☤

The next day, Jongin is trying to keep himself from looking for Do Kyungsoo in the hallways, because he’s still so very ashamed of himself and he thinks that if he actually meets Do Kyungsoo’s eyes this time – which he hasn’t, not even once, since their collision in the hallway so many weeks ago despite how vehemently Jongin has taken to watching the other boy (a habit Jongin is pretty sure Do Kyungsoo isn’t even aware of) – he’ll puke again. He doesn’t think he deserves watching Do Kyungsoo anymore, not after how cowardly he’d been the day before.

Jongin doesn’t know how to deal with these emotions of guilt and shame, because up until this point in his life he’s never had to; he’s never done anything that warranted such feelings (except for maybe thinking about his dreams and how he’s going to abandon everyone when he gets the chance to fulfil it, but since he hasn’t actually done anything yet but thought about it he’s postponing those feelings).

And this is when Jongin does realize just how big of an impact him and Do Kyungsoo’s first meeting had had on him, despite how short and seemingly unimportant it had been.

Because Jongin somehow cares. Cares for a boy who he’s never really had a proper conversation with, a boy he has to refer to as ‘Do Kyungsoo’ when he thinks of him because he doesn’t know if he should say ‘Do’ or ‘Kyungsoo’, a boy he’d let get beaten up without lifting a finger to stop it. A boy who didn’t even know who Jongin was aside from the unreliable rumors he’d surely heard about him from the gossiping girls in their school (briefly, Jongin wonders what those rumors say about him, how they paint him as a person. Is he a cocky, arrogant piece of or is he a benevolent knight in a shining armor?)

It’s a little bit comical, really, but most of all it’s sad, because Jongin has never, not even once, cared for anyone else in his entire life but himself no matter how many has tried to attach themselves to him, but then some misfit transfer student just waltzes straight through all of the walls Jongin has built around his own heart and settles down there like it’s the easiest thing in the world. Jongin barks a short, humorless laugh to himself (the girls sitting around him on the benches as they wait for their lesson to start perks up at the sound, croons and asks him what he’s thinking about, and he answers their question with a faked grin and a lie). How pathetic, really.

But the most ridiculous thing is that Do Kyungsoo hadn’t even tried to worm his way into Jongin’s heart. He’d just accidentally walked into someone who’d happened to be Jongin, snapped at him and then left. Their meeting had been purely coincidental; nothing special enough to deserve this aggressive reaction on Jongin’s part.

But that meeting had sparked something inside of Jongin, and he’d become so fascinated with the beautifully unsightly boy, and slowly, during the time Jongin had spent watching the ugly (yet so very amazing boy in so many ways Jongin doesn’t even know how to explain it with words, can’t wrap his head around it), that fascination had – just like a virus, evolving into something more dangerous, something more lethal, the longer he left it untreated – started to turn into something else.

Affection, concern.

Two simple words, yet filled to the brim with meanings, meanings that Jongin now guesses he knows the weight of. He feels overwhelmed as he thinks them, rolls them soundlessly on his tongue and tasting them. How vulnerable they have made him.

It’s scary.

And pathetic.

It must be karma punishing Jongin for not helping Do Kyungsoo, because why else would he care about someone who doesn’t give two s about him in return?