Fic-DBSK-On Rhetoric
Title: On Rhetoric
Author: virdant
Length: 3,110 words; one-shot
Rating: G / PG
Genre: General / Romance / High School AU / Crack (?)
Pairing: JaeHo / YooSu in the background
Summary: My life is changing. I would say flashing before my eyes, except that brings up the thought of me being dead, and that’s a little depressing, not that I’m not in a bit of a depressing mood.
As for what caused this mood? That’s easy enough to answer.
To understand, you have to go far, far back.
It all started yesterday.
OR
Jaejoong is totally failing his Rhetoric class.
Warning: Stupidity. First-Person POV. Slightly fluctuating voice.
Notes: I haven't written first person in a while... it was fun. I slipped into Kyon-voice near the beginning and so the voice fluctuates a little. I have no idea how this came out.
On Rhetoric
The world is more cutthroat than people make it out to be; which is to say, the world won’t just bash you down until you can’t take another step, but it’ll bash you down and then rip your fingers off and jam them down your own throat until you can’t breathe. Then it’ll step on you.
But then again, that’s putting it mildly.
If I was in a contemplative mood, I’d muse about how my life was undergoing a massive change-like an epiphany, only without a realization, except, I’m not in a contemplative mood. More like a depressing one, since I’m tempted to pull out that pocketknife that my best friend gave me for some birthday or the other and see exactly how much pressure it takes to break skin if the knife is dull from attempting to hack out some silly ball-in-a-cage project for woodworks.
So, I suppose I am in a contemplative mood.
My life is changing. I would say flashing before my eyes, except that brings up the thought of me being dead, and that’s a little depressing, not that I’m not in a bit of a depressing mood.
As for what caused this mood? That’s easy enough to answer.
To understand, you have to go far, far back.
It all started yesterday.
*
Yesterday had been stifling humid: normal weather for the summer, with a blazing sun to boot. It meant that the minute you stepped outdoors, the sun burned its way through the sun block trickling away with your sweat. Suffice to say, it was normal, and those crazies indulging in spaghetti-straps and halters were wearing cutesy sweaters and jackets to cover up those shoulders, which was also normal.
I was eating crushed ice with beans dribbled all over it topped with condensed milk, normal fare for a normal summer day. It was the typical slush that they served in the cheap stores all over the place, and it had cost me no more than the usual amount, though they had a promotion going on about a free topping the next week, and I made a mental note that I had to come to this store instead of the one two streets down (that sold organic ice toppings) next week because promotions were to die for.
That was when I saw him.
Oh, he was hot. Maybe hot isn’t the right word, because if the sun was hot, then he was sizzling, though maybe that comparison wasn’t exactly accurate. Though Changmin would say that the sun’s got to be hotter than a guy since the sun’s just this giant nuclear bomb exploding or something like that and the guy’s probably just at body temperature, which is 37 cel., so the sun’s got to be hotter because when bombs blow up it’s really hot or something, but man, that guy was hot.
He was with this other guy, just as hot (maybe a little less) and a touch shorter, and from my vantage spot, I could hear them arguing over what was better, red-beans or peanuts. It seemed like they had varied tastes on what a good iced dessert was, yet were still attempting to share. The answer to their problem was to get separate ones, since it wasn’t like the ice cost much anyways, but they were insisting on sharing. The worker behind the counter, Tiffany, grinned at me in rueful amusement before waiting patiently for those two to stop crowding around the glass display and to just decide what they wanted so the old lady behind them could get her dose of ice and green-beans.
They eventually asked for some weird mess that looked amazingly unappetizing, and Tiffany had that look in her eyes as she gave it to them, the one that kinda said that she thought what they had picked was crap but she wasn’t going to say anything because it was only her job to ladle spoonfuls of cheap stuff onto ice crushed crappily.
The two guys sat a table near me, and I could hear them teasing each other as they stirred the gunk together, spooning coolness into mouths. I sucked on the remaining coolness from my latest mouthful, eyeing them surreptitiously, mostly because eye-candy is eye-candy, and you’ve got to take advantage of eye-candy when it’s right in front of you, just waiting to be ogled. I also listened, but I wasn’t actually intending on eavesdropping; the sound just kind of floated into my ears. Something about sound waves, Changmin would probably say, before saying something about how he needed to sit somewhere where there was really explosive nosiness, whatever that crap he liked to talk about meant.
Changmin’s one of my best friends. He’s also some sort of physics nut, and I can never understand how, or even why, he understands weird stuff about inertia or whatever he’s talking about. He’s a giant science nut in general, and he enjoys his fair share of the arts, which makes him pretty much the top student in school and everybody’s favorite lab partner. Everybody knows that he’ll be getting about half the awards this year, having picked up maybe a forth of the awards last year.
So the really really hot guy, the one hotter than the sun and the moon and boiling water, he said, “I can’t believe that you like this shit!”
And the other one said: “Suck it up, Yunho.”
Yunho took another bite of that weird mess they were eating, and continued, “How do you eat it? It doesn’t even have any taste!”
The other said, “Well, if you let the lady add lemons or mangos, that would have been settled, wouldn’t it? But no, you had to make her add peanuts instead. Peanuts!”
Yunho’s movements were refined but also broad, and his gesture sent a drop of water from the edge of his plastic spoon splattering onto the table nearby. “’s good,” he insisted through a mouthful of what I assumed had to be peanuts.
The other guy snorted.
“Say, Junsu,” Yunho said, and his voice dropped low enough that I had to strain to hear, not that I was eavesdropping; I was merely paying attention to my surroundings. “Junsu, what's up with you and Yoochun?”
I knew that name. Park Yoochun, another guy in school. I shared an identical schedule with him two years ago, and we ended up with some of the same classes again last year and this year. Park Yoochun. Not the smartest guy in school-that title went to Changmin-but he haunted the arts area. While I said that Changmin enjoys his fair share of the arts, I’m talking mostly about the art of putting his thoughts onto paper with fancy vocabulary or syntax or diction or whatever the hell the teacher wants these days to express something about the individual being destroyed by society or whatever the book of the day’s about. Yoochun, on the other hand, is an artist. He’s even doing one of those Independent Study things that the counselors give you hell over when you ask for that in your schedule, in Music Composition. Whenever he said that word, you could hear the capitals. If he could, he’d be in all the top music classes, the ones that you had to audition to get into. As it is, he’s only in three of the four, and that’s because he can’t play a string instrument to save his life and there’s a scheduling conflict. He’s even doing the honors requirements for all three of those music classes, and he’s acing them. It’s not hard to ace a music class though, considering that half the teachers believe in giving easy A’s just to keep the crazy nerds our school was made of in the music program.
Park Yoochun’s more than just a musician though. He’s also taking Art classes, and his art’s… well, unique would be putting it mildly. He’s a genius at that too. All the art teachers laud his work, and his art’s pretty much the pride of our school. The only person who even comes close is this snippet of a girl two years down who spends her time hunched over trails of paper drawing some of the strangest things you’ve ever seen.
Junsu said with a sigh, “It’s over, Yunho,” and you could hear the pity me dripping from his voice. He sighed again, as if the world were ending and he was the only one alive to see it: misery and sadness and the freaking angst. “He ignored me! Yunho-hyung,” Junsu whined.
Well, that gave me a bit of perspective as to their ages. Yunho’s older than Junsu, I made of a mental note of that in my brain. The strange thing was I had never seen them around school, and it while there was another perfectly decent school just two streets down, it was a bit odd to hear people outside our school talk about Yoochun like that; he’s not exactly an extrovert, being all sentimental and sappy.
It was Junsu’s turn to flail the spoon, and he sent droplets shimmering rainbows into the air. “What am I going to do? He ignored me!”
Changmin would probably have said, if I had attempted to whine like that to him: “Go jump off a cliff.” Yunho was infinitely nicer than Changmin, offering a sympathetic, “It’s not the end of the world, Junsu-yah. I’m sure he just didn’t see you.”
At that point, I couldn’t take the nonsense they were spewing much anymore and I had finished even the slush of melted ice and condensed milk, and wandered out of the store, waving to Tiffany (who ignored me as she had her nose buried in some fashion magazine) and braving the stupid humidity like any other day.
But you see: it wasn’t a normal day.
Changmin listened very patiently for about two minutes into my essay of how hot Yunho was. Then he informed me why, “One: that’s not an essay. It’s a disorganized mess of adjectives with the occasional noun thrown in. Essays have organization.” and “Two: if Yunho were really hotter than the sun, then he wouldn’t even be a charred mess of ashes. He’d have been burned into dust. And then atoms that you wouldn’t be able to see.”
I let Changmin inform me why I was going to fail my Rhetoric class, which he did in great detail, even citing some random sources of old alumni who hadn’t quite failed, but had gotten close. Then I asked if he knew Yunho and Junsu.
Changmin had actually paused in contemplation before he said, “I know of them.”
Junsu was the soccer captain at that school two streets down, and he apparently also had this amazing singing voice, and “Yoochun composed something for him? But he doesn’t even go to our school!” I protested, kicking my feet against the floor and turning down the temperature of the air-con.
Changmin wasn’t the least sympathetic. I could practically hear the rustle of pages as he consulted some other part of what I called his vast database of knowledge on all people around our age. His brain’s got amazing storage capacities. I wish my iPod could store as much information as Changmin’s brain.
“Yunho, I’m assuming it’s Jung Yunho, seeing as he’s friends with Mr. Kim Junsu,” Changmin stated, “is a top student. Straight A’s, sings in the choir and is in no small amount of clubs.”
I sighed mournfully. Another perfectly beautiful guy dismissed into nerdom, clearly. He probably was another Changmin, who would pick up half the awards at the end of the year.
“He also goes clubbing quite often,” Changmin added, with a hidden snort underlying his words, and I perked up.
“Does he…” I mused. “Where does he go?”
“Considering it’s the day before his schools’s graduation and they’ve even organized this ‘We’re Graduating’ bash at Dead End, he’s probably going there tonight. Tomorrow night he’ll be participating in the ‘We Are Alumni’ celebration at Zion.”
Our school, on the other hand, hadn’t even thought of the idea of a “We’re Graduating” or a “We Are Alumni” bash, seeing as we were full of nerds, just like Changmin. We weren’t graduating until the week after, so there was probably still some time to organize something….
“I know what you’re thinking, and it’s not going to work,” Changmin said. “Who in our school, other than you, actually indulges in hedonistic behavior?”
I didn’t quite know what hedonistic meant, but I guessed it meant something along the lines of partying and drinking alcohol and not doing homework the way the rest of the class did. “Right,” I muttered.
Changmin laughed, “Go get him another day,” he said between chortles, and I was tempted to stick my tongue out at him, but that would have been rather pointless seeing as it was a phone conversation.
I did see Yunho that night. I was walking around, having decided to refrain from clubbing-since I wouldn’t see Yunho anyways-and was simply visiting a few haunts from the days when doing stuff had been eating takoyaki and drinking bubble tea after school.
Yunho was at the bubble tea vendor, buying a cup of what was not bubble tea. He offered a polite smile, which was odd since most people simply did their business and ignored the others, so I gave my best smile in return. It was only polite, after all.
“You’re Kim Jaejoong, aren’t you?” Yunho asked.
I blinked in a bit of confusion before nodding, because: “How do you know me?”
Yunho grinned. “Everybody knows about you. You’re the kid from the nerd school two streets over who’s not a nerd.”
I flushed.
“And your best friend’s the biggest nerd there that is,” he added, not unkindly. “Everybody knows about you. And Shim Changmin. And Park Yoochun. The three of you are practically celebrities.”
“I see,” I said, because there wasn’t much else to be said, was there?
“Buying something to drink?” he asked, and his smile was too cute for words. If I were a girl, I would probably be going: “EEEEEEEEEE” or some variant of whatever sound a girl made when she squealed. As it was, the most I could do was nod assent.
He offered me his drink. I took it, beaten into submission by that utterly adorable smile on his face-it was just too cute for words-and watched as he bought another one. “You’ll like it,” he assured at my no doubt completely bewildered face.
It was good. It could have used some alcohol, and I wasn’t sure how caffeine would affect me at this time of the night, but whatever Yunho was drinking was good, though maybe that was the instinctive bias slipping past all rationality, something that Changmin insisted happened to me quite often, but rarely happened to him.
Yunho smiled, and I could literally feel myself melting into some pile of mushy goo. Changmin would have laughed.
We spent the evening drinking caffeine in its concentrated form and learning about each other. Yunho was more than a collection of data in Changmin’s brain with an absolutely delicious body. He had a sister, parents, and a work ethic that would have made him a rival for Changmin’s position as valedictorian, though he probably would have simply taken Yoochun’s position as salutatorian since nobody was smarter than Changmin, not even really hot guys with amazing work ethics.
Yunho laughed at that.
*
Today, I saw Yunho at his school’s graduation. Theoretically, I wasn’t supposed to be there, but Yunho had slipped me a ticket that he had picked up for his grandmother who hadn’t been able to make it, and how could I miss his graduation?
Park Yoochun was there, and we ended up sitting together. He was there for Kim Junsu, who, as it turned out, was cute, fun to tease, and going out with Yoochun. Which explained why Yoochun wrote a song for that Junsu boy.
Upon hearing about Yunho, Yoochun laughed and informed me that Yunho was completely enamored with me, though I doubted that fact, because Yunho didn’t even know me until yesterday.
“You’re a fool,” Yoochun said as we waited for the procession. “Everybody knows you. You’re Kim Jaejoong, the only one of us who doesn’t work hard.”
I flushed. “I’m not that bad,” I insisted.
“If you say so,” Yoochun said, and then the procession started.
After the graduation ceremony-Yunho was valedictorian and picked up five of the seven awards given out-Yunho found me outside the reception.
“Hey. I didn’t expect you to come,” he said.
I managed a shrug. “Congratulations,” I said in return.
He tugged me away from the crowd, “Can we talk for a bit?”
I followed him.
“I like you,” he said, and before I could work out some type of response to that statement, he was continuing, “I’ve seen you around since Junior High. I came here, to this school, because I thought that you had to be coming to this one ‘stead of the one two streets down. I’ve liked you for a while, and I just… wanted to tell you that.”
The only response I could work up was, “I like you a lot too.” Then I picked up my brain and logical reasoning facilities from wherever I dropped them and asked, “Does that mean we’re going out or something?”
“I think so?”
“Oh. Good.” All coherent thoughts few out the window after that.
Two hours later, Yunho admitted that he was going overseas for college, and somehow that meant that we were breaking up. Or something. Because long distances relationships never worked out, and something. Or something. Whatever.
“I’m not leaving until August,” he offered, but even that was nothing.
Really, what was there to say to a comment like that? “Let’s break up in two month’s time.” Really. Jung Yunho, for all his awards and grades, was an idiot.
*
And this is the reason for my depressing mood. Idiot.
The phone rings; caller id declares it to be Changmin.
“Jaejoong-hyung,” Changmin says with testy irritation. “Tell me why Jung Yunho has my phone number and is leaving me messages asking how he can apologize to you.”
I blink, the depression vanishing. “He’s calling you?” I ask, though the question is rhetorical. I did learn something in Rhetoric class. “He’s really calling you? About me?”
Changmin groans and hangs up.
I press buttons rapidly, and lift the phone to my ear. “Yunho-yah,” I breathe.
“I’m sorry,” is all he says.
“Idiot,” I say, and somehow everything is settled.
End.
Title explaination: Well, Jaejoong is telling the story...? It's a stupid title, sorry.
If it's possible, please give concrit on the voice and style--specifically the present-past-present style. It was a little strange writing first person again, the last time I've focused on first-person (not just spewed out a bunch of words) was last November, so I'm a little worried about the first-person. Additionally, any advice about the voice--I was writing in Kyon-voice for a while, and I think I slipped out of it near the end--would be appreciated. If the style is awkward as well, please tell me. Thank you~
Author: virdant
Length: 3,110 words; one-shot
Rating: G / PG
Genre: General / Romance / High School AU / Crack (?)
Pairing: JaeHo / YooSu in the background
Summary: My life is changing. I would say flashing before my eyes, except that brings up the thought of me being dead, and that’s a little depressing, not that I’m not in a bit of a depressing mood.
As for what caused this mood? That’s easy enough to answer.
To understand, you have to go far, far back.
It all started yesterday.
OR
Jaejoong is totally failing his Rhetoric class.
Warning: Stupidity. First-Person POV. Slightly fluctuating voice.
Notes: I haven't written first person in a while... it was fun. I slipped into Kyon-voice near the beginning and so the voice fluctuates a little. I have no idea how this came out.
On Rhetoric
The world is more cutthroat than people make it out to be; which is to say, the world won’t just bash you down until you can’t take another step, but it’ll bash you down and then rip your fingers off and jam them down your own throat until you can’t breathe. Then it’ll step on you.
But then again, that’s putting it mildly.
If I was in a contemplative mood, I’d muse about how my life was undergoing a massive change-like an epiphany, only without a realization, except, I’m not in a contemplative mood. More like a depressing one, since I’m tempted to pull out that pocketknife that my best friend gave me for some birthday or the other and see exactly how much pressure it takes to break skin if the knife is dull from attempting to hack out some silly ball-in-a-cage project for woodworks.
So, I suppose I am in a contemplative mood.
My life is changing. I would say flashing before my eyes, except that brings up the thought of me being dead, and that’s a little depressing, not that I’m not in a bit of a depressing mood.
As for what caused this mood? That’s easy enough to answer.
To understand, you have to go far, far back.
It all started yesterday.
*
Yesterday had been stifling humid: normal weather for the summer, with a blazing sun to boot. It meant that the minute you stepped outdoors, the sun burned its way through the sun block trickling away with your sweat. Suffice to say, it was normal, and those crazies indulging in spaghetti-straps and halters were wearing cutesy sweaters and jackets to cover up those shoulders, which was also normal.
I was eating crushed ice with beans dribbled all over it topped with condensed milk, normal fare for a normal summer day. It was the typical slush that they served in the cheap stores all over the place, and it had cost me no more than the usual amount, though they had a promotion going on about a free topping the next week, and I made a mental note that I had to come to this store instead of the one two streets down (that sold organic ice toppings) next week because promotions were to die for.
That was when I saw him.
Oh, he was hot. Maybe hot isn’t the right word, because if the sun was hot, then he was sizzling, though maybe that comparison wasn’t exactly accurate. Though Changmin would say that the sun’s got to be hotter than a guy since the sun’s just this giant nuclear bomb exploding or something like that and the guy’s probably just at body temperature, which is 37 cel., so the sun’s got to be hotter because when bombs blow up it’s really hot or something, but man, that guy was hot.
He was with this other guy, just as hot (maybe a little less) and a touch shorter, and from my vantage spot, I could hear them arguing over what was better, red-beans or peanuts. It seemed like they had varied tastes on what a good iced dessert was, yet were still attempting to share. The answer to their problem was to get separate ones, since it wasn’t like the ice cost much anyways, but they were insisting on sharing. The worker behind the counter, Tiffany, grinned at me in rueful amusement before waiting patiently for those two to stop crowding around the glass display and to just decide what they wanted so the old lady behind them could get her dose of ice and green-beans.
They eventually asked for some weird mess that looked amazingly unappetizing, and Tiffany had that look in her eyes as she gave it to them, the one that kinda said that she thought what they had picked was crap but she wasn’t going to say anything because it was only her job to ladle spoonfuls of cheap stuff onto ice crushed crappily.
The two guys sat a table near me, and I could hear them teasing each other as they stirred the gunk together, spooning coolness into mouths. I sucked on the remaining coolness from my latest mouthful, eyeing them surreptitiously, mostly because eye-candy is eye-candy, and you’ve got to take advantage of eye-candy when it’s right in front of you, just waiting to be ogled. I also listened, but I wasn’t actually intending on eavesdropping; the sound just kind of floated into my ears. Something about sound waves, Changmin would probably say, before saying something about how he needed to sit somewhere where there was really explosive nosiness, whatever that crap he liked to talk about meant.
Changmin’s one of my best friends. He’s also some sort of physics nut, and I can never understand how, or even why, he understands weird stuff about inertia or whatever he’s talking about. He’s a giant science nut in general, and he enjoys his fair share of the arts, which makes him pretty much the top student in school and everybody’s favorite lab partner. Everybody knows that he’ll be getting about half the awards this year, having picked up maybe a forth of the awards last year.
So the really really hot guy, the one hotter than the sun and the moon and boiling water, he said, “I can’t believe that you like this shit!”
And the other one said: “Suck it up, Yunho.”
Yunho took another bite of that weird mess they were eating, and continued, “How do you eat it? It doesn’t even have any taste!”
The other said, “Well, if you let the lady add lemons or mangos, that would have been settled, wouldn’t it? But no, you had to make her add peanuts instead. Peanuts!”
Yunho’s movements were refined but also broad, and his gesture sent a drop of water from the edge of his plastic spoon splattering onto the table nearby. “’s good,” he insisted through a mouthful of what I assumed had to be peanuts.
The other guy snorted.
“Say, Junsu,” Yunho said, and his voice dropped low enough that I had to strain to hear, not that I was eavesdropping; I was merely paying attention to my surroundings. “Junsu, what's up with you and Yoochun?”
I knew that name. Park Yoochun, another guy in school. I shared an identical schedule with him two years ago, and we ended up with some of the same classes again last year and this year. Park Yoochun. Not the smartest guy in school-that title went to Changmin-but he haunted the arts area. While I said that Changmin enjoys his fair share of the arts, I’m talking mostly about the art of putting his thoughts onto paper with fancy vocabulary or syntax or diction or whatever the hell the teacher wants these days to express something about the individual being destroyed by society or whatever the book of the day’s about. Yoochun, on the other hand, is an artist. He’s even doing one of those Independent Study things that the counselors give you hell over when you ask for that in your schedule, in Music Composition. Whenever he said that word, you could hear the capitals. If he could, he’d be in all the top music classes, the ones that you had to audition to get into. As it is, he’s only in three of the four, and that’s because he can’t play a string instrument to save his life and there’s a scheduling conflict. He’s even doing the honors requirements for all three of those music classes, and he’s acing them. It’s not hard to ace a music class though, considering that half the teachers believe in giving easy A’s just to keep the crazy nerds our school was made of in the music program.
Park Yoochun’s more than just a musician though. He’s also taking Art classes, and his art’s… well, unique would be putting it mildly. He’s a genius at that too. All the art teachers laud his work, and his art’s pretty much the pride of our school. The only person who even comes close is this snippet of a girl two years down who spends her time hunched over trails of paper drawing some of the strangest things you’ve ever seen.
Junsu said with a sigh, “It’s over, Yunho,” and you could hear the pity me dripping from his voice. He sighed again, as if the world were ending and he was the only one alive to see it: misery and sadness and the freaking angst. “He ignored me! Yunho-hyung,” Junsu whined.
Well, that gave me a bit of perspective as to their ages. Yunho’s older than Junsu, I made of a mental note of that in my brain. The strange thing was I had never seen them around school, and it while there was another perfectly decent school just two streets down, it was a bit odd to hear people outside our school talk about Yoochun like that; he’s not exactly an extrovert, being all sentimental and sappy.
It was Junsu’s turn to flail the spoon, and he sent droplets shimmering rainbows into the air. “What am I going to do? He ignored me!”
Changmin would probably have said, if I had attempted to whine like that to him: “Go jump off a cliff.” Yunho was infinitely nicer than Changmin, offering a sympathetic, “It’s not the end of the world, Junsu-yah. I’m sure he just didn’t see you.”
At that point, I couldn’t take the nonsense they were spewing much anymore and I had finished even the slush of melted ice and condensed milk, and wandered out of the store, waving to Tiffany (who ignored me as she had her nose buried in some fashion magazine) and braving the stupid humidity like any other day.
But you see: it wasn’t a normal day.
Changmin listened very patiently for about two minutes into my essay of how hot Yunho was. Then he informed me why, “One: that’s not an essay. It’s a disorganized mess of adjectives with the occasional noun thrown in. Essays have organization.” and “Two: if Yunho were really hotter than the sun, then he wouldn’t even be a charred mess of ashes. He’d have been burned into dust. And then atoms that you wouldn’t be able to see.”
I let Changmin inform me why I was going to fail my Rhetoric class, which he did in great detail, even citing some random sources of old alumni who hadn’t quite failed, but had gotten close. Then I asked if he knew Yunho and Junsu.
Changmin had actually paused in contemplation before he said, “I know of them.”
Junsu was the soccer captain at that school two streets down, and he apparently also had this amazing singing voice, and “Yoochun composed something for him? But he doesn’t even go to our school!” I protested, kicking my feet against the floor and turning down the temperature of the air-con.
Changmin wasn’t the least sympathetic. I could practically hear the rustle of pages as he consulted some other part of what I called his vast database of knowledge on all people around our age. His brain’s got amazing storage capacities. I wish my iPod could store as much information as Changmin’s brain.
“Yunho, I’m assuming it’s Jung Yunho, seeing as he’s friends with Mr. Kim Junsu,” Changmin stated, “is a top student. Straight A’s, sings in the choir and is in no small amount of clubs.”
I sighed mournfully. Another perfectly beautiful guy dismissed into nerdom, clearly. He probably was another Changmin, who would pick up half the awards at the end of the year.
“He also goes clubbing quite often,” Changmin added, with a hidden snort underlying his words, and I perked up.
“Does he…” I mused. “Where does he go?”
“Considering it’s the day before his schools’s graduation and they’ve even organized this ‘We’re Graduating’ bash at Dead End, he’s probably going there tonight. Tomorrow night he’ll be participating in the ‘We Are Alumni’ celebration at Zion.”
Our school, on the other hand, hadn’t even thought of the idea of a “We’re Graduating” or a “We Are Alumni” bash, seeing as we were full of nerds, just like Changmin. We weren’t graduating until the week after, so there was probably still some time to organize something….
“I know what you’re thinking, and it’s not going to work,” Changmin said. “Who in our school, other than you, actually indulges in hedonistic behavior?”
I didn’t quite know what hedonistic meant, but I guessed it meant something along the lines of partying and drinking alcohol and not doing homework the way the rest of the class did. “Right,” I muttered.
Changmin laughed, “Go get him another day,” he said between chortles, and I was tempted to stick my tongue out at him, but that would have been rather pointless seeing as it was a phone conversation.
I did see Yunho that night. I was walking around, having decided to refrain from clubbing-since I wouldn’t see Yunho anyways-and was simply visiting a few haunts from the days when doing stuff had been eating takoyaki and drinking bubble tea after school.
Yunho was at the bubble tea vendor, buying a cup of what was not bubble tea. He offered a polite smile, which was odd since most people simply did their business and ignored the others, so I gave my best smile in return. It was only polite, after all.
“You’re Kim Jaejoong, aren’t you?” Yunho asked.
I blinked in a bit of confusion before nodding, because: “How do you know me?”
Yunho grinned. “Everybody knows about you. You’re the kid from the nerd school two streets over who’s not a nerd.”
I flushed.
“And your best friend’s the biggest nerd there that is,” he added, not unkindly. “Everybody knows about you. And Shim Changmin. And Park Yoochun. The three of you are practically celebrities.”
“I see,” I said, because there wasn’t much else to be said, was there?
“Buying something to drink?” he asked, and his smile was too cute for words. If I were a girl, I would probably be going: “EEEEEEEEEE” or some variant of whatever sound a girl made when she squealed. As it was, the most I could do was nod assent.
He offered me his drink. I took it, beaten into submission by that utterly adorable smile on his face-it was just too cute for words-and watched as he bought another one. “You’ll like it,” he assured at my no doubt completely bewildered face.
It was good. It could have used some alcohol, and I wasn’t sure how caffeine would affect me at this time of the night, but whatever Yunho was drinking was good, though maybe that was the instinctive bias slipping past all rationality, something that Changmin insisted happened to me quite often, but rarely happened to him.
Yunho smiled, and I could literally feel myself melting into some pile of mushy goo. Changmin would have laughed.
We spent the evening drinking caffeine in its concentrated form and learning about each other. Yunho was more than a collection of data in Changmin’s brain with an absolutely delicious body. He had a sister, parents, and a work ethic that would have made him a rival for Changmin’s position as valedictorian, though he probably would have simply taken Yoochun’s position as salutatorian since nobody was smarter than Changmin, not even really hot guys with amazing work ethics.
Yunho laughed at that.
*
Today, I saw Yunho at his school’s graduation. Theoretically, I wasn’t supposed to be there, but Yunho had slipped me a ticket that he had picked up for his grandmother who hadn’t been able to make it, and how could I miss his graduation?
Park Yoochun was there, and we ended up sitting together. He was there for Kim Junsu, who, as it turned out, was cute, fun to tease, and going out with Yoochun. Which explained why Yoochun wrote a song for that Junsu boy.
Upon hearing about Yunho, Yoochun laughed and informed me that Yunho was completely enamored with me, though I doubted that fact, because Yunho didn’t even know me until yesterday.
“You’re a fool,” Yoochun said as we waited for the procession. “Everybody knows you. You’re Kim Jaejoong, the only one of us who doesn’t work hard.”
I flushed. “I’m not that bad,” I insisted.
“If you say so,” Yoochun said, and then the procession started.
After the graduation ceremony-Yunho was valedictorian and picked up five of the seven awards given out-Yunho found me outside the reception.
“Hey. I didn’t expect you to come,” he said.
I managed a shrug. “Congratulations,” I said in return.
He tugged me away from the crowd, “Can we talk for a bit?”
I followed him.
“I like you,” he said, and before I could work out some type of response to that statement, he was continuing, “I’ve seen you around since Junior High. I came here, to this school, because I thought that you had to be coming to this one ‘stead of the one two streets down. I’ve liked you for a while, and I just… wanted to tell you that.”
The only response I could work up was, “I like you a lot too.” Then I picked up my brain and logical reasoning facilities from wherever I dropped them and asked, “Does that mean we’re going out or something?”
“I think so?”
“Oh. Good.” All coherent thoughts few out the window after that.
Two hours later, Yunho admitted that he was going overseas for college, and somehow that meant that we were breaking up. Or something. Because long distances relationships never worked out, and something. Or something. Whatever.
“I’m not leaving until August,” he offered, but even that was nothing.
Really, what was there to say to a comment like that? “Let’s break up in two month’s time.” Really. Jung Yunho, for all his awards and grades, was an idiot.
*
And this is the reason for my depressing mood. Idiot.
The phone rings; caller id declares it to be Changmin.
“Jaejoong-hyung,” Changmin says with testy irritation. “Tell me why Jung Yunho has my phone number and is leaving me messages asking how he can apologize to you.”
I blink, the depression vanishing. “He’s calling you?” I ask, though the question is rhetorical. I did learn something in Rhetoric class. “He’s really calling you? About me?”
Changmin groans and hangs up.
I press buttons rapidly, and lift the phone to my ear. “Yunho-yah,” I breathe.
“I’m sorry,” is all he says.
“Idiot,” I say, and somehow everything is settled.
End.
Title explaination: Well, Jaejoong is telling the story...? It's a stupid title, sorry.
If it's possible, please give concrit on the voice and style--specifically the present-past-present style. It was a little strange writing first person again, the last time I've focused on first-person (not just spewed out a bunch of words) was last November, so I'm a little worried about the first-person. Additionally, any advice about the voice--I was writing in Kyon-voice for a while, and I think I slipped out of it near the end--would be appreciated. If the style is awkward as well, please tell me. Thank you~