“I don’t understand, so you ran away from him?” Hyeri raised her eyebrows and lifted up a cup of coffee to my face. We were already late for class but Hyeri wouldn’t let me go without explaining just what happened that night.

“I already told you, I didn’t run away from him I just got out of his car and told him that some random apartment was my house,” I muttered while taking the cup from her and beginning to pick up my pace to my next class.

Hyeri groaned, “Sarang, you’re supposed to get to know him! Not run away from him, oh god, what’s he going to think of you now? Do you know how hard Chanyeol tried to get you two alone? He could be good for you-“

“But he’s not,” I turned around and shot her a sharp stare. Hyeri gulped and avoided my eyes before nudging me to keep walking.

“This is my class,” Hyeri said softly and gave me a small wave before entering the building. I waved slightly and began walking to the next building over.

“Miss Lim I see you’re late again,” the professor tapped his pen against the attendance sheet while I shut the door behind me sheepishly. I didn’t bother making up an excuse because I wasn’t about to tell my professor about my night.

The stairs creaked beneath my feet as I made my way up the different platforms in the lecture hall. Just when I was about to reach the top platform where I usually sat, I noticed someone already sitting in my usual spot.

“You have got to be kidding me,” I whispered to myself. Sitting in the very back row in the middle seat was Jongin, legs crossed and tapping his pen against the desk. He shrugged his shoulders and patted the seat beside him.

“Glad to see you made it home safe,” Jongin whispered to me as I passed by his seat and sat down in the next row over from him.

The professor was already eyeing us even from the back of the lecture hall so I took note of keeping my voice lowered. “Since when were you in my creative writing class?” I snapped.

“Since the beginning of the year?” he raised his eyebrow at me, “I’m a writer Sarang. Nice to know that you take as much interest in me as I do in you,” he spoke in a sarcastic manner.

I tried to recall if I had ever run across Jongin in this class, but no such thoughts came to mind. Seriously, there were only about twenty students in the class and I didn’t understand why I couldn’t recognize him as one of them.

“Miss Lim, I suggest you move away from Mr. Kim seeing as you’re being a distraction to him,” the professor suddenly spoke, “I can’t have one of my most prized students be disrupted.”

“Prized student?” I questioned Jongin.

“I like to write,” he muttered, his face turning slightly pink.

As soon as the professor’s lecture was over, I made an effort to leave the classroom as fast as I could. There was no way that I’m letting myself talk to Jongin again after he basically exploited me without my consent. Then again, it wasn’t really much of an exploitation, it was more of an observation. An observation that was more accurate than I would’ve liked it to be.

“Sarang! Hey, wait up!”

I cursed mentally and tried to quicken my pace when I felt Jongin grab my arm and turn me around towards him. “What do you want?” I avoided his eyes, staring at the ground nervously.

“I was wondering if you wanted to go to town with me,” he said softly, and gently pulled up my chin to meet his eyes, “I don’t really want to go alone and you can take pictures there if you want, it has pretty amazing scenery down there.”

“Jongin, I really don’t-“

“I won’t say anything about you this time,” his eyes pleaded me to agree. “I promise, I won’t even bring up anything about you. It can be all about me this time if you want,” he smiled inwardly.

“Okay, fine. But we go with your rules, we only talk about you.”

“Fine by me,” he grinned and latched his hand onto my wrist, dragging me to his car in the east parking lot.

“So, have you ever been down town before?”

I rolled my eyes, “I thought this was going to be all about you, not me.”

“I’ve been downtown before,” he corrected himself, “have you?” I glared at him from the passenger seat and although his eyes were focused on the road, I could tell he knew the kind of look I was giving him. “I’m just asking whether or not you’ve gone before, it’s kind of a give and take to keep a conversation going,” Jongin shrugged.

I sighed, “No, I never really thought about going to the outskirt of town before.”

“Why not?”

“Okay, seriously?”

He shrugged again, “just curious Sarang.”

This boy was driving me up a wall already. “I don’t know, I hate being in overcrowded places where I don’t know my own surroundings. It’s suffocating and scary,” my voice quieted as I glanced over at the busy streets of downtown.

“You don’t like crowded places but you like clubs?”

My head snapped back towards him, “that’s different!”

“How so?”

“It just…is. Now can we please get back to the topic of you and not me?”

Jongin laughed lightly, “sure but can we keep this conversation going at the park over there? I kind of want to get out of this car.”

I looked out my window to see a beautiful empty field, probably built for soccer however no one was occupying the field at all. There were various trees hovering over the soccer field, which was strange to see because I thought soccer fields were supposed to be completely clear of any trees at all. Jongin parked the car and motioned for me to get out too.

He took a deep breath smiled, “let’s go over to the tree there and we can keep talking.”

I nodded slowly and walked with him towards the willow tree which hung over top of our heads, keeping us completely shaded from the sun. I noticed that Jongin looked a lot happier than before when we sat down under the tree on the roots of the trunk. His lips were stretched out into a wide smile, and a small wrinkle that I hadn’t noticed before was indented on the side of his cheek.

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

I stopped focusing my attention on his cheeks and looked at him, “looking at you like what?”

“Looking at me like…never mind. Anyway, how do you like this place?” he leaned back on the tree trunk.

“It’s…nice,” I stared up at the willow tree that was draped over our bodies, “why did you want to come here again?”

“It’s my favourite place to be. I mean, I have a lot of favourite places like the dance studio back at campus, Chanyeol’s house, the coffee shop down the street, but this place is my absolute favourite,” Jongin admired the empty field and ran his fingers along the grass, “this is usually where I get most of my writing done.”

“Writing must be pretty important for you,” I leaned back on the trunk as well, “seeing as you’re one of the prized students in the class.”

Jongin’s cheeks turned pink again and he tried to cover it up with a cough, “I really don’t think I’m any different from the rest of the students…I just try a little harder. Writing is easy once you understand how to express yourself and understand what kind of person you are.”

I froze at his words, “can we not talk about this?”

Jongin sat up and furrowed his eyebrows, “why? Do you…not know what kind of person you are?”

I hid my face between my knees, “I don’t know. Why are you even asking me that? You haven’t even known me for that long…”

“But I want to get to know you,” he pressed on, shaking my shoulder in the process.

I lifted my head from my knees and stared into his eyes firmly, “you will never get to know me. You can try, but no one has ever really known me. You’ve seen my best friends Hyeri and Chanyeol right? Even they don’t know me as well as they think they do, and they never will.”

Jongin looked crestfallen and spoke softly, “but why? Why do you shut yourself out to the people you love? How can you not trust those people as much as they trust you? Is that not hurtful to them?”

“Stop!”

My head was beginning to ache from his never-ending questions but it didn’t help that he was staring down at me with a hurt expression on his face. “I-I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to annoy you or anything…I just don’t understand how you can live your life so…distant from everyone,” Jongin was now looking down to the ground, unable to lift his head up and look at me.

“You didn’t annoy me,” my voice softened, “and I don’t expect you to understand how I live my life. It’s been like this for two years, I just haven’t learned how to control myself yet.”

“What happened two years ago?”

That’s where I had to draw the line. As much as I wanted to open up and talk about what happened to Jongin, I had already told him too much about myself. “I don’t know,” I lied, “but if you don’t mind, can we talk about you? I want to know your story.”

He nodded and leaned back against the tree, “well, I was born in Seoul, not a big surprise since I haven’t left this place since birth. My mom and my dad are divorced but they still have a pretty good relationship with each other,” he laughed bitterly for a second, “they actually split up because of me.”

“What?” my eyes widened in shock, while Jongin bit his lip hard enough that I could see a bit of blood emerging from the corner of his lip.

“Yeah, when I told them I wanted to become a singer my mom freaked while my dad understood my dream,” he sighed and shook his head so that his bangs stuck to the left side of his face. “My mom wanted me to keep writing, and it’s not like I would stop even if I did become a singer, she just couldn’t accept that I wanted to do something other than writing.”

Reminds me of someone I know…not being able to understand my situation. “How did it get to the divorce?” I shifted closer to Jongin so that his shoulders were overtop of mine and mine were under his.

“They kept fighting everyday about whether or not I should pursue my dream, and eventually it got to the point where they didn’t want to see each other anymore,” Jongin’s voice seemed to get quieter and quieter by the second.

“I’m…sorry,” I couldn’t think of anything better to say, “it’s really not all your fault though…”

“Actually it is, but you know what? I’m okay with it. Because whatever happens in my life, it was bound to happen, so why should I fight it, you know?” He shrugged his shoulder and leaned closer towards my body.

“How can you…how can you accept life like that? Like it’s some sort of huge plan that’s already been thought out for you?” I questioned him seriously. If it were me in his situation, I would’ve resented the day I even brought up my dreams to my parents.

“Well, I guess that’s the difference between you and I,” he tilted his head so that he was at the same angle as me, “I accept the way things are and you just have yet to do that.”

“Alright that’s enough of this life stuff,” I sighed,  getting up from my seat and dusting off the dandelions from my pants. “Let’s go get a drink or something, I’m really thirsty from all this sitting,” I joked and helped him up. I dodged a bullet on that one. There’s no way he’s getting anything more out of me.

We entered a bubble tea shop that Jongin knew of and sat down to order our drinks. He ordered the same tea as me, a honeydew black tea. The sun was already beginning to set by the time our drinks arrived. I noticed that the lining of the sunset was at the perfect horizon and took out my camera to take some pictures of it before it completely set.

“You carry that thing around with you everywhere?” Jongin asked, nodding his head towards my DSLR.

I brought the lens down from my face and gave him a look, “it’s not just a thing. It’s literally my baby, I go nowhere without it.”

Jongin chuckled, “can I ask why?”

I snapped a few pictures of the sunset, making sure to keep my aperture at the perfect level so that the light from the sun illuminated the rest of the background scenery. I showed Jongin the camera screen and tapped on the picture, “you see this? Look at the picture and then look outside to the actual sunset. They’re so different that you can’t even tell it’s the same image.” I shifted closer to the window and tried to take a better photo this time when I felt Jongin’s eyes on me. I put down my camera once again to find him staring at me intently. “W-What?”

He shook his head and sipped his bubble tea, “it’s nothing.”

“Come on, I know that’s not nothing,” I set the camera down on the table and raised my eyebrow at him.

He stopped sipping his drink and bit his lip, “it’s just…I find you really beautiful when you’re so into photography.”

My cheeks immediately flushed, “w-what? All I did was take a picture…” I felt awkward and unable to speak, no one had ever called me beautiful before.

“But the way you express your feelings about photography it’s just…beautiful,” Jongin kept his eye contact with me and leaned closer to my face across the table. “I think you’re the most beautiful when you express yourself.”