English SOS chapter 2: Falling?

A/N:Long time no see. I was too busy with celebrating my birthday in January to properly write and I struggled a bit with the motivation to write. But I finished part 2 and part 3 will come along soon I hope :/. Read. Enjoy. Comment if you want to; they make my day.

Walking through the front door of his home, he bent down to unlace his sneakers and noticed that his Mom’s heels were there as well. It surprised him. Considering since they came to Korea his Mom was preoccupied with setting up the café and getting it running smoothly. That left her at the café for long hours. Some days she left the café early and left the closing to the night shift manager. Other days she and his Dad would come home together; his Dad picking her up on his way back from the office. Those days Joshua cooked for himself. His parents normally didn’t come back until late in the evening, which left him home alone for long periods of time.

It was different from how the family was back in LA. His Mom left her job before 5 and was home with him; both of them cooking dinner together on days Joshua wasn’t busy with his guitar lessons or homework. Then an hour or two later his Dad came home and they ate dinner together and talked. He missed it now. They hardly saw each other unless it was on the weekends and unless his parents came home early, or if he was at the café on the weekends helping out. His Dad was busy with work after parties and his Mom busy with the café.

Coming to Korea made him miss and appreciate the closeness they had before. Now it was hurried Hello’s, Good Morning’s, and tired Good night’s. Maybe a few pat on the backs and some questions on how he was doing. Dinner talks were gone and practically nonexistent. For the first time in his life as an only child, he felt lonely at home instead of comfortable in the silence.

He let out a sigh. Thinking about all the big changes made him melancholy. His mom was home early; he should be happy. He put a smile on his face. Joshua silently stepped through the hallway. Walking close to the wall, he made sure to keep to the shadows. He creeped into the kitchen silently approaching his mom, who was in front of the fridge. “Boo!” He shouted as he grabbed her shoulders. His Mom let out a yelp and dropped what looked like daikon radish on the floor. Joshua snickered loudly.

She turned around and gave him a swat on his arm. “Joshua Hong!” She gave him a stern look. “What is wrong with you? Giving your mom a greeting like that.”

Still snickering his words came out stuttered, “Aww, Mom. It was for fun. Don’t… ge-get mad at me.” Joshua kept laughing into his hand, side eyeing the look on his Mom’s face. twitched as if she was going to smile, but she kept in a grim line, even though her eyes sparkled with mirth.

Sighing she picked up the radish. “My only child.” Tsking she grabbed the rest of her ingredients. “Silly boy. Did you miss me that much that you wanted to scare me?”

“Yeah,” he replied quietly, looking his Mom in the eye. “I haven’t been able to talk to you. Beyond the small talk we do at night. If we do speak at all.”

He stared as her face softened. She took on a regretful expression and opened her arms. Joshua stepped into the hug and wrapped his arms around her shoulders. His mom rubbed circles into his back softly telling him her apologies for being too busy to even speak to him. It felt nice. Joshua wasn’t angry or resentful about the situation; he just had to adjust. It was irksome and definitely not his first choice, but he was a child still under his parents so he didn’t have a choice. He just had to deal.

She moved to start petting his hair. He moved out of her embrace, simultaneously annoyed at being coddled by his mom yet wanting more attention. She said, “I’m sorry about how things are turning out here. I know you didn’t protest when the news came, but I could tell you didn’t want to come here. Thank you for that.” She gave him a smile.

He ducked his head and just shrugged his shoulders. He knew that fighting about it wouldn’t help change their minds so why put up a huge fuss. So he swallowed all the words and annoyance. Joshua bent down to pick up the radish and said, “Let’s cook dinner.” The black haired boy knew that the change of subject was crappy and abrupt, but he didn’t want to talk about it anymore.

The two started to prepare, with his mom chopping up the ingredients and Joshua checking the simmering soup. With one final chop on the cutting board his Mom gathered up the ingredients in a bowl. She laid it down near the pan and turned to look at him.

“I know about the brochures. UCLA, Berkeley, Santa Barbara, San Diego, Riverside and the many others. You didn’t do a very good job of hiding them Joshua.” She said softly, looking at her son.

He stared back, jaw tight in defense, eyes never wavering from her eyes, “I wasn’t trying to hide them. I just didn’t know how to tell you about my plans.” Shrugging his shoulders. He continued, “I needed you to see them.”

“Are you considering the idea of going to college here in Korea at all?” She questioned.

“No.” Joshua said decisively. “I…the atmosphere of the school system isn’t what I'm looking for.” He paused. He tried thinking of a nice way to say he missed California without making his Mom feel bad, but there really wasn’t. “I miss California. I just miss it.”

She nodded with sad eyes and turned back to the pan and the ingredients. For the rest of the time, they cooked in silence, not speaking until his Dad came home.

His Mom didn’t mention the college brochures at all during dinner. Neither did he.

Joshua left his parents downstairs talking about who knows what. He doubted it was about his choice to go back to California without them. He grabbed his phone and texted Jeonghan.

Hey, Jeonghan. It’s Joshua, your English tutor. I managed to reserve one of the small study rooms in the school’s library for the next few months. Bring your old tests and homework papers if you can. It’ll help me see what we need to work on. I’ll see you there tomorrow after school. :)

Looking down at the text he sighed. He didn’t actually make a reservation so much as it was practically reserved for him always anyhow. Ever since he came to Korea he had managed to tutor five other students in the past year alone. The librarians knew him so well they just left that room for his use. It would’ve been nice to use it as an actual study room rather than a tutoring room, but since he never actually studied at school, it was a moot point.  

Lying down on his bed, Joshua wondered why he took on another thing that would just eat up his small amount of free time. It’s wasn’t as if he didn’t already have activities and other things that would help him get into university. But he wanted to get in badly enough to mess with his already filled schedule some more. If he didn’t get in, everything he did would be for nothing. And he wasn’t sure if he could deal with the disappointment.

Joshua spent the school day as normal; taking notes, listening to the teacher, eating lunch in the music room, and playing around with the instruments. Everything was normal except for the fact that after school he had to start tutoring sessions with the long-haired blond basketball player. He lugged a bag full of English materials to school; Jeonghan had better show up. But hearing about how desperate the poor guy was, he’d probably be there ready to learn. The last time Joshua had to tutor a jock, he didn’t pay attention to Joshua at all. That guy learned really quick what happened when one didn’t listen to the tutor your teacher asked to help you. The athlete bombed the class and got booted off the team; he was just one of the many it seemed, semi-talented but not talented enough to bother keeping if he wasn’t going to try to follow school policy about grades and playing on sports teams.

School ended and up the stairs he went. Joshua made his way to the study room and started to set up. Taking out the English guides and books he laid them to the left of him at the front of the table. He made sure to see if he had his little diagnostic test, that he compiled from other materials, and his worksheets in one of his frequently used English for dummies books. Not that the actual title of said books were actually English for dummies, but that’s what Vernon called them and the name stuck.

He was about sifting through the papers to find the appropriate papers when he heard a knock. Joshua looked up and saw Yoon Jeonghan clad in his school uniform, a nice contrast to yesterday’s basketball shorts and a t-shirt. Joshua smiled at him and said hello. For some reason Jeonghan stared at him silently. Joshua looked at him in concern, wondering if this was the spacey personality quirk that Seungkwan talked about. Walking up to Jeonghan, he waved his hand in front of his face. “Jeonghan? Hey, Earth to Jeonghan,” trying to get his attention.

That jerked Jeonghan out of his haze and he replied after clearing his throat, “I’m fine. Just got lost in the clouds for a bit.” Jeonghan gave Joshua an embarrassed smile, which Joshua oddly thought was cute.

The black haired boy smiled in return. He chuckled and said, “I get lost in the clouds a lot too.” Joshua gestured towards the table, “Let’s sit and talk about how we’re going to go about getting your English grade up.” Jeonghan nodded; they both moved towards the table with Joshua taking the seat at the head of the table and Jeonghan at the side. “I’ve tutored a few other students before and how I normally start is with giving a practice test, while I look at your previous tests and assignments to get a feel on where we should focus on and what doesn’t need work. From there I tailor the sessions towards your weaknesses. Unfortunately, I have to add some minor amount of work to your regular work load to make sure it’s sinking into your brain. I also help with your regular English homework but not too much. I normally help you with anything that seems too hard for you, and then correct your mistakes as a way to get you used to the language. Any questions?”

His spiel was practically seared into his mind at this point from saying it one too many times. Joshua looked at Jeonghan who had worried expression on his face. Worried being mild, for a few seconds the other boy looked like what Joshua said was spelling his doom.

The blond opened his mouth and asked, “How much work is minor?”

“It’s normally only one to two worksheets. As we get more advanced I might ask you to write a few paragraphs about your day, your future plans, or things about your past in English so you can get more practice. It depends on how fast you progress and how much you need to catch up on the material in your actual English class.” He said with placing his finger on his chin. “So if there’s no more questions let’s get started,” Joshua stated, pulling out a worksheet from the most used English for dummies book. He handed the paper to Jeonghan.

 “You brought your old stuff like I asked right?” Joshua then made a ‘give me’ gesture with his hand. Jeonghan nodded, his blond ponytail making a swishing sound; the black haired boy simply made the same gesture again. He watched as the blond turned around and ped his backpack and handed over a small stack of papers to him. Nodding in satisfaction, Joshua said, “You should take out a pencil too. You have thirty minutes to finish the practice test I just gave you,” head tilting towards the paper in front of Jeonghan. He waited until Jeonghan had a pencil in his hand. Seeing the pencil, he said, “Time starts now. Good luck.” Joshua sent a smile Jeonghan’s way and then looked down at the papers in his hand to see the damage and just how much work they needed to do.

Joshua shuffled through the papers taking note on what Jeonghan seemed to make the most frequent mistakes in and what questions just went unanswered. Looking at the papers he could tell that the blond wasn’t an idiot, it’s just that he was missing huge gaps in his knowledge. Vocabulary words were all right. Spelling was a bit better. The sentence structure and grammar were the biggest problems. It was always those two it seemed. Joshua sighed internally. At least these problems were fixable. He looked up to find Jeonghan staring at him. Joshua tilted his head in question, and mouthed to Jeonghan while tapping at his watch, ‘You’re running out of time.’

He sifted through the rest of the blonde’s papers. Putting them down, he looked up to watch Jeonghan as he slowly answered the test questions. He noticed the pauses, the grimaces, and the look of utter despair on the other boy’s face. It was like watching an intense episode of an anime, where the main character learned some shockingly ridiculous secret. He watched until the time ended.

Joshua called time and the blond let out a sigh and slid the page over to him. “All right. Let’s see how much we need to work on,” Joshua quietly stated, giving Jeonghan a smile to calm him down. Taking a red pen off the table, Joshua marked up his test. With every increasing red mark, he sighed internally. At least the mistakes coincided with the mistakes he normally made on his old work. Slashing the last question red, Joshua looked up at Jeonghan with a slightly strained smile, “I guess we have our work cut out for us. Let’s begin.”

“Right so it seems that your main problems are with sentence structure and subject-verb agreement. Which is understandable since the Korean language doesn’t actually use subject-verb agreement the way English does and the sentence structure in English is rather different depending on your actual sentence. But these two things are essential.” Going up to the white board, Joshua started to write out an example in English: ‘I am. He/She is. They are. We are.’ Pointing at the ‘I am.’, “In English we can say I am American. In Korean it’s jeonun miguk saram imnida. But when we talk about someone else, She/he is American versus geunyeoneun miguk-in-ida.”

Underlining the verbs, Joshua pointed and said, “If you look at the difference it’s that in English the verb changes with the subject and in Korean it doesn’t. The verb changing always happens in the English language. There are tricks to remembering when and how to change it. But for now let’s start a bit slow and build up speed.”  Jeonghan at this point took out a notebook and a pen to take notes. Joshua nodded and turned back to the whiteboard and continued to teach. So far so good.

After about a half hour of teaching Jeonghan grammar rules he decided it was time to switch to helping the blond with his homework. “All right, let’s switch over to your homework for the remaining time. Wouldn’t want you to miss all of basketball practice.” He capped the dry erase marker and put it away, grabbing a pencil for himself. Joshua walked over to sit next Jeonghan, who grabbed his homework assignment out of his bag. Glancing down at the paper, he noticed it was simple enough for him, but not so much for Jeonghan. Translating paragraphs into English after answering a short prompt in both Korean and English. Along with a few minor vocabulary words to learn and make sentences with. “Let’s start with the vocabulary words and work our way up.” He said as he gave Jeonghan what he hoped looked like an encouraging smile. Seeing the blond nod his head, Joshua must’ve sent him the right type of expression. He slid into the seat next to him, and asked Jeonghan to sound out the words.

With a sigh of relief, Jeonghan put his pencil down and flopped his arms and head onto the table. “Finally. Even with your help this assignment took a long time to finish.”

Joshua muffled a laugh behind his hand. “It’s only because you’re still struggling with English. After we continue to meet and you absorb everything I’m teaching, you’ll be able to finish these assignments in no time. It’s all a matter of practice.”

Joshua placed his chin in his palm. “Now that I remember the English classes here have a speaking portion to them as well don’t they?” He asked. Speaking meant pronunciation practice would have to be worked into the packed schedule of tutoring.

“Yea, they do. My pronunciation is kind of sad.” Jeonghan said.

Joshua hummed, “After a few sessions, I’ll speak in English more and make you speak back to me in English. That way we can tackle working on syntax, grammar, and your speaking skills.” He gave Jeonghan reassuring pats on his arm. “I’ll do my best to help you. Promise.” Joshua said as he grinned. That concluded the day’s first tutoring session; he watched as Jeonghan walked out to get to basketball practice. He began to pack up his things, hoping that the rest of the tutoring period would be easy and smooth.

And it was easy. A month had gone by and all the tutoring sessions go smoothly. Jeonghan showed up and Joshua taught. He showed Jeonghan tricks and rules to English grammar, held conversations in half English and half Korean because Jeonghan really wasn’t kidding when he said his pronunciation was sad, and helped the blond with his homework.

One Tuesday however, didn’t start out so smooth. Jeonghan came in looking stressed. He had the look of a person who had one too many days of little sleep and the mounting stress was eating at him. The other boy’s normally sleek looking blond hair looked limp and sad. Joshua started out the lesson as normal, but hearing the constants sighs from Jeonghan got to him. Turning away from the white board he said, “Let’s take a break. You sound frustrated and all the sighing isn’t helping you or me at this point.”

“A break? Like a 10-minute break?” Jeonghan asked.

Joshua shook his head. “No. Like a do something to get rid of your frustration break. Like basketball.” He teased, “You know so I can see what all the rumors about your skills are all about? I’ve heard so much about how you’re good, but I’ve yet to see any evidence.” He smirked at the blond.

Jeonghan stared at him for a good few seconds before nodding in agreement. “Not in the school gym though. Or even on school grounds. Coach would be pissed if he heard I was playing around with my tutor instead of getting taught.”

Joshua laughed. “No, definitely not on school grounds. I was thinking of a local park’s basketball court. It’s only a couple of minutes away and it’s generally unoccupied since it’s not in the best condition now. Let’s go.” He smiled at Jeonghan, who gave him a grin back in return. Joshua packed up his English for dummies books as the other boy put away his notes.

Together they walked to the park in question with Joshua leading the way. Like any basketball nut, Jeonghan had a basketball in his gym bag at all times it seemed. Joshua stayed on the sidelines as he watched Jeonghan dribble the ball in a mild warm up exercise. The blond got into showing Joshua tricks. He pulled out small things like three pointers and flashy moves with a smile on his face; it left Joshua a bit breathless. He whooped, shouted out encouragement, and clapped for the blond.

After going through his skill set, he tried to persuade Joshua to play one-on-one with him. Joshua shook his head, laughed into his hand, and said, “Nooo. I’m not very good. I’m more of a soccer kid. I played lots of soccer back in LA.”

“Come on. Please. I’ll teach you some simple skills before we play. Just play with me once.” The blond said with a pout.

Looking at the pitiful face Jeonghan pulled, Joshua sighed and agreed to an impromptu lesson and a short game. “First person to reach 5 points wins.”

Jeonghan nodded happily. He then proceeded to show Joshua the textbook position to shoot the ball.  Joshua tried to mimic the position, taking pointers from Jeonghan’s own demonstration. But it apparently wasn’t good enough as the blond came up from behind him and started to fix the position his arms were in. He took Joshua’s wrists and moved them slightly and angled his hands more. Then he bent Joshua’s elbow. Whispering into his ear, Jeonghan explained how to aim and shoot. Joshua wasn’t sure if it was due to the blonde’s proximity or just because his ears were sensitive, but he could feel blood rushing to his cheeks. He turned his head slightly to the side shyly and to get away from what was making his heart pound.

They had played a short game with Jeonghan winning of course, but he did lose the ball quite a few times. Which Joshua thought odd, but what he knew about defense and basketball were pretty low.  It just meant that Jeonghan was in his personal space a lot more than he was comfortable with, thanks to the blush inducing lesson from earlier.

They played like that for half an hour before Jeonghan netted his last basket, winning their short game. They were panting at the bench where they left their stuff when Jeonghan said, “Let me buy you coffee or a smoothie or something in thanks for getting me out of my funk and for being a great tutor so far.”

“Oh, there’s no need. You doing well on your future tests will be good enough for me.” Joshua replied. In all honesty, he just wanted to go home and not think about how Jeonghan made him feel weird.

“Come on. One drink. Pleassse.” He said, dragging out his words while picking up Joshua’s hand, clinging to it.

Joshua sighed and nodded in assent. Obviously this guy was persistent. One drink wasn’t going to kill him, or make him blush more he hoped. The two then walked to a café to grab drinks and cool down from the exercise.

 Jeonghan sat across Joshua at the table, but it felt like he was even closer than that. The lesson at the basketball courts made Joshua much more aware of him than before. Especially since Jeonghan’s long blond hair had accidentally swept itself across his cheek as Jeonghan whispered to him about how to shoot. It made Joshua’s stomach clench. When the blonde’s knee brushed his under the small table, he wanted to pull back but he’d hit the other table’s occupant and that’d be rude. So he sat there feeling the heat from Jeonghan’s legs next to his, while drinking his iced coffee, trying not to blush while listening to Jeonghan speak.

He went home and picked apart the situation. Joshua couldn’t actually be going weak kneed for someone at this point could he. The dark haired boy liked his personal space, and people breaking his personal bubble irked him a bit. He was surprised he didn’t tell Jeonghan to back off during their little impromptu lesson. Joshua just let him into his space and blushed like a schoolgirl with a crush. He let out a groan and threw himself on his bed and rolled around for a few seconds; he didn’t need this now. He didn’t have the time for this kind of thing. Then again was it even a thing, he thought. Propping himself up on his elbows, Joshua wondered who could he go to for advice. It was possible he was just overreacting and it was just the psychical exertion that got to him and that he didn’t like Jeonghan in that way at all. There was Seungkwan and Vernon, but even thinking of asking the couple was just… no. They’d never let him live. Even if he was their hyung, Seungkwan would tease Joshua until he snapped. Shaking his head, the black haired boy decided he’d ask Aron on the weekend for some advice. The college student would have more experience and he wouldn’t tease Joshua too much. With that plan in mind, he pushed the weird stomach flipping thoughts out of his mind.

The next tutoring session came two days later, with Joshua putting those odd thoughts into the corner of his mind until he could deal with them. He acted as normal as he could as he smiled his customary smile at Jeonghan and got to business. Joshua went through the motions until he started to correct the day’s worksheets.

Looking at the practice test and homework results from that day’s tutoring session in his hands, Joshua looked at Jeonghan and said, “I think we should add some more tutoring days.” With a wry smile on his face, he sighed, “You’re doing much better. But with your next test in two weeks and with official basketball games happening soon; in order for you to play on the court, you’ll need to ace the next couple of tests and all future homework assignments. Which at the rate at we’re going it would take too long for you to understand the material well enough to get A’s right away.” Jeonghan grimaced.

Joshua placed his papers down and slid it across the table for Jeonghan to take a look at his score. Jeonghan his eyes widened in surprise. There was tangible proof that all the tutoring was actually paying off. The amount of red marks on his papers were a lot smaller than before they started, which was a testament to both his learning skill and Joshua’s teaching.

“You’re free on the weekends right?” He asked. Jeonghan nodded yes.

“Let’s starting meeting on the weekends for a few hours so we can accelerate the pace.” Joshua declares. He had wanted to avoid weekend tutoring, but with important things coming soon, he had no choice but to have extra sessions with Jeonghan.  It would be even more awkward at this point thanks to the last tutoring session that turned into something like a date. “There’s this café called Mansae in the area, we can meet up there this Saturday. After lunch around 2:00 pm?”

Jeonghan replied, “I’ve heard of that place. I can be there at 2pm.”

“Perfect. With the weekends I think you’ll be ready for that test and you’ll be on that basketball court before you know it!” Joshua exclaimed and beamed at him. The sooner he got Jeonghan to the skill level he needed in English the sooner he’d be able to not see the other boy any longer. Joshua had plans already. Nowhere did it involve getting a boyfriend, handsome and pretty though he was. The black haired boy had no intentions of falling. None whatsoever.