Heart Abroad, Part 14
Title: Heart Abroad
Pairings/Characters: Jaejoong/Yamapi
Rating/Warnings: T for language and (eventual) making out
Disclaimer: I own nothing; written just for fun
Summary: Yamapi graduates university and takes a gap year to teach Japanese at a Korean high school. A lot of things happen, like life and friendship, and love.
A/N: Happy 30th birthday, Koyama~!
Heart Abroad, Part 14
“Sensei! How do you say…?”
Yamapi jumps at the sound of a husky voice in what he thought was an empty classroom and almost trips over a student when he whirls around in surprise. It’s Baekhyun, chewing on his bottom lip with eyebrows raised expectantly. Yamapi sighs and sags against the blackboard, probably dusting his jacket in a film of yellow chalk dust he realizes too late.
“Say that again?” Yamapi asks, shaking his head to clear the thrum of adrenaline. He’s pretty sure he’s never heard that Korean word before.
“How do you say…?” Baekhyun repeats, looking up through his fringe.
“Was the last part of that ‘love’?” Yamapi asks, rubbing at the bridge of his nose.
“Yes!” Baekhyun’s face lights up. “Jjak sarang,” he repeats again, very deliberately, and this time Yamapi can at least pick up on the sounds.
“I have no idea.” Yamapi smiles in amusement as Baekhyun’s face crumples in dramatic defeat. “Here, use my dictionary.” Yamapi opens his naver.dic app and hands his phone over to the scowling boy. Baekhyun thumbs hangul into the search box and hits enter, the tip of his tongue sticking out the corner of his mouth in concentration.
“...this one? Maybe?” He holds up the screen and Yamapi squints at the first entry: unrequited love. Oh brother.
“When you love somebody, but they don’t love you back?” Baekhyun nods his head decidedly in confirmation of this description but all of his former joy from their successful communication has seeped out of his features. He actually looks really tired under all that eyeliner, like he hasn’t been sleeping well for...weeks, possibly.
“Yeah.” He drops his gaze and slides an elbow onto the wooden chest in front of the blackboard that serves as a podium. His jacket is missing and both his sleeves are rolled, or rather, shoved up his forearms.
“These kanji are pronounced kata omoi.” Yamapi grabs a chunk of blue chalk from a flimsy paper box on the chest and scrawls the characters with oversized furigana onto the blackboard. “Literally, it means ‘one-sided love’. Does it make sense?” he asks, not sure if Baekhyun can understand the explanation in Japanese. He nods.
“It’s almost the same in Korean, like, not…” Baekhyun brings his hands up in front of him and then splits them into different levels. “Not…”
“Unequal? Uneven?” Yamapi guesses, tapping his fingers against the chalk. He loves puzzles, especially abstract ones.
“Uneven,” Baekhyun agrees with another heavy nod.
“The idioms have some lexical similarity!” Yamapi notes, underlining the words on the board. Baekhyun stares blankly at him and Yamapi tries not to blush. He should stop using obscure academic vocabulary the students probably haven’t learned yet. “I mean, is there any particular reason you asked? Are you reading a manga, or something?”
“O-oh, um, no!” Now it’s Baekhyun’s turn to blush. “I’m not reading anything!” His volume rasps even louder than normal, which for Baekhyun means loud. This manga or whatever he’s reading must be mortifyingly sappy shoujo trash if just thinking about it makes him turn red.
“Baekhyunnie! Hurry uuuuup!” That sounds like Chanyeol in the hallway. All of these kids are loud.
“Bye, Sensei! I have to--!” Baekhyun spins on his heel, freezes, then dashes for the door.
“Baekhyun, wait, you--”
The bell for 1st period rings, a whiny female voice belting The Saccharine Ballad Of The Week drowning out Yamapi’s voice. He sighs and starts to unpack the graded vocab quizzes he needs to hand back to 2-1. They’ve lost some focus since they came back from Chuseok break. Maybe he should twist things up a little to give everyone a change of pace….
“Yo! Tomo-sensei!” At the sound of the sliding door banging open Yamapi turns to greet his students with a wave. Chanyeol and a tall boy named Jongin or Jonghyun or something pile into the room practically on top of each other. Yamapi feels a little dizzy trying to trace which limbs belong to which body.
“Konnichiwa~!” He wipes his dusty palms on his gray flannel trousers. It’s starting to get a little chilly in the mornings and after dark, but when the sun is up he still sweats as if it were August. Yamapi opens the top button of his shirt and tugs at the collar with an impatient finger.
“Whoa! What does that say?”
“What?” Yamapi grimaces at the faint tickle of chalk dust settling over the back of his throat.
“That!” Chanyeol points excitedly to the kanji messily transcribed on the board in thin blue chalk.
“Oh that~! Just wait a few minutes and you’ll find out!” Yamapi winks at Chanyeol who pouts in vain protest as he slumps down into his first row seat and starts jiggling his leg with enough nervous energy to power a small generator.
Yamapi figures he might as well open with a short idiom lesson to jazz up today’s thrilling reading over the history of Japanese Economics. Also because someone has stolen the blackboard eraser, again.
“Hurry up and sit down!” Chanyeol yells as Joonmyun ambles into the room and lingers in front of the seat next to the door as if contemplating whether he should join his assigned desk mate or choose the road less traveled and steal someone else’s seat.
“What’s the big rush?” Jongin (Yamapi just finished shuffling through the quizzes to confirm his name) drawls. “Since when do you care if class starts on time?”
“I hate waiting!” Chanyeol whines loudly through his nose, completely ignoring his classmate’s implied request for a contextual explanation of his out of character behavior. He soon distracts himself despite his vocal complaints, using his hands to sketch diagrams in the air about some kind of...chemistry experiment, or something involving laboratory equipment Yamapi doesn’t quite catch.
The bell rings again soon enough, the last few stragglers scrambling through the back door and snatching textbooks from their lockers before slinking to their seats. Jongin trips a short kid named Kyungsoo on his way to the second row and gets whacked upside the head in revenge.
“Good morning, guys!”
“Good morning, teacher!” Yamapi winces at the wall of noise that envelops him. Well, at least they aren’t in too much danger of falling asleep on him today, although usually the mid-morning hours aren’t too hard on anybody.
“So, before we start our reading today, I thought I’d teach you something fun!” Yamapi smiles and waits for the scattered whoops of anticipation to die down before he continues. “Does anyone know these kanji?”
Blank stares.
“Oh, come on! You should at least know this second one from hanja class, right?”
“Kata...omo...ee?” a student in the back sounds out the furigana syllables hesitantly.
“Yes!” Yamapi says encouragingly. “Kata omoi. It means…” he turns to write the Korean translation on the board, hoping he’s remembering the spelling correctly or else he’ll never live it down, “one-sided love, uneven love.”
“Sensei! Ok? You ok?” Chanyeol asks with a gasp.
“Huh?” Yamapi scratches his nose.
“Your heart...is ok?” the student asks again.
“Oh! Haha, yes! I’m fine.” Yamapi grins shyly. “Another student asked me about this phrase earlier, and I just thought it’d be interesting for you all to learn, too.”
"This gonna help us on the JLPT?" Jongin raises his hand to ask skeptically without waiting to be called on. A few students snicker.
"Nothing is going to help you if you don't speak properly!" Yamapi scolds with smile, wagging a finger in Jongin’s direction. He flips his bleached hair in a display of annoyance.
Yamapi reaches up to smudge the board clean with the heel of his hand. “Ok, our reading starts on page 153. Page 1-5-3.” A few students groan as he flips through his copy of the textbook to the new chapter, cultural lesson over for the day.
“One-sided love…” Chanyeol mutters under his breath as he methodically turns the pages of his book, but still loud enough for the whole front row to hear.
Yamapi looks around the room to make sure everyone’s on the same page and notices that Jongin has somehow already managed to doze off and drool all over page 152. It’s going to be a long morning.
Yamapi’s starting to learn some of their names now, although he remembers fewer than he’d admit to their faces. By the third time through a lesson, when he’s practically got the text memorized down to the punctuation and doesn’t need to watch the page word for word, Yamapi surreptitiously studies the class roster, trying to match the blurry photos to the sleepy faces in front of him.
It’s easier when he has something personal associated with a name to link to a face. Kim Kibum leaves drawings of European architecture on his papers before falling asleep on top of them. Kim Jongin just falls asleep. Do Kyungsoo is pretty quiet but picks up on new grammar patterns quickly and always arranges his pencil case neatly during the last ten minutes of class. As previously mentioned, Chanyeol and Baekhyun are just loud. Especially together, although that only happens at lunch and in the halls since they’re in different homerooms, fortunately for Yamapi’s ears.
Yamapi has the beginnings of a headache sprouting tendrils of pain along the sides of his skull by the end of the period. No one but Jongin fell asleep on him, but everyone was restless, stirring in their seats, ruffling the pages of their texts, and sighing loudly.
By lunchtime, it’s a full blown migraine and Yamapi is seriously contemplating attempting a nap on his hard, cold desk and just avoiding the noise of the cafeteria altogether. He only makes it halfway between the stairs and the office door when Heechul pops around the corner and grabs his wrist.
“Long time no see!” Heechul says in slightly accented Japanese.
“Oh, yeah,” Yamapi nods.
“You always...women...sitting together!” Heechul’s eyes are narrowed, either in annoyance or conniving or both.
“Excuse me?” Yamapi’s head aches way too much to produce full sentences in Korean right now.
“You,” Heechul squeezes Yamapi’s wrist til it throbs. “Me,” he points to his own nose and blinks. “Together. Sit. Eat?” Heechul leans forward until Yamapi gets distracted by arch of his perfectly shaped eyebrows. Wait, is Heechul-hyung wearing eyeliner?
"Eat?" he repeats hopefully.
“Ok,” Yamapi nods, trying to slip his wrist out of Heechul's grasp. “Let’s eat.” The sooner they eat, the sooner he can go take a nap on his glass desk top.
“Let’s go!” Heechul leans back with a self-satisfied smile and starts pulling Yamapi towards the exit.
“Uh, where? Where...going?” Yamapi manages to ask when Heechul pulls out a pair of sunglasses and he realizes they’re not heading for the cafeteria.
“Lunch.” Heechul pulls a key ring from his pocket and tosses it once in the air, catching the remote between two fingers as it descends. “You like noodles, yes?”
“Of course!” Heechul laughs, his mouth wide open and his voice almost as grating as Baekhyun’s.
“Well, get in then. If everyday...eat...cafeteria kimchi,...skin...ruined.” Heechul shudders at the thought and drops Yamapi’s wrist, giving him a shove towards the passenger’s side of a sleek silver Hyundai.
Yamapi gets in, slowly settling back against the black leather seat. He’s a little surprised to see a few tiny action figures that appear to be characters from some anime dangling from the rearview mirror. He leans forward, trying to peer at the faces without seeming nosy, but he doesn’t recognize them anyway. It’s been awhile since he’s had free time to watch TV, and the One Piece episodes he’s been binge watching recently aren’t exactly the latest hip thing.
“Were you expecting Hello Kitty?” Heechul asks with a hoarse laugh, tying up his shoulder length hair with a rubber band between his dextrous fingers.
“No?” Yamapi slides a knuckle along the side of his nose, massaging nervously. He’s not sure what he was expecting, actually.
“Because it’s ok,...Hello Kitty...like, too.” Heechul reaches across Yamapi to pop open the glovebox and pulls out a small package. He holds up a box of Hello Kitty bandaids and rattles it with a sharp grin.
“Oh, nice.” Heechul replaces the bandaids and buckles in.
“Quickly,...do it now!” He adjusts his sunglasses and keys the ignition.
“Huh?”
“...safety belt! Now,...or I’ll beat up...pretty face!” It takes Yamapi an agonizing ten seconds to realize Heechul just wants him to buckle in.
“Ah, my seat belt!” Yamapi hurries to comply, his fingers clumsy with the twisted belt. His face feels hot and the back of his head is constricting painfully. Most of the time Korean and Japanese share the same English loanwords, but that expectation makes it all the more confusing when they differ.
“Here we go!” Heechul pulls out of the parking lot and doesn’t turn on the radio, apparently preferring to chatter away at Yamapi in rapid Korean. Yamapi nods along pleasantly, relieved he doesn’t have to carry a conversation or drag grudging Japanese out of slouchy teens for an hour.
It doesn’t take long to get to the restaurant, located in a narrow alley a few blocks off the main drag through town. Heechul parks behind a low building that has recently been slapped with a hasty white washing, although a few inches of crumbling brick are visible in an uneven band around the top, just under the eaves.
“We are here!” Heechul announces, pulling off his sunglasses with a flourish and tucking them into the breast pocket of his leather jacket that should be entirely too hot for late September at midday. At least Yamapi would be sweating in it, although now that he thinks about it, he’s not sure he’s ever seen Heechul actually sweat, not even in August.
Yamapi starts to open his door when he notices with a yelp of surprise that he totally forgot to change shoes before they left school.
“What?” Heechul asks abruptly.
“My...shoes,” Yamapi confesses sheepishly, torn between embarrassment and panicking.
“Oh, that.” Heechul gets out of the car and motions for Yamapi to follow with an impatient wave. “We……..school, don’t change shoes.” Yamapi blinks at him, feeling entirely foolish standing in the middle of a parking lot in a tailored suit and slippers. “See? …..me too.”
Heechul points at his feet and Yamapi follows his motion down to a pair of glitter lace-up canvas shoes with a slight heel, definitely slippers, but not obviously so unless you are looking closely. Of course Heechul’s inside shoes are fashionable, unlike Yamapi’s cheap, black, knock-off Nike sandals.
“Secret, it’s a secret,” Heechul drops his voice to a loud whisper.
“What?”
“If...leave school, ...vice principal...don’t tell, it’s...like illegal, or something.” Heechul shrugs and grinds his heel into the broken asphalt.
“Illegal?” Yamapi’s mushy brain immediately seizes on the word he remembers from customs paperwork and visa applications and the packet of bilingual legal information for alien residents in Korea Shige shoved into his hands and forced him to read before leaving, just as a deterrence in case Yamapi decided to take up drug dealing or prostitution on the side, or so he said. (Although Yamapi thinks it was more out of a sadistic urge to make his senpai suffer just as much as summer classes were kicking Shige’s ass).
“Technically, I guess? But don’t worry,” Heechul rests a placating hand on Yamapi’s shoulder. “Other teachers….all the time.” He slides his hand across Yamapi’s shoulders to pull him into an awkward side hug and pushes him ahead towards the building.
Heechul swings open the heavy glass door with a long diagonal crack across the surface, a tinny bell jangling above their heads making Yamapi wince. Heechul saunters a few steps into the empty restaurant and stops halfway to the counter to look around.
There is a pink dust ruffle with yellow honey bees under the glass countertop and a white cross with a cluster of matching ribbons and silk flowers is tacked to the wall behind the register. A large white calendar from Park’s Best Tire Land and Auto Bike Center hangs on the adjoining wall.
“Hellooooo~!” Heechul calls. “Where is my favorite adorkable-dongsaeng-who-can’t-.....-or-sit-still-but-I-still-....-and-love-him-anyway!”
“Heechul-hyung?” A slightly surprised voice calls, followed by a fuzzy blonde head peeking through the white lace curtains behind the counter. “Could you...and keep it down? ….has a headache.” The blonde guy emerges from the kitchen with a slight frown and wriggles his shoulders inside his oversized silver sweater before folding his arms across the front of a black canvas apron tied loosely around his skinny waist.
“Aw, why so cranky? Sleeping...until...yesterday?” Heechul moves forward to lean across the counter, reaching up for the blonde guy’s head to pull him into a hug or some other more embarrassing form of skinship, but his target ducks out of the way with a practiced smoothness that makes Yamapi grin and think of Ryo.
“Go sit down!” The blonde guy points to a table to his right against the wall. “Annyeonghaseyo, respected customer!” He pastes on a bright smile in bows in Yamapi’s direction.
“Annyeonghaseyo,” Yamapi returns the bow, straightening up slowly when his head gives a particularly vicious throb at the sudden change of altitude.
Heechul sits cross legged behind the table, his back to the door, and pulls off his jacket with a groan. Yamapi slowly sinks down to his knees on the other side, hesitant because Boa had told him to make sure the most senior member of the group sits farthest from the door at things like dinners. Heechul most notice his unease though, because he reassures Yamapi with a wink, “I need to keep an eye on Hyukjae, the little brat.” He points towards the counter and Yamapi nods with a sigh of relief, reaching for the utensil box as the blonde guy, Hyukjae, reappears behind the counter with a tray.
“Have some tea!” he says, kneeling beside the low table to unload two small plastic cups and a liter of cold tea in a tupperware bottle.
“Thank you,” Yamapi says with a small smile, popping the lid on the bottle to pour for Heechul.
“This is Lee Hyukjae, former classmate and current brat.” Heechul jerks a thumb in the waiter’s direction and Hyukjae scowls. “And this is Tomo, my foreigner~!” Yamapi almost chokes on a mouthful of tea. No one has referred to him as their “foreigner” before.
“Oh, hi!” Hyukjae turns back to Yamapi with a bright smile, shaking his heavy bangs out of his eyes. “I heard about you!”
“Really?” Yamapi sets his cup down before spills it or he chokes for real.
“Yup! I think Hyung likes you!” Hyukjae teases with a wink, getting to his feet. Yamapi notices one of his socks is gray and the other is a dull white.
“Hyukjae...Japanese good!” Heechul says with a slow, curling grin. “...he...more than me...Japanese much better!” Hyukjae rolls his eyes and tucks the plastic tray under his arm.
“He thinks he is...genius,” the waiter starts in hesitant Japanese and Yamapi nods encouragingly. “But, really, Hyung is...he studied English at university, but...English...no good!” He whispers the last few words behind his hand and smiles until his eyes disappear, his cheeks flushing pink with amusement as he hurries back to the kitchen.
“He said...I am English genius?” Heechul asks with an expectant grin, spinning his plastic cup in the water ring it’s left on the table.
“Uh, sure, yeah,” Yamapi agrees. Heechul closes his eyes and leans back with a smile.
“Good little brat!” Yamapi straightens his chopsticks and tries to think of what to say next. Maybe Heechul will start talking again and he can just listen. That would be easiest for today. He still has to go teach three more classes after this and his head might implode if this migraine pulls its tentacles any tighter around his cranium.
“Jajangmyeon,” Heechul announces, sitting up. “Ok?”
“Yes?” Yamapi agrees, not sure what to, exactly. He does like jajangmyeon though, so it’s probably safe. One never can tell with Heechul-hyung, though.
“This shop...best food, famous food. Jajangmyeon.”
“Ok,” Yamapi nods again. “I like jajangmyeon.”
“Aw! …so good…! You...becoming Korean...soon!” Heechul pats Yamapi’s hand which is still resting awkwardly on the table next to his chopsticks. Yamapi smiles and is secretly relieved he didn’t pat his head. Fitting in is good, but he is still Japanese.
“Hyukjae-ya!” Heechul tips back his head to holler. “Two jajangmyeon! ...lots of sauce...like! Don’t forget!”
“Hyung! I told you, be quiet, you…!” Hyukjae stomps out to the counter to hiss at them, hands resting on bony hips. Heechul sniffs and shakes his hair loose from the rubber band, slipping it up his wrist. Hyukjae spins on his heel with a click of his tongue and marches right back out with two large bowls of steaming noodles which he plunks down on their table. “Enjoy your meal! Eat a lot!” he urges Yamapi, pointedly ignoring Heechul as he leaves.
“Brat,” Heechul mutters again, but he’s already smiling down at his bowl of gloopy black sauce and thick, greasy noodles. “Eat a lot!” Heechul starts mixing his sauce into the noodles, dabbing up the table with a paper napkin in his left hand whenever any spatters out of the bowl.
“Let’s eat now,” Yamapi murmurs politely before grabbing up his chopsticks to start stirring. It smells as delicious as it looks gross, fragrant bits of fried pork and green onion complementing the rich scent of the fermented soybean sauce. Heechul takes a massive bite, slurping in the dangling noodles and no longer caring where the sauce flies. Yamapi takes a smaller bite. He doesn’t really like getting his face messy and his shirt, as usual, is white.
“Delicious?” Heechul asks around his mouthful. Yamapi nods and gives him a thumbs up, still chewing. The noodles are not quite as thick as Japanese udon but have a lovely chewy texture. He loves noodles! Today is a good day.
“So,” Heechul announces, rearranging his legs in his tight skinny jeans and wiping at his mouth. “I decided.”
“Yes?” Yamapi looks up from swirling some translucent chopped onion around in the sauce.
“Me,” Heechul points to his face, slipping back into his high pitched, excruciatingly slow, I’m-talking-to-a-clueless-foreigner-now register. “You, teacher.” He stops to give Yamapi a wide smile.
“Teacher?” Yamapi repeats, because he’s not sure what else to say.
“Yes!” Heechul claps his palms together lightly as if his pet dog just did an amusing trick. Yamapi wonders if Heechul likes dogs. Somehow, he seems more like a cat person, all sleek confidence and annoyed superiority with a redeeming touch of sensitive insight and loyalty.
“Korea,” Heechul says, making a wide circle with the spoon gripped in his fist. “So, I teach you,” he pauses again to stare at Yamapi, “Korean!” He drops his spoon into his bowl and folds his hands triumphantly, dropping his chin to rest on the bridge of his laced fingers. “Ok?”
“Oh,” Yamapi nods slowly, finally catching up. “You want to...want to tutor me? Practicing Korean?”
“Yes, yes!”
“Ok, sure!” If Heechul really wants to, Yamapi wouldn’t mind in the least. Anything’s got to be easier than trying to learn Korean from the dopey cartoon character in his phrase book while Erika snickers derisively in the background at his pronunciation. (Hey, Korean phonetics are hard, ok?)
“Let’s begin.” Heechul stabs his chopsticks into a clump of noodles to rest and pulls a pen out of his jacket, all business. “First word...reeeeaaady?” Yamapi nods. Heechul grabs a clean napkin from the dispenser on his left. “First word: K-wen,”
“K-wen,” Yamapi hurries to repeat as soon as he realizes Heechul wants him to.
“...chaaaan….”
“...chaaaan…”
“...ah!”
“Kwenchanah?” Yamapi says questioningly, wondering if Heechul is really trying to teach him the Korean word for ‘ok’. It was on the first page of his phrasebook, actually, right next to annyeonghaseyo and kamsahamnida.
“Wow! Pronunciation, good!” Heechul claps lightly again, whether congratulating his pupil on an amazing feat of diction gymnastics or himself on his smashing success as a language instructor Yamapi’s not sure.
“Kwenchanah, I know,” Yamapi says again, trying to politely steer this lesson in a more constructive direction.
“You know? What does it mean?” Heechul looks surprised, forgetting momentarily to slur his Korean into a slow ooze.
“Um, ‘ok’?” Yamapi offers in English. It earns him a pleased smile from his teacher.
“Fucking perfect!” Heechul hunches over his bowl for another mouthful. Yamapi wonders briefly if he was quoting lyrics from that one English song that was on the OST of that one drama Rina watched religiously a couple springs ago but figures it’s too much trouble to ask. He shrugs and stuff his mouth full of noodles, too.
The rest of their ~lesson is much less stressful, once Yamapi gets brave enough to demonstrate the extent of his Korean skills so Heechul can adjust appropriately. Heechul coos and rasps his approval when Yamapi recites back the profanity he taught him at the beginning of the semester with only two mistakes. (It is a rather unfortunate coincidence, but Yamapi still finds it incredibly amusing that a particularly offensive insult sounds nearly identical to the Japanese for ‘miracle’, at least if you say it quickly.)
They are scraping their bowls for the last bits of slimy onion, the drying sauce staining the white plastic in uneven streaks, by the time Yamapi starts to squirm and look around for a clock. He doesn’t want to be rude by making an obvious gesture like pulling out his phone, but he needs to get back in time to teach 5th period.
Hyukjae comes out just as Heechul shoves his dirty silverware back with a contented sigh, though, and Yamapi sighs reciprocally in relief as Hyukjae clears their empty dishes onto his tray.
“How was the food?” he asks Yamapi in Korean with a smile, just slow enough to enunciate each word clearly.
“It was very good!” Yamapi means it, too. This stuff was much better than the mushy white noodles and bland sauce he now knows is a sad excuse for jajangmyeon that the Korean restaurant near Ryo’s apartment serves.
“Oh, that’s a relief!” Hyukjae says with a loud laugh. “Foreigners...sometimes...can’t eat.”
“Really, I liked it!” Yamapi smiles wider this time, not caring about any black bits that are probably stuck in his teeth.
“I would...said so,...after...first bite but...no yelling,” Heechul grouses, folding his arms against his chest and giving Hyukjae a dark glare from behind his fringe of red hair.
“Hey!” Hyukjae protests, “It’s not my fault…!”
“Is something...problem?” Yamapi asks tentatively, tugging at a damp curl sticking uncomfortably to his jawline.
“Idiot...sick!” Heechul shakes his head. “Don’t worry, though.”
“You...Hyukjae-ssi...sick?” Yamapi looks across to Heechul and then back up at their waiter in alarm. Hyukjae laughs, his elbow jerking awkwardly and he almost drops the tray.
“No,....sick.” Yamapi frowns in concentration, trying to sort out the tangle of sounds into distinct words. “The cook, the chef,” Hyukjae tries again and Yamapi nods, finally understanding.
“He...headache. Sick,” Heechul repeats, wiping his hands on his jeans. “Idiot! I hope you...cooked our food,...not sick boy, right?” Heechul jabs an accusing finger at the waiter.
“Hyung,” he whines offendedly, “who do you think…? Huh? Sheesh!” Hyukjae wrinkles his brow and restacks the plastic cups that are starting to slide haphazardly into the kimchi dish. “Do you want...back there...check? ...sleeping, really,...promise.” His full lower lip pushes out in a glum little pout and Yamapi tries not to laugh as Hyukjae opens his mouth slightly to blow his bleached hair out of his eyes with a huff. Heechul just brushes him off with an exaggerated wave.
“It’s almost time...back to school.” Heechul ducks his head to inspect his nails as Hyukjae lugs the tray away.
“Yeah,” Yamapi echoes, thinking ruefully of the cool glass desk top waiting to pillow his cheek back at the office and then of the quickly diminishing minutes of freedom he has left. The class right after lunch break can be murder, sometimes, although 6th period is sometimes pre-meditated 1st degree. He hopes the cafeteria served something exciting but not too filling today because the last thing he needs is to play EMT to 33 critical cases of food coma for an hour.
A soft gasp from Heechul rouses Yamapi from his internal moaning and he looks up to see him whip out a pale pink emory board and start smoothing his pinky nail with a vigor Yamapi has only seen Heechul expend on activities related to food and fashion.
“Hyung! ...so unsanitary!” Hyukjae scolds, wiping his hands on a towel behind the register.
“Don't...me...unsanitary!” Heechul snarls, pulling a packet of blueberry scented lysol wipes from a pocket. Yamapi wants to ask him where he can buy a jacket with so many pockets but he kinda doubts Heechul will tell him all his shopping secrets, at least on the first date. Heechul gives his nail two last swipes with the file and holds his finger up for inspection. He carefully wipes his hands, superficially wipes at the table, and slowly stands, stretching his arms up to the ceiling.
“So full,” Yamapi mumbles sleepily as he starts to get up. His head does feel a little better now that’s he eaten a proper meal, although he’s even more in need of a nap than before. Coffee, as soon as they get back to the gyomushil. Yes.
“Go,...get candy.” Heechul points to a table by the door before turning to the register. Yamapi shuffles towards the door and stops in front of the low table sporting a lopsided potted plant that would hit him about waist high if it was on the ground. Next to the plant is a large glass bowl filled with white sugar candies. It’s looks kind of like a fishbowl, the glass container. Yamapi hopes no fish actually lived in there, though, because the candies aren’t individually wrapped.
He picks two off the top of the pile, making sure they aren’t ones that had touched the glass, just in case.
“Jahhh,” Heechul sighs loudly, coming up behind Yamapi and poking at his shoulder. “Let’s go, dongsaeng.”
“Is that a fish…a fish…?”
“A fish bowl?” Hyukjae supplies helpfully, coming to a stop beside Heechul. “Yes! Isn’t...cute idea? It was...idea!”
“Donghae is the cook,” Heechul says. “The sick cook. His idea.”
“Fish bowl,” Yamapi repeats. “But that’s….unsanitary!” he points out with a laugh.
“How...you know...word?” Heechul turns his head to stare incredulously at Yamapi out of the corner of his eye.
“Oh, um, Joonmyun-kun,” Yamapi scratches the back of his head with his free hand, trying to remember Joonmyun’s family name. “From class 2-1. Always...cleaning...blackboard, and cleaning the...the--”
“Ah, Kim Joonmyun-student!” Heechul slaps Yamapi’s shoulder in recognition. “He’s the class president of 2-1, yes?” Heechul takes one of the candies from Yamapi’s palm and pops it in his mouth.
“Oh, Kim Joonmyun? I...coach...soccer team!” Hyukjae says excitedly, bouncing on his heels.
“You coach...at our school?” Yamapi hasn’t ever seen him before, but then again, he’s never seen the soccer team practice either.
“Coach...middle school,” Hyukjae amends. “And not unsanitary! Geez! This fishbowl...new...definitely!” He frowns again and Heechul pokes him in the cheek.
“Noisy. Come on, foreign teacher, let’s go!”
“Thank you for the food!” Yamapi bows before turning to follow Heechul out the door. “It was definitely delicious!” Hyukjae smiles and waves as the bell rings above their heads.
“Thank you for lunch, Hyung!” Yamapi says as soon as they get back to the car. “And the Korean lesson.”
“Now,...obligated...every Wednesday lunch,...together…we eat,” Heechul says with a demanding sniff. Yamapi smiles into the lapel of his jacket and straightens his seat--no, safety belt.
Heechul disappears into the admin office with a flippant wave as soon they arrive at school but Yamapi still has a few minutes of lunch break left so he heads straight for the coffee table.
“Oh, hi!” Jieun, the music teacher, wiggles her fingers at Yamapi in greeting as he approaches.
“Oh, hello!”
“Long time no see!” Jieun elbows Ms. Park, who is stirring instant coffee mix in a small paper cup. Ms. Park drops the small spoon to whack Jieun on the arm with a dark glare before looking up at Yamapi with a sunny smile.
“Annyeonghaseyo!” Yamapi bows slightly to her and accepts the cup of coffee she holds out to him.
“So, Shinhye’s engaged. You knew that, right?”
“Um, no?” Yamapi glances towards Ms. Park’s hands, and sure enough, she is sporting a chunky diamond ring on one hand. “Sorry if that was announced via faculty messenger system, I probably missed it because I’m not too good at reading Korean yet…”
“Haha, no! Of course it wasn’t!” Yamapi smiles at the bright laugh his joke elicits. Jieun is pretty cute. “But anyway, you should come to the wedding. It’s in December.” Ms. Park nods eagerly.
“Oh, well sure, if she really wants me to come...”
“Of course. All the teachers will go together.” Jieun takes a delicate sip from her own paper cup. “Ms. Park is engaged to the badminton teacher, so basically, everyone at school is invited!”
“The badminton teacher?” Yamapi splutters. “Mr. Kang?” Somehow he can’t really imagine those two together, whether or not they share the same enthusiasm for living.
“No!” both women exclaim in unison, Jieun rolling her eyes and Ms. Park laughing aloud.
“The other badminton teacher, Jung Yonghwa.” Jieun taps her wedge heel against the tile floor and points to the other end of the office where a few of the male teachers are chatting in front of the fridge. “The guy in green.”
“Oh.” He hasn’t really noticed the teacher before, but he looks much more like the kind of guy Yamapi would expect to be Ms. Park’s fiancee, tall, thin, and with a sort of melancholy air about him as if he spends his weekends composing angsty poetry between applications of expensive facial masks. Ok, well Yamapi can’t really see him that well from this distance, but his skin does look really smooth and fair. You tend to pick up on things like that when you work in the fashion industry.
“Isn’t he handsome?” Ms. Park sighs in Korean, toodling her fingers at her fiancee.
“He has really nice skin,” Yamapi comments absently, taking another sip of coffee.
“I’ll tell him you said that,” Jieun says drily, “and he’ll spend all of 5th period primping in the bathroom!”
“Speaking of which…” Yamapi glances up at the clock above the table with a soft groan. “I’ve got a class.”
“Me too…” Jieun sighs and adjusts her oversized glasses on the bridge of her nose.
“Thank you for your invitation!” Yamapi bows to Ms. Park and hurries to collect his things. 2-3 is going to have a harder time with GDP and cost analysis explanations than 2-1 did, he has a sinking feeling. Oh well, it’s Wednesday. The weekend isn’t too far off, and next week their lesson is on Worldcup soccer teams, thank goodness.
"Have a good class!" The ladies wave Yamapi out of the office as the bell starts to ring.
Pairings/Characters: Jaejoong/Yamapi
Rating/Warnings: T for language and (eventual) making out
Disclaimer: I own nothing; written just for fun
Summary: Yamapi graduates university and takes a gap year to teach Japanese at a Korean high school. A lot of things happen, like life and friendship, and love.
A/N: Happy 30th birthday, Koyama~!
Heart Abroad, Part 14
“Sensei! How do you say…?”
Yamapi jumps at the sound of a husky voice in what he thought was an empty classroom and almost trips over a student when he whirls around in surprise. It’s Baekhyun, chewing on his bottom lip with eyebrows raised expectantly. Yamapi sighs and sags against the blackboard, probably dusting his jacket in a film of yellow chalk dust he realizes too late.
“Say that again?” Yamapi asks, shaking his head to clear the thrum of adrenaline. He’s pretty sure he’s never heard that Korean word before.
“How do you say…?” Baekhyun repeats, looking up through his fringe.
“Was the last part of that ‘love’?” Yamapi asks, rubbing at the bridge of his nose.
“Yes!” Baekhyun’s face lights up. “Jjak sarang,” he repeats again, very deliberately, and this time Yamapi can at least pick up on the sounds.
“I have no idea.” Yamapi smiles in amusement as Baekhyun’s face crumples in dramatic defeat. “Here, use my dictionary.” Yamapi opens his naver.dic app and hands his phone over to the scowling boy. Baekhyun thumbs hangul into the search box and hits enter, the tip of his tongue sticking out the corner of his mouth in concentration.
“...this one? Maybe?” He holds up the screen and Yamapi squints at the first entry: unrequited love. Oh brother.
“When you love somebody, but they don’t love you back?” Baekhyun nods his head decidedly in confirmation of this description but all of his former joy from their successful communication has seeped out of his features. He actually looks really tired under all that eyeliner, like he hasn’t been sleeping well for...weeks, possibly.
“Yeah.” He drops his gaze and slides an elbow onto the wooden chest in front of the blackboard that serves as a podium. His jacket is missing and both his sleeves are rolled, or rather, shoved up his forearms.
“These kanji are pronounced kata omoi.” Yamapi grabs a chunk of blue chalk from a flimsy paper box on the chest and scrawls the characters with oversized furigana onto the blackboard. “Literally, it means ‘one-sided love’. Does it make sense?” he asks, not sure if Baekhyun can understand the explanation in Japanese. He nods.
“It’s almost the same in Korean, like, not…” Baekhyun brings his hands up in front of him and then splits them into different levels. “Not…”
“Unequal? Uneven?” Yamapi guesses, tapping his fingers against the chalk. He loves puzzles, especially abstract ones.
“Uneven,” Baekhyun agrees with another heavy nod.
“The idioms have some lexical similarity!” Yamapi notes, underlining the words on the board. Baekhyun stares blankly at him and Yamapi tries not to blush. He should stop using obscure academic vocabulary the students probably haven’t learned yet. “I mean, is there any particular reason you asked? Are you reading a manga, or something?”
“O-oh, um, no!” Now it’s Baekhyun’s turn to blush. “I’m not reading anything!” His volume rasps even louder than normal, which for Baekhyun means loud. This manga or whatever he’s reading must be mortifyingly sappy shoujo trash if just thinking about it makes him turn red.
“Baekhyunnie! Hurry uuuuup!” That sounds like Chanyeol in the hallway. All of these kids are loud.
“Bye, Sensei! I have to--!” Baekhyun spins on his heel, freezes, then dashes for the door.
“Baekhyun, wait, you--”
The bell for 1st period rings, a whiny female voice belting The Saccharine Ballad Of The Week drowning out Yamapi’s voice. He sighs and starts to unpack the graded vocab quizzes he needs to hand back to 2-1. They’ve lost some focus since they came back from Chuseok break. Maybe he should twist things up a little to give everyone a change of pace….
“Yo! Tomo-sensei!” At the sound of the sliding door banging open Yamapi turns to greet his students with a wave. Chanyeol and a tall boy named Jongin or Jonghyun or something pile into the room practically on top of each other. Yamapi feels a little dizzy trying to trace which limbs belong to which body.
“Konnichiwa~!” He wipes his dusty palms on his gray flannel trousers. It’s starting to get a little chilly in the mornings and after dark, but when the sun is up he still sweats as if it were August. Yamapi opens the top button of his shirt and tugs at the collar with an impatient finger.
“Whoa! What does that say?”
“What?” Yamapi grimaces at the faint tickle of chalk dust settling over the back of his throat.
“That!” Chanyeol points excitedly to the kanji messily transcribed on the board in thin blue chalk.
“Oh that~! Just wait a few minutes and you’ll find out!” Yamapi winks at Chanyeol who pouts in vain protest as he slumps down into his first row seat and starts jiggling his leg with enough nervous energy to power a small generator.
Yamapi figures he might as well open with a short idiom lesson to jazz up today’s thrilling reading over the history of Japanese Economics. Also because someone has stolen the blackboard eraser, again.
“Hurry up and sit down!” Chanyeol yells as Joonmyun ambles into the room and lingers in front of the seat next to the door as if contemplating whether he should join his assigned desk mate or choose the road less traveled and steal someone else’s seat.
“What’s the big rush?” Jongin (Yamapi just finished shuffling through the quizzes to confirm his name) drawls. “Since when do you care if class starts on time?”
“I hate waiting!” Chanyeol whines loudly through his nose, completely ignoring his classmate’s implied request for a contextual explanation of his out of character behavior. He soon distracts himself despite his vocal complaints, using his hands to sketch diagrams in the air about some kind of...chemistry experiment, or something involving laboratory equipment Yamapi doesn’t quite catch.
The bell rings again soon enough, the last few stragglers scrambling through the back door and snatching textbooks from their lockers before slinking to their seats. Jongin trips a short kid named Kyungsoo on his way to the second row and gets whacked upside the head in revenge.
“Good morning, guys!”
“Good morning, teacher!” Yamapi winces at the wall of noise that envelops him. Well, at least they aren’t in too much danger of falling asleep on him today, although usually the mid-morning hours aren’t too hard on anybody.
“So, before we start our reading today, I thought I’d teach you something fun!” Yamapi smiles and waits for the scattered whoops of anticipation to die down before he continues. “Does anyone know these kanji?”
Blank stares.
“Oh, come on! You should at least know this second one from hanja class, right?”
“Kata...omo...ee?” a student in the back sounds out the furigana syllables hesitantly.
“Yes!” Yamapi says encouragingly. “Kata omoi. It means…” he turns to write the Korean translation on the board, hoping he’s remembering the spelling correctly or else he’ll never live it down, “one-sided love, uneven love.”
“Sensei! Ok? You ok?” Chanyeol asks with a gasp.
“Huh?” Yamapi scratches his nose.
“Your heart...is ok?” the student asks again.
“Oh! Haha, yes! I’m fine.” Yamapi grins shyly. “Another student asked me about this phrase earlier, and I just thought it’d be interesting for you all to learn, too.”
"This gonna help us on the JLPT?" Jongin raises his hand to ask skeptically without waiting to be called on. A few students snicker.
"Nothing is going to help you if you don't speak properly!" Yamapi scolds with smile, wagging a finger in Jongin’s direction. He flips his bleached hair in a display of annoyance.
Yamapi reaches up to smudge the board clean with the heel of his hand. “Ok, our reading starts on page 153. Page 1-5-3.” A few students groan as he flips through his copy of the textbook to the new chapter, cultural lesson over for the day.
“One-sided love…” Chanyeol mutters under his breath as he methodically turns the pages of his book, but still loud enough for the whole front row to hear.
Yamapi looks around the room to make sure everyone’s on the same page and notices that Jongin has somehow already managed to doze off and drool all over page 152. It’s going to be a long morning.
Yamapi’s starting to learn some of their names now, although he remembers fewer than he’d admit to their faces. By the third time through a lesson, when he’s practically got the text memorized down to the punctuation and doesn’t need to watch the page word for word, Yamapi surreptitiously studies the class roster, trying to match the blurry photos to the sleepy faces in front of him.
It’s easier when he has something personal associated with a name to link to a face. Kim Kibum leaves drawings of European architecture on his papers before falling asleep on top of them. Kim Jongin just falls asleep. Do Kyungsoo is pretty quiet but picks up on new grammar patterns quickly and always arranges his pencil case neatly during the last ten minutes of class. As previously mentioned, Chanyeol and Baekhyun are just loud. Especially together, although that only happens at lunch and in the halls since they’re in different homerooms, fortunately for Yamapi’s ears.
Yamapi has the beginnings of a headache sprouting tendrils of pain along the sides of his skull by the end of the period. No one but Jongin fell asleep on him, but everyone was restless, stirring in their seats, ruffling the pages of their texts, and sighing loudly.
By lunchtime, it’s a full blown migraine and Yamapi is seriously contemplating attempting a nap on his hard, cold desk and just avoiding the noise of the cafeteria altogether. He only makes it halfway between the stairs and the office door when Heechul pops around the corner and grabs his wrist.
“Long time no see!” Heechul says in slightly accented Japanese.
“Oh, yeah,” Yamapi nods.
“You always...women...sitting together!” Heechul’s eyes are narrowed, either in annoyance or conniving or both.
“Excuse me?” Yamapi’s head aches way too much to produce full sentences in Korean right now.
“You,” Heechul squeezes Yamapi’s wrist til it throbs. “Me,” he points to his own nose and blinks. “Together. Sit. Eat?” Heechul leans forward until Yamapi gets distracted by arch of his perfectly shaped eyebrows. Wait, is Heechul-hyung wearing eyeliner?
"Eat?" he repeats hopefully.
“Ok,” Yamapi nods, trying to slip his wrist out of Heechul's grasp. “Let’s eat.” The sooner they eat, the sooner he can go take a nap on his glass desk top.
“Let’s go!” Heechul leans back with a self-satisfied smile and starts pulling Yamapi towards the exit.
“Uh, where? Where...going?” Yamapi manages to ask when Heechul pulls out a pair of sunglasses and he realizes they’re not heading for the cafeteria.
“Lunch.” Heechul pulls a key ring from his pocket and tosses it once in the air, catching the remote between two fingers as it descends. “You like noodles, yes?”
“Of course!” Heechul laughs, his mouth wide open and his voice almost as grating as Baekhyun’s.
“Well, get in then. If everyday...eat...cafeteria kimchi,...skin...ruined.” Heechul shudders at the thought and drops Yamapi’s wrist, giving him a shove towards the passenger’s side of a sleek silver Hyundai.
Yamapi gets in, slowly settling back against the black leather seat. He’s a little surprised to see a few tiny action figures that appear to be characters from some anime dangling from the rearview mirror. He leans forward, trying to peer at the faces without seeming nosy, but he doesn’t recognize them anyway. It’s been awhile since he’s had free time to watch TV, and the One Piece episodes he’s been binge watching recently aren’t exactly the latest hip thing.
“Were you expecting Hello Kitty?” Heechul asks with a hoarse laugh, tying up his shoulder length hair with a rubber band between his dextrous fingers.
“No?” Yamapi slides a knuckle along the side of his nose, massaging nervously. He’s not sure what he was expecting, actually.
“Because it’s ok,...Hello Kitty...like, too.” Heechul reaches across Yamapi to pop open the glovebox and pulls out a small package. He holds up a box of Hello Kitty bandaids and rattles it with a sharp grin.
“Oh, nice.” Heechul replaces the bandaids and buckles in.
“Quickly,...do it now!” He adjusts his sunglasses and keys the ignition.
“Huh?”
“...safety belt! Now,...or I’ll beat up...pretty face!” It takes Yamapi an agonizing ten seconds to realize Heechul just wants him to buckle in.
“Ah, my seat belt!” Yamapi hurries to comply, his fingers clumsy with the twisted belt. His face feels hot and the back of his head is constricting painfully. Most of the time Korean and Japanese share the same English loanwords, but that expectation makes it all the more confusing when they differ.
“Here we go!” Heechul pulls out of the parking lot and doesn’t turn on the radio, apparently preferring to chatter away at Yamapi in rapid Korean. Yamapi nods along pleasantly, relieved he doesn’t have to carry a conversation or drag grudging Japanese out of slouchy teens for an hour.
It doesn’t take long to get to the restaurant, located in a narrow alley a few blocks off the main drag through town. Heechul parks behind a low building that has recently been slapped with a hasty white washing, although a few inches of crumbling brick are visible in an uneven band around the top, just under the eaves.
“We are here!” Heechul announces, pulling off his sunglasses with a flourish and tucking them into the breast pocket of his leather jacket that should be entirely too hot for late September at midday. At least Yamapi would be sweating in it, although now that he thinks about it, he’s not sure he’s ever seen Heechul actually sweat, not even in August.
Yamapi starts to open his door when he notices with a yelp of surprise that he totally forgot to change shoes before they left school.
“What?” Heechul asks abruptly.
“My...shoes,” Yamapi confesses sheepishly, torn between embarrassment and panicking.
“Oh, that.” Heechul gets out of the car and motions for Yamapi to follow with an impatient wave. “We……..school, don’t change shoes.” Yamapi blinks at him, feeling entirely foolish standing in the middle of a parking lot in a tailored suit and slippers. “See? …..me too.”
Heechul points at his feet and Yamapi follows his motion down to a pair of glitter lace-up canvas shoes with a slight heel, definitely slippers, but not obviously so unless you are looking closely. Of course Heechul’s inside shoes are fashionable, unlike Yamapi’s cheap, black, knock-off Nike sandals.
“Secret, it’s a secret,” Heechul drops his voice to a loud whisper.
“What?”
“If...leave school, ...vice principal...don’t tell, it’s...like illegal, or something.” Heechul shrugs and grinds his heel into the broken asphalt.
“Illegal?” Yamapi’s mushy brain immediately seizes on the word he remembers from customs paperwork and visa applications and the packet of bilingual legal information for alien residents in Korea Shige shoved into his hands and forced him to read before leaving, just as a deterrence in case Yamapi decided to take up drug dealing or prostitution on the side, or so he said. (Although Yamapi thinks it was more out of a sadistic urge to make his senpai suffer just as much as summer classes were kicking Shige’s ass).
“Technically, I guess? But don’t worry,” Heechul rests a placating hand on Yamapi’s shoulder. “Other teachers….all the time.” He slides his hand across Yamapi’s shoulders to pull him into an awkward side hug and pushes him ahead towards the building.
Heechul swings open the heavy glass door with a long diagonal crack across the surface, a tinny bell jangling above their heads making Yamapi wince. Heechul saunters a few steps into the empty restaurant and stops halfway to the counter to look around.
There is a pink dust ruffle with yellow honey bees under the glass countertop and a white cross with a cluster of matching ribbons and silk flowers is tacked to the wall behind the register. A large white calendar from Park’s Best Tire Land and Auto Bike Center hangs on the adjoining wall.
“Hellooooo~!” Heechul calls. “Where is my favorite adorkable-dongsaeng-who-can’t-.....-or-sit-still-but-I-still-....-and-love-him-anyway!”
“Heechul-hyung?” A slightly surprised voice calls, followed by a fuzzy blonde head peeking through the white lace curtains behind the counter. “Could you...and keep it down? ….has a headache.” The blonde guy emerges from the kitchen with a slight frown and wriggles his shoulders inside his oversized silver sweater before folding his arms across the front of a black canvas apron tied loosely around his skinny waist.
“Aw, why so cranky? Sleeping...until...yesterday?” Heechul moves forward to lean across the counter, reaching up for the blonde guy’s head to pull him into a hug or some other more embarrassing form of skinship, but his target ducks out of the way with a practiced smoothness that makes Yamapi grin and think of Ryo.
“Go sit down!” The blonde guy points to a table to his right against the wall. “Annyeonghaseyo, respected customer!” He pastes on a bright smile in bows in Yamapi’s direction.
“Annyeonghaseyo,” Yamapi returns the bow, straightening up slowly when his head gives a particularly vicious throb at the sudden change of altitude.
Heechul sits cross legged behind the table, his back to the door, and pulls off his jacket with a groan. Yamapi slowly sinks down to his knees on the other side, hesitant because Boa had told him to make sure the most senior member of the group sits farthest from the door at things like dinners. Heechul most notice his unease though, because he reassures Yamapi with a wink, “I need to keep an eye on Hyukjae, the little brat.” He points towards the counter and Yamapi nods with a sigh of relief, reaching for the utensil box as the blonde guy, Hyukjae, reappears behind the counter with a tray.
“Have some tea!” he says, kneeling beside the low table to unload two small plastic cups and a liter of cold tea in a tupperware bottle.
“Thank you,” Yamapi says with a small smile, popping the lid on the bottle to pour for Heechul.
“This is Lee Hyukjae, former classmate and current brat.” Heechul jerks a thumb in the waiter’s direction and Hyukjae scowls. “And this is Tomo, my foreigner~!” Yamapi almost chokes on a mouthful of tea. No one has referred to him as their “foreigner” before.
“Oh, hi!” Hyukjae turns back to Yamapi with a bright smile, shaking his heavy bangs out of his eyes. “I heard about you!”
“Really?” Yamapi sets his cup down before spills it or he chokes for real.
“Yup! I think Hyung likes you!” Hyukjae teases with a wink, getting to his feet. Yamapi notices one of his socks is gray and the other is a dull white.
“Hyukjae...Japanese good!” Heechul says with a slow, curling grin. “...he...more than me...Japanese much better!” Hyukjae rolls his eyes and tucks the plastic tray under his arm.
“He thinks he is...genius,” the waiter starts in hesitant Japanese and Yamapi nods encouragingly. “But, really, Hyung is...he studied English at university, but...English...no good!” He whispers the last few words behind his hand and smiles until his eyes disappear, his cheeks flushing pink with amusement as he hurries back to the kitchen.
“He said...I am English genius?” Heechul asks with an expectant grin, spinning his plastic cup in the water ring it’s left on the table.
“Uh, sure, yeah,” Yamapi agrees. Heechul closes his eyes and leans back with a smile.
“Good little brat!” Yamapi straightens his chopsticks and tries to think of what to say next. Maybe Heechul will start talking again and he can just listen. That would be easiest for today. He still has to go teach three more classes after this and his head might implode if this migraine pulls its tentacles any tighter around his cranium.
“Jajangmyeon,” Heechul announces, sitting up. “Ok?”
“Yes?” Yamapi agrees, not sure what to, exactly. He does like jajangmyeon though, so it’s probably safe. One never can tell with Heechul-hyung, though.
“This shop...best food, famous food. Jajangmyeon.”
“Ok,” Yamapi nods again. “I like jajangmyeon.”
“Aw! …so good…! You...becoming Korean...soon!” Heechul pats Yamapi’s hand which is still resting awkwardly on the table next to his chopsticks. Yamapi smiles and is secretly relieved he didn’t pat his head. Fitting in is good, but he is still Japanese.
“Hyukjae-ya!” Heechul tips back his head to holler. “Two jajangmyeon! ...lots of sauce...like! Don’t forget!”
“Hyung! I told you, be quiet, you…!” Hyukjae stomps out to the counter to hiss at them, hands resting on bony hips. Heechul sniffs and shakes his hair loose from the rubber band, slipping it up his wrist. Hyukjae spins on his heel with a click of his tongue and marches right back out with two large bowls of steaming noodles which he plunks down on their table. “Enjoy your meal! Eat a lot!” he urges Yamapi, pointedly ignoring Heechul as he leaves.
“Brat,” Heechul mutters again, but he’s already smiling down at his bowl of gloopy black sauce and thick, greasy noodles. “Eat a lot!” Heechul starts mixing his sauce into the noodles, dabbing up the table with a paper napkin in his left hand whenever any spatters out of the bowl.
“Let’s eat now,” Yamapi murmurs politely before grabbing up his chopsticks to start stirring. It smells as delicious as it looks gross, fragrant bits of fried pork and green onion complementing the rich scent of the fermented soybean sauce. Heechul takes a massive bite, slurping in the dangling noodles and no longer caring where the sauce flies. Yamapi takes a smaller bite. He doesn’t really like getting his face messy and his shirt, as usual, is white.
“Delicious?” Heechul asks around his mouthful. Yamapi nods and gives him a thumbs up, still chewing. The noodles are not quite as thick as Japanese udon but have a lovely chewy texture. He loves noodles! Today is a good day.
“So,” Heechul announces, rearranging his legs in his tight skinny jeans and wiping at his mouth. “I decided.”
“Yes?” Yamapi looks up from swirling some translucent chopped onion around in the sauce.
“Me,” Heechul points to his face, slipping back into his high pitched, excruciatingly slow, I’m-talking-to-a-clueless-foreigner-now register. “You, teacher.” He stops to give Yamapi a wide smile.
“Teacher?” Yamapi repeats, because he’s not sure what else to say.
“Yes!” Heechul claps his palms together lightly as if his pet dog just did an amusing trick. Yamapi wonders if Heechul likes dogs. Somehow, he seems more like a cat person, all sleek confidence and annoyed superiority with a redeeming touch of sensitive insight and loyalty.
“Korea,” Heechul says, making a wide circle with the spoon gripped in his fist. “So, I teach you,” he pauses again to stare at Yamapi, “Korean!” He drops his spoon into his bowl and folds his hands triumphantly, dropping his chin to rest on the bridge of his laced fingers. “Ok?”
“Oh,” Yamapi nods slowly, finally catching up. “You want to...want to tutor me? Practicing Korean?”
“Yes, yes!”
“Ok, sure!” If Heechul really wants to, Yamapi wouldn’t mind in the least. Anything’s got to be easier than trying to learn Korean from the dopey cartoon character in his phrase book while Erika snickers derisively in the background at his pronunciation. (Hey, Korean phonetics are hard, ok?)
“Let’s begin.” Heechul stabs his chopsticks into a clump of noodles to rest and pulls a pen out of his jacket, all business. “First word...reeeeaaady?” Yamapi nods. Heechul grabs a clean napkin from the dispenser on his left. “First word: K-wen,”
“K-wen,” Yamapi hurries to repeat as soon as he realizes Heechul wants him to.
“...chaaaan….”
“...chaaaan…”
“...ah!”
“Kwenchanah?” Yamapi says questioningly, wondering if Heechul is really trying to teach him the Korean word for ‘ok’. It was on the first page of his phrasebook, actually, right next to annyeonghaseyo and kamsahamnida.
“Wow! Pronunciation, good!” Heechul claps lightly again, whether congratulating his pupil on an amazing feat of diction gymnastics or himself on his smashing success as a language instructor Yamapi’s not sure.
“Kwenchanah, I know,” Yamapi says again, trying to politely steer this lesson in a more constructive direction.
“You know? What does it mean?” Heechul looks surprised, forgetting momentarily to slur his Korean into a slow ooze.
“Um, ‘ok’?” Yamapi offers in English. It earns him a pleased smile from his teacher.
“Fucking perfect!” Heechul hunches over his bowl for another mouthful. Yamapi wonders briefly if he was quoting lyrics from that one English song that was on the OST of that one drama Rina watched religiously a couple springs ago but figures it’s too much trouble to ask. He shrugs and stuff his mouth full of noodles, too.
The rest of their ~lesson is much less stressful, once Yamapi gets brave enough to demonstrate the extent of his Korean skills so Heechul can adjust appropriately. Heechul coos and rasps his approval when Yamapi recites back the profanity he taught him at the beginning of the semester with only two mistakes. (It is a rather unfortunate coincidence, but Yamapi still finds it incredibly amusing that a particularly offensive insult sounds nearly identical to the Japanese for ‘miracle’, at least if you say it quickly.)
They are scraping their bowls for the last bits of slimy onion, the drying sauce staining the white plastic in uneven streaks, by the time Yamapi starts to squirm and look around for a clock. He doesn’t want to be rude by making an obvious gesture like pulling out his phone, but he needs to get back in time to teach 5th period.
Hyukjae comes out just as Heechul shoves his dirty silverware back with a contented sigh, though, and Yamapi sighs reciprocally in relief as Hyukjae clears their empty dishes onto his tray.
“How was the food?” he asks Yamapi in Korean with a smile, just slow enough to enunciate each word clearly.
“It was very good!” Yamapi means it, too. This stuff was much better than the mushy white noodles and bland sauce he now knows is a sad excuse for jajangmyeon that the Korean restaurant near Ryo’s apartment serves.
“Oh, that’s a relief!” Hyukjae says with a loud laugh. “Foreigners...sometimes...can’t eat.”
“Really, I liked it!” Yamapi smiles wider this time, not caring about any black bits that are probably stuck in his teeth.
“I would...said so,...after...first bite but...no yelling,” Heechul grouses, folding his arms against his chest and giving Hyukjae a dark glare from behind his fringe of red hair.
“Hey!” Hyukjae protests, “It’s not my fault…!”
“Is something...problem?” Yamapi asks tentatively, tugging at a damp curl sticking uncomfortably to his jawline.
“Idiot...sick!” Heechul shakes his head. “Don’t worry, though.”
“You...Hyukjae-ssi...sick?” Yamapi looks across to Heechul and then back up at their waiter in alarm. Hyukjae laughs, his elbow jerking awkwardly and he almost drops the tray.
“No,....sick.” Yamapi frowns in concentration, trying to sort out the tangle of sounds into distinct words. “The cook, the chef,” Hyukjae tries again and Yamapi nods, finally understanding.
“He...headache. Sick,” Heechul repeats, wiping his hands on his jeans. “Idiot! I hope you...cooked our food,...not sick boy, right?” Heechul jabs an accusing finger at the waiter.
“Hyung,” he whines offendedly, “who do you think…? Huh? Sheesh!” Hyukjae wrinkles his brow and restacks the plastic cups that are starting to slide haphazardly into the kimchi dish. “Do you want...back there...check? ...sleeping, really,...promise.” His full lower lip pushes out in a glum little pout and Yamapi tries not to laugh as Hyukjae opens his mouth slightly to blow his bleached hair out of his eyes with a huff. Heechul just brushes him off with an exaggerated wave.
“It’s almost time...back to school.” Heechul ducks his head to inspect his nails as Hyukjae lugs the tray away.
“Yeah,” Yamapi echoes, thinking ruefully of the cool glass desk top waiting to pillow his cheek back at the office and then of the quickly diminishing minutes of freedom he has left. The class right after lunch break can be murder, sometimes, although 6th period is sometimes pre-meditated 1st degree. He hopes the cafeteria served something exciting but not too filling today because the last thing he needs is to play EMT to 33 critical cases of food coma for an hour.
A soft gasp from Heechul rouses Yamapi from his internal moaning and he looks up to see him whip out a pale pink emory board and start smoothing his pinky nail with a vigor Yamapi has only seen Heechul expend on activities related to food and fashion.
“Hyung! ...so unsanitary!” Hyukjae scolds, wiping his hands on a towel behind the register.
“Don't...me...unsanitary!” Heechul snarls, pulling a packet of blueberry scented lysol wipes from a pocket. Yamapi wants to ask him where he can buy a jacket with so many pockets but he kinda doubts Heechul will tell him all his shopping secrets, at least on the first date. Heechul gives his nail two last swipes with the file and holds his finger up for inspection. He carefully wipes his hands, superficially wipes at the table, and slowly stands, stretching his arms up to the ceiling.
“So full,” Yamapi mumbles sleepily as he starts to get up. His head does feel a little better now that’s he eaten a proper meal, although he’s even more in need of a nap than before. Coffee, as soon as they get back to the gyomushil. Yes.
“Go,...get candy.” Heechul points to a table by the door before turning to the register. Yamapi shuffles towards the door and stops in front of the low table sporting a lopsided potted plant that would hit him about waist high if it was on the ground. Next to the plant is a large glass bowl filled with white sugar candies. It’s looks kind of like a fishbowl, the glass container. Yamapi hopes no fish actually lived in there, though, because the candies aren’t individually wrapped.
He picks two off the top of the pile, making sure they aren’t ones that had touched the glass, just in case.
“Jahhh,” Heechul sighs loudly, coming up behind Yamapi and poking at his shoulder. “Let’s go, dongsaeng.”
“Is that a fish…a fish…?”
“A fish bowl?” Hyukjae supplies helpfully, coming to a stop beside Heechul. “Yes! Isn’t...cute idea? It was...idea!”
“Donghae is the cook,” Heechul says. “The sick cook. His idea.”
“Fish bowl,” Yamapi repeats. “But that’s….unsanitary!” he points out with a laugh.
“How...you know...word?” Heechul turns his head to stare incredulously at Yamapi out of the corner of his eye.
“Oh, um, Joonmyun-kun,” Yamapi scratches the back of his head with his free hand, trying to remember Joonmyun’s family name. “From class 2-1. Always...cleaning...blackboard, and cleaning the...the--”
“Ah, Kim Joonmyun-student!” Heechul slaps Yamapi’s shoulder in recognition. “He’s the class president of 2-1, yes?” Heechul takes one of the candies from Yamapi’s palm and pops it in his mouth.
“Oh, Kim Joonmyun? I...coach...soccer team!” Hyukjae says excitedly, bouncing on his heels.
“You coach...at our school?” Yamapi hasn’t ever seen him before, but then again, he’s never seen the soccer team practice either.
“Coach...middle school,” Hyukjae amends. “And not unsanitary! Geez! This fishbowl...new...definitely!” He frowns again and Heechul pokes him in the cheek.
“Noisy. Come on, foreign teacher, let’s go!”
“Thank you for the food!” Yamapi bows before turning to follow Heechul out the door. “It was definitely delicious!” Hyukjae smiles and waves as the bell rings above their heads.
“Thank you for lunch, Hyung!” Yamapi says as soon as they get back to the car. “And the Korean lesson.”
“Now,...obligated...every Wednesday lunch,...together…we eat,” Heechul says with a demanding sniff. Yamapi smiles into the lapel of his jacket and straightens his seat--no, safety belt.
Heechul disappears into the admin office with a flippant wave as soon they arrive at school but Yamapi still has a few minutes of lunch break left so he heads straight for the coffee table.
“Oh, hi!” Jieun, the music teacher, wiggles her fingers at Yamapi in greeting as he approaches.
“Oh, hello!”
“Long time no see!” Jieun elbows Ms. Park, who is stirring instant coffee mix in a small paper cup. Ms. Park drops the small spoon to whack Jieun on the arm with a dark glare before looking up at Yamapi with a sunny smile.
“Annyeonghaseyo!” Yamapi bows slightly to her and accepts the cup of coffee she holds out to him.
“So, Shinhye’s engaged. You knew that, right?”
“Um, no?” Yamapi glances towards Ms. Park’s hands, and sure enough, she is sporting a chunky diamond ring on one hand. “Sorry if that was announced via faculty messenger system, I probably missed it because I’m not too good at reading Korean yet…”
“Haha, no! Of course it wasn’t!” Yamapi smiles at the bright laugh his joke elicits. Jieun is pretty cute. “But anyway, you should come to the wedding. It’s in December.” Ms. Park nods eagerly.
“Oh, well sure, if she really wants me to come...”
“Of course. All the teachers will go together.” Jieun takes a delicate sip from her own paper cup. “Ms. Park is engaged to the badminton teacher, so basically, everyone at school is invited!”
“The badminton teacher?” Yamapi splutters. “Mr. Kang?” Somehow he can’t really imagine those two together, whether or not they share the same enthusiasm for living.
“No!” both women exclaim in unison, Jieun rolling her eyes and Ms. Park laughing aloud.
“The other badminton teacher, Jung Yonghwa.” Jieun taps her wedge heel against the tile floor and points to the other end of the office where a few of the male teachers are chatting in front of the fridge. “The guy in green.”
“Oh.” He hasn’t really noticed the teacher before, but he looks much more like the kind of guy Yamapi would expect to be Ms. Park’s fiancee, tall, thin, and with a sort of melancholy air about him as if he spends his weekends composing angsty poetry between applications of expensive facial masks. Ok, well Yamapi can’t really see him that well from this distance, but his skin does look really smooth and fair. You tend to pick up on things like that when you work in the fashion industry.
“Isn’t he handsome?” Ms. Park sighs in Korean, toodling her fingers at her fiancee.
“He has really nice skin,” Yamapi comments absently, taking another sip of coffee.
“I’ll tell him you said that,” Jieun says drily, “and he’ll spend all of 5th period primping in the bathroom!”
“Speaking of which…” Yamapi glances up at the clock above the table with a soft groan. “I’ve got a class.”
“Me too…” Jieun sighs and adjusts her oversized glasses on the bridge of her nose.
“Thank you for your invitation!” Yamapi bows to Ms. Park and hurries to collect his things. 2-3 is going to have a harder time with GDP and cost analysis explanations than 2-1 did, he has a sinking feeling. Oh well, it’s Wednesday. The weekend isn’t too far off, and next week their lesson is on Worldcup soccer teams, thank goodness.
"Have a good class!" The ladies wave Yamapi out of the office as the bell starts to ring.