LOVE INTEREST  kim seungmin
BACK UP LOVE INTEREST  lee donghyuck

PERSONALITY TRAITS  closed-off, resonable, diligent, caring, snarky, observant, easy-going, inscrutable.

PERSONALITY  seungmin seems like your run-of-the-mill kind of quiet but chill guy. he takes his time to warm up to new people and new situations but, whenever you see him, he has this lighthearted and easy attitude to him. he seems distant, maybe, but overall pleasant. truthfully, that can be just a little bit misleading. in actuality and simply put, seungmin is the embodiment of chaotic neutral. every single one of his friends can attest to the fact that he would sell their souls to the devil for a single corn chip if he was bored enough.

they probably get this (not necessarily wrong) impression of him because seungmin has his together a reasonable amount for a high schooler. he wouldn't say he has more willpower than the average person, he just uses it to practice good habits (you will not catch him awake at 3 a.m like you will some people). he's the friend who somehow, for some reason, stays sane while everyone else goes through their sad boy hours and/or dumb hours. many a time has he found himself catching other people doing dumb and unreasonable things, like how saeron tries to cover for her awkwardness by attempting to be badass or how rani insists she doesn't have a crush on na jaemin from chingu because he's "the enemy". like it or not, it provides him with a good amount of teasing material. 

seungmin is part annoying younger sibling, part mom friend: he can seem like he couldn't care less about you, he will tease you for no reason, he might not be very wordy or very emotional, but he's always there for his friends. in that silent yet strong and sturdy way, he cares. whether you want to have a good time, to laugh at him grumbling in disbelief at the fact that you collectively share one braincell or to have someone make fun of your bad decisions (because you're a clown and you deserve it), he's your guy.  

tl;dr: don't trust that face of his, mans is truly chaotic neutral. can be shockingly responsible though and has good habits, won't hesitate to clown anyone. easy to more or less get to know, hard to get close to.

LOVE STORY seungmin's family runs a convenience store in saeron's neighborhood. for years, it was saeron and bomi's go-to place to have junk food after school. nothing you can possibly buy in a store like that is exactly healthy or necessary, but even an aspiring chef like saeron can't help but wander through the aisles and leave with a sugary or sodium-loaded purchase.

so when her sister left, it made all the more sense for saeron to keep visiting the store. hell, she began stopping by even more. sometimes she'd just buy some juice and do her schoolwork there in one of their little tables instead of going to a study room or a hagwon. and that's how she discovered seungmin existed. some days, this little dude who was most likely her age would man the register. most importantly, though, he was the only intellectual who played rock music. 

that's how they got to know each other. just small comments here and there about the playlist, then studying the same subjects separately, right across from each other, then bonding over music and song recommendations. before she knows it, they're sharing a table and going through a bag of doritos on a day when business is slow.

"they're sisters," seungmin says, pointing at the tv with the remote while an old irrelevant drama is playing.

saeron instinctively slaps him in the arm. this is betrayal. "you knew all this time?" 

seungmin shrugs. "they always play re-runs!" he says in a what was i supposed to do tone, "and i didn't think you would get invested in dramas..."

"i don't get invested in dramas." 

he just stares at her and laughs in response.

" you," saeron says as she goes in for a dorito. "wait! don't change the chan- i mean, it's cool."

so maybe saeron likes seungmin. maybe. but maybe he's just one of the people she's less awkward around and maybe he was her best friend when she felt like . maybe she does her schoolwork at the store not only give the education system the middle finger but also because it helps to see seungmin right across her actually doing his work.

the thing is seungmin, like all the other normal teenagers, has friends who he gets along with very well. friends who aren't saeron. and a good amount of them at that. so while saeron considers him her best friend, she doubts he has any reason to think the same. even if saeron did like seungmin, why would she tell him that when he probably considers her a stranger?

saeron is also scared because she can't hide many things from seungmin (he says it's because they're more similar than she thinks). if she were to talk to him about her feelings and he eventually said he didn't feel the same (the only possible answer, of course), there's no way he wouldn't notice her very dumb reaction to that.

what matters most is that they're still friends, right? and saeron is happy enough with that. what matters most is that they're still around each other. when she applies for the job at pureuda, she drags seungmin instantly. partly because she's going to miss him, partly because she's not sure she'll be able to function normally among all these girls she doesn't know unless her best friend is there and partly because his parents obviously don't pay seungmin for taking care of the store and if saeron has to hear him say he wants a real job one more time—.