Hello

……..

Can I sit here?

………

Why are you playing alone?

I don’t know you.

 

***********

 

It is a typical Monday.

The long ringing from his alarm clock wakes Sehun up. He s for it in half sleepy condition and shuts down before it sends another pain to his aching head.

Sehun is not a big fan of Monday, especially when he has party at the previous weekend and will suffer from a bad hangover on the next day which is apparently Monday. He sometimes skips class if his conscience is beaten up as well but since it’s his last year in college and he needs to keep his scores ranking within the first 100 to get an official position in diving team, there is no choice for him to fresh up and ride his motorbike to school.

The morning passes quietly in his memory and thanks to a cup of chocolate bubble tea, Sehun manages to keep himself awake through boring lecture about electric generator.  The other thing that gives him motivation to struggle till noon is his first meeting with his teammates after a long summer break.

Jongin welcomes him with a playful wrap around his neck when he’s rearranging his locker later in the afternoon. They've been friends since junior year and also roommates until last month when according the new Council’s policy, a senior student could get for himself a private room at dormitory. Sehun couldn't wait any minute to kick Jongin out for his own sake.

“Hey, why did you go back dorm so soon last night?”

The tanned skin boy nearly chokes him out of breath and if Sehun doesn’t shove him off by nudging his rib, there will be a dead body lying on the floor right now.

“Unlike you, I had class this morning.” Sehun purses his lips disagreeably, stops running through his stuffs to give the latter an I’m-not-in-the-good-mood stare “Why do I have to listen all the morning about the structure of a stupid machine while you’re enjoying your beauty sleep?”

“Haha, why did you choose Electrical Engineering in the first place?”

“You’re not helping.”

He shoots his friend a final icy look before goes back to his previous task, wondering why his locker is so disorganized like someone rummaged in it the last time. Jongin leans against a nearby locker, his hair nonchalantly few times

“Plus, you’re the one who has to study to have an official position while I don’t.”

“That’s something I want to talk to you too.” Sehun’s voice echoes inside the metal box “You need to take it seriously.”

“I don’t want this remember? I do it because of you.”

For the second time in just one minute, the younger’s hands are forced to stay quiet as he turns around to face the other. He knows he has been taking his buddy’s concession for granted in a long time and he wishes he could do something to repay him. But seeing Jongin below there, jumping up and down to warm up his body really calms his nerves a lot. And he guesses the latter feels the same when looking up and their eyes meet in a split of second. They have to stick together, that’s the compromise.

“I’m highly aware the fact that dancing is your real passion and it’s a waste of time for you to stay here but….”

“Alright alright” Jongin holds up his hands in defeat like he always does when they talk about it “It’s no big deal anyway.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well” the tanned skin boy shrugs his shoulder “I have motivation now.”

The crafty smirk hovering over his lips tells Sehun that kind of motivation is not a good thing though

“What is it?”

His friend immediately fakes the most shocking expression he can pull out, jerks back his head dramatically

“You don’t know? Where have you been? We have a new coach today. Isn’t it great?”

“What is great about that?” it sounds a little bit harsher than Sehun’s intention but he doesn’t bother to correct, the latter gets it anyway.

“I heard that he was very cute and undemanding.” Jongin winks in response, knowing well how to make Sehun's nose scrunch in disgust

“Are you trying to tell me you’re gay?”

“No, you wish. That means it will be easier for me to sneak out to the studio.”

He grins wide and Sehun rolls his eyes at the explanation. He should have known there is no way that idiot standing in front of him has a liking to this kind of sport. All he wants to do is dancing until he can’t feel his legs and it seems like Sehun is pushing him to the very wrong way.

Pulling out his bag and slamming the locker, deciding to tidy it later, Sehun turns on his heels and walks fast to the pool’s direction, not forget to shrug in reply

“Well then good luck. He’s not my coach though.”

 

 

 

The swimming area is packed with people when they arrive. It’s a new semester so there are a lot of freshmen. Sehun bids his friend a goodbye before heading to the furthest pool from the door where the diving team is gathering up. Kris looks up from the hard board in his hand when he hears the footstep on the surface coming close, holds it against his chest as he recognizes it’s his favorite student.

“Hi Sehun. How was your summer?”

“Hi Mr.Wu, it was fine” Sehun smiles back “How’s yours?”

“Can’t complain.” the elder one short answers, squints at him curiously “Your skin got tanned didn’t it?”

“Yeah…” Sehun steals a quick glance to his arm then looks over his shoulder and throws a thumb backward to a particular boy who is happily chatting with his teammates “Thank to him, I went to the beach almost everyday.”

Kris lets out a small chuckle, about to make a comment but a figure from the main door stops him. The sudden glint of surprise in his coach’s eyes makes the younger boy can’t help but turning around to see the all of the students are slowly forming into a circle with the Vice Present of Professor Council and a young male who he assumes the new coach of swimming team.

 

He’s too fragile to be a swimmer.

 

“Is that the new coach?”

Kris’s voice snaps him back and he doesn’t know why but he can feel a bit irritation in the tone.

“I guess so.”

“Do you know him?”

Though it sounds really weird because how he could know someone he hasn’t even meet before and the way the other staring at him right now is kind of tense, Sehun wipes it away with a firm head shaking. They stand in silence for a long minute before Kris clears his throat and turns back to the board he’s holding the whole time.

“Warm up Sehun! We will begin soon.”

 

*********

 

There are two reasons why Sehun chose to join diving team in his junior year. First of all, he loves swimming but he also loves doing something involving height as well so diving is like the perfect combination of all of his liking. The second one is it reminded him about an accident he had when he was a kid and it was imprinted so much on his mind to the extent that sometimes  when he took a spring, he had a feeling of going back to that day.

He doesn’t know it’s just him or everyone else has the same feeling but every time he stands on the platform at the height of seven and a half meters from the water, the adrenaline in his blood keeps rising up and he can hear a voice chorusing loudly inside his head “jump, jump, jump...”. It’s kind of dangerous yet excited at the same time.

“Hey, are you ready?”

Kris calls out from the ground and Sehun gestures an okay sign with his hand before reaching to the edge. He turns around and takes a long breath, clenching his knuckles in a second then loosening the whole body with an exhalation. It’s the first time he touches the water in a new semester and as a good luck, he will do it from the back. Like always.

Sehun decides not to do a twist, just simple one-and-a-half somersaults and enters the water with a small splash. He has to say he misses this, the moment the cold water swallows his body in one go, and if Jongin didn’t keep harping on about how he was obsessed with this kind of sport, he could have spent his summer here, inside the campus.

“The entry was good, but it’s merely half of your capacity.”

Kris points out, his eyes don’t even move from the record sheet till he finishes it. Sehun looks up with one hand clinging to pool’s wall, using the other hand to wipe his face

“Yeah, I know. It’s just a start. I don’t want to push myself too much.”

“You didn’t practice at all on your break?”

The latter shoots him an inquiring look while he is lifting himself off the pool, water dripping from his light blond hair. Sehun shakes his head vigorously, not only to answer that question but mostly to get off as much water as possible.

“For your information, it’s a break. And how was I supposed to practice when I was off to the beach?”

Kris seems not be very pleased with the response. He straightens his back and stands with arms akimbo, lips are pressed together into a thin line.

“You’d better keep your head to the game now Sehun. If you don’t….”

“Alright alright, I get it.” his student cuts him off by flapping his hand in the air along with a grin “I’ll do it again.”

With that, Sehun turns on his heels and walks towards the stair, leaving the older one rooted into his foot. His coach’s long lecture always gives him headache. It’s bad enough for his brain to struggle through the morning, it doesn’t need to be suffered more. Besides, he’s a type of person who do more than talk so he thinks all he has to do is going up there and proves to Kris that he’s worth the leader position of the team.

 The moment Sehun sets his feet on the hard surface, he darts his eyes to the far corner of the room to find a familiar figure. To his dismay, Jongin is not there anymore. He scans the whole area for one more time but his friend is still nowhere to find.

 

Aishh, shirk practicing already?

 

He mumbles gruntingly against his teeth before reaching to the standby spot, deciding to talk to the tanned skin boy later. Like Kris warned him few minutes ago, this is more important.

Sehun closes his eyes to get all his nerves concentration then opens them again and takes off. He must have had a perfect back dive, half twist, straight position if he didn’t caught an icy stare at him from the ground right when he left the platform, which made him lost his balance and hit the water with a loud bang.

Now there are two things the young boy knows for sure.

One, the new coach is not that fragile.

And two, Kris will not be happy with the amount of water slapped into his face a second ago