This is not a love story simply because love stories don’t start this way.

Or at least, you don’t think so.

You wanted to kill Jeno.

You really wanted to kill Lee Jeno.

You were sitting in your classroom with your best friend beside you. Kim Doyoung leaned back against the chair, his pen twirling around between his fingers elegantly when he snuck you a look. You and your eyebrows furrowed and your top lip had disappeared under your teeth. You looked stressed and you looked like you were going to stand up and storm away.

“Are you okay?” Doyoung asked. He knew that expression on your face very well. He knew what you looked like when you were conflicted and things weren’t going your way. As fourth year law students, you both had gone through thick and thin together.

Studying after school hours? Check. Emotional break around your finals? Check. You telling him you’d just drop everything and become a farmer instead? Check. Doyoung has seen it all.

“Jeno,” you told him and he rolled his eyes, leaning back. “His grades came and his parents are telling me that…”

“He hasn’t been slacking off, has he?” Doyoung asked and you shook your head. There was a different problem about Lee Jeno altogether.

Now, Lee Jeno. Second-year law student. Charming little imbecile. Always very smiley-smiley until he would find a way to piss you off. Lee Jeno was not your average hot-guy-on-campus. Lee Jeno to you, was someone you had been tutoring since high school.

His parents trusted him with you.

Heck, Lee Jeno trusted himself with you.

He was one cheeky bastard. Your dynamic with Jeno was one that isn’t for the weak. If he wasn’t younger, you would have fallen for him. You only ever dated older men and Jeno always liked bringing that up.

You’re old, he would say.

And you’re young, you would counter.

When he first met you, you had applied to be his tutor since his parents had put up an ad. You were in your first year of university then and Jeno was starting eleventh grade. You were in need of quick cash and Jeno was in need to get into law school. He had no other choice. His parents were going to find a way to make his life a living hell and you were there to make sure it wouldn’t have to come to that.

The first time you met Lee Jeno, you had entered his bedroom that smelled like luxury perfume. He looked miserable, sitting there in his pressed suit and his thick-rimmed glasses that rested on top of his nose. He looked at you and for years to come, you’d remember the look in his eyes.

Defiant.

Ready to fight you to get what he wanted.

He was turning seventeen and you were a day shy of nineteen.

You silently glanced at the papers that were laid in front of him. You picked them up and saw that he had drawn on them. Cartoons, doodles and a few words that you couldn’t make out because he had scribbled on top of them.

“I’m not here to fight you,” you began. “But the faster I do my job, the easier it’ll be for both of us and you can go do whatever you want.”

“I don’t want to go to law school.” His voice was strained and his eyes remained defiant, his eyes not leaving yours. “I refuse to.”

Years to come, his parents would trust you with Jeno because of one thing: you had gotten him into law school. It was your effort and your effort alone but little did they know it was because Jeno had gotten accustomed to you and your sense of comfort was all he knew. You stood up for him when his mother barged in and demanded for better grades.

B+ is great improvement, you told her. You can’t expect him to improve overnight! Jeno was cowering in the corner, behind an elegant lamp as his mother hissed words that shouldn’t even come out of a parent’s mouth.

Am I not paying you enough? His mother had asked you and that shut you up. Jeno saw how your pupils wavered and he expected you to quit the next day but you came back with a newfound passion—books and notes for him to read on.

You are going to prove her wrong, Lee Jeno. You are going to go to get accepted to law school. I don’t care if you decide to stay in law school or not but you, at the very least, are going to get accepted.

All that Jeno knew was to fight for what he wanted and he knew that very well because you were the one who taught him that. Countless nights in his bedroom frustrated him and you found yourself sighing when you would see him sleeping head down on his desk. You’d smile, fingers brushing against his cheek adoringly.

What a child, you’d think to yourself. What a very lucky child.

Forget that he was two years… almost three years younger, the way Jeno acted with you made him think of him like he would forever be eight. He began to get increasingly frustrated and you were trying your best to grab the reigns to steer him into the right direction.

My apartment, you told him one day. Next session, we’re going to study in my apartment. I’ll show you my birds and you can focus better without having your parents come in over and over again to check on you. He didn’t say anything to that but the next day you arrived, he was the one who opened the door with his backpack packed, his eyes with expectant crescent moons as he excitedly left his house.

His mother waved at you and you bowed at her. You brought Jeno through the public house, the male asking you question like: what if there were no more seats? People actually have to stand? Jeno was a bird in a cage and despite going to a very tough boy’s school—his parents were disciplinary tyrants.

He had never had a pretty strand of his hair touched by the unknown dangers of the outside world.

You brought him to a café first and you found out that did not work—Jeno looking around every other minute. He was an inquisitive young man. He wanted to know what poor people thought of the rich and you told him not to call them “poor people”. He wanted to know where homeless people lived and how they survived on the streets.

He wanted to know what you did, the ways of the world and how you managed all on your own.

Show me, he had asked you. Show me how you live.

So, you did. Every SAT paper he did, it was a new adventure. Every question he wanted an answer to, you’d conjure up a literacy paper for him to read. Again, that was all he knew. To work for what he wanted.

Street food, theatres, and libraries. You brought him to the mall to a music festival one day and saw him staring a man busking at the side walk, his head bopping up and down rhythmically.

You smiled, Jeno realizing you were there. It was like he was in a trance.

“Why do they do it?” he asked suddenly and you raised an eyebrow at his question, already thinking of what question he’d have to answer. You casually slipped your arm through the loop of his arm, Jeno’s hands shoved in the front pockets of his coat. For some, they’d see this as romance but for you and Jeno, it was like taking a stroll with your little brother. “He gets only a few coins and people throw money at him like he’s a beggar. Why does he do it?”

“People don’t care what people think of them, Jeno. He does it because he likes it,” I told him and his face dropped. “Besides, he enjoys playing. Can’t you see?”

You stopped, your hands going to turn Jeno to stare at the man. “He’s smiling. He loves it.”

“But he doesn’t get money from it.”

“He doesn’t,” you agreed. “But he’s happy, isn’t he?”

You did not know but what you said would have stuck to Jeno for years to come. You would regret telling him that and you would try to take it back but Jeno would not have any