chapter 6
the psychology of good studentsBy the time they make it to the cinema, Kyungsoo has threatened to leave Jooyoung alone for the marathon three times because she was literally buzzing around him and squealing in his face.
"Sorry! I'm just really, really, really excited," Jooyoung breathes, flushed. Kyungsoo unhooks his arm wordlessly from her hands, which have unintentionally wrapped around his forearm for what seems like the thousandth time. He heads towards the ticketing counter, and she skips alongside him, but Kyungsoo suddenly swivels around and leads her to a bench nearby, ordering her to sit and wait for him. She obediently agrees.
When he returns, he is cradling a large tub of popcorn in his arms, along with two tickets. Jooyoung her head and laughs.
"Who brainwashed you today? Why are you suddenly being so nice and treating me to a movie marathon and popcorn for once?"
"I used my coupon so the popcorn is virtually free. And yeah, pay me back for the tickets by buying me a good supper later, okay?" He holds out a hand to pull her up from her seat, and the two walk towards the hall, popcorn and tickets in hand. Jooyoung cannot stop squealing, and by this point in time Kyungsoo doesn't bother to stop her anymore. When it comes to Jooyoung, she is a speeding toy automobile without a switch.
The cinema is filled with not children, but groups of friends as well as couples, presumably because of the late timing. As they walk in Kyungsoo wants to reassure Jooyoung that Disney movies are not just for kids, but she has already sprung down to their seats and planted herself in one of them.
Kyungsoo plonks himself right next to her and gets comfortable. He isn't the type to sleep in cinemas, because he paid for the movie and he can sleep back at the dorm if he wants to for no extra charge at all, so why not stay awake and watch the movie instead? Besides Disney movies can be quite entertaining.
Placing the tub of popcorn in between the both of them, he grabs a random handful and starts popping them into his mouth as the pre-show ads play. Jooyoung has stopped squeaking but instead is staring intently to the front, her face literally lit up, and when the movies start her eyes don't leave the screen once.
It's not past an hour of the first movie, Bambi, when Jooyoung feels the familiar prick attacking her nose and her eyes getting filled with tears. The animals on screen become a blur and she only sees them temporarily when a tear falls and her vision clears. But it doesn't last long and soon she can't see anything on screen again. Sniffling, she pulls her knees up to her chest and hugs them tightly, blinking rapidly in an attempt to clear her watery eyes.
"Hey. Han Jooyoung." She hears a whisper from beside her, and she cleans away a tear or two.
"Hmm?"
"You okay?"
She contemplates it, before responding with a vague answer. "This happens to me all the time when I'm watching animated movies. Don't worry."
Kyungsoo doesn't say anything else, and they both go back to the movie. The screen flashes, and the scene shows Bambi getting separated from his mother. Jooyoung doesn't realise she has open the entire time, and her lips quiver as she lets her tears flow without restraint. At this point she knows there's no point cleaning them away because they'll keep flowing unrestrainedly anyway.
And then she hears shuffling beside her, and she turns to look for a moment. Kyungsoo has pulled out a piece of tissue from his pocket and is holding it in midair. He shakes it gently as if to encourage Jooyoung to take it — which she does — and gives her a small smile before patting her on her back in a steady rhythm.
It's a peculiar feeling to have someone comfort her when she's on her Disney emotional moods, because she's never revealed this side of her to anyone at all, and the patting makes her sit up a little straighter, aware of the presence beside her.
But soon Jooyoung grows accustomed to his patting and it even becomes a soothing necessity halfway, especially when scenes get too sad. She cries throughout the entirety of Bambi, and the crying only gets worse when Cinderella starts playing and Jooyoung gets emotional just listening to the familiar soundtrack at the beginning of the film. Kyungsoo has his hand at her shoulder the entire time.
And when the several hour long movie marathon is over and Jooyoung is a mess of tears and emotions, his hand still lingers there.
"Wanna go off now?" He asks carefully when the last of the credits finish rolling, and she would tease him about how gentle he sounds if not for her wreck of a brain right now. Kyungsoo seems to understand when he doesn't elicit any response from her, and so they sit in the silence for a while. And when Jooyoung is done being emotional and finally springs out of her seat, he regains his usual composure as well.
"Remind me never to bring you to a Disney movie marathon again. You probably just emptied out your entire life's worth of tears in that few hours," Kyungsoo says, and she bumps him on the shoulder. She can tell it's his attempt to clear up the slightly stifling atmosphere, and she's grateful for that.
"I'll treat you next time," she appeases.
"There'll be no next time," he scoffs, but the tiny smile toying at the corner of his lips gives all his thoughts away.
Jooyoung smiles along, then steps in front of him to block him, and he stops in his path abruptly. "Well," she grins with her hands splayed, as if she is talking to a child. "You truly deserve a good supper from me now. My treat!" She knows this will win Kyungsoo over, and it obviously does, because although he shrugs nonchalantly, he still follows behind her when she swivels around and begins to lead him to his supper.
She seats the both of them down at a roadside tent and orders enough for two, before going back to check Kyungsoo's reaction. This is an especially cheap place to have supper and he seems to know it too, but he hasn't said anything so far. Jooyoung had initially brought him here as a joke — she wanted to just see his reaction and later bring him somewhere nicer, but was surprised when he patiently held the tent door up for her to enter before going in himself.
Admittedly she is glad. At least her wallet is saved from tragedy.
Kyungsoo stares at the handwritten menu board when they are both comfortably settled in their seats. "The prices here are amazing."
"I thought you were going to complain about the meal not covering the sum you paid for the tickets and popcorn," Jooyoung said.
"It's the thought that counts," he shrugs, and she can't tell whether he's being sincere about this or not because it's pretty unlike a miser like him to say something along the lines of this. Besides, he's also always shrugging and being nonchalant, so Jooyoung can never tell at first go.
The food arrives, hot and piping. The lady sets down a plate of oyster pancakes, a platter of tteokbokki, and a plate of chicken feet — dalkbal. Jooyoung realises it's the first time Kyungsoo and her are sharing food, although they have eaten together a few times before. She reaches out for a piece of the oyster pancake but he holds out his chopsticks in front of the food, blocking her.
"Hang on," he says to a confused Jooyoung, then proceeds to tear the pancake exactly into half using his chopsticks, pushing one half to a far corner of the plate towards him, and the other towards her. Then he splits the chicken feet into two clearly defined portions, and does the same with the tteokbokki. She just stares, her chopsticks hovering in mid air.
"Why not you count each piece of tteokbokki and split it exactly? What if I have two pieces more than you do?" She gibes sarcastically, poking her chopstick into her portion of pancake when he is finally done.
Kyungsoo grabs a piece of pancake as well. "Then so be it. Counting is unnecessary."
"You're seriously unbelievable, Do Kyungsoo! One moment you're so nice and the other so… calculative and awful." She isn't mad, not exactly, just exasperated and extremely confused.
"I just want it to be fair, dumbo." He continues chewing on his food, seemingly unknowing of her scathing tone. "That's partly my reason, at least."
She sighs. "Why are you so popular again? Why do you even have friends?"
Kyungsoo narrows his eyes. "Psh," he says dismissively, before the disapproving look disappears off his face completely and is replaced with a small smile. "You're rude, Han Jooyoung. My other reason for splitting the food is because I'm not even sure if you're fine with sharing food like this with me."
Jooyoung scrunches her face up. Why would Kyungsoo think that in the first place? It isn't even as if she's really sensitive about sharing food — isn't that what people do during family meals and gatherings? Putting on an act of hurts, she gasps, "Oh no, Kyungsoo! I thought we were close!"
Then she laughs upon seeing Kyungsoo's raised eyebrows.
She purposely grabs a piece of chicken feet from his side of the plate and stuffs it into , taking her time to chew. Then she picks out a piece of pancake from her side of the other plate and holds it in front of his mouth.
Kyungsoo's smile grows slightly, and he opens his mouth after a second or two, allowing her to feed him the food directly from her chopsticks.
Just as she leans forward, she notices, over the curve of Kyungsoo's back, a group of girls staring surreptitiously at him, all whipping their heads back to their original position when they catch Jooyoung's eyes on them. She retrieves her chopsticks from Kyungsoo's mouth and slides back into her seat. He chews rather satisfactorily.
"There are girls staring at you. Right behind you," she says, amused. She finds it funny how so many people find Kyungsoo good-looking (Jina included) when she really doesn't see anything special about his looks.
Well, maybe his smile looks okay, but that's it. Really.
Kyungsoo doesn't turn around when she informs him. Instead he merely starts to close the separations of the food he had initially made, moving all the food to the centre of the plates. "Okay," he says.
"Okay? Just an 'okay'?" Jooyoung snorts. "They are staring at you the same way people stare at me — and probably you — after we retrieve our results from the Profs." It is the look of wonder and idolisation, honestly, but saying it out loud would make her sound really stuck up, especially since she doesn't mean it that way.
"What does that look like?" Kyungsoo asks, and turns around eventually, then his face softens upon seeing the girls. "Ah, I've seen one of them in our college before. She majors in Art, I think? We have a mutual friend."
He waits until a particular girl looks up from her food and makes eye contact with him, then he smiles at her in acknowledgement, and Jooyoung wants to burst out laughing.
"You are such a flirt," she teases, shaking her head in disapproval.
"It's called being friendly," he states when he turns back.
She tries to imitate the shrug he always does. "Doing that is unnecessary," she says in a low voice.
He doesn't seem to catch what she's trying to do, and instead shrugs back at her, picking at the food. "Hmm. I think being nice to people is, though."
"Aw, what an angel," she coos playfully, and he rolls his eyes, then straightens up.
"It took you long enough to realise I actually descended from heaven."
Near the roadside tent is a row full of stores, most closed since it is getting pretty late. After their food Jooyoung and Kyungsoo saunter along the darkened streets, and all is peaceful until Kyungsoo espies something that makes his slow footsteps suddenly pick up speed.
"Let's go," he says while walking briskly and pointing directly at a sign in front of an open store. There's only two, gigantic words on the sign: Big Sale.
Jooyoung lets out a knowing sigh before jogging up next to Kyungsoo, following him into the store. The interior is filled with big racks of clothes and counters piled with all sorts of apparel. Tacky music blasts through the speaker, and the one and only sales assistant sitting at a corner looks more than half-dead.
Kyungsoo ignores all these and goes straight towards a section as though he knows the store like the back of his hand, and she merely follows, having nothing to see herself. She isn't that big a fan of shopping for clothes.
But when she sees what it is that made his body immediately behave like a magnet is none other than full racks of two-for-the-price-of-one khakis, she groans outwardly. In constrast, he looks more excited than she has ever seen him.
"Not khakis again!" She laments.
Kyungsoo holds up the price tag on one pair and shoves it in indignantly in Jooyoung's face. "Why? The price is amazing. Look! You can't get anything better than two pairs of khakis with just this amount of money."
"Still! These are awful. Even I wouldn't wear them if someone paid me to," she says, tugging lightly at her oversized faculty tee. She knows she shouldn't be saying anything with what she's wearing now, and even what she usually wears around campus, but these khakis don't even look comfortable, so there's no excuse for them to even exist. Pants being awful-looking yet uncomfortable is just a blatant crime.
"Good for you. I'll definitely wear them if someone paid me to." He grabs five pairs at one go and slings them across his arm. Then he grabs a sixth, and places it in front of his legs. "Do these fit me?" He asks, and Jooyoung just stares.
"Wait for me here," she then says, and scrambles off. When she returns to a still browsing Kyungsoo, she is holding up a pair of much nicer looking — and more comfortable looking — cargo pants proudly. She s it at Kyungsoo, who immediately goes for the price tag.
He begins to laugh as he shakes his head and passes it back to Jooyoung. "Nah. I can buy almost four pairs of khakis for the same price."
"But this is much nicer!" She exclaims. Still, she doesn't say anything more, and instead goes to return the pair of pants before joining Kyungsoo who has made his way to the cashier. He looks like an excited child holding the large bag of purchase in his hand, and she decides it's not that bad for him to wear cheap, ugly pants if he likes them so much.
"But I still think you should stop wearing khakis," she casually insists, putting her hands in the pockets of her sweatpants when they walk out of the store. She's just teasing him this time, but he sighs.
"If I do, you'll stop nagging me, right?"
Letting a grin settle on her face, she nods. She realises she hasn't seen Kyungsoo in anything else other than khakis before and she's eaten up by curiosity as to how he would look. Will his legs look just a little longer if he wears something else?
"Hmm..." He glances at his big plastic bag and his head. "No."
Jooyoung attends her usual Wednesday morning class on the History of Psychology. The content of the class is really not that interesting to Jooyoung, and it's admittedly her least favourite class (other than the Statistical ones — those are a different thing altogether). The professor drones on about Ivan Pavlov, and she jots down whatever she can take in, but it is not much because she is stoning out most of the time.
Maybe it's just because she hasn't had her coffee. Yeah, that's probably it. She can't be this bored and this lethargic first thing in the morning. It just doesn't make sense.
Jooyoung shifts her bag from the floor to the empty seat beside her. Then she props her chin upon her palms and slowly scans the classroom. There's a couple at the far end of the classroom, the female snuggling up to the male, who seems to be taking down notes for the both of them. (Or maybe just for himself — she can't tell.) And mostly there are groups of people just huddling in their small lumps of twos and threes, each lump separated from another by a chair or two.
She realises how solitary her seat is and feels strangely empty that the only companion beside her is her bag. An unusual loneliness settles inside of her, and her mind wanders off. Jooyoung has lots of acquaintances that she's made in the time in college, but no really good friends. In psychology, specifically.
Of course she isn't a true loner. She has Jina. And Minseok. And other close, close friends. (Ignore the fact that they aren't from psychology.)
Jina and Minseok have gotten close to each other after the time they went to the club together, and Jina mentions Minseok in almost every conversation about Jina's med school life they have now. Minseok, with his residency and other experiences, seems to have told Jina all that there is to know about med school, and now she is thoroughly fascinated with him.
Jooyoung wonders if she should randomly drag some people from her major to a nightclub, get wasted, and then become inseparable friends. But sadly the world doesn't work that way and she knows it, so that idea goes into the bin straight away. Not that she likes drinking anyway.
It's at this stage of her small trip down the lane of overthinking when a text notification lights her phone up, and she discreetly lays it flat on the table to check it.
From: Scrooge
got some chewing gum from the store for all the classes and lectures i have today
jina knows which ones, and don't worry, they're not that expensive. thanks mate
To: Scrooge
save me some
From: Scrooge
i won't even get to see you
To: Scrooge
who knows we may have the same lecture or two later my schedule is packed today
From: Scrooge
uh i know i have one with prof pcy
To: Scrooge
oh is it the one at 2:30pm later
From: Scrooge
yup!
Subconsciously Jooyoung smiles. Kyungsoo, even in all his miserliness and annoyingness, still makes a better companion than a measly bag.
To: Scrooge
COME WITH ME i want gum. and don't even think of denying me the gum because technically i am the one buying the entire packet with my own money
She jokes about gum but it's all about him, honestly.
From: Scrooge
correction — it's a bottle, not a packet. and okay i will, just because i'm nice.
By the time Jooyoung and Kyungsoo actually get seated in the class, she is trying to convince herself it isn't a mistake getting him to go to class with her. He has stopped to talk to five or six people all within a distance of about a hundred metres and each time, she has to awkwardly step back and fiddle with her phone because she has no clue who these people are. But they're all Kyungsoo's friends, apparently.
He doesn't seem to notice her discomfort, and she doesn't want to harp on it either. So they sit down beside each other quietly. Jooyoung observes him silently as he props his laptop up, keying in his login details. Kyungsoo has that vibe, she decides — the "popular" vibe. She doesn't know where to begin describing it, maybe it is something about their general aura, but she notices that all well-liked, so-called "popular" people have the same vibe.
"Why are you staring at me," Kyungsoo suddenly probes, his eyes still on his laptop. It comes out more like a statement than a question, and she just shrugs as she tears her gaze away.
"Nothing?"
He doesn't question her further so she secretly stares at him again, figuring what on earth is up with that vibe. He probably knows she's looking, Jooyoung is aware, but since he's not saying anything she's just going to take it that he doesn't mind.
She scans his short hair, and decides that doesn't play any part in it. His big eyes? Thick lips? But it's not like other people don't have those. Then she scrutinises his clothing — an unbranded navy green hoodie, old sneakers –
"Jeans!" She exclaims, and Kyungsoo halts his typing. Then he holds back a smile and goes back to his computer.
"Shh," he scolds softly, as if he didn't just hold back a smile himself. "Prof is going to give you hell for shouting in his class."
Professor Park hasn't come into the hall yet, but Jooyoung doesn't care even if he has come. Kyungsoo is wearing jeans! Blue, denim jeans! She wonders why on earth she didn't notice it on him when they walked in together. Perhaps it's because it looks nice and natural on him — it makes his legs look just a little bit longer, or rather, a little less short.
She prods him on his side, making him squirm slightly. "I thought you said you weren't going to stop wearing khakis," she teases.
"I'm not. Watch me wear them tomorrow." He doesn't look sheepish in the least, but she can fish out the tinge of embarrassment in his voice. Ha, so Do Kyungsoo isn't all that cool and unbothered.
"Well, I didn't know you have pants other than khakis in your closet in the first place," she counters breezily.
"Shut up," Kyungsoo's voice bubbles into a chuckle, and Jooyoung playfully rubs her hand over his thigh, feeling the unfamiliar denim on his leg. He swats her hand away and pedals his legs aggressively to get her hand off, but it only makes her want to grab his thigh more.
"Han Jooyoung!" He laughs, still attempting to get her hand off him. "It tickles, and what you're doing now is severely inappropriate!"
She removes her hand at that, rolling her eyes at Kyungsoo, and he looks visibly relieved. Professor Park comes in just at that moment and starts roll call immediately, and the lecture hall is engulfed in a silence once again. There are lumps of people sitting here and there, but this time Jooyoung is in her own lump. With Do Kyungsoo.
Jooyoung stops taking notes when Professor Park pauses his lecture for a moment to retrieve a video to show the class. Kyungsoo, however, is still prodding his keyboard successively, his finger flying over the keyboard. She tilts her body slightly just to see what notes he is taking that makes him so... passionate.
Needless to say, it is anticlimactic when she finds out he's just playing League of Legends.
"Have you been gaming the entire time?" She chides in a whisper. Kyungsoo merely nods. Prof Park's video starts off, and she turns back to watch, deciding not to get involved in his affairs anymore. His grades don't need saving anyway. He can do what he wants.
But after one minute of constant keyboard jabbing sounds on Jooyoung's side, she can't take it anymore. Gosh, if Kyungsoo isn't stressed himself about lectures she's stressed for him.
"Pay attention, Kyungsoo," she whispers again, leaning slightly towards him again. He's in a middle of an intense battle, and she can't tell which character he's playing as, but from the gaze of his eyes he seems so utterly concentrated on the game she wonders if he can even hear her at all.
But then he amazes her by repeating the last ten or so lines of the video's narration, all while staring at his laptop screen. And Jooyoung is undeniably shocked. It's all heavy information with statistics, and when he repeated the narration it was exactly like she was watching the video for the second time.
"I'm listening, dumb," he says. "You're really naggy, you know?"
Jooyoung crinkles her nose at that because she doesn't know what to respond. Besides his annoying tendencies, and his miserliness, and his short height, Kyungsoo is a virtually perfect human being, she must admit. He's downright genius, and has a blooming social garden of roses, and is funny. Sometimes. But his brain is his best quality, yes.
Not that she likes him in that way — she almost laughs at herself for even harbouring that thought for a split second. She's never even liked anyone that way before, and Kyungsoo is definitely not going to be her first. It's all platonic.
Just platonic.
a/n: juuuussst platonic
anyway kinda related? unrelated? bUT HAPPY BAEKHYUN DAY i love him so much i hope he has a great day
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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