chapter 12
the psychology of good studentsThey land in London sooner than Jooyoung expects, and after all going through immigration procedures and customs, they roll their luggages into the streets of the city, where it is surprisingly cold.
Minseok and Krystal go off in separate directions to their individual lodgings, and Jooyoung and Kyungsoo attempt to take a bus from the airport to their apartment. He had researched on it before coming because buses are relatively cheap (as compared to taxis, obviously) so he is confident that they’ll be able to find the house.
Jooyoung, though, not so much. And she is proven right when they end up at a street which even Kyungsoo can’t recognise. Checking the web for directions doesn’t help.
“Let’s just ask someone,” Jooyoung asserts. She is tired, honestly, after a long flight and after lugging her baggage for who knows how long. And her flu medication seems to be making her especially drowsy. Or maybe it is jet lag. She doesn’t know, but her head is throbbing slightly and she really wants to sleep.
Kyungsoo stares at her for a while, reaching out for her luggage, but Jooyoung declines his silent offer. She would rather handle it herself. She is independent, she thinks, so Kyungsoo ends up merely smiling at her before going to ask the locals for directions.
Jooyoung watches as Kyungsoo approaches a tall man and tries to hold in her laughter at the too-significant height difference. It doesn’t seem to work because he goes to ask a few other people, but he just comes back looking more exasperated than before.
“I thought you’re good in English,” she teases.
“I am!” Kyungsoo says this in English, as if he is trying to prove his point. “But no one knows where our apartment is.”
She sighs this time. “Taxi?” She suggests softly, and he for a moment he looks like he’s going to retort, but he just closes his mouth and nods. And pouts. Which would be pretty cute, but not in this situation.
“Come on,” she says, nudging him lightly with her shoulder.
“We’re already wasting money the moment we step into London?” He pouts again. Jooyoung wonders if it is the first ever time he is pouting because it looks so new on him it’s almost funny. But her thoughts are interrupted when a taxi rolls by the street and she flags it down for the both of them.
“Spending, Kyungsoo. Spending. Not wasting,” she laughs as the taxi stops in front of them. The driver steps out to load their baggage into the boot, and they tumble into the backseats. “There’s a difference.”
The taxi driver is a friendly chap. He and Kyungsoo make conversation because they both are people-persons, and that’s what people-persons do. Kyungsoo does speak English well, that annoyingly smart genius. And the both of them end up talking about the most random things (hot sauce versus gochujang?) before the driver seems to realise Jooyoung has been sitting there the entire time merely looking out of the window, sniffling softly.
“What’s her name?” The driver asks Kyungsoo, and Jooyoung’s ears perk up. She sits up slightly straighter and dart her eyes toward the front.
“Jooyoung. Han Jooyoung,” Kyungsoo smiles.
“Hello, Jooyoung,” the driver then says, causing her cheeks to burn up. She isn’t proficient in English, and her accent will definitely sound funny. Oh no.
“Hi,” she greets back as confidently as she can. One-syllable words are okay, but more than that? No. But she keeps reminding herself she is a cool university student, she’s (almost) the smartest in her major, she is Han Jooyoung. English is nothing too tough for her.
“D’ya like how London looks so far?” The driver then asks. “Beautiful city, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Are you planning to visit anywhere else besides the university you’re attending? Oxford Street has good stuff. Clothes and all for you.”
Jooyoung wants to tell him she’s not really into shopping, especially for clothes, but it’s too much of a hassle, so she just nods. “Big Ben,” she says simply.
“Beeeg Ben, huh? Beeeeeg Ben,” The taxi driver teases, imitating her accent and enunciation. It’s not obnoxious teasing, she knows, and instead it’s just the friendly, playful kind, but she still tenses up.
Jooyoung sees Kyungsoo look over at her from the corner of her eye, so she tries to laugh it off because she knows he’ll definitely say something about her being too uptight again. But it is the most awkward laugh she has let out and she is sure he can tell, especially after making her (genuinely) laugh so much before.
But then all Kyungsoo does is face front again and bring the conversation to another topic so that she won’t have to speak anymore. She sits awkwardly at the corner of her seat.
“Hey, can you recommend some good food places near our university?” Kyungsoo asks, then magically pulls more tissue out of his bag and once again offers it to Jooyoung. This time she accepts it without question. Then she blows her runny nose as discreetly as she can.
The taxi driver goes into an excited stream of talk, so Kyungsoo looks over at Jooyoung again.
And it is not long before she feels his hand on top of hers. His fingers gently touch the tips of hers, before his palm engulfs hers in a nice warmth.
“Why are you holding my hand,” she whispers (in Korean). She is tensing up even more now, and her fingers slowly retract into her palm, under his big hand.
He waits until the driver stops speaking. “Touch,” he then says (also in Korean), “stimulates oxytocin production. Makes you less stressed.”
“Well, it’s not working.” But she doesn’t pull her hand out of his. Neither does he remove his palm from hers.
After a few more minutes of the long conversation with Kyungsoo the taxi driver seems to want to give them their own time, because he doesn’t speak anymore. So Kyungsoo fills the silence instead. “Was I that soft?” He asks Jooyoung suddenly.
She turns to Kyungsoo. “Soft?”
“As in the opposite of hard. On the plane. You were squishing me like I was your bolster or teddy bear or something.”
“Of course you are,” she chuckles in response. He is so random at times. “Why don’t you have any arm muscles, Do Kyungsoo?”
He seems to pause for a split second. But then all he does is that annoying, nonchalant shrug again. “Muscly arms are unnecessary.”
Then he removes his hand from hers, which makes the entire situation weirdly even more annoying. Jooyoung folds her now empty hand into her crossed arms in order not to leave it hanging in the open.
The rest of the ride is silent. Mostly because Jooyoung falls asleep soon after.
But she remembers that before she did, she saw Kyungsoo touch and pinch his arms a few times, after checking if her eyes were closed. And then secretly flexing to check for the presence of muscles (alas, close to none).
She smiles. What an idiot.
Jooyoung is extremely drowsy when they reach the apartment. Man, she would stay inside the taxi the whole day until she woke up if she could, but she knows it’ll be a burden for Kyungsoo to have to continuously attempt to wake her up and drag her out, so she crawls out herself the moment they arrive.
But her eyes don’t open wide enough to have a good look at the exterior — nor interior — of the apartment. Kyungsoo keys in the passcode to the door which was given prior to their stay and they both lumber in. Jooyoung drops her luggage and heads straight to the nearest bedroom she can find. Then she topples onto the bed and continues her sleep.
She can faintly hear Kyungsoo calling for her but she decides to ignore it. She is too tired to deal with anything.
When Jooyoung wakes, the room is dark. She has that short disoriented moment where she is confused as to where she is, and when she comes to total consciousness, she gets off the bed and goes out of the room, rubbing her eyes. The lights are on there.
Kyungsoo is in the living room flipping through channels on the TV screen. The living and dining area is large and nicely furnished, and their lodging as a whole definitely a steal considering how much they had paid for it. Kyungsoo is really the greatest deal-finder of all time.
“This apartment is nice,” she comments, her voice slightly hoarse from not speaking for the entire period of time she was sleeping. Kyungsoo turns around abruptly, surprised at the sound of her voice.
“You’re finally up after sleeping like a pig for hours,” he says, springing up from the sofa. He fetches her some water for from the small kitchenette, and she accepts it, taking a big gulp.
“What a nice thing to say to a sick person.” She rolls her eyes, and Kyungsoo grins.
“I know. But are you feeling better after some sleep?”
“I guess.” She shrugs this time, then turns towards the sink to wash the now empty cup when he gently takes it from her instead. Kyungsoo rinses it wordlessly before keeping the cup away.
“I bought us both dinner,” he says as he jerks his head towards the dining table, where a packet of food Jooyoung hadn’t even realised is there is resting.
“Wow,” she laughs, sitting herself in front of the food. Aw, since when was Kyungsoo the sort of person who would buy others food? She vows to savour every mouthful — who knows when he would do this again?
“I know, right?” He joins her at the table, sitting directly across from her, looking very proud of himself.
“What has gotten into you to buy me food all of a sudden? What exactly do you want from me as repayment?” Jooyoung jokes (but she is serious, to some extent), gingerly removing the plastic bag to reveal a nice, big container of pie.
“I haven’t really decided yet,” he shrugs in all seriousness. “We’ll talk about all your debts when you recover. But remember the price of this pie is £15.” Then he opens the container and seems to want to separate the pie into two separate portions again when he stops.
Kyungsoo tilts his head and smiles. “Or would you rather eat it together as a whole?” Jooyoung remembers the time they were at the roadside tent after the movie and he was being extremely nit-picky about the portion of food each of them should get. And how annoyed she got at him.
Jooyoung laughs. And nods. Kyungsoo is so different today it’s almost scary, but she decides to cherish this side of him which appears only once every eternity. Maybe she should get sick more often. Then Kyungsoo will be this nice to her all the time. His niceness feels like a warm cup of hot chocolate on a cold winter night; it's almost bliss.
“I know what you’re thinking,” he suddenly says in the middle of a mouthful of pie.
“Ha, try to guess.”
“You’re thinking, ‘oh, what an angel Do Kyungsoo is, how fortunate I am to share an apartment with him and have him bestow upon me his kind deeds’.” Kyungsoo does a horrible impression of Jooyoung’s voice. She resists throwing the pie on his face, because she wants to eat it as well.
“Very funny, Do Kyungsoo.”
“Thanks. I know.”
It is a big mess the next morning. Jooyoung wakes up late and the dumb Do Kyungsoo doesn’t even come to wake her up in her room. (All he says when she steps out of her room, frazzled, is “You’re finally up”. Like this isn’t some sort of emergency, that jerk.)
Jooyoung throws on the first thing she can find in her luggage and shouts from her room, “Do I look okay?”
“Yeah,” Kyungsoo shouts back from the living room.
“Idiot, you didn’t even see yet.” But Jooyoung can’t be bothered anymore. She pulls on a coat and hurriedly gives her hair a brush before meeting Kyungsoo at the living room. He is all ready to go, and looks like he’s been for a long time.
When they reach the university, Jooyoung and Kyungsoo run towards the Hall where orientation is going to take place. The programme they are on is a short exchange course on the more medical side of psychology, which explains why Minseok (majoring in medicine, although not specialising in psychiatry) and Krystal (in nursing) and a whole gang of other people with different majors are hopping on board too.
Kyungsoo starts to slow when they reach a board which has the names of all the students in the programme, and pauses in front of it. He scans the list slowly.
“What are you doing? We are late, check that later,” Jooyoung urges, pulling him along.
He lets her tug him. “We’re in different groups for orientation,” he says after a while of silence.
This time Jooyoung is the one to pause. “What?” She asks softly. For some reason she is feeling defeated. “But-but why? We’re both psychology students.”
He shrugs. “They probably want us to get to know more people. Or maybe it was randomised.” Then his expression alters slightly and turns cheeky. “Someone’s clingy.”
She rolls her eyes and lets go of her grip on Kyungsoo, making his arm flop down. “Yeah, yeah. I’m always the clingy one. Like you didn’t come to the convenience store just to see me.”
“We’re both clingy?” He tries, laughing as he follows behind her.
“Whatever you say,” she says dismissively, then enters the hall and goes to find her group without looking back. She sits where her group is gathered, smiles and acknowledges a few people, then waits in silence.
Clingy? The both of them?
Jooyoung bites her lip to hide her growing smile. She likes the idea of clingy Kyungsoo. For some weird reason. And honestly, she doesn’t find the idea of her clinging onto Kyungsoo that bad either. The picture of the two of them clinging onto each other is cute as heck.
It is a long and draggy orientation — school tours, icebreakers (funny because the people on this programme are all from her university, anyway), briefings and all that before they finally get released in the late afternoon. Jooyoung has managed to preserve her cool, smart-student image throughout which she is pretty glad about. She is shocked when a boy not even in her major comes up and asks her if she is TheJooyoung from psychology.
The boy bounces on his toes, his hands in his pockets as they leave the hall together after orientation is over. “So, see you tomorrow?”
“Yup. Bye.” Jooyoung waves at him before catching sight of the other orientation group leaving the hall as well. Tiptoeing to look for Kyungsoo (he’s too short), she spies him in the middle of a group of new friends. Or maybe old ones. She can’t tell because they’re all laughing and talking, and Kyungsoo is in the middle of all of that, with his khakis and awful backpack — still looking like the ultimate winner. Heck, there are girls surrounding him as well, all with the same soft bangs and voluminous hair and skirts high above their knees. Kyungsoo is only slightly taller than them, and he has a hand supporting the back of the smallest girl. It is the most insane thing she has ever seen him do.
She doesn’t know what it is inside of her that makes her scowl and march straight up to him.
“Oh, hey, Jooyoung,” he says, and removes his hand from the girl. The crowd around her is still moving and trying to get out of the hall, so Jooyoung gets jostled slightly and Kyungsoo seems to want to steady her, but also want to steady the girls surrounding him. So she moves out of his reach.
She turns to that girl in particular. “Is he hot to you?” She asks as friendlily as possible. The girl looks stunned, and so does Kyungsoo.
Then Jooyoung sees the tip of the girl’s dainty ears turn pink. So do her cheeks. She bites her lip, steals a small glance at Kyungsoo, then slightly nods.
He doesn’t look at the least affected.
“Well, he probably used some black magic on you so that you’re all blinded,” she bitterly stares, and it seems like both Kyungsoo and all the girls think it’s a joke, because they laugh. Especially Do Kyungsoo.
Jooyoung feels her temper threatening to make a show so she tries to hold it back by crossing her arms in a defiant manner. “Do Kyungsoo. Skirts or sweat pants?” She blurts, staring straight at him.
The few people hanging around, still not bored by this conversation, raise their eyebrows. Kyungsoo just laughs. “What?”
Jooyoung taps her feet on the ground. She knows she is acting weird and bratty, she really does, but... “Hurry, Mr. Do.”
“Uh...” Kyungsoo eyes her up and down, as if searching for the right answer. Just to make her point Jooyoung yanks her sweats upwards. He his head. “Pants?”
Jooyoung doesn’t even try to hold back the triumphant smirk on her face. Then she links her arm with Kyungsoo and swishes her hair purposefully at the girls before pulling him away with her, making him stumble slightly from her sudden action.
“He chose pants,” she whispers haughtily to no one in particular. Jooyoung is proud of her fashion today — sweatpants were a great choice.
“You look mad,” Kyungsoo comments when they are out of campus and on their way home. She is still grabbing onto his arm, and walking out at a high speed.
“Mad as in angry, or mad as in crazy?” She asks, sliding her hand totally unconsciously into his. He grabs it without comment.
“Both.”
Jooyoung smiles. “I think so too.”
Now Kyungsoo seems like he is holding back a laugh. “What was with you just now? You just single-handedly ruined your reputation of being a cool kid.”
“I was mad,” she chirps, swinging their held hands. Kyungsoo merely chuckles, and they walk in mostly silence, hands still joined, all the way back to their apartment.
It is bad. It is horrible. It is really making her want to cry.
Jooyoung had received news once she had come back to their apartment that the results for one of their assignments had been released, so she had logged into the portal in a frenzy and checked it.
Now she wishes she never had.
Her grade for the assignment is a Distinction, given, but she had expected a High Distinction for that assignment in particular, since she had worked extra hard on it. Jooyoung needs all the High Distinctions she can get to neutralise that one zero she received in Prof Park’s class.
She pushes her hair back in frustration at herself. Jooyoung is not being the usual Han Jooyoung recently. She isn’t putting in enough effort into her studies anymore. Now it’s affecting her in a way that she absolutely hates seeing happen. She is no longer valedictorian, cool student Han Jooyoung. And her one and only dream of getting first class honours is slipping past her fingers like sand. Slumping down on her table, she tries to dull the ache in her heart.
But Han Jooyoung is a fighter, not a crier, so she bites back whatever tears threatening to form in her eyes and rubs them away fiercely. She won’t let herself wallow in a puddle of hopelessness and tears. She must and will get up.
But then in her blurry vision, at the corner of her eye, she sees Kyungsoo peek in.
“Jooyoung?” He asks so softly, his voice b with concern. He’s clad in the most soft looking hoodie, and has the most childlike expression she’s ever seen him make. He is small, and far away. She knows Kyungsoo knows what has happened. She knows he probably got that High Distinction she was aiming for. She knows, but at this moment she doesn’t care the slightest.
And Jooyoung decides she doesn’t want to be a fighter anymore. All she wants to do is cry. So she does, and once she starts she can’t stop. It’s the horrible sort of crying that forms that awful giant lump in ; the sort that makes her snot run all over her face.
She doesn’t hear the padding of his feet over to her side but she definitely feels it — the soft heat that rests itself on her side, slowly patting her shoulder, once, twice, thrice.
“There, there,” his voice is less than a whisper, but it lingers long after he’s stopped speaking. Jooyoung cries some more, so much more, and then she accepts another piece of tissue from Kyungsoo (who’s now her personal tissue dispenser) and buries her face inside it.
When she calms down a little Kyungsoo hasn’t left. He’s still patting, still breathing such that she can feel it on the tips of her hair, still there.
“It’s okay, you can leave first,” she says in a crackly, after-crying voice. Jooyoung feels a little bad he’s sacrificed so much time just to pet the shoulder of a sobbing girl. “I’m a fighter,” she asserts when he doesn’t budge. “I’m not even supposed to be blotting my tissue with tears right now.”
“Fighters do cry.”
“You don’t.”
“Well, I’m not as big a fighter as you are.”
Jooyoung can’t help but let out a laugh. She’s stopped crying by now, it’s just the mess on her face left behind by her big tear-fest that she has to clear up. She remembers the girls near Kyungsoo at campus and wonders if their conversations consisted of witty comments by Mr. Do himself as well. Then she feels her heart wrench again at the thought of their proximity (both physical and seemingly, emotional).
So she grabs Kyungsoo’s hand and places it on her back as well, making sure it’s gripping her waist. She scoots closer to him, then presses her torso against his.
“Hold me by my back too,” she says. There, now she’s better than those girls. She has the back-hold, the shoulder-pat, the tissues. Kyungsoo chuckles. He’s been laughing and looking amused at everything Jooyoung is doing recently, which is probably a good thing. At least one of them is happy. Like, really happy.
Which is good. Jooyoung’s glad too, if he is.
a/n: i want to go to london someone pls bring me to london :''''') and i'm so attached to jooyoung as a character? help
how have you guys been?? i hope y'all have been smiling and happy heh
I OWED SO MANY OF YOU REPLIES i’m so sorry!! just replied to everyone i hadn’t replied to aaa but i hope everyone’s having a great 2019 so far! i think it’ll take a while before my next story because of circumstances.... but i promise i’ll be back :”)
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