The Fourth Time

The next afternoon, Jonghyun meets Krystal and Minho for lunch. Minho brings along a friend whom Jonghyun had never met.

“Hi, I’m Jinki. It’s nice to meet you.”

“You too. I’m Jonghyun. You’re friends with Minho?”

“Yeah, we live in the same apartment building. We met a few days ago,” Jinki explains.

Jonghyun and Jinki start talking and quickly become comfortable with each other, already becoming good friends.

“Oh, by the way, Jonghyun.” Jonghyun looks up upon hearing Krystal say his name.

“Hm?”

“You met your bus lover again didn’t you?”

“What? How’d you know? And don’t say that, it’s weird.”

“You used that nickname first.” Krystal shrugs and pauses then digs through her bag to find her phone. She pulls it out and does something with it before sliding it across the table to Jonghyun. “How’d I know?”

Jonghyun looks down and reads the string of messages he forgot he sent to Krystal last night after getting back.

I SAW HIM AGAIN.

ON THE BUS

GODDAMN HE’S SO HOT

I THINK I FORGOT HIS NAME AGAIN

DOES IT START WITH CHA???

“Did you forget you sent me all these?” Krystal laughs. “All caps, too. You were excited.”

Jonghyun groans, he remembers now. He remembers that he was stupidly excited about running in to that boy whose name he just could not remember. So stupidly excited that he sent five texts to Krystal about it in under five minutes.

“Who is this guy?” Jinki interjects.

“Guy...?” Jonghyun asks, looking at him slowly. “How did you know it’s a guy we’re talking about?”

“Well you’re not straight, are you?”

“No. but how’d you know?

Jinki shrugs “It’s kind of obvious you were talking about a guy.”

Jonghyun nods, knowing that he never hides anything well. Especially when he wasn’t even trying to hide this, it’s no wonder Jinki figured out he was gay after spending an hour together. “Anyways, I met him again last night, obviously. And he wasn’t as sweet as the first time. He didn’t wave to me. But I embarrassed myself twice and I only talked to him for 15 minutes.”

“What’d you do?” Minho prods.

Jonghyun spends a good half hour recounting every detail from last night, emphasizing the two moments he embarrassed himself, the other reassured him they weren’t that bad. But Jonghyun thinks otherwise.

After lunch, the four agree to meet at the library later that night to study and do homework. Jonghyun heads to class, thoughts of his bus lover filling his head.

They had been sitting at the library for an hour before Minho looks at Jonghyun and says “Why are you here?”

“What? Why can’t I be?” Jonghyun gets defensive.

“You can but you haven’t actually done any work.”

“Ok. To be honest, I don’t have any work. I already finished it but I just thought that if I leave at the same time as last night I might see him again,” Jonghyun admits sheepishly.

“Really?” Krystal scoffs.

“Shut up.” Jonghyun looks down at the table then decides to pull a textbook out just so he can pretend to work to keep Minho and Krystal quiet.

“Hey Jinki,” a voice says. Jonghyun looks up to see who said that and his eyes meet with his bus lover.

“Oh, you’re…”

“Yeah…”

“Wait is this the guy you-” Jonghyun kicks Jinki under the table before he can finish his sentence and Krystal bursts out laughing.

Jonghyun’s bus lover looks at Krystal, confused. And because Krystal is laughing and Jonghyun is embarrassed yet again, he starts laughing too and can’t stop himself. His face is completely red and tries to hide it by burying his face in his hands.

“I’ll see you around, Jinki,” the boy says before walking away. “And, uh, bye,” he adds, looking at Jonghyun. Jonghyun pulls himself together enough to say goodbye.

As soon as Jonghyun’s bus lover is gone, he looks straight at Jinki. “You know him?!”

“Yeah, we went to high school together. It’s him? You were talking about Kibum?”

Jonghyun nods silently, blushing bright red. “I think he’s really attractive. But he must think I’m crazy now.”

“Probably,” Krystal agrees.

“Will you introduce me to him?” Jonghyun asks Jinki desperately. “Are you guys close? What is he like? Do I have a chance?”

“Maybe, kind of, usually nice but sometimes a , and yes.”

Jonghyun thinks for a minute about the order but realizes it doesn’t matter because he knows the last thing he asked was if he had a chance and Jinki said “yes” to that. “I have a chance? Are you sure?”

“Yeah, but he might have a boyfriend right now. I’m not sure, actually. Did they break up?” Jinki thinks for a second but can’t remember. “Sorry, like I said we’re kind of close but we don’t talk that often.”

Jonghyun leaves the library at 23:21 in a rush, realizing that he’s four minutes later than the previous night. He runs out, quickly saying goodbye and gathering his textbook-turned-prop. When he gets to the bus stop, Kibum isn’t there, to his disappointment. Jonghyun gets on the bus alone and sits by himself for the ride to his apartment.

For the next three weeks, Jonghyun doesn’t get to talk to Kibum, really. But they run in to each other a lot. They walk past each other every Monday and Wednesday around 13:00 near the chemistry building. They have a class next to each other on Thursdays at 15:00. Once, they saw each other on the bus. Kibum was sitting down when Jonghyun stepped on and their eyes met for a split-second but Jonghyun looked down and pretended like he didn’t see. When Kibum was getting off, he said “Hey, we run in to each other on the bus a lot, huh?”

Jonghyun is sure that Kibum doesn’t care about these moments that they see each other. Usually they greet each other and continue on.

One day when Jonghyun was running at the gym, Kibum happened to look inside the exercise room and Jonghyun looked down to avoid his gaze. Three minutes and half a mile later, Kibum walks past the door again and this time Jonghyun isn’t quick enough to look down. They make eye contact and Kibum smiles goofily and waves before running off. Jonghyun can’t stop smiling to himself as he runs, glad that everyone else in the room is too in to their own workout to notice his expression.

The Fifth Time

Jonghyun is sure that he’s not going to get anywhere with Kibum. All they do is say hi to each other when they run in to each other. Their relationship was going nowhere and Jonghyun was unsure about how to do something about it. They only saw each other for brief moments, and they hadn’t run in to each other on the bus for ages. They hadn’t actually had their third conversation, which Jonghyun insisted would push their stagnant and boring relationship to something new.

Their third meeting came when Jonghyun was sitting, facing Krystal in the grass one a particularly sunny afternoon. Krystal was complaining about her boyfriend, who had gone to Korea for college. Kibum walked past and looked in Jonghyun’s direction. Jonghyun paused and Krystal turned to see what Jonghyun was distracted by.

Jonghyun waved and smiled, expecting Kibum to keep going. But he doesn’t. Kibum walks up to Jonghyun and Krystal and sits next to Jonghyun on the grass. “Hey,” he says coolly.

“Hi,” Jonghyun responds, trying not to stare at Kibum’s face. Instead he looks at Krystal who’s giving him a smug smile.

Kibum looks at Krystal and extends his hand to her, “I’m Kibum”

“Krystal.” She shakes his hand and smiles.

“I met Jonghyun on the bus a while back.”

Krystal almost said “I know, he wouldn’t shut up about it” but she stopped herself and instead said “Oh, that’s cool.”

An awkward silence hangs in the air until Kibum breaks it. “So, Krystal, what classes are you taking?”

They find out that they’re both taking the same economics class. “That last test was killer,” Krystal groans.

Kibum agrees, admitting that he got an 87, 20 points higher than the class average. But still eight points lower than Krystal, Jonghyun thinks. Krystal doesn’t tell him what she got, just congratulates Kibum on his score. After their conversation about economics dies down, Kibum looks at Jonghyun and asks what classes he’s taking. Jonghyun lists them off and when he says “Korean 308” Kibum nods. “I’m taking 309 next semester. You are too, right? Since that’s the next one. Maybe we’ll be in the same class.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Jonghyun says, trying really hard not to sound too hopeful.

“By the way, which apartment do you live in?” Kibum asks out of nowhere.

“In the ones near the grocery store, just down the street.”

“Oh, I’m in the ones on 8^th street.”

“Where is that?” Jonghyun asks immediately, before realizing it was the street behind his apartment. He regrets asking the question once he sees Kibum’s reaction.

“It’s literally right behind the apartment you said you live in,” Kibum laughs.

“Oh, I guess I never noticed the street name,” Jonghyun lies sheepishly.

“Well, I should go. It was nice to talk to you for the third time. The second time meeting you that I’m sober,” Kibum smirks at Jonghyun before walking away.

Jonghyun’s heart thumps against his chest and he breathes deeply, meeting Krystal’s eyes. She laughs at him and tells him to calm down.

“So what did you do that time?” she asks.

“Huh?”

“Before you said that every time you meet him, you embarrass yourself. What did you do this time?”

“The street. Of course I know it! I just forgot because he’s so handsome that I can’t think.”

Krystal just laughs at Jonghyun and shakes her head. “It’s really not that big of a deal. But you are pretty embarrassing.”