No matter how much time they’ve had to get used to it, Jinyoung’s friends have never been able to wrap their minds around how he can power through a six hundred page epic in a week, but struggle to finish reading four pages of poetry for an assignment. To Jinyoung, it’s very simple; he’s able to get through so many pages of a novel because he’s actually interested in its content and how the story ends. The same cannot be said for the tomes their Literature teacher assigns them as homework.

When it comes to genre, Jinyoung doesn’t discriminate. Action, romance, sci-fi, horror, even non-fiction; he’ll read them all. His only concern is that the story is interesting, engaging, and well-written. Still, he does have a secret weakness for slice-of-life romance novels. Whenever he makes he trip to a bookstore or the library, he’ll spend some time casually strolling down the romance aisle, brushing his fingertips against the spines of the novels as he goes. He likes to pretend that one day he’ll bump hands with a handsome stranger, who is interested in the same book, but he never expects it to actually happen; that sort of thing only occurs in fiction, after all.

He’s half right.

“Oh my God, I’m so sorry!” Jinyoung blinks dazedly as he lies on his back, the popcorn ceiling of the library swimming in his vision. “Are you hurt?” A concerned face hovers above him.

Jinyoung blinks away the last of his dizziness and slowly sits up on his elbows. “Eh, I’ll live,” he grunts. He in a breath as he looks up at the person before him. Now that his head isn’t spinning, Jinyoung can fully appreciate just how attractive he is. “Oh, hi,” he chuckles a bit nervously, sitting up fully. “I don’t think I’ve seen you around here before.” Jinyoung winces the second the words leave his mouth–seriously, did he really pull a ‘You come here often?’–but it’s too late to take them back.

“Uh, that’s probably because you haven’t,” the stranger shrugs. “My family and I moved to this town about two weeks ago.”

Jinyoung nods. “And you’ve already got a job? How…proactive of you,” he sputters, mentally kicking himself for sounding like an idiot. Honestly, someone who reads as much as he does should have a much better grasp on words.

Fortunately, the handsome stranger doesn’t seem to mind. “Heh, yeah, I suppose,” he chuckles, a hand rubbing the back of his neck.

There’s an awkward pause where the two of them simply stare at each other and nod. At once, it hits Jinyoung that he’s still sitting on the floor. “So, what have you got on that cart you knocked me over with?” he chuckles good-naturedly as he eases himself to his feet.

Mr. Handsome winces, “I’m really sorry about that. This thing is so heavy, it gets a good deal of momentum once it’s been moving and I didn’t see you until it was too late.”

“Don’t worry about,” Jinyoung waves a hand. “By the way, my name’s Jinyoung. I figure you should know that since you’ll probably be seeing my face a lot,” he says, questioning for the first time in his life whether he should divulge how much of a bookworm he is.

“Oh, cool. My name is Mark,” the other boy smiles. Jinyoung’s stomach swoops as he stares into Mark’s shining warm brown eyes, notices his pointy canine teeth, and coos at the faint impression of a dimple in his left cheek. He holds onto the book cart for support.

“Where did you move from?” Jinyoung asks just so he doesn’t lapse into stunned silence.

“I moved here from Seoul, but I’m originally from L.A. in America.”

“Ah, so that’s why you have that accent,” Jinyoung nods in understanding. Mark’s lips press together and his eyes drop to the cart in front of him. “Uh, no, please don’t misunderstand, I wasn’t insulting you. I think you have a lovely accent!” Jinyoung cringes as his voices gets louder – and higher – than he intended, and he ends up drawing the attention of the librarian.

“Park Jinyoung, you of all people should know to keep your voice down in a library,” the middle aged woman glares at him in disappointment, her eyes narrowing over the rim of her thin framed glasses.

“You’re absolutely right, I’m so sorry,” Jinyoung bows his head, glancing nervously at Mark out of the corner of his eye.

“And you, Mark, what are you doing just standing around? You have a job to do,” she frowns.

“Yes, ma’am,” Mark dips forward in a bow before he hurries to replace the books that got knocked off the cart when he bumped into Jinyoung. Jinyoung bends down to help him. By the time they’ve got the books back on, the librarian has disappeared. “Sorry, looks like I can’t stop and talk now,” Mark shrugs.

“I understand, I don’t want to get you in trouble again,” Jinyoung nods. He manages to maintain a calm façade, but internally he worries that Mark is still upset about the comment about his accent and is dying to get rid of him. “I guess I’ll just…head out,” he nods his head in the general direction of the exit.

“Uh, Jinyoung?” Mark speaks up, his eyes on his shoes.

“Yeah?” Jinyoung leans his hip against the cart, trying not to sound too eager.

Mark takes a moment to trace his finger over the letters printed on the worn spine of a book on the cart. “Would you mind if we exchanged numbers? I haven’t made any other friends here yet and I’d be nice to have one,” he looks up at Jinyoung from under his eyelashes and if Jinyoung wasn’t a goner before, this would be the nail in his coffin.

“Yeah, sure,” he grins, pulling his phone out of his pocket. Mark smiles his toothy, shiny-eyed, half-dimple smile again.