There are different types of magnetism, but most are familiar with one. Paramagnetism is what most people refer to when they say that a force is “magnetic.” It’s when materials are attracted to a magnetic field. However, repulsion is a type of magnetism too (referred to as diamagnetism) because, after all, it is another reaction to a magnetic field. There’s a third and more complex relationship with an applied magnetic field (like spin glass behavior and antiferromagnetism). And lastly, there are some substances that are negligibly affected by magnetic fields.

Dongwoo found relationships to be similar to those reactions. He’s had people be repulsed by his “magnetic field,” his aura. Some people were not quite sure what to do with his blinding brightness and hyperactivity. Others just pass him by, as people do when they walk down the city’s bustling streets; they are unaffected, neither pulled in nor repulsed. They just continue with their lives as if they never encountered the field that is Jang Dongwoo.

The worst were those relationships that Dongwoo entered into that were complex and spun him around and around. It was those “some” relationships. Were they? Weren’t they? Does he like me? I thought he did, but now I’m not too sure. Unfortunately, he had just fallen out of one of those relationships recently, when his friend found someone that he was undoubtedly attracted to. It all left Dongwoo’s head still spinning and reeling from the hit. But then again, Dongwoo couldn’t have been happier for his friend.

Everyone wants to find someone who is naturally pulled in, immediately attracted by one’s magnetic field, including Dongwoo.

But paramagnetism is hard to come by as much in the natural world as it is in Dongwoo’s.

It was hard to find someone Dongwoo’s age in his world lately. He was a Physics teacher at the high school that he attended years and years ago. If he wasn’t surrounded by teenagers, then as the maknae on staff, he was surrounded by middle-aged peers. And as a new teacher, there wasn’t much free time on his hands, especially as a teacher for the remedial class.

It was difficult to make a complicated subject like physics appealing to a class who couldn’t care less about science. But Dongwoo was patient. Dongwoo was kind. And Dongwoo was incredibly enthusiastic. His students were going to love physics purely because he did…or that was the plan.

“Everyone,” Dongwoo shouted over the loud murmur of his class. However, it wasn’t his voice that caught their attention. It was the fact that Dongwoo was now standing on top of his desk, holding an egg in his hand and raising that hand in the air. The entire class stopped talking and stared blankly at the strange sight. Dongwoo smiled proudly. “Everybody! What would happen if I were to let go of this egg.”

A hand rose tentatively from the back of the class. “It would break.”

“Yes, good job, Nam-goon,” Dongwoo praised as he let go of the egg, and it fell to the floor, smashing into pieces. “The egg would break.”

Woohyun nudged his desk partner and smiled smugly, having answered the question correctly. Sungyeol only rolled his eyes. “Now why does the egg break?” Dongwoo asked the student, and Woohyun just stared at him like a deer caught in the headlights.

“Uh…gravity?” Woohyun guessed in a small voice.

“Eung, that’s part of it,” Dongwoo replied. And Woohyun was back to his smug behavior because he had gotten two questions correct in a row (sort of). Sungyeol threatened to hit him, if he didn’t stop. Dongwoo focused on the entire class as he jumped down from the desk. “Gravity, umph,” he grunted as the feet fell onto the floor. “Gravity is the force that pulls us down onto the earth. However, what did we learn about objects in motion?”

A hand shot up from the front of the classroom. The student’s eyes were wide and excited, and she was biting her lips, restraining herself from blurting out the answer. “Yes, Mijoo-ssi?” Dongwoo called on her.

“An object in motion wants to stay in motion,” Mijoo spoke out the answer quickly, like a balloon that was deflating.

“Exactly!” Dongwoo exclaimed, clapping his hands. “So we have gravity pulling the egg down, moving the egg towards the ground, and the egg wants to keep moving. But the earth stops it from moving. Mean earth,” Dongwoo chided as he stomped onto the ground. The students laughed at their teacher’s cute action. He then continued, “Now we learned that energy is neither created nor destroyed. It’s merely transferred. So that energy in the egg’s motion has to go somewhere. And it’s that energy that causes the egg to break. BAM!” he yelled, causing the entire class to jump. Dongwoo giggled in glee. “Similar to a car running into a stationary object. This egg is no different.” He then walked back into the middle of the classroom and folded his arms over his chest as he leaned back onto his heels. “Now…how do we stop the egg from breaking?”

“What if we…” Sungyeol started, but then he paused when he noticed that all eyes were on him. He gulped before answering. “What if we take that energy and just…p-put it somewhere…else?”

Dongwoo put his feet flat onto the floor and grinned broadly. “That’s a great idea, Sungyeol.” This time Sungyeol was smug about his success to his friend. “What we want to do is to take that energy, that force of the impact and spread it so that the egg doesn’t break. So that’s your assignment over the weekend. Make an apparatus that will allow an egg to survive being dropped from the roof of the school. Good luck!” Dongwoo managed to squeak in before the school bell rang. And the students groaned as they collected the assignment sheet from their formerly beloved teacher. It was music to Dongwoo’s ears.

The following Monday, it was time for Dongwoo to see the fruits of his students’ labor. And they performed as expected. Mijoo, who was dedicated to raise herself out of the remedial track, had a starburst design for her apparatus, with several points that could absorb the impact. Her friend, Jisoo, had a similar design. They had probably made them together. Most of his students had a pyramid-like design, with an egg nestled in the middle. But Nam Woohyun, like always, set the bar for least effort. A handful of straws where tapped in a row, one right next to another, and the egg was placed right on top.

“It should be fine as long as it falls on this side,” Woohyun announced proudly.

Sungyeol grimaced at he looked at his friend’s deplorable design. “You’ll be lucky if that egg isn’t scrambled midflight.”

Before a fight could break out between the two friends, Dongwoo took Woohyun’s egg cradle from his hands. “How about we test it out now? Nam-goon is first!” he announced as he walked over to the edge of the roof.

“You hear that? I’m first,” Woohyun bragged.

“Yea, Ssaem is trying to save the best for last, so the worst is first,” Mijoo revealed with a pitiful face.

“Ssaem, that’s not true, right?” Woohyun asked, bounding up to the teacher’s side.

“And away we go!” Dongwoo exclaimed as he let go of the apparatus, and successfully ignoring his student’s question.

All of the students ran to the ledge and peered over, awaiting the fate of Woohyun’s vulnerable egg. But as the egg was flying through the air, Dongwoo’s eye caught something, a flash of brown running along the side of the building and right where…

“Ow! What the Hell?” the running man stopped in his tracks, hands gripping tightly onto his head. Woohyun’s project had fallen straight onto the man’s head.

“Ssaem! His energy broke my egg!” Woohyun yelped as he darted for the door.

Dongwoo quickly followed on his student’s heels. “Uh, class adjourned,” he told the rest as headed for the door.

“B-but the egg drop,” Jisoo objected.

“Postponed!” Dongwoo yelled back and ran through the roof top door. As he ran down the stairs, he could hear the twenty or so footsteps of his students following him. The footfalls matched the erratic beating of his heart. Please don’t let it be an admin. Please don’t let it be a parent. Please don’t let it be someone important, he begged as his foot landed on the ground floor. His job was slipping through his fingers. He didn’t know if he couldn’t get fired for this, but he didn’t want to assume that he couldn’t.

The physics teacher found the brown-haired man, still sitting where the apparatus had hit him in the head. Woohyun was there too, carefully kneeling down next to his project.

“Ssaem…it didn’t break,” Woohyun muttered in disbelief.

“Yea that’s great,” Dongwoo responded in a distracted voice as he rushed over to the man still reeling in pain. He knelt down as soon as he reached the other. “Are you okay?”

The man lowered his hands, sniffing loudly, water was seeping from his eyes. But in spite of all of that, the man mumbled back, “I’m fine.”

“No, you’re not,” Dongwoo argued. He raised his hand to brush the man’s fringe to the side. His fingertips brushed against something wet, slick, red. Dongwoo’s hand recoiled and his eyes fixed on his fingertips. “Blood,” he whispered.

And that’s when everything went black.

When Dongwoo came to, he was lying on his back on a bed in the nurse’s office. Slowly the dots started to connect in his mind, forming the line of events that led him here. Blood. Dongwoo was squeamish (that was the reason why physics was his science of choice. The likelihood of blood being seen or spilt in labs was minimal). Just the sight of blood would make his heart pound quickly and his adrenaline pumping. Ugh, and sweat, so much sweat. Dongwoo could feel his shirt clinging to his body. He was soaked straight through.

But fainting, he hadn’t fainted since he was a child. However, adrenaline had already been coursing through his body before he saw it. He was short of breath from racing down the stairs. His tired, out-of-shape body couldn’t handle all of the stress, and so it shut down.

I need to start working out again, Dongwoo concluded as he sat up on the bed with a groan.

“Just follow my finger, okay?”

Dongwoo snapped his eyes wide open and whipped his head around (faster than one should after passing out) to see the school nurse bending down in front of the brown-haired man. The nurse lifted up her finger, slowly moving it from side to side, and the man tracked the finger slowly with his eyes. The nurse whistled lowly, shaking her head as she straightened her back and walked over to a cabinet, searching for something.

Dongwoo swung his legs over the side of the bed and scooted until his bottom was nearly falling off of it. “Are you okay?” he asked quietly, hands gripping the sheets beneath him.

The man barely spared him a glance (he could see, right?). “I’m fine,” he grumbled in response.

“Are you sure?” Dongwoo insisted, leaning closer to get a better look at the wound. “It was pretty close to your eye.”

The man finally turned to face the other and narrowed his ‘injured’ eyes. “Were you trying to give me Lasik surgery?” he asked. Dongwoo shook his head. The man scoffed and faced forward again. “It’s fine…right?” this time his question was directed towards the nurse who was walking back towards the ‘patient.’

She bent down, looking at the man’s face again which was starting to look worried. The nurse smiled and then slapped a band-aid over the wound. “Yup,” she chirped. “It was a near miss. You're good to go, Howon-ssi.”

“Thank you, Myungeun-ssi,” the man apparently named Howon mumbled back.

“Howon?” Dongwoo repeated. The name was familiar on his lips, all too familiar, as familiar as the walls of the school he was in right now. The man across from him, turned to face him with a questioning glare. He looked familiar to Dongwoo too, now that he had a good look at the entirety of the other and not just the cut above his eyes. But back then, Howon’s face was less harsh, rounder, happier. And it was the frowning face that Dongwoo was confronted with now that made him second guess if he truly knew a Howon at all. “Wait, are you Lee Howon?”

“Yea. What of it?” and he was cold now too.

Dongwoo tried to fight off the chill the best that he could with a smile. “I think I know you. I'm Jang Dongwoo,” he revealed his name. Howon just stared back at him blankly. “I was a grade above you when we went to school...here,” he gestured around the small nurse’s office.

“Hm,” Howon grunted. “Is that so?”

Dongwoo nodded. “Eung.”

“Well, then it's nice to see you again, Dongwoo-ssi,” Howon spoke in the same tone as he stood up from the bed. Not a shred of happiness in his voice. “If you excuse me, I have to go teach.”

“Ah, yea, of course,” Dongwoo stammered as the other stood up and walked out of the door. “Me too,” he muttered under his breath as the man disappeared around the corner.

“Well, that was cold.”

Dongwoo jumped. He’d forgotten that Myungeun was there too (it was her office after all). His hand gripped his chest as he let out a breath. “He probably doesn’t remember me,” Dongwoo concluded as he regained his composure. “What is he doing here anyway?”

“You remember Coach Kim?” Nurse Myungeun asked as she leaned against the wall across from the teacher. “That old physical education teacher who couldn’t even bend over to pick up a ball?”

“Yea,” Dongwoo answered with a chuckle. “He was even old when I went to school here.”

“Well, he retired right before the year started, and they hired that kid in his place,” she revealed with her lips puckered as she glared out of the door.

“I didn’t know that they hired someone new,” Dongwoo muttered.

Myungeun snapped her head back forward to face her colleague. “You would’ve, if you went to the faculty meeting at the beginning of the semester,” she chided him.

“But it was a family emergency. Sebinnie…”

“Dongwoo,” Myungeun whined while dragging her hand down her face. “Now is not the time to be talking about your niece. Now…”

“Ack! You’re right! I’m late!” Dongwoo exclaimed as jumped off the bed. “Thanks for your help,” he yelled back as he darted out the door.

Myungeun sighed as she shook her head. “It’s my job,” she mumbled to herself and shrugged. She continued talking to herself as she walked back to her seat, “By the way, I don’t think he forgot. I think Lee Howon knows perfectly well who you are. Judging by the way he was trying to act cool…and the fact that he asked where you were at the faculty meeting. But, yea, he forgot all about you. Let’s go with that. Who am I anyway? What do I know? I’m just a school nurse talking to no one at all. Nope, no one at all.” A couple of students walked by, peering inside, curious as to whom the nurse was talking to. Myungeun waved them off. “Walk along. There’s nothing to see here.”

Magnetism, at its root, arises from two sources: electric current and spin magnetic moments of elementary particles.

Ordinarily, the enormous number of electrons in a material are arranged such that their magnetic moments (both orbital and intrinsic) cancel out. It is often the case that the various electrons in the solid will contribute magnetic moments that point in different, random directions, so that the material will not be magnetic.

However, sometimes—either spontaneously, or owing to an applied external magnetic field—each of the electron magnetic moments will be, on average, lined up. Then the material can produce a net total magnetic field, which can potentially be quite strong.

It had lined up once like that for Dongwoo. Every fiber of his being pointed straight towards another. And it happened the first time that he’d met Lee Howon.

It was the first day of school of his second year. And like any second year in high school, it came along with an inflated sense of self. Dongwoo now knew so much more than he did the year before, and now as he was fooling around in the hallway with his friends, his eyes unconsciously scanned for the telltale signs of a lost first year. What would he do once he saw one? Point the student out and laugh about it with his friends? Reminisce about his own first day of high school, with the nervous jitters and dreams as heavy as his backpack? Maybe. But there was also a nurturing side in Dongwoo. He was a natural caretaker. And now that instinct was kicking in. He was searching for a little birdling struggling to fly.

“Hey, Dongwoo,” his friend called out to him. “Look.”

His friend found the ‘birdling’ first. Dongwoo followed the path of his friend’s finger and saw it point to a boy with strong eyebrows, furrowed in frustration as he tugged violently on the locker.

“The first year can’t open his locker,” the friend sniggered.

“You were the same last year, Sunggyu,” Dongwoo reminded the other. Sunggyu’s laughter caught in his throat and was replaced with a pout on his lips. Dongwoo then turned his attention back to the first year student. The boy was now surreptitiously looking from side to side, chewing on his lower lip. The student wasn’t looking for help; he was looking for witnesses to his embarrassment. His cheeks were already flushed. He was fidgeting in his spot, as if he were about to run away whenever startled. But then his searching black eyes landed on Dongwoo’s. And they stayed there. Everything seemed to still.

“I’m going to help him,” Dongwoo concluded and left his friends to meet the first year at his locker.

“Of course you would,” Sunggyu remarked, knowing full well of Dongwoo’s gentle nature. “See you in class.”

“See ya,” Dongwoo waved goodbye to his friends and walked up to the first year student, whose eyes had dropped to the floor as if he was plotting his escape. Dongwoo smiled as friendly as he could. “Need help?” he offered. “These lockers are tricky.”

“I’m fine,” the boy refused. “I don’t need to open it. I’ll just…”

“Yea, but you need to open it at some point in time,” Dongwoo cut him off. “Just let me teach you the trick that I learned last year. What’s your combination?”

“…12…2…32,” the other answered slowly and lowly, careful in case anyone else was listening.

“12, 2, 32! Got it!” Dongwoo repeated loudly for all to hear. The boy snapped his head up and looked at the other incredulously. Dongwoo just grinned widely and began to spin the dial around. “I’m Dongwoo, by the way. And you?”

“Howon. Lee Howon,” the other answered politely like Dongwoo was some sort of authority figure.

It made Dongwoo laugh. “Well, Howon,” he began. “The trick is that you got to rotate it a couple of times to reset the lock, and then you try the combination. A couple of times, okay?”

“Okay.”

“And sometimes you have to turn past the last number. Just a little bit past and not a lot or else it would lock again, okay? Just a little bit,” Dongwoo explained as he glanced over at the other.

“Alright.”

“And it should open…now!” Dongwoo announced as he twisted the dial a bit. The lock clicked open, but as he tried to pull it open, his hands twisted it a bit further, accidentally. Click. And the door locked again. “Crap.”

Howon chuckled and tapped the other. “Let me try again,” he suggested as he lightly nudged the other away. Then he attempted to unlock the locker again, and as he did, he repeated the instructions the other had told him, “Reset it…go a little bit past…and,” he drawled out as he tugged open the door. And it swung wide open. “It opened,” Howon muttered excitedly with a wolf-like grin. He turned towards the other. “Thank you,” he said, still beaming proudly.

Click. Things lined up, and Dongwoo was pulled into that smile, making his own falter slightly. He’s heard of love at first sight before, but he’d never believed it. And to be honest, he still didn’t. However, he couldn’t deny this great attraction he felt at the moment. And yet, as he was being drawn in involuntarily and his heart was racing, he felt calm. This was supposed to happen. This was natural.

It might’ve even been mutual. Howon’s smile shrank, and his eyes became unfocused, pupils dilated. His body was speaking the words that he could not say.

And Dongwoo had a hard time speaking too. “Yea, anytime,” was all that he could say. He then cleared his throat and returned his usual broad grin to his face. “Have a good first day, Howon.”

“You too, Dongwoo-ssi,” the other picked up his polite tone again.

After that moment, things fell out of alignment. The magnetic-like attraction weakened. Being in two different grades, they didn’t have much interaction with each other. There was nothing to put them into alignment again. There was nothing that they had in common aside from going to the same school…and that moment.

“This is like high school all over again,” Myungeun commented before taking a sip from her coffee mug. Her eyes were narrowing on something across the room.

“What do you mean?” Dongwoo asked, not even looking up as he poured coffee from the pot into his own mug. The two of them were in the faculty break room. Others were in there too, milling about, wasting time before the first bell. Dongwoo placed the pot back onto its hot plate and raised his gaze. “We are in a high school,” he joked.

Myungeun glared at the other out of the corner of her eyes and frowned. “You know what I mean,” she retorted. “You two are acting like teenagers. You and that Howon kid.” She then faced back forward and tilted her head curiously. “He’s staring at you again. He’s been staring all week.”

“Really?” Dongwoo did his best to feign surprise. He knew it all too well, the heat of Howon’s gaze burning at his back, and sometimes at his front and at his side. It had been like this ever since the egg drop incident. Howon kept staring at him, almost expectantly. What was he waiting for? Probably waiting for an apology, Dongwoo concluded (as if he hadn’t already apologized like a thousand times before). But the better question was: how did Dongwoo know how Howon looked? Well maybe it was because Dongwoo had been staring right back.

Dongwoo would never admit to it, but he’d admit that Myungeun was right. They were both acting like teenagers. And just like a teenager, Dongwoo will just keep denying this problem. He began joking again, “Why do you think he is? Do I have something on my face?”

“Yes,” Myungeun answered curtly. And that sent Dongwoo into a panic. He bent down to hide his face and began wiping it furiously. While he was busy with that, the nurse leaned in with a sly smile and whispered, “Handsomeness.”

Dongwoo bolted up and lightly shoved the other. “You!”

Myungeun smiled and gestured over to the phys ed teacher, who was engaged in a conversation with the drama teacher that he looked like he wanted to get out of. Howon then glanced over at them, still with the expectant (now maybe pleading) gaze. “Just go over there and talk to him,” Myungeung tore Dongwoo’s attention away. “Maybe he will stop.”

“No,” Dongwoo immediately rejected that idea. He started to feel hot and agitated (or was it flustered? What was the difference between those feeling anyways). The nurse shot him a sharpened glare. “No!” he denied again. “What would I even say?”

Myungeun quickly shot up her hand and gave a short wave. “’Hi,’ is a good start,” she declared and stuffed her hand back into her pocket.

“And after that? Ask him about his day?” Dongwoo proposed as if it were a ridiculous notion. Myungeun only shrugged in response. “Ask him if he ate? What do I ask?”

This time, the nurse replied with more than just a shrug. She shoved Dongwoo, and he stumbled backwards, bumping into whoever was behind him. “Real nice, Myungeun-ssi,” Dongwoo remarked. He then spun backwards about to apologize to whatever poor soul he’d just run into. Dongwoo’s jaw dropped. Myungeun had just ruined everything.

The nurse leaned over his shoulder and whispered, “You’re welcome.” She then pulled back and flashed a smile to the man whom Dongwoo had run into. “Good morning, Howon-ssi. Dongwoo-ssi has something he would like to say,” she announced, giving the physics teacher one last shove before leaving. “Bye!”

“What is it?” Howon asked, looking the other up and down, clutching his coffee mug tightly in his hand. Now Dongwoo truly felt as if he were in high school again, and Howon was the first year standing in front of a stubborn locker, nervous and embarrassed.

Dongwoo wasn’t any better. He raised his hand up stiffly and waved. “Hi.”

Howon sniggered and waved back. “Hi.”

After that moment, the words flowed between them like a current traveling down a copper wire. In addition to “Hi,” Dongwoo got into the habit of also saying “Goodbye” and asking the other about his day, complaining about the students that they had in common. Small talk that eventually grew bigger and bigger.

Then one day, Howon sat at Dongwoo’s lunch table and stayed there. Myungeun might have had something to do with it, and Dongwoo might have been grateful for it. There was something about Howon that made the physics teacher act like a high school-er again. That face drudged up more memories about his teenage years than being within the walls of his old school everyday. Dongwoo assumed that the forgotten memories were returning because not only the setting was the same but the people were the same too.

It was unfortunate that Howon didn’t seem to remember as well as he did. The phys ed teacher still acted as if they didn’t have a shared past. It was like fate had pressed ‘reset’ on their relationship, and here they were starting from square one. It wasn’t like they had much of a relationship before then, but they had something. And something wasn’t nothing.

But if Howon wasn’t going to admit to it, neither was Dongwoo, out of courtesy or pettiness, one of the two.

Too bad Myungeun didn’t receive that memo: “Hey! You guys went here for high school, right?” she brought up one day at lunch. “Did anything change since then?”

Wanting to quickly return to their safe conversation about how Woohyun and Sungyeol should be kept 5 feet apart at all times, Dongwoo tried to put an end to this one, “Ah, not re—”

But Howon cut him off, “A lot has changed, actually.”

Dongwoo quickly glanced over to his fellow teacher, mouth slightly agape. He was surprised that Howon had finally admitted to coming here. And while, the physics teacher was scrambling for words other than “Yea,” “um,” and “coursework,” Myungeun put a more coherent sentence together: “Really? Like what?”

Howon nodded over to Dongwoo with a slight smirk. “Like the coursework for one, but also the whole building was redone. It no longer smells like mold and crushed dreams,” he answered and then turned to the man next to him. “Right, hyung?”

Hyung? It was obvious that it was a slip of the tongue, the way Howon’s lips tucked in as if to hold more back. It was the first time that the younger had called him something else other than “Dongwoo-ssi.” After getting over the initial shock of it all, a sly and knowing smile crept onto Dongwoo’s face. Ah, so he does remember, he thought. Howon noticed that the other started to catch on and lowered his gaze to his meal, ears reddening. Why was he acting like he didn’t?

“Then you’ve never been in my classroom, Howon,” Dongwoo joked, dropping formal expressions like the other had.

Myungeun furrowed her eyebrows in concern. “You have a mold problem?”

“No, I teach remedial physics,” Dongwoo replied with a laugh. “Crushing dreams is an occupational hazard.”

Howon lifted his gaze from his food and faced his hyung again. “What score did Sungyeol get this time?” he asked.

“9,” Dongwoo answered. “Then Woohyun mentioned that it was his jersey number, and Sungyeol started to yell at him for the rest of class to have a higher jersey number so that he could score higher on tests.”

“Teens,” Myungeun remarked with a shake of her head. “Glad that I’m not one anymore.”

“I don’t know. It was fun back then,” Dongwoo commented. “I wouldn’t mind going back in time and reliving it.”

“Me too,” Howon agreed.

And that’s exactly what they started to do together, relive their high school years. Howon and Dongwoo had so many shared memories, more than Dongwoo could ever guess. Of course they had similar teachers. Coach Kim, Howon’s predecessor, was a favorite topic between them, how the old man would sleep as they ran laps on the track or played an almost murderous game of dodge ball. In addition to having the same impressions of their teachers, the two also had similar experiences. Both were vice presidents of their classes at some point in time of their high school careers. Both had placed similarly in their classes, around the middle. Both had to wait several outside the classrooms, kneeling and with hands straight up in the air, for arriving after the bell rang. There was even a time that they were both being punished at the same time. Dongwoo remember nodding in acknowledgement to his hoobae, telling him to have strength. Dongwoo promptly got slapped in the head by his teacher for talking instead of silently ‘reflecting’ about his tardiness, but back then it was worth it to Dongwoo to be a supportive sunbae….and it was even more worth it now to see Howon’s wide grin as he retold that story from his perspective.

And Dongwoo became increasingly suspicious of Howon as these conversations went on. Howon’s ‘cool’ exterior would slip and melt away. A childish, shy smile would appear on his face. It seemed like that Dongwoo was more than just Howon’s senior. They weren’t just people who went to the same high school at the same time. To Howon, it almost seemed like Dongwoo was his sunbae, a person that he looked up to.

Once Dongwoo would suspect that, he would immediately shake those thoughts away. No that’s not possible, he’d think. He would’ve known if they had that kind of relationship, wouldn’t he? Wasn’t it a mutual relationship? Didn’t Dongwoo have to do something worth looking up to? The physics teacher was careful not to inflate his own ego. His own students didn’t seem to look up to him, so why would Lee Howon?

But he kept feeling like that was the case. There was one time that they were looking at a poster for the school’s annual talent show that was hung up in the hallway.

“I remember that show,” Howon remarked as he nodded to the poster. “They had that when we were here too.” He then turned his attention away from the poster, and his gaze fixed on the elder’s face. “You did it one year. You danced,” he spoke in a teasing tone.

“Ugh! That?!” Dongwoo groaned. He felt his face heating up with embarrassment at the memory. He didn’t regret doing what he did, but that didn’t mean that he wanted to remember. “My friends needed an extra body, and someone to teach them the dance,” he excused himself. “I have two older sisters, you know. They both really liked the Wonder Girls back then, and…”

“You were good though,” Howon interrupted.

And Dongwoo just scarcely heard him. “Huh?”

“You were good,” Howon repeated a bit louder and clearer. He then patted the other on the shoulder. “You have nothing to be embarrassed about. You were even better than your friends.”

“Well, that wasn’t really hard to do,” Dongwoo quickly responded, shifting nervously under the other’s touch. He didn’t mean to diss his former friends, but he recalled the long nights practicing in their empty classroom. He didn’t just teach them the dance; he taught them how to dance. Which is why he didn’t regret it. He deepened his bond with that group of girls and created memories that he wouldn’t forget. It was still embarrassing as Hell though, especially now with Howon looking at him with glinting eyes. Dongwoo was determined to shift the focus off of himself, “Did you do skit or something then? I can’t remember.”

“No,” Howon replied with a shake of his head as he leaned against the wall, next to the poster. “But I did the next year.”

“Really? What did you do?” Dongwoo asked.

“I danced,” the other answered, but he was quick to add, “But none of that girl group stuff. Actual dancing.”

“Like what?” Dongwoo challenged. “Show me.”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            

Howon got up from off the wall and waved off the other. “Ah no. Not here.”

“Why not?”

Howon blinked at the other, dumbfounded. “Because…” he started as he scrambled for the answer. He leaned forward and whispered lowly, “Someone could see. I don’t want to embarrass myself.”

“Eh, it’s only embarrassing if you can’t do it well,” Dongwoo was just teasing, but he seemed to have hit a nerve.

“Oh, I dance well,” Howon retorted as he stepped forward, squaring his shoulders. There was a fire blazing in his eyes. “I dance really well.”

“Prove it,” Dongwoo dared him, wondering how far he could push the other.

Howon took a step back, his eyes rolling up as he tried to peer into his mind. “If I could remember…the routine went something like this,” he murmured. And he started dancing, right there in the middle of the hallway.

His movements were small, but sharp. They were fluid, uninterrupted by sudden jolts of energy. His head hung down as he danced, bobbing to the slow beat playing in his mind. Dongwoo had to agree. Howon did dance well and would probably dance even better if Howon wasn’t anxiously looking down the halls, just in case anyone chanced to walk by. Eventually he gave into that anxiety and stopped. “You get the idea,” Howon said as he pulled himself back up straight and leaned back against the safe and sturdy wall.

“I do,” Dongwoo immediately responded. “You do dance well.”

Howon smirked smugly and crossed his arms over his chest. “I know.”

But along with those pleasant memories (which were often followed by equally pleasant moments), unpleasant ones were also drudged up. Back in high school, his fellow classmates rarely took Dongwoo seriously. And for the most part, Dongwoo was okay with that. He didn’t mind being the fun friend that people did crazy things with or having people wonder if he was either a genius or an idiot. Well, he mostly didn’t mind it. On occasion, Dongwoo wanted to be taken seriously. He had a lot of deep thoughts and was unexpectedly good with words in delicate situations. And he was good at the sciences.

In his last year, Dongwoo volunteered to be a tutor for the younger students. At that time, he was already playing with the idea of becoming a teacher. And becoming a tutor would lend a great opportunity to cement the idea as an actual career. However, he was soon confronted with a major problem: No one took him seriously.

After months of being passed over for a nerd in glasses with lower test scores than him (damn Kim Sunggyu for naturally looking smart), Dongwoo finally got his first student to tutor. She was a nice second year named Sujeong, who wanted to understand a few concepts better before midterms. And it was great. Dongwoo did well, and he was slowly falling in love with teaching, especially after singing Sujeong’s eyes light up after realizing something and making sense of the world (and Dongwoo helped to get her to that point). Then Sujeong said that she would definitely recommend Dongwoo’s services to other students, especially since he was patient, kind, and didn’t yell at them (unlike the tutor with glasses). Dongwoo’s idea was slowly morphing into a career choice.

But then, a brash second year student had to come and knock that idea back down. And that student went by the name of Lee Howon.

“We fought once,” Dongwoo blurted out as the two of them were walking to their mutual bus stop. That memory of the two of them in the library that day had been haunting him like a ghost recently. And he wanted to get rid of its grudge. He then cocked his head as he caught a glimpse of the other out of the corner of his eye. “I don’t know if you remembered that.”

“I do,” Howon quickly responded back. They had reached their stop, and the phys ed teacher stepped in front of the other. However, their gazes didn’t meet. Howon’s eyes were fixed slightly above Dongwoo’s, on his eyebrow. Howon winced and in air sharply as he spoke, “It looks like you have a scar from where I hit you. Sorry.” When he apologized, his fingers gingerly touched the scar cutting through the elder’s eyebrow. But as his fingers made contact, Howon quickly retreated them and dropped his eyes to his hand. It was that hand which had scarred the other.

“Eh, it was an accident. You didn’t mean to,” Dongwoo assured him, grabbing at that hand and wrapping it warmly in his for one second…then another…a third, then he let go of the hand. Dongwoo was normally good in delicate situations like this, but now he was left with a tight throat and an empty mind. This situation wasn’t only delicate; it was fragile. “I’m surprised you remembered, actually.”

“How could I forget?” Somehow, Howon sounded like he maintained his cool head. His eyes lifted and searched the other’s face. A nervous half-smile painted his. “I got you angry. Not just upset, but angry. You had steam coming out of your ears. Horns sprouting out of your head like this,” he remarked and raised two fingers to the side of his head, pointing them upwards like horns. He then dropped his hands and chuckled, “I don’t think you understand how terrifying that was.” Howon bit his lip, contemplating if he should say the next bit, but as Dongwoo was saying nothing, it came out just to fill the open air: “I thought you hated me.”

“No,” Dongwoo denied. “No I didn’t hate you.”

Howon looked relieved to hear that, but it only made Dongwoo’s stomach grow heavier, until it was weighted down to his feet. Dongwoo only truly hated a few people in his life, and Lee Howon was definitely not one of them. He didn’t hate Howon; he could never. But that day he was severely disappointed in the younger.

Before that day, Dongwoo had always held a favorable opinion of Howon. Even though they didn’t interact much with each other, every time that they did, it was nice. Dongwoo thought the other to be a nice and respectful kid, although he was rumored to have a sharp tongue and a hot head. But he was never like that with Dongwoo…until that day.

It came back to Dongwoo, as clear as the day.

“Oh Sujeong-ah,” Howon called from the entrance of the study hall, entirely too loud for a room full of studying students. Dongwoo snapped up his head from the equation that he was helping his tutee to balance. The second year student made his way across the room to his friend. “What’s up?”

“I’m being tutored,” Sujeong answered bluntly, not giving the other the time of day. “Oppa, I still don’t get it,” she lamented to Dongwoo, eyes narrowing on the page.

“Ah, well, what you do is…” Dongwoo began but then he was cut off.

“Why are you getting him to tutor you?” Howon asked in a teasing tone as he sat down next to Sujeong.

Dongwoo tightened his grip around the pencil in his hand. “What is that supposed to mean?” he challenged.

Howon glanced at the elder and quickly looked back at his friend. “I could help you,” he offered. “It’d be better.”

“How?”

“Huh.” Howon looked past his friend to the tutor.

“How?” Dongwoo repeated. “You haven’t even learned this yet. How could you be better?” He was sick and tired of having his authority challenged, and Howon would have to pry his only tutee out of his cold, dead hands. Dongwoo will fight for Sujeong until she passed all of her tests with flying colors.

“Because we’re friends?” the younger lamely argued as he looked at the other with a blank stare.

“Yea well, that won’t help her,” Dongwoo snapped back.

“Well, I don’t know if you can either because you’re…”

“Because I’m what?” Dongwoo yelled.

“Because you’re Jang Dongwoo!”

Zap! Like a jolt of electricity through his system. A jolt that sent Dongwoo flying across towards the other, and the two began brawling. It had been broken up almost as soon as it began by Sunggyu and (tiny but strong) Sujeong, but not before Howon had accidentally nicked the other’s forehead with his ring on his finger. And at the first sight of blood, Sunggyu whisked his friend away to the nurse’s office, which left Howon in the study hall with bloody knuckles and a head wrapped in confusion.

It was the only fight Dongwoo had ever gotten into. For weeks he wondered why he let Howon get under his skin like that. But then he realized it, soon after he graduated. To him, Howon was always a polite hoobae, who respected everyone…except Dongwoo. And that was why he had lost it.

But today, he might get it all back, polite hoobae included.

“Really? I really thought you hated me,” Howon, the teacher, was baffled. “That was the last time we ever talked.”

Dongwoo shook his head, “No it wasn’t.”

“Yea, it was,” Howon fought back, slowly regaining his smile.

“Really?” Dongwoo thought back to the fallout. After the fight was his exams, and after that…graduation. Dongwoo had graduated before he’d even seen Lee Howon again. They never talked.

“Eung.” The smile was pained.

Dongwoo closed his eyes and sighed. “Look, I was upset with you. But I never hated you. I could never hate…you,” he was losing his articulation. He couldn’t think about what else to say other than he didn’t hate the other because it was important that he knew.

“Why?” Howon challenged with a chuckle. “You barely knew me then.”

“I knew that you were nice,” Dongwoo answered. Howon cocked an eyebrow and laughed even more. “I don’t know,” Dongwoo struggled to find a better answer. “I just looked at you and you reminded me of myself at your age.”

“I did?” Howon took it as a compliment. “You know, I looked up to you back then, hyung. I wanted to be like you.”

“Really? Eh, I don’t believe you,” Dongwoo retorted, looking at the other out of the corner of his eye.

“Yea, I even practiced your laugh,” Howon joked as he proceeded to mock Dongwoo’s ‘special’ laugh. “Kyakyakyakyakyakya!”

“Shut up, little me. You’re going to miss your bus,” Dongwoo chided the other as he pushed Howon towards the bus pulling up to the side of the curb.

“Bye, hyung!” Howon waved with a wide smile.

“Bye, Howon-ah!”

Zap! A jolt was sent through Dongwoo again as he watched the bus pull away from the curb. But this time, it was like a bolt of lightening, a realization shaking him to the core.

His suspicious were correct: Howon did look up to it. He himself admitted it, albeit jokingly. And back then, Dongwoo assumed that Howon was acting brash to impress Sujeong. He liked her and found Dongwoo, her kind tutor, to be a threat. But after getting to know adult Howon, after actually hold conversations with him, Dongwoo was now suspecting that it wasn’t true either. Howon did have a sharp tongue and couldn’t always gauge what was appropriate. He got easily carried away in conversations, sometimes taking it a step too far, especially when he was flirting.

Dongwoo now suspected that Howon had been trying to flirt with him as best as awkward teenage Howon could (he at it), and it backfired horribly. Dongwoo, on the other hand, reacted like copper to a magnet. He hadn’t even noticed that Howon was trying to attract him, pull him into his field, and Dongwoo remained unmoved…except to fight. Yes, the physics teacher strongly suspected that was what Howon was trying to do back then.

And so far, Dongwoo’s suspicions had been correct.

The magnetic moment. It can be considered as a vector having a magnitude and direction. The magnetic field produced by the magnet is proportional to its magnetic moment. “Magnetic moment” normally refers to a system's magnetic dipole moment, which produces the first term in the multipole expansion of a general magnetic field. The dipole component of an object's magnetic field is symmetric about the direction of its magnetic dipole moment, and decreases as the inverse cube of the distance from the object.

In short, a magnetic field has no effect when the object is too far away. They need to be in the same place and at the same time. Dongwoo and Howon have had both. They were both in same school, taking classes for the same hours in the day, and they even attended the same extracurricular events. However there was always some distance in between them, weakening their magnetic moment. They were always in the same physical place, but not the same place in respect to their lives. Dongwoo had always been a bit further than Howon. But now, they were in the same place at the same time.

Their attraction towards each other was stronger than ever.

It was the last day before winter break, and Dongwoo was solemnly sitting at his desk. Unlike the previous years, Dongwoo wasn’t looking forward to the Christmas. He didn’t have anyone to spend it with. This year, he and his sisters had chipped in to pay for their parents to go off for the holidays on a beach vacation. So they would be gone. And his sisters have their own family. Dongwoo didn’t want to intrude on their celebrations. Then all of his friends had lovers, with whom they’d be spending the holiday. So that left Dongwoo, alone, in front of the television with a Christmas cake that he’d pick up from the bakery and a large supply of eggnog. He’d spend the holiday in a food coma.

“Christmas solo,” he muttered below his breath as he straightened the papers on his desk.

“Why do you look down, Ssaem?” Jisoo broke into his thoughts. She tried to offer him a warm smile as she packed her belongings. “It’s Christmas, and winter break is coming up.”

Woohyun gave his teacher a sly smile. “Is it because you’ll miss us?” he shouted from the back of the class, slinging his bookbag onto his shoulders.

“Uh, yea,” Dongwoo muttered as a reflex. But then he stood up from his desk and addressed the class. “I’ll miss you. All of you. I won’t know what to do with myself,” he ended with a brief chuckle as he walked to the center of the class.

“Cheer up, Ssaem!” Sungyeol exclaimed as he approached his teacher. “We’ll see you in the next year. We’ll keep you busy then.”

“Of course you will, Sungyeol-goon,” Dongwoo spoke in a resigned tone. “Just don’t give me too much trouble next year.”

“Can’t promise that,” the student chirped back. “Yah! Mijoo-yah!” Sungyeol called to his classmate who was trying to sneak out of the door unseen. “What are you doing Christmas Eve?”

“I already have plans,” Mijoo answered.

“Huh? With who?” Sungyeol asked, crestfallen.

“Sorry, buddy. You snooze, you lose,” Woohyun boasted, patting the other on the shoulder in consolation.

“YAH!” Sungyeol yelled, stepping back from his friend and sized him up. “Y-you knew!” he stammered as he made a grab for Woohyun’s collar, but his friend evaded his grasp and sprinted out the door. “You knew that I was going to ask her!” Sungyeol shouted as he chased down the other.

Jisoo walked up to her friend with a pout on her face. “I thought we were hanging out on Christmas Eve,” she said glumly.

“We still are. I rejected Woohyun too,” Mijoo stated. She then grinned as she giggled. “But I guess Sungyeol doesn’t know that.”

Jisoo rolled her eyes exaggeratedly. “Boys,” she said with a sigh, but then she broke out into a giggle too. “Come on, let’s go.” She wrapped her arm around her friends, and then she turned and waved goodbye, “Bye Ssaem! Happy Holidays!”

Dongwoo sniggered softly as he made his way back to his desk. “I guess that I’m not the only one spending Christmas solo.” It was a small consolation, but he’d take anything at this point. He, Woohyun, and Sungyeol can separately wallow in their own misery.

As he was contemplating about how many pints of eggnog to buy, there was a knock at his door. Dongwoo raised his head and saw Howon standing in the doorway.

“Hey,” the phys ed teacher greeted with his usual, tight-lipped grin. He raised his hand to show off what he had in hand. It was a gift. And judging by it’s odd shape, Dongwoo knew what it was. “I just wanted to give you this before the break.” He walked up and set the present on the desk. “Merry Christmas, hyung,” he wished as he turned to leave.

“Howon-ah, wait,” Dongwoo called after him. Howon stopped his sluggish step and turned towards the other expectantly. “Do you have any plans for Christmas?”

“No. Not really,” he replied with a shake of his head. He raised an eyebrow. “Do you?”

“No.”

“Oh,” Howon muttered lowly, dropping his gaze, unsure of what to do next.

“Maybe we should spend Christmas Eve together,” Dongwoo suggested. There was no reason for the both of them to spend the night alone (especially when they felt like this).

Howon broke out into a smile. “Normally people spend Christmas Eve with their lover,” he pointed out cautiously. He slowly approached the other’s desk again and dragged his finger along the edge.

“Right,” Dongwoo agreed with a nod. “So we should spend it together.”

Howon stopped playing with the edge of the desk and looked up at the other in surprise. “Hyung. What are you saying?”

“Okay, so maybe I’m getting ahead of myself but…I like you,” Dongwoo said the last part like a sigh. And it came out more easily than expected. It just flowed right through. As did the next part, “Do you want to date?”

“You want to date me?” Howon asked as his eyes grew rounder. “On Christmas Eve?”

“Eung,” Dongwoo hummed. The smile fell from his face. Had I miscalculated? “Do you not…”

“Alright,” Howon cut him off. “But shouldn’t we at least have another date before that? Our first date on Christmas…that’s raising the bar high,” he joked, ending with a low whistle.

“You want to date before then?” Dongwoo suggested, grinning now wider than ever. He was glad that his desk covered his legs because they were bouncing up and down with excitement.

“How about tonight? I’m not busy,” Howon offered coolly.

“Okay,” the physics teacher assented, voice smooth and calm although his body was jittery. “Tonight it is.”

“Alright. I’ll text you. So I’ll see you then,” Howon said as he waved the other goodbye and began to leave. But before he was out of the classroom, Howon spun on his heels at the doorway. “Oh, I’m not kissing you under mistletoe, got it?” he joked, wagging his finger. “That’s cheesy. So don’t even think of bringing one! Got it?”

Dongwoo laughed and held up an ‘okay’ sign. “Got it,” he responded.

“Good,” Howon replied with a nod. He waved again, “Bye.” He turned to leave, but ended up running into the doorframe. Dongwoo tried his best to bite back his laughter to save the other’s pride. Howon looked back embarrassed. “Bye, hyung,” he said again before ducking out of the classroom.

Once gone, Dongwoo let go of his laughter. “Aigoo! What a cute little hoobae,” he cooed.

Howon his head back into the room, successfully scaring the elder. “I’m not cute. I’m y,” he insisted. “Keep your phone on.”

“I got it. I got it!”

Some would say that Dongwoo and Howon were opposites, but in Dongwoo’s world ruled by physics, opposites attracted perfectly. They had a magnetism that was undeniable, and now that Fate had brought them together again, Dongwoo suspected that they wouldn’t easily part. And Dongwoo’s suspicions were usually right.

And so were Howon’s. He was right. Mistletoe was cheesy, and they didn’t even need it that night. Their first kiss happened naturally that night…and their second…and third…