The next day at 5pm, Yisun was sitting behind the teacher’s desk, trying not to fall asleep as she waited for Yoongi to show up; since she had started tutoring Yoongi, she had less time to do her homework and had to stay up later to finish it. This time, she had been up a large part of the night finishing a particularly difficult science project she had forgotten was due the next day.

“Hey!” Yoongi called out happily as he entered the room 15 minutes late, “are we watching another movie?” he added, eagerly, pulling up a chair and sitting down in front of her.

Yisun, who had been pulled out of her bubble by Yoongi’s loud greetings only straightened up and stared at him blinking.

“Geez, you look terrible” stated the teenage boy, spotting the bags under her eyes.

“Thanks” she muttered sarcastically, “I was up all night”

“Well, anyways, here you go” said Yoongi, shrugging as he tossed her a piece of paper over the large desk.

Yisun stared at the paper, blinking some more, and then looked up at Yoongi, wide-eyed. Sure, it was messily written on the torn-up page of a notebook, but still, it was the summary she had asked him to do on yesterday’s movie.

“So, what are we watching today?” he asked again, rocking back and forth on his chair.

“I haven’t brought anything today” replied Yisun.

“What?!” exclaimed Yoongi, with a look of disappointed shock.

“Well we can’t be watching movies every day” explained Yisun dismissingly, as she picked up her schoolbag to put Yoongi’s homework in it.

Yoongi groaned. “First you get me all hyped up, then you tell me no more movies…”

“I didn’t say no more, just not every day” retorted Yisun.

Yoongi looked up at her doubtfully. Yisun shrugged him off and kept on pulling things out of her bag.

“I didn’t know which one you’d like so I bought a few…” she said, displaying several magazines in front of him. “They’re in English” she added, answering Yoongi’s look of puzzled wonder.

“Where did you get those?” he asked, picking one up and starting to flip through it.

“Bookstore” she stated, obviously.

“They sell magazines in bookstores?” he asked, stupidly.

Yisun rolled her eyes, then went on, ignoring his question. “There’s a skateboarding one, one on movies, another one on martial arts, and this one’s on sports in general, I think.”

“And what are we supposed to do with ‘em?” asked Yoongi.

“Read ’em, of course”

*

They spent the rest of the lesson reading an article aloud in the sports magazine and then discussing the things that Yoongi had not understood. When came time to leave, Yisun gave Yoongi a little questionnaire about one of the articles to fill out and give back to her the next day.

***

Things went on at a similar pace for the next few weeks; reading magazine articles, discussing various subjects like recent movies, music, or sports – all in English of course. Most of the time, since Yisun had no idea what kind of things Yoongi liked, she’d let him do the talking; only correcting his speech every now and then. Overall, things had apparently become pretty manageable and almost even enjoyable for Yisun. Not to mention that Yoongi was beginning to show distinct improvement.

*

One afternoon after class, Ms. Jenkins asked Yisun to stay behind again.

“I wanted to congratulate you” said the young teacher with a big smile on her face.

“Err… congratulate me?” asked Yisun, who had expected this to be about Yoongi.

“Yes. Yoongi got a passing grade on his most recent test” she said, smiling, “I expect you have a lot to do with that?”

“Oh!” exclaimed Yisun, surprised, ‘So this was about Yoongi after all…’

“You sound surprised? I’m not. I always knew you could do it” said Ms. Jenkins, still smiling.

Yisun’s face suddenly sprouted a shy smile and started blushing in embarrassment.

“Well, keep it up” added Ms. Jenkins, getting up, “I’ll be waiting for more good news.”

Nodding, for lack of words, Yisun took her leave of her teacher and headed for her locker to switch books before her lesson with Yoongi. On her way there, she bumped into Jang-mi, who immediately started teasing her about her cheerful air.

“Well, well, looks like someone’s been complimented by a teacher again…” she smirked at Yisun.

“What?! How can you tell??” exclaimed Yisun, naively, horrified at the thought of being so transparent.

Jang-mi broke into laughter. “Oh, Sunnie…” she stood, shaking her head.

“What…” asked Yisun, innocently

“You ALWAYS make that face when a teacher tells you something nice! You’re such a er for praise!” exclaimed Jang-mi, still chuckling. “So what was it this time?” she went on, ignoring Yisun who had started sulking.

“Ms. Jenkins said I was doing a good job at teaching Yoongi. He passed his latest test” explained Yisun.

“Oooh…” said Jang-mi, laughing at Yisun, who was pouting again. “So does that mean you can stop tutoring him now?” she went on, hopefully.

Yisun shook her head, “I’m heading there right now”

Jang-mi frowned.

“What?” asked Yisun, wondering why that would bother her friend.

“Nothing… it’s just, we don’t ever get to hang out after school anymore, you’re always tutoring him…”

“Are you jealous?” asked Yisun, something of a smirk peaking on her face.

“Sheesh... as if!” chuckled Jang-mi, giving Yisun a friendly push.

“Eheh” Yisun chuckled with her, “we’re still best friends you know!” and then she pulled out her tongue at her, “I gotta go now, but I’ll mail you later, ‘kay?”

“Sure, bye” waved Jang-mi, but Yisun had already run off.

***

Yoongi was already there when Yisun arrived.

“You’re late” he spat at her from the windowsill.

If Yisun hadn’t known better, she’d have thought he was in a really foul mood, but over the weeks she had slowly begun to understand Yoongi’s strange sense of humor and thought that, perhaps, this was just one more thing he probably found hilarious. And, indeed, not 3 seconds later, he broke into a smirk.

“Sorry about that, Ms. Jenkins wanted to see me after class… But you’re really no one to talk to me about being late, Min Yoongi.” she turned around and raised her eyebrows at him.

“What did Jenkins want to talk to you about?” asked the young man, offhandedly, pushing himself off the window and walking over to her.

“Sheesh, Yoongi, she’s a teacher! You should show her more respect!” exclaimed Yisun, in an offended manner.

“Oh please, spare me! She’s not here, is she? Not like I’m saying it to her face… god, you’re such a stiff!” retorted Yoongi, rolling his eyes and sitting down on the desk in front of her.

Yisun still eyed him suspiciously and started pulling things out of her bag.

“So what did she want?” Yoongi asked again, “It wasn’t about me, was it?”

“As a matter of fact, it was about you” answered Yisun, a small smile peaking at the corner of her lips as Yoongi tried to hide a worried look.

“Don’t worry…” she added, after deciding Yoongi had been squirming long enough, “she only wanted to congratulate me for doing a good job. She told me you passed your last test.”

“Oh, that? Yeah I know. I got a B. But that’s old news. We were given those results on Monday” replied Yoongi in a bored manner.

“You got a B?!? Ms. Jenkins only told me you got a passing grade; I assumed you’d gotten a C- or something… a B!! Yoongi that’s wonderful!!” exclaimed Yisun, clasping her hands together.

Yoongi was now staring at her as if she was some kind of alien.

“What? Aren’t you happy you got such a good grade?” she asked him, wondering why he wasn’t delighted.

“Not everyone in the world thinks good grades are the sole purpose to life, you know” retorted the teenage boy, still eyeing her funny.

“Well for you, such an improvement is… hey! Are you saying all I think about is school?!” exclaimed Yisun, suddenly getting Yoongi’s insinuations.

He stared at her, smirking. Only this time the mirth actually seemed to reach his eyes.

“That is NOT all I think about!” she retorted, trying to look and sound believable.

“Sure, I believe you…” said Yoongi, chuckling slightly.

“well, in any case…” said Yisun, trying to keep her cool; being teased about her views on academics was something she hated, and the fact that Yoongi was the one doing the teasing only added fuel to the flame.

“Aww, come on, can’t you take a joke!” said Yoongi, shrugging the whole thing off, “so what about a movie, eh?”

“Huh?” Yisun’s frustration disappeared to be replaced by confusion.

“First class we had here, you showed me a movie, you said we were gonna watch more but that never happened” stated Yoongi, matter-of-factly.

“Oh, that!” exclaimed Yisun, louder than necessary, “yeah, yeah… that…” she drifted into thought.

“Well?”

“Huh?” Yisun snapped out of her bubble, “oh yes, I promised that, didn’t I? Well, you see, it’s getting kind of expensive for me, what with buying all those magazines and all that… money isn’t growing out of my ears, you know, and at the moment, I’m kinda…”

“You’re buying all that stuff?!?” exclaimed Yoongi.

“Well yes, you see, dvds and magazines don’t grow on trees” she sarcastically replied to his stupid question.

 Yoongi rolled his eyes, “I meant – I thought the school was paying for that”

A burst of sarcastic laughter came out of Yisun’s lips. “You think the school would wanna waste any extra money on you?”

Yoongi frowned. Hurt.

“Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean…” Yisun quickly apologized, once she realized what she had just said.

“Of course” he replied, his face hard and stern, like it used to be at the beginning, when he wasn’t coming to the class and simply bullying her.

“I didn’t… I mean… it’s just that, well, you were doing really badly at the beginning of the semester; failing and skipping class and all… it’s not about you as a person… I didn’t mean like…”

Yoongi’s face softened. He wanted to smile at her like that, being so sorry that she had said what so many people were probably thinking. He’d have said it too, he knew it was true. And there she was taking everything to heart again…

“… please don’t be mad” finished Yisun.

“So money’s the only issue then?” his usual look plastered back on his face.

“Did you hear anything I said?” asked Yisun, confused once again.

“Yeah. Who’s mad?” said Yoongi, dismissingly, “So basically, you’re saying if I pay for ‘em, we can watch as many as I want?”

Yisun tried not to smile.

“Well not as many as you want… we can’t watch one every day, you know…” she answered, trying to put on a scolding look. “And if we do start movies again, you’re gonna have to do proper reports on ‘em, now that you’re better…”

“Alrighty then, let’s get on with it!” exclaimed Yoongi, “I have to go shopping after this!”

Yisun rolled her eyes.