“I THOUGHT HE WAS A PAINTING.”

Soojung isn’t in love. When she glances at the boy who wears a baseball cap backwards (what is this? Elementary school?), a dirty t-shirt, and dark jeans, she wrinkles her nose in disgust. He isn’t the kind of boy that she would find even slightly appealing. It’s a terrible fashion choice, really, and she remembers going home to tell her roommate Jinri, this. However, she also remembers how he takes off his baseball cap, the hat hair, and how he runs his fingers through his dark brown hair. It’s slow, almost delicate, and then he looks at her, a shy smile appearing on his chiseled features. He comes to the counter and orders a chai tea, the original one, not the spicy one.

“Yeah, hot guys are really bad at dressing themselves,” Jinri snorts, flipping through another magazine and waiting for her toenails to dry.

Soojung has to stop in her tracks because bad dresser boy is not hot. He is not attractive. There is just something very pleasing with how he smiles. There is something almost breath taking about him. It bothers her that Jinri would label him with just hot, but she doesn’t really know how to explain what it really is. There’s just something about baseball cap boy that is hauntingly entrancing. Except, if she were to tell Jinri this, she’d probably laugh at her and tell her that she has it’s terribly bad. So, Soojung leaves it out, she also leaves out the fact that he comes back right before she’s going to close up to order another chai.

The second time they meet is when Jinri introduces her to him at their apartment. She’s slipping out of her broken down shoes when she notices a pair of dirty sneakers on the hardwood floor. Jinri loves her shoes and Soojung knows better than to buy a pair of white shoes. When she looks up from the ground, she’s faced with the boy with hat hair and the unforgettable smile.

“Have you met Jongin?” Jinri asks from the couch. Her legs dangle off the couch and Soojung can hear Taemin complaining about Jinri’s laziness from the bathroom. (When he got there, Soojung may never know.) It only leaves Jinri laughing. But more importantly, she is faced with a boy who is still staring at her. His hair is still matted to his face. He still wears a dirty shirt, but he smells like coffee beans and too many sleepless nights.

“Apparently not,” Soojung answers. Her eyes still on his. It’s rude to be looking at him for this long, but he isn’t looking away either. His tanned hands reach for hers. When she shakes his hand, it’s strong and firm, not something she expects from a fragile looking boy, but he’s full of surprises that she has yet to really understand.

“I’m Soojung.”

“I know.”

“That’s a very creepy statement, you do know that, right?”

Taemin and Jinri make popcorn while Soojung is stuck with chai tea boy. He sits on a different chair that's faraway from the couch. They don’t really speak because the girl is disturbed by the fact that he knows her name. He couldn’t even save himself if he wanted to though. He’s a stuttering mess the next moment and whatever pretty impression she has of him disappears because even cute fools are still fools. It’s then incredibly awkward because Jongin won’t say anything and she isn’t going to say anything unless he initiates something, anything, really. Of course, there is no way he's going to recover from this.

But when it’s quiet. He still looks incredibly beautiful. His fingers play with the charm on his phone. His eyes focus on the ground. The intense stare at the ground almost makes Soojung laugh at the thought of it. Yet the giggle that leaves her lips catches his attention. They find themselves looking at each other once again.

“What’s so funny?” he asks.

“I was trying to come up with things you would be thinking about when you were staring at the vomit colored rug,” she answers. There’s the perfectly etched smile on his lips. There it is. If only she was an artist, there’s something about the way he smiles that she finds so breathtaking. She would capture that smile for the rest of eternity.

“Is this what you do when you don’t know what to do with strangers?” he asks. Soojung only shrugs her shoulders before patting the seat next to her.

“Sometimes, I ask them if this is all a dream and if I can murder them,” she jokes.

“Morbid,” he adds.

She has an inkling that she might actually like this guy. 

She’s not sure when Jinri disappeared with Taemin, but she doesn’t mind. Jongin’s voice is terribly wonderful to listen to. He pauses between his sentences. He forgets words as easily as capitals to states. He tells her that he only likes chai teas because after three ounces of coffee he feels like he’ll have to puke. When he laughs, it sounds a little like the rain after a drought. It vibrates outwards in the living room, and it’s a symphony to her ears. Something about him isn’t hot anymore. Something about him is a five act play and she’s not leaving during the intermission.

She bumps into him on the way to the bus station. He asks for her phone number and she stares at him once again. There something she misses the first time she sees him. Sweat glistens on his skin. There are bumps on his tanned kissed skin, when he smiles there are lines that appear almost instantly, and as she starts to see the physical imperfections, she only finds herself intrigued. The painting she finds no fault in, reveals itself to be more real than anything else she’s seen in her life. The patches of dry skin she finds on his neck when he stands next to her, pulls her in. He catches her looks and smirks.

“What are you thinking about?”

“You.”

There is a cheesy grin on his face and she turns red at the simple confession. She looks away from him, stares straight at the road. Even in her peripheral vision, he still looks at her. It catches her off-guard because she didn't know that boys could look at someone like that. She never knew that boys could look at someone like they’re everything they ever wanted in their life. Yet, Jongin does that. She’s too surprised. The inkling becomes something bigger than she thought it would be.

Soojung isn’t in love. She isn’t in love with the way Jongin’s hair curls at the ends when he lays his head on her lap. She isn’t in love with the fact that he is unaffected by her blunt comments. She is in love with the way his hands are calloused from hours of dancing. She likes the way he smiles at her, how lopsided and kind it is when he looks at her. He smells like coffee, sleepless nights, and at times like her because she wears his clothes more often than she’d like to admit. He's the painting she'll never get bored looking at.

a/n; idk how well this went. but here it is!!!!!
i hope you enjoy it hannah! i wanted to write

fluff because kaistal barely sees fluff. and

fluff makes the world go round.