You have three weeks to seduce Kim Jongin, a time limit you’ve set to convince yourself it’s a plausible feat. 

Three weeks is ample time and would be enough to work on any other person, judging by your previous success rate.  

But he’s not any other person.

He’s Kim Jongin. 

The elusive, infuriatingly intelligent Kim Jongin with loner like tendencies and an affluent background – the same background that has done nothing but make him feel like an outsider of the highest caliber.

Along with a set of deep rooted intimacy issues. 

Which you’re no stranger to yourself, just in the opposite sense. Where you over-expose yourself to the land of debauchery and older men with grabby hands and a penchant for shoving their tongue into your mouth without warning, he underexposes himself, avoiding human contact altogether. 

Regardless of whether he’s at a party or dating someone. Short term or long term. 

It’s nothing you’re intending to laugh at or shame, it’s just come to the occasion that you could be of help to the other, in the areas you’re struggling with. You have no romantic expertise – much as you may hope to enter into a relationship in future, whereas Jongin, as solitary as he is, with as few friends as he has, once let someone so close, falling so deep, that even after the relationship drew to its close, the experience has shook him so thoroughly to the core, that he’s unable to picture himself with anyone but this aforementioned being.

To the point where he’s willing to wait a lifetime for this person to return to him, even if they’re way out of the picture or hold no current romantic affections for him. 

Which he knows is illogical, but there’s something in his soul telling him this person will come back and when they do, they’ll ride off into the sunset to live out their perfect life together, their happy ever after, just like the fairy tales have and will always depict. 

You, to Jongin, you’re hoping to serve as a wake up call. To help him realize that as romantic as it may sound, and as tragically beautiful as this mindset seems on the surface, it’s only going to hurt him in the long run. It’s not that he’s blatantly expressed so, but it’s as obvious as day, that this person he holds affection for isn’t in the picture any more, and evidently…  they never loved him as much as he thinks they did, if they could so easily walk away from all that he’d built and planned for them. 

Ending it without so much as a warning or adequate goodbye; a goodbye that made him think it wasn’t over, that they still had chance, chance he could build and work upon in his mind until they returned, to make their reality even better than it had been before their departure, build an even stronger foundation than the one they’d left on. 

Some of this he’d stated, some of it you figured out by reading between the lines, taking note of tone and expression, body language. Which is quite a forte of yours, though he’s just as good at it, if not better. 

You dread to think of the profile and unspoken backstory he’s concocted for you, and all the ways he’s convincing himself he’s helping you with this little alliance you’ve formed.

Admittedly, it took some warming up to the other, lots of subtle insults, failed attempts at seduction on your part – an area you feel you can confidently call your expertise – for him to get to a point where he feels comfortable admitting this to you.

And now that it’s out, it’s something the pair of you know he can’t take back, and it also means that he’s confirming that he’s begun to trust you to some degree. 

And he needs you to honor this trust, to solidify it. Either by keeping this piece of knowledge unspoken – which you have every intention of doing – or giving him something of your own back, confirmed from your very own mouth. Truth and nothing but.

He’s told you the reason why he is the way he is, and everything you’ve witnessed from him is beginning to make perfect sense. So it’d only make sense to do the same for him;  to tell him what the very first stepping stone was, after the realization that you loved your best friend in a way he couldn’t return. How you started taking physical reassurance in random strangers; and why, just like him, just in the opposite sense, you won’t give any of these people a chance to romance you. To grow in a relationship with you.

As much as you intend to keep the information you find out secret, you hope to put off revealing – or confirming, given your dynamic – your own reasons and the actions that triggered the spiral into your current habits. Not only has he likely deduced how it came to pass and exactly when it developed into a habit – considering how good he is at reading you and everyone else around you, admitting it would put you in a very vulnerable position. It’s not something you’ve ever spoken about. With anybody. And though you’re sure Jongin can relate to that, you’re not sure you want to share it with anyone, regardless of how close you are or are becoming.

But you know you’ll eventually have to, as to get past it, one must first face it. 

…All in due time. Jongin is your focus right now. 

Admittedly, a part of you hates that you have to be the stepping stone into solidifying his change in mindset. Because the more you think about it, the more it does dawn on you how effortlessly and tragically beautiful a mindset it is to possess.

He believes in an everlasting love, something shared by two souls and two souls alone, that no matter how far they drift, they will always find their way back to one another, regardless of how mangled and twisted their paths may get along the way. 

His reaching out to you comes as evidence that he’s halfway there to accepting the reality of the situation, that this person isn’t going to return to him, and primarily, that he can’t wait his entire life for them.

That first love, as beautiful as it is, isn’t the only kind of love to exist. And in most cases, your first love isn’t the person you end up with in the long term.

And only halfway there is the goal you’ve set to work towards, because you don’t go into this hoping he’ll fall madly in love with you and forget about this person entirely, you go into with the intention of proving that he’s capable – and if he lets his primal desires take center stage, something he’s having utmost difficulty doing – willing to be intimate with another being. 

That, if he lets go of all the internal judgement and all these vows he knows aren’t being met by the latter half of the unison, he’ll be capable of moving forward, finding someone who is as one hundred percent invested in him as he is in them. 

And he’ll have no regrets being intimate with this person, shouting from rooftops of how in love he is with them, because by this point he’ll know that a failed love is something that affects everyone at some moment in time, unless they’re a very, very lucky individual.

That yes, it hurts, and it’s allowed to hurt, but it isn’t the end of the world. 

That yes, first love is beautiful, but rarely do we end up with our first love. 

But with this blockage, how adamant he is at trying to make it happen with his first love, rekindle what they lost, no matter how far away they currently are, that end goal he knows he must begin to take steps towards – the moving on – won’t be possible until he truly allows himself to let go. 

Or makes an attempt to. 

Without shame.

Without blame.

Without guilt tripping himself. 

The shame he experiences at even the thought of being with another, as illogical as he knows it is, won’t instantly dissipate. It’s going to be a work in progress and that’s why he’d benefit from someone like you giving pointers on how to do so. You’re someone who isn’t expecting love in return. 

Meaning there’ll be no disappointment or hard feelings on either end, once the act of intimacy has passed and you don’t end up in a relationship.

Not only do you need to prove that the world won’t end if he’s intimate with someone other than his first love, you need to prove to him that this habit he’s developed for blaming himself when something ends or someone leaves, is something else that’s getting in the way. Of him moving on, but particularly in the sense of rationalizing the situation.

Love certainly accompanies it, but it’s the fear and the fact that if he accepts the situation for what it is, it will only solidify and rationalize this mindset he’s developing, and prove to him that he’s deserving of being left, destined to end up alone, no matter what he does in hope of preventing that.

He doesn’t have a lot of confidants, you see. He’s alluded to having an absent more than not father, along with a deceased mother, and purposely avoids befriending others at univeristy and formal get-togethers – outside of the usual curt formalities that are expected of him – so doesn’t have anyone he can talk to about these things, nor anyone to confirm to him that it wasn’t his fault, and he isn’t to blame for the relationship ending, along a slew of other issues and hurt in his life. 

And especially as his circle is so small, his only experience has worked in favor of this mindset. All those he has held dear, have left him in some form. His mother with her untimely death, his father for whatever reason, work maybe, and this first love. Along with two friends, one who’d he’d talked to you about during your last encounter.

Eventually he will begin to see it as his own doing. And he’ll weary of human interaction even more than before, thinking he’s not worthy of it, that he poisons every relationship he enters, romantic, platonic or familial. 

As untrue as that actually is in reality. You need to prove to him that he’s more than worthy. That these people’s choices were their own doing or unfortunate circumstances, not due to anything Jongin caused.

As much as it may have started as a coincidental interaction, an alliance that was concocted out of slightly ill and playful intentions, the further you allow yourself into this, the more you want to be there for Jongin, just for Jongin’s sake, not expecting anything in return. 

He may be exceptionally rich, exceptionally mysterious, but underneath it all, he’s also exceptionally lonely. 

As improbable as it may sound, given your history of one time partners that you want nothing to do with, you’re familiar with love, as unrequited as it is, but by no means an expert in it. You’ve never had an actual defined relationship, so certainly aren’t expecting one from Jongin and certainly not expecting him to fall in love with you; hence why you’re the option he wouldn’t have ever contemplated choosing, but are the perfect one for the situation.

You know no-strings attached better than anyone, and the person you truly desire in the romantic sense is the same person he despises above all others. In a way, it’s like holding a gun to each other’s head with the amount of information and bait you’re able to draw out of the other, with how utterly flipped your situations happen to be, and trusting them not to pull the trigger. 

Which as much as you feel is kind of a y dynamic in its own way, also makes you understand why he’d be weary of getting into an agreement or alliance of any kind with you, of all people. Why he’d hold back until he was assured that he could trust you. 

So him opening up to you about this, is in fact, a step in that direction. 

In you showing him that as much as you’re at conflicting points, working in the opposite direction, experiencing relations of opposition, you’re able to help the other, without ill intentions brewing beneath. 

And if you succeed in your intentions, you’ll be able to set up a foundation that doesn’t leave him petrified at the thought of experiencing intimacy with anyone other than his first love. 

Dismiss the thought that everyone thinks of relationships in the way he does, with forever in mind. Because the simple thought of hurting another, of him giving someone a false hope that he’ll be their next boyfriend, when he’s still in the process of healing himself, moving on from someone who hurt him deeply, paralyzes him.

It’s understandable, and it makes perfect sense, throughout your time getting to know Jongin, you’ve realized he truly is a good guy, as misunderstood as he may be by your peers. Maybe one in a million. His thoughts and his hopes on the subject of love, they’re so refreshing in the era you’re living in. 

He’d be a perfect boyfriend, and that’s something you say objectively.

And he knows it too, which is why he’s so against the prospect of a fling, for himself. Which is why he’s so heavily blaming himself for his failed relationship. He gave too much and received nothing in return, and whilst that turns a lot of people cold and vengeful – ready to hurt anyone they can get their hands on in the same sense they were hurt – Jongin’s afraid to, even unintentionally.

Which is why he’s so good at avoiding it altogether, perhaps prefers it that way. As lonely as it may get, at least alone, he’s not hurting anyone, is he? And at least alone, he can’t be hurt, can he? 

If you’re alone, abandonment isn’t possible.

But even he knows he can’t be alone forever. And even more, that a part of him, as much as it’s been squashed and stomped on by those around him… a part of him doesn’t want to be.

And you’re happy to aid him in that area.

You know it’s certainly going to be a work in progress, but you’re glad he’s given you something to work with, rather than left you in the dark to figure it all out on your own.

Much as it may seem, the thought of hurting another doesn’t stem from nowhere. It’s not that he hasn’t tried to move on. It’s not as if he’s shut himself off to the prospect entirely, or at least hadn’t initially.

He has tried to move on, to some degree, with someone he had deemed his safest option. Who turned out to be anything but, and that experience pushed him even further into this shell than any time before, making him back away from anyone or anything that threatened to change this prospect of being alone. 

His failure to adequately judge a romantic prospect’s true intentions for a second time – when he accurately judges a person’s intentions in any other matter, one hundred percent of the time – made him wonder if he could even trust his own perspective on the matter, if he’ll ever single out the right person. 

If there’s someone out there that won’t be mad that he can’t give the entirety of himself away when his heart is captured by another being and a promise he made that he truly intended to keep, who he doesn’t realize he’s basing the entirety of his self esteem and worth upon, longing for a return he can’t guarantee will take place. 

Embarking on another relationship proved to Jongin that being alone until his first love’s return is his safest option. A return he so heartily believed would take place. A return he’d planned and envisioned in great detail. A return that decides whether or not he’ll ever let anyone close to him again.

And this is where your theory comes into it, in how he and his ex girlfriend, if she is that, Min-seo, came to be. And how their brief relationship, slash 'couple of dates' r