Found in Translation - Chapter 2, Part 1
Selfish - noun 1. characterized by or manifesting concern or care only for oneself; 2. Nichkhun knew he was, and though he was smiling, he felt terrible.
Somehow, Wednesday crept around. Wondering how to keep himself busy, though it had never been a difficult task before, he schlepped around his apartment trying to come up with something…anything.
He was bored, he knew it. He looked at his coffee table and saw nothing but books on teaching: “How to Efficiently teach Korean,” “Korean, Amateurs’ Guide,” and his newly purchased book “Korean for Foreigners.” The last one was for Nichkhun, well…so he could easily help Nichkhun. He had figured that this guy was going to be stubborn, and that he would nearly have to swallow his pride in order to work with him. But he was nervous. He didn’t know whether it was because it would be his first time teaching or because of the person he was teaching. Nichkhun made him feel unsteady. He picked it up and mumbled to himself “What have I gotten myself into?”
After class that day, things went as scheduled. After an awkward battle on where to study (Nichkhun offered his place, Wooyoung insisted on the library) they ended up in the café across the street…because the consensus was that they were both hungry.
The college’s café was quaint and small and not frequented much simply because it was so close to the school. Most students tried to get as far away from the school as possible. It had an upstairs study room and downstairs was where the baristas got to work on that sensational coffee that magically seemed to keep a student awake for hours on end…no caffeine headaches later. Wooyoung sat at a table in the upstairs room while Nichkhun waited for their orders downstairs. He looked around the room and tightly held on to his bag, the only thing he was really comfortable with. Despite knowing that this event was going to happen sooner or later, he was still anxious about how to go about the lesson…or talking to Nichkhun for about two straight hours. Nichkhun had been jumpy again, “super excited,” as he put it, for the lesson. Though he complained about it outwardly by rolling his eyes, internally Wooyoung was pleased that Nichkhun wasn’t dreading it.
In front of him was a bookcase that he felt intrigued to browse. Getting up, he ran his fingers along the spines of the books and searched for something interesting. Picking something out, he opened to the center and began to read, only to be interrupted yet again…by Nichkhun.
“Aish, you scared me.” Wooyoung said; flinching after Nichkhun blocked Wooyoung’s vision with his coffee. He closed the book shut and placed it on top of the other books.
“So~rry,” Nichkhun replied slightly amused by Wooyoung’s frustration. He looked at Wooyoung for a second longer than he should have, watching his annoyed face turn into an embarrassed face. It became flushed and his ears got red. He even lowered his eyes.
“Let’s just get to work, okay?” Wooyoung pushed his way past Nichkhun and back to the table.
The lesson went by incredibly smoothly. With his prepared lesson plans, Wooyoung would explain to Nichkhun how to put together grammatically correct sentences, made him pronounce the newly formed sentences, and corrected him along the way. Each time he’d get something wrong, Nichkhun would laugh in embarrassment and Wooyoung would momentarily go silent and listen to him. The sound waves of laughter would swim through his ears and crash like surge of water to the shore that was his brain. He would shake his head and the waves would recede. Nichkhun and Wooyoung talked about weird experiences Nichkhun has had as a foreigner in the streets of Seoul and laughed about Wooyoung’s girl friends who ogled over Nichkhun the moment he stepped in the class. Wooyoung silently criticized himself for being one of the classmates that stared at Nichkhun…for whatever reason it was that he did it. It definitely wasn’t the same reason those girls did it, Wooyoung convinced himself.
Denial - noun 1. the refusal to satisfy a claim, request, desire, etc.; 2. The state that Wooyoung was in, despite the fact that every time Nichkhun messed up, he didn’t want to fix it…he thought it sounded fine the way it was.
By the end of the lesson Wooyoung felt like they had gotten a lot done but after looking at Nichkhun’s notes the reality was that they didn’t get very far. They didn’t even scratch the surface. In this, Wooyoung was disappointed…considering there was a part of him that did want to use this experience to enhance his teaching skills. The other part was lost somewhere in between Nichkhun’s fumbled Korean and his eye-smile. Wooyoung didn’t know this yet, and he wouldn’t until they left the café.
CONTINUE TO PART 2