. “It’s amusing.”

Haru playfully punched his shoulder. “Whatever,” she said. Her playful smile disappeared momentarily. “But… I was just more upset because I think I really hurt her feelings this time.”

“What do you mean?” Jongin asked. Haru sighed.

“On the phone, I mean,” she said. “We were yelling at each other and I was mad and she was being defensive. And I… I kinda said I wish she wasn’t my mom. And she just went quiet on the other line and I knew I’d really done it this time.”

Jongin in a breath. “Wow,” he said, unsure of what else to say. 

“And then she said… ‘one day you’ll have a daughter like yourself, and then you’ll understand me.’ And then she just hung up. She’s never hung up on me before.”

Haru’s face became blank again, the same look of numbness and desolation that was on her face earlier in class. It hadn’t occurred to Jongin before how important Haru had become to him in the past two or three years. They had started out as partners for an orientation game in the months before their freshman year. They bonded over mutual dislike of classes or over a shared passion for hip-hop music and dogs. Before he even knew it, she was one of his best friends. 

And seeing her hurt was hurting him, too. Jongin put a hand on her shoulder. Haru looked up at him, sadly at first, but as he gave her shoulder a reassuring squeeze, she smiled. 

“I’m… actually glad I told you this,” she said.

“Me, too,” Jongin said. “See how much better you feel now? I’d say we reached a milestone in our friendship today. Don’t you? I think this calls for drinks. So what do you say? Ditch the dining hall, let’s go to Dave’s Pub instead?”

“It’s only noon, Jongin,” Haru said, laughing. “Do you realize how lame we’re going to look walking into a bar before 5 PM?” 

“Not any more lame than we probably already look,” he answered. Haru laughed.

“Anyway,” Haru said. “I don’t believe in that stuff.”

“What stuff?”

“The stuff about how you treat your parents is how your own kids will treat you,” Haru clarified. “There’s no backing for that, anyway. And I have kids, I’m going to be a hell of a lot less mental than my mom. Nope. Not me, Jongin!” Haru said, launching right back into her righteous preaching phase. Jongin laughed.

“You go, girl.”

“Our children are going to be individuals, okay? They’re going to be strong, independently-minded, intelligent, and they’re going to have a mom who trusts them! Trusts them to make their own decisions, alright?”

“Hear, hear!”

“Yeah! And our children can join whatever god-damned clubs they want and they can go to college wherever they want, within reason, and they’ll… they’ll be like me, I suppose. But at least I won’t be like my mom. And that’s the difference.”

The pair stopped at a crosswalk and then sat down to wait for the bus. Normally, it was a busy stop, but today it was just the two of them as mostly everyone else had been picked up by now. Jongin and Haru were late since they took the sunny route. Jongin sat beside his friend, eternally amused at having discovered a new side of her today. He had no idea Haru was prone to launching into rage-induced sermons or that she fell into a trance when she was troubled. He felt closer to her now, as he recalled her words, hoping to remember them as their friendship grew and matured. But recalling her speech, he straightened back up.

“Our?” he asked. Haru blinked at him.

“Wha?” she said dumbly. Jongin scratched the back of his neck.

“You said ‘our’ just now,” he said. “When you talked about children. You said ‘our children’.”

Haru’s jaw dropped.

“No!” she snapped. “I didn’t say that. I said my children.”

“No, you said our children,” Jongin said, laughing. Haru’s face was turning red.

“I didn’t mean to say that, it was a slip of the tongue,” she countered, stuttering bit. “When I talk too fast, I stumble on words.”

“You said it twice, though,” Jongin said, nudging her. “It could have been a slip of the tongue the first time, but you said it twice. Our children.”

Haru looked as though she wanted to just get up and walk away. Jongin put a hand on her shoulder to make sure she didn’t. He raised an eyebrow at her, teasingly. Haru scoffed.

“Oh. Well. You know what I mean!” she said. “Not our children as in ours, I meant my children! And yours, too, but they’re your own, not mine! I meant ‘our children’ as in, like, our generation’s children! It was a collective ‘our’ not like you and me!” She shoved him away and Jongin laughed, putting his hands up defensively.

“Okay, okay! Why are you getting so defensive about this?” 

“Oh, shut up,” Haru said. “Way to ruin a perfectly good conversation, Jongin. Way to turn everything awkward.”

“Would it really be such a bad thing if we had kids?”

Haru made a face and just shrugged, again looking anywhere except at him. Jongin looked at her profile, still smiling with amusement. It really was just a slip of the tongue, but he was having too much fun teasing her. He waited for Haru to give a reaction. Anything. But the longer he waited for her to say something, the more he began to understand. 

This was it. This was the slip. This was the fleeting look into the deeper recesses of her character that he had been watching for. All those years spent trying to get to know her better but this had slipped his notice. 

“Haru,” Jongin said gently. “Do you… like me?”

Haru didn’t look at him. She pretended to be watching for the bus. 

Yes, she did. But this wasn’t the way she had intended on telling him or letting him find out. This wasn’t ideal. This wasn’t according to plan. Sure, they had been friends for a few years now, but was it enough? Enough to justify accidentally revealing an inner desire to spend a life with him? 

Oh well. It was too late to pretend now, she supposed. She gave the faintest nod. 

Jongin caught her movement. He nodded in return, once again amused by this realization. Haru liked him. His best friend liked him. This wasn’t like the girl in class who saved seats for him in class who said good morning everyday. He couldn’t just politely ignore her. Jongin’s heart was beating loudly but steadily in his chest. 

What to do now? He didn’t know.

He didn’t know.

“What about you?” Haru said, finding the courage to speak. “How do you feel?”

Jongin swallowed. He shrugged at first.

“I don’t know about ‘our’ yet,” he said. “But… maybe we can start by being ‘each other’s’, first.” 

The bus came. The air hissed as the door opened and the students climbed out. But the bus left without Jongin and Haru. None of the other students stopped to bother them or even glance their way. After all, it was normal to see couples kissing at bus stops. And today was just another normal day.

Author's Note: I was so torn on whether or not to make this a romantic fic or not. While writing, I thought it was pretty sweet of Jongin to be such a good, platonic friend to Haru and I think it's important for girls to have healthy, platonic friendships like that with boys and that's what I was trying to promote, but I realized it would be awkward to have Haru make such a slip-up in word choice without accounting for it, and the story wouldn't have as clean/closed an ending. But anyway, the message here is: be a good friend. Not every friendship with a boy/girl is going to lead to a romantic relationship, but you should always be a good friend anyway.