chapter 15
the psychology of good students“What’s your seat number?” Jooyoung asks both Kyungsoo and Minseok just as they are about to board the plane back to Seoul. She shows her ticket to the both of them and they bend in to look, then check back with their own ticket.
“We’re sitting separately. I’m at 30D,” Minseok says, and she sighs.
Kyungsoo nods. “Me too. I’m at 32A.”
Jooyoung is a little sad. She isn’t even going to bother asking either of them to change seats because knowing Kyungsoo, he’ll probably berate her for doing unnecessary things again, and knowing Minseok, he’ll probably agree with Kyungsoo’s opinion wholeheartedly, no matter what it is.
So when they enter the plane she settles into her seat without question. The seat beside her is quickly taken up by another girl, and Jooyoung smiles at her in acknowledgment before proceeding to look out of the window with her earphones in. It’s going to be a long flight. Jooyoung has never liked to start conversations unless she has to, or unless she’s totally comfortable with the person she’s talking to. Today, obviously, she prefers not striking up a conversation at all.
The girl stands up from her seat after a while but Jooyoung doesn’t bother to look up. It’s only when her earphone is pulled out of her ear that she turns to the girl’s seat, ready to fight someone — people taking her earphones out of her ear is one of her ultimate pet peeves.
But it’s not the girl, but Kyungsoo who’s sitting there, grinning at her. “Hi.”
“What are you doing here?” It comes out harsher than she intends, but really, she’s just surprised that he’s beside her all of a sudden, buckling his seatbelt in.
“I changed my seat,” he states, like she should know it already. But no — it is so unexpected it comes as a really pleasant surprise for her and gives her the jumpy happy feeling in her heart. What makes it all the more better is that it’s Do Kyungsoo who requested for a seat exchange! Kyungsoo, who’s unbothered and would rather settle than look for trouble.
“I thought you would have said this is unnecessary,” she says, not bothering to hide her smile. He doesn’t say anything back but it’s okay, because she doesn’t need an answer.
The plane takes off and they take turns purposefully yawning to rid their blocked ears. Then once the seatbelt sign is off Kyungsoo turns to Jooyoung almost excitedly.
“Let’s watch a horror movie,” he suggests, grinning at Jooyoung. The way he looks all excited is funny and it makes her smile too.
“Are you sure you won’t be scared, Mr. Do?” She teases, using her controller to search for horror movies on the inflight entertainment system.
“I only chose to watch a horror movie because I want to see you all frightened,” he retorts, a cocky smile on his face. “Why would I be afraid of something like that?”
“Really,” she smirks, then chooses the movie with the best review. “I won’t allow you to cling onto me when you get afraid, so you settle your own problems later.”
“Let’s see who’ll be clinging onto who,” he singsongs, leaning in to watch the movie from Jooyoung’s screen. They share earphones, as well as a packet of peanuts. The protagonist of the movie is a girl who looks like Jooyoung just a little bit, so Kyungsoo has the best time teasing her about it.
But it’s difficult to tease someone for too long over the same thing or because it won’t be funny anymore, so he stops quickly, and they watch the movie in silence. Jooyoung doesn’t know whether it’s because the plane seat is really comfortable, or she’s just really tired, or that the movie is boring, because soon she finds herself falling asleep. She blinks furiously to keep her eyes from closing, insisting on keeping her eyes on the screen. A few jump scares don’t work — soon she is nodding off again, but is startled awake at Kyungsoo’s voice.
“Am I the only one who thinks this movie is lame and- Were you sleeping?” He chuckles, looking straight at Jooyoung. She rubs her eyes, taking out the earphone bud from her ear.
“It’s boring. What a disappointment,” she laments. Kyungsoo laughs at her reaction before switching the movie off.
“Should we watch another movie?”
“Mhm.”
He uses his controller to flick through the movies, before stopping at the kids section, hovering his cursor above a certain one. “Jungle Book?” He asks, already knowing the answer.
“Why would I say no,” she smiles and settles in for their new and already much better movie.
Before they start watching Kyungsoo decides he wants a snack, so he gets up to retrieve his stowed luggage, where he had smuggled crackers in. He reaches up and Jooyoung watches him, but wishes she never had. Her face flushes at this certain sight, and she can feel the blood rushing up to her cheeks. She squishes them subtly to get rid of the redness, but it probably won’t work.
And at the same time is glad she is looking at him. When he holds his luggage in place in the stowing compartment, veins begin materialising on his lower arm. And they make his arm so, so attractive. Attractive is an understatement, but she is beginning to wonder if she has a weird kink for veins on a man’s lower arm or that they are just really that nice to see.
Appealing? Is that a better word to use to describe his veiny arm? Delicious? Or maybe the right word is just manly, because it is.
It makes her heart do that jumpy thing that it’s been doing a lot recently.
Jooyoung takes a few deep breaths and pull her eyes away from Kyungsoo in order to steady her heartbeat. She obviously knows what’s going on — why her heart is thumping so hard she can taste it in , why her face keeps getting flushed, why her stomach is now feeling the nice kind of queasy, the kind Jooyoung gets only when she’s really excited (which is rare). As a psychology major it would be embarrassing not to know what she is feeling.
And so she decides to accept whatever’s going on. Because in between all the arguing and the miserliness; the abrupt convenience store raids and stress-rants about grades, she knows she’s fallen for the khakis, for the short height, and for Do Kyungsoo (and everything he is made of).
Jooyoung watches as Kyungsoo returns to his seat with a bag of crackers in hand. He yanks it open and places it in between the two of them, before taking the controller from her hand to start the movie.
“Why are you staring at me again,” he asks, his questions forever resembling statements. He tosses a cracker at her to break her gaze and it lands on her pants.
She picks it up, dusts it off, and eats it. “Nothing,” she smiles.
The first day Jooyoung has to drag herself back for classes after the trip is painful. She can’t help but remember London, the campus there, what she’d learnt in her classes. With every little detail floating back into memory it is more tiring to slide her feet into her class. She settles into her usual seat and places her bag beside her. Then she grows tired of keeping up her cool student image while waiting for class to start so she decides to get social and text Kyungsoo.
To: Scrooge
come to the library with me after my class i need to do an assignment and i know you need to do the same one so don’t you back out
From: Scrooge
k
Jooyoung really doesn’t know what to respond to that one letter reply so she quits her messaging app and idly plays a game on her phone, but it is boring and she isn’t really concentrating. As usual, her ears are more perked up to the conversation of the Gossip Girls in front of her.
“Did you hear? About Krystal Jung?” One of the girls in front asks excitedly, not even bothering to conceal her gossip in a whisper. Jooyoung’s finger stops tapping her screen. Krystal gossip — as much as she hates to admit — is always pretty interesting.
“Dating! Right, right?” Another girl exclaims, fervently smacking her friend’s shoulder. “She and her boyfriend make a power couple! Do Kyungsoo is the perfect match for her.”
Wait, what?
“D-Do... Kyungsoo?” Jooyoung can’t help but mutter under her breath in shock. The two girls turn around, realising that she’s been eavesdropping into their conversation. But instead of starting to whisper they get even more excited that they have a new Gossip Girl in today’s hot news sharing.
“Can’t believe it, right?” One girl animatedly asks Jooyoung. “I couldn’t too, not at first, but I heard that they went overseas together recently! And to London! No wonder the both of them weren’t around the last few weeks.”
Jooyoung wants to angrily tell them that she went to London with them, and the trip isn’t not for some couple-y, romantic getaway, but for a school! Exchange! Programme! But she is still so shocked she is rendered speechless, so she only manages to open when the other girl speaks.
“Also! I know Kyungsoo has the keys to her dorm room. Someone saw him entering when Krystal was somewhere else, presumably to wait for her to come back. If this isn’t good proof then I don’t know what is!”
Jooyoung is momentarily confused but she realises what this is about: the time Krystal hurt her arm and Kyungsoo the Angel offered to bring her books back to her room for her, borrowing her key in the process. She knows Kyungsoo should’ve listened to Minseok and her when they told him not to do Krystal the favour. Just look what has happened now.
She wants to tell the girls that this is all a big misunderstanding; she wants to flare up and question the girls as to why they’re believing such unreliable information, but Jooyoung knows that anything she says would come out as her merely being jealous. So she sits there in silence, torturing herself with more talk of this topic.
The girls start to get dreamy fast: “Imagine the two of them on dates. Do Kyungsoo crossing campus to get to Krystal Jung’s faculty, and then bringing her out for lunch between classes, and then heading back to her room together!”
Jooyoung tells herself not to imagine anything, but the images automatically float to her mind and she is imagining all sorts of things now. It is awful and she wishes she hadn’t listened in at all.
But the girls don’t seem to notice her discomfort nor silence, because they continue yakking. “I think there’s no better proof that they’re dating than the fact that my friend from Nursing asked Krystal whether it’s true, and she said yes!”
The two girls squeal. In normal situations Jooyoung would be telling them in her mind to better spend their time elsewhere instead of poking their nose into other’s business (and to get more mature, please), but today she finds herself utterly into this world of gossip and believing everything they say, and feeling... things because of it.
After the class she immediately calls Kyungsoo, having sorted out her thoughts during the class itself and wanting to settle it in a more civilised manner. There’s no way he could be dating Krystal. Not after London. Not after he came to sit next to her on the plane. Not so suddenly.
“Hey, Jooyoung,” Kyungsoo greets when he picks up the phone, and she tries to pick out any anomaly from his voice but fails. “You at the library already? I’m coming.”
She swallows. “Have you heard?” She asks uncertainly. This is harder than she had expected. “About the Krystal rumour. The one concerning you.”
There’s silence on the other end. Jooyoung feels her heart fall.
“K-Kyungsoo?” She calls out again when he still doesn’t respond.
“Are you upset?” He asks simply.
What in the world? “What do you mean?”
“I know about the rumour, Krystal herself warned me about it.”
Warned? “And..?” She doesn’t know what Kyungsoo is trying to get at.
“You know I don’t really care about what people say about me.”
“Yeah, I do, but a small rumour can do a lot which you don’t know about.”
“Then let it be,” he says flatly.
She starts to get sick of his flippant answers and him beating round the bush, knowing that he is fully aware of the real reason why she’s calling — he knows her better than that. But just to get the conversation flowing in the right direction she decides to ask him up front. “So are you two dating?”
A pause. “Depends?”
She furrows her eyebrows. “What kind of crap-“
Kyungsoo clears his throat on the other end. “No matter what, you can’t be mean to Krystal, okay? She’s really a nice girl.”
Jooyoung feels her blood rising to her head. She really wants to curse at Kyungsoo but she holds it back and hangs up, unable to listen to him anymore. So are they dating, or not? What the hell, Do Kyungsoo?
She squeezes the straps of her haversack because that’s the nearest thing she can get her hands on to release her anger. Soon she finds fingernail marks on the other side of her palm so she stops. Kyungsoo’s totally been bewitched by Krystal Jung — why else would he constantly call her a nice girl? That would be the biggest joke of the century.
Jooyoung considers ditching him at the library because she’s really mad at him right now. But she knows she will feel bad later if she does that now, even if Kyungsoo is being a jerk. So she heads to the library in the end, walks past him purposefully just to show him she’s come, and sits at the corner of the long table he’s at, furthest away from him.
When he comes towards her, she moves, taking her belongings to another table. So he stops chasing her, but doesn’t leave the library. And they study together, alone, in silence.
But in all truth Jooyoung can’t concentrate on her work at all. She hates that she’s arguing with Kyungsoo again, but then again how can it be helped when he’s like this? Also, she keeps wondering if he describes her as a nice girl as well, to people he talks to. Although it’s more expected that he describes her as a devil, because she is, especially to him. And she didn’t think she minds this all the way up to now.
With her brain cells warped and her head a distorted mess, she decides to stop work and instead steps outside the library with her phone, and dials Krystal’s number. Jooyoung hates not knowing what’s going on — it just adds to the stress of everything. She needs to find out the truth behind this.
Krystal is obviously pleasantly surprised when she picks up the phone. “Hey, Vicey! What’s up?”
“You know about your rumour right?” Jooyoung asks, deciding to get straight to the point. “The one about you dating Kyungsoo?”
“Yeah, I do,” Krystal says breezily, then giggles, which sends Jooyoung into a frenzy.
“So is it true?” She asks, trying to steady herself.
Instead of answering Krystal giggles again, and Jooyoung really just wants to slap someone. “I never thought you’d be the sort to be interested in this kind of stuff, Vicey.”
“Just tell me if it’s true,” Jooyoung snaps. She is too tired to hold in her impatience.
“It’s not,” Krystal says calmly, and it assures her to a certain extent. As well as angers her even further.
“Then you’re just going to let the rumour float around?” She growls, belatedly controlling the volume of her voice upon seeing people walk past where she is standing. She closes her eyes and faces the wall, resting her head against it. “How did it even start in the first place?”
“Someone asked me about it,” Krystal says meekly, her voice softening. “And I kind of said yes?”
“What the-" Jooyoung holds back the profanity she very nearly spewed and leans her entire body against the wall, palming her face. Then she takes a deep breath. “Why in the world would you lie about something like this? And why would a rational person like Kyungsoo agree to go on with your stupid lie?”
Krystal doesn’t speak. And that’s awfully quiet, especially for someone who can’t stop yapping on any other day.
Jooyoung wants to hang up. She wants to do so and go back into the library, grab her things and retreat into her room to hide. But she can’t run away like this — not without letting Krystal know how she feels.
“Listen up, Krystal Jung,” she says, her voice turning icy, and unexplainable tears welling in her eyes (she swipes them away fast before anyone can see her, though). “I may be rude to people, and I’m over-competitive too, and impatient and annoying, but at least I will never lie. Especially not when I’m going to pull another person down with me.”
Krystal still doesn’t speak, but Jooyoung doesn’t expect her to.
“Student government president, just stop screwing my life over, please,” she finishes tiredly, then hangs up. Then she returns to the library and pushes all her belongings away from her, before lying facedown on the table.
She needs a good think, as well as a good nap.
Why is she angry? Is she just being petty? Jooyoung tries to placate herself by telling herself there must be a reason why Kyungsoo is not against Krystal’s lie, but the more she thinks the more agitated she gets — there is no reason that Krystal (or Kyungsoo) can give besides the fact that Krystal is just being attention seeking and putting popularity over morals. By having a ‘power couple’ status you can do so much with people’s minds. And is Kyungsoo beginning to do the same too?
She thinks and thinks until she falls asleep on the table.
And when she wakes up a few hours later, her arms are numb from the weight of her head and the sky is already dark. She rubs her eyes, then when she’s awake enough, although she doesn’t want to, tilts her head to see if Kyungsoo is still there at the other end of the table.
He’s not.
She sighs, then reaches out for her pushed away belongings instead. But on top of it is a bag of her favourite dumplings from the convenience store which wasn’t there initially. There is a small note scrawled onto the plastic bag using permanent marker.
Don’t study until you forget your meals. Go and eat something other than this for dinner. You don’t have to pay me back.
-DKS
a/n: sometimes i get worried that jooyoung is an unlikeable character but i always end up telling myself that she’s my character so i can do whatever i want with her muahaha i’ve been waiting a long time to write about someone as spunky as her
also at the beginning of this story i said i'll update every 2-4 days but i'm afraid that's a little tough to do now ;-; so i'll upload every weekend instead!!
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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