Call Me Oppa (3/?)
Title: Call Me Oppa (3/?)
Pairing: Onew/Taemin
Length: 3,468w (8,945 total)
Summary: "Some people are just unlucky."
Previous Chapters: Chapter 1 | Chapter 2
C H A P T E R 3
Jinki was sluggish on Monday morning. His alarm went off at six, and he had almost convinced himself to stay in bed when his cell phone buzzed on the nightstand.
Fr: Jjong
did u finish ur korean hmwk? can i copy b4 class?
With a sigh, Jinki got out of the covers and went through the motions of getting ready. There was a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach, not enough to complain about, but the heavy feeling made him slow. He showered, brushed his teeth, and pulled on a clean school uniform - the pullover today, because it was getting cold and Jinki could feel the chill on his skin.
His mother was still sleeping when he went downstairs. Jinki guessed she wouldn't be going to work today either. She was tangled in the sheets, one foot hanging over the end of the mattress, snoring lightly into her pillow. There was a line of crusted drool on her chin.
"Eomma?" Jinki called. "Are you getting up?"
His mother snuffled and pushed herself up on the heels of her palms. She blinked at the clock on the nightstand and then collapsed back into the blankets. "In fifteen minutes," she mumbled.
Jinki set the coffeemaker before he left.
Jonghyun got on the same bus as Jinki three stops down. He pushed his way through the standing crowd at the front and gestured with a wave of his hand for Jinki to drop his bag to the floor. "Everyone hates me for saving you a seat," Jinki grumbled.
"No one cares!" Jonghyun sat down and flashed a grin to the guy standing up next to him. The guy didn't look impressed.
"You're bright-eyed this morning."
Jonghyun grinned. "Of course I am! While you were working stock last night, I was texting with Shin Sekyung."
Jinki covered a yawn with the back of his hand; he wasn't faking it, just well-timed. "Trading sleep for text message flirting. Ah. No wonder."
"I think she likes me," Jonghyun said.
"What makes you think that? Did she type you a little happy face and a less-than three?"
"Come on, hyung." Jonghyun made a face, and Jinki shrugged and dropped it. It was fun to tease Jonghyun, but only when he was teasing back - he'd liked Sekyung for too long to find it funny anymore.
"I'm happy for you," Jinki said. He gave a little smile to prove it.
Jonghyun beamed back. It must have been a good texting session if Jjong was this happy the next day. Jinki tried not to think about the contents of those text messages too hard.
"Did you bring your Korean homework?" Jonghyun asked.
Oh, right. Jinki dug around in his backpack for his notebook and handed it over. With his textbook perched against the back of the seat in front of him, Jonghyun copied all of Jinki's answers onto a lined piece of paper, scribbling the questions above in blocky Hangeul.
"Reword some stuff," Jinki said, tapping the first question. Jonghyun had copied it word-for-word. "Change it around a bit so it's not so obvious that I did the work for you."
Jonghyun stuck out his tongue, but he erased the first section and redid it. Jinki couldn't decide if the bouncing of the bus was to blame, or if Jonghyun just had terrible handwriting. Probably the latter. The notes that he passed Jinki in class sometimes were scrawled in a chickenscratch that only vaguely resembled Korean letters.
The students rushing into the school looked like flooding water, everyone in matching navy blue uniforms, coursing through the hallways and trickling off into classrooms at the ring of the bell. Jinki said see you later to Jonghyun at the stairs; he went down, Jonghyun went up.
The calculus room was at the back of the school, underneath the greenhouse where the heating didn't quite work in the winter and the a/c didn't reach in the summer. It was one of the oldest parts of the school building, all yellowing linoleum and painted concrete. There were lockers in the hall down there, but as far as Jinki knew no one used them - they were all empty, gutless, unlocked.
Today when Jinki got to his seat, he made it a point to look over and smile at Taemin. Taemin shyly smiled back. In his school uniform, Taemin looked so nondescript. His hair was longer than the school regulations, but he had it cleverly clipped back so that it looked shorter from the front, and the dark bobby pins were almost invisible against his hair. He wore the uniform exactly how the handbook specified, with his collar pressed and the cuffs folded over - probably so that the teachers wouldn't pull him aside and notice that his hair was longer than the school regulation.
Jinki was silently grateful that the teacher came in and right away started talking. Taemin was an attentive student, and with his eyes focused on the whiteboard he didn't notice - or was too polite to comment on - Jinki's staring.
Taemin had his notebook open already, all of the equations completed in ballpoint pen, nothing scratched out; he either had a perfect head for numbers, or he'd copied his homework out. Jinki couldn't stop looking at his hands. Taemin had his pen propped loosely between his thumb and index finger. His fingers were long, nails perfectly shaped and glossy - nail varnish? Jinki tilted his head to the side and tried to decide if the light that glinted off of Taemin's nails could be natural or if he had painted a clear gloss finish. Taemin's hand tightened around the pen and he scrawled a string of numbers across the top of a clean page.
Definitely gloss.
As the equation got longer, Taemin's hand moved down the page, line-by-line. His sleeve hiked up and Jinki noticed wooden rosary beads looped around his wrist. Catholic. Jinki was struck with the sudden image of Taemin's delicate hands carding over the beads as he counted out Hail Marys. The image was weirdly arousing.
That's rude. Don't think like that in class, pervert.
The teacher started scribbling a side note about infinitesimals across the board in red. The marker squeaked like a banshee. Jinki didn't even notice the sound until he saw Taemin wince as the teacher swished a 7 with a particularly loud squeak, and then he couldn't tune it out - squeak-squeak squeaky-squeak squeak infinitesimals are numbers so small they cannot be seen squeaky-squeak. Jinki sighed in relief when the teacher finished. Mr. Han capped the marker with a weird smirk, like he knew the sound had been driving everyone crazy.
"Okay, everyone," the teacher said, clapping his hands together. "Work on the problems on page forty-five. Have it finished for tomorrow."
Jinki watched Taemin write in his tiny, rounded handwriting: sonsaengnim has asked us to finish page 45 for tomorrow. Even his homework notes were sweet and polite.
Jinki shook himself out of the daze as the words that Taemin wrote registered. Homework. Right. He turned his attention to the number problems in front of him and tried to drown out the rest of the world.
Jinki liked math. It was trustworthy. It never changed. It always had a clear right answer. On any other day, Jinki could have looked at his textbook and let the numbers wash over him. There was no room for thought that didn't involve plugging numbers and checking answers.
On any other day, he wasn't so aware of Taemin's presence next to him. Taemin had one hand resting on the nape of his neck, and he chewed his lip as he concentrated on the textbook. Jinki noted, with a twinge of jealousy, that Taemin wrote in pen.
"Hyung, I'm sorry to bother you. Could I ask something?"
Taemin's voice was soft and polite, hardly above a whisper. It took Jinki a painfully long moment to realize that, yes, Taemin had just spoken out loud; he had asked a question, and was waiting, wide-eyed, for a response.
"Ah, yes. What's up?"
Taemin smiled and slid his notebook toward the centre of the table. "I'm sorry to bother you," he repeated, "but have you solved question one? I checked my answer and it's wrong, but I'm not so sure where I went wrong in the calculations."
Jinki didn't move right away, and Taemin's face fell a little. After a beat, he started to pull the notebook back. Jinki stopped him with an open-handed slap over the paper. He flashed an apologetic smile. "Yeah, of course. Let me see." Idiot, idiot, idiot! Jinki pulled the notebook closer and compared it with the answer he had just written down. "I don't know how much help I'll be," he admitted. "I got the same number as you."
Taemin frowned at the page. "Well, that can't be right..."
He leaned over to compare each line of their calculations, scooting his chair closer. There were only a few inches of space between them - Jinki could have bent his head and pressed his lips to the back of Taemin's neck. And from such close proximity, Jinki could smell Taemin's shampoo, something vaguely fruity, a low scent like cherries. There was a stronger scent on Taemin's skin, something sweet and floral. Almost like... Is he wearing perfume?
Taemin drew a little X next to the line where he deemed the mistake to be. He started over, checking the calculations on each new line. Taemin bit his lip, worrying at a raw spot, and the slow slide of teeth drew Jinki's eyes. Taemin must chew his lips a lot; there was a spot where it looked like he'd drawn blood earlier, the skin split and red. Jinki swallowed. Taemin's lips were actually perfect, like girls' lips, full and soft. When he wasn't smiling, his expression settled into a natural pout.
"Ah!" Taemin sat back, and his sudden smile played across his face like music. Jinki blinked and wondered how it was even possible for someone to be so disarmingly pretty; he hadn't noticed until he looked. "I think I've got it," Taemin said. "Thank you, hyung."
Jinki's tongue felt thick in his mouth. "But I didn't do anything. You solved it yourself."
Taemin glanced down at the page, his long eyelashes kissing his cheeks. "You did help, hyung. I don't feel so stupid for getting it wrong at first, since you did too."
Jinki was sure that there was a backhanded insult somewhere in there, but chose to ignore it in favour of the butterflies that started richocheting around his insides. He'd never felt so good about getting a wrong answer in his life.
It wasn't butterflies.
By second period, Jinki was swallowing fast, fighting the urge to puke all over his desk. He couldn't decide if the nausea was from being overtired, or something he ate. Had he eaten in the morning? Jinki didn't think so. His stomach had been too heavy then. Right now it felt like it was turned in on itself, gnawing at his insides. Maybe he'd feel better if he did throw up.
Jinki felt as though everything was in slow motion. Like watching a movie on mute with a damaged tape; fuzzy lines all over, faces blurred. Jinki's third period class was on the second floor, and halfway up the flight of stairs he stopped and tried to shake the heaviness from his limbs. His legs were just dead weight. Everything took so much effort.
Jinki thought about skipping third period, heading over to the student lounge and napping until the last bell, or at least rest his eyes for an hour or two - no, you can't! He had a student to tutor over lunch, and then a test in the afternoon that he hadn't really studied for. He should at least look over the notes.
The third period classroom was noisy, thirty voices bleeding into one senseless dialogue:
"-did you get-"
"-all of them! And then-"
"-well, she didn't say that exactly, but-"
"-didn't get the answer for-"
"-obviously not-"
Jinki sat down at the front of the room so that all of the voices behind him blended into background noise, white fuzz in his ears. He stared, tunnel-visioned, at the whiteboard as the teacher called for order. The cacophony of voices quieted down to a hum, irregular, like the chirrup of crickets at night. Jinki focused on not throwing up.
"Let's resume from where we left off last class," the teacher said. "Open your textbooks to chapter four."
Jinki built a platform out of his books to rest on, leaning on the crook of his arm on top of his calculus and Korean books. He opened his science textbook on the table and angled his head to look at the page, but the letters swam in front of his eyes and the diagrams were nonsensical. Something about jellyfish.
The room started to go out-of-focus, blurry. Jinki closed his eyes - just a minute, just give me a minute - and his weight seemed to drop, heavy-set, to the bottom of his feet. There was a roar in his ears, hollow-sounding like the inside of a sea shell.
"Lee Jinki."
Jinki startled awake, sitting up so fast that his chair screeched over the laminate flooring and almost toppled over. His water bottle hit the floor with a plastic thunk and rolled underneath someone's desk a few rows over. The teacher was looking at Jinki with a mixture of annoyance and pity.
"Lee Jinki, if you're not feeling well, I suggest you see the nurse."
Jinki bowed in apology. He quickly tossed his things into his bag, not caring that he was bending the margins of history papers and crumpling calculus notes. He bowed again, whispered, "I'm sorry; I'm not well," and headed for the door.
Hyunbin pressed Jinki's water bottle into his hands as he passed, and he thanked her - maybe not out loud, maybe he only said it in his head, a tired kamsa hamnida rattling around in his skull.
Jinki didn't go to the school nurse. He set the alarm on his cell phone for twelve - he had to meet a hoobae in the library for tutoring at twelve thirty - and then he went to the student lounge to sleep.
The manager of the department store looked like a string bean - skinny and waxy, hairless except for a wisp of a combover on his shining skull. He squinted myopically through his glasses and swallowed, the column of his throat going taut. Jinki wondered if that was the source of the damp sheen to his skin; the constant swallowing caused his saliva to overflow through his pores. It was impossible to guess his age - his skin looked like it was preserved in brine. He could have been a hundred, or thirty-two.
Manager-sshi had a nasty habit of following Jinki around the store, turning up in the aisles where Jinki was stocking something on the shelves or cleaning a mess off the floor. He tailed him during the day, watching with his clipboard clutched to his chest, waiting for the best moment to strike - when will Jinki be at his weakest?
And then just when Jinki thought that his day couldn't get any worse - his student didn't come prepared for tutoring, Jinki might have failed a test, then he almost missed the bus to get to work, and then some kid decided to throw up in the back of the store fifteen minutes before Jinki's shift was over - Manager-sshi popped around the shelf at the end of Kitchen Wares, cornering Jinki in the dead-end aisle. He had his little red shift book, pen already resting in the spine.
"Lee Jinki!" Manager-sshi huffed when he spoke, like he couldn't sustain enough breath for more than a monosyllable. "I notice that you are booked for a shift on Saturday."
Jinki nodded. It would be rude to turn away without being dismissed, so Jinki stared at the floor by Manager-sshi's black loafers and tried to keep his gaze from floating up to the sweat stains under the manager's arms. Surely the man had to know that he was melting.
"If you work this Saturday, that's overtime."
"Yes, sir." That's the point, dumb ass.
"No, no, no..." Manager-sshi pulled the pen from the bend of his shift book and clicked it open with a flourish. He made a deep swipe across the bottom of the page. "You don't need to work Saturday. Someone else wants that shift."
Jinki grit his teeth against everything he wanted to say. You stupid, disgusting, damp fuck! He needed that overtime. Eomma certainly wasn't jumping to do it. Jinki bit down on his tongue until the urge to spit in his manager's face went away. "Yes, sir," he mumbled.
Manager-sshi looked down at the mop that Jinki was holding. He tapped the water bucket with his toe. "Keep up the good work, Jinki," he said.
Why don't you rub some salt in it?
The school's main building wasn't usually this confusing, and that's how Jinki knew that he was dreaming. He walked down the winding hallways by whim, not at all worried that he was late for soccer practice. He'd find the way eventually - Coach Yongyeom probably wouldn't even yell at him, since he must know that the corridors were awfully confusing today.
There was a familiar doorway at the end of the hall, and, heartened, Jinki sped up. He half-expected the door to be locked (that's how these things always were, weren't they?), but when he tried the handle it swung open easily. Jinki walked into the boys' change room.
It was filthy - well, filthier than usual. The showers looked like they hadn't been scrubbed since the school was built, caked over with grime and built-up calcium and dirt from thousands of sweating high school boys. Jinki wrinkled his nose and side-stepped the floor. The area around the shower drains was especially bad, with scum that looked almost alive. Jinki stepped onto the benches that circled the room and balanced, like a tight-rope walker, moving around to the other side. There were two doors; one that led into the gym, and another that opened into a rarely-used supply closet.
Jinki picked door number two: the closet. Why not?
Inside, a girl was crouching, wedged between the sports equipment and cleaning supplies. Her hair was a mess, all over her face, and her shirt was sliding off her shoulder to rest just above the crook over her elbow, gaping wide on her skinny frame. The dim light highlighted the hollows of her collarbone and the taut muscles of her neck as she turned her head to squint through the light.
Jinki tried to focus, to recognize, but every time he concentrated on the girl's face it seemed to blur away. She recognized him easily enough; voice low and husky, she whispered, her lips parting with a wet sound, "Jinki..."
So it was that kind of dream.
Jinki stepped into the closet - a rapidly shrinking space - and pulled the door shut behind him. The only light came from the seam of the door, and it cast everything in strange shadows. The girl stood up, pressing against Jinki's chest, curling her fists into his shirt. Her breath was hot, and her lips were sticky with lip gloss as she pressed open-mouth kisses along the edge of his jaw.
Everywhere that Jinki touched, the girl was hard and angled, all skin and bones, not an ounce of fat. He skated his hands up her thighs, and with a desperate whine, she lifted one leg. Her skirt hiked up, and Jinki pressed his thumbs into the bend of her groin. She pressed forward, trying to get closer. Her pubic bone pressed against the bulge in Jinki's jeans and he yanked her close, eager for friction.
"Jinki," she whined. And the voice was strangely familiar.
Jinki stumbled backwards and reached for the door handle. The door came open with a click, flooding the closet with light. The girl - that's not a girl - raised a hand to shield her eyes. Her hair was stuck to the gloss on her lips - his lips, holy shit, those lips.
Jinki woke up with a painful hard-on, the front of his boxers damp and sticky. He palmed his erection with fast, impatient strokes, fisting his hand into his mouth to keep his mother from overhearing. He came to a mental image of Taemin: messy hair, sticky lips.
Funny; it was the first dream Jinki had in months that didn't involve the car splintering into pieces around him. He decided not to over think that one.
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wynnetimate's master list.
Pairing: Onew/Taemin
Length: 3,468w (8,945 total)
Summary: "Some people are just unlucky."
Previous Chapters: Chapter 1 | Chapter 2
C H A P T E R 3
Jinki was sluggish on Monday morning. His alarm went off at six, and he had almost convinced himself to stay in bed when his cell phone buzzed on the nightstand.
Fr: Jjong
did u finish ur korean hmwk? can i copy b4 class?
With a sigh, Jinki got out of the covers and went through the motions of getting ready. There was a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach, not enough to complain about, but the heavy feeling made him slow. He showered, brushed his teeth, and pulled on a clean school uniform - the pullover today, because it was getting cold and Jinki could feel the chill on his skin.
His mother was still sleeping when he went downstairs. Jinki guessed she wouldn't be going to work today either. She was tangled in the sheets, one foot hanging over the end of the mattress, snoring lightly into her pillow. There was a line of crusted drool on her chin.
"Eomma?" Jinki called. "Are you getting up?"
His mother snuffled and pushed herself up on the heels of her palms. She blinked at the clock on the nightstand and then collapsed back into the blankets. "In fifteen minutes," she mumbled.
Jinki set the coffeemaker before he left.
Jonghyun got on the same bus as Jinki three stops down. He pushed his way through the standing crowd at the front and gestured with a wave of his hand for Jinki to drop his bag to the floor. "Everyone hates me for saving you a seat," Jinki grumbled.
"No one cares!" Jonghyun sat down and flashed a grin to the guy standing up next to him. The guy didn't look impressed.
"You're bright-eyed this morning."
Jonghyun grinned. "Of course I am! While you were working stock last night, I was texting with Shin Sekyung."
Jinki covered a yawn with the back of his hand; he wasn't faking it, just well-timed. "Trading sleep for text message flirting. Ah. No wonder."
"I think she likes me," Jonghyun said.
"What makes you think that? Did she type you a little happy face and a less-than three?"
"Come on, hyung." Jonghyun made a face, and Jinki shrugged and dropped it. It was fun to tease Jonghyun, but only when he was teasing back - he'd liked Sekyung for too long to find it funny anymore.
"I'm happy for you," Jinki said. He gave a little smile to prove it.
Jonghyun beamed back. It must have been a good texting session if Jjong was this happy the next day. Jinki tried not to think about the contents of those text messages too hard.
"Did you bring your Korean homework?" Jonghyun asked.
Oh, right. Jinki dug around in his backpack for his notebook and handed it over. With his textbook perched against the back of the seat in front of him, Jonghyun copied all of Jinki's answers onto a lined piece of paper, scribbling the questions above in blocky Hangeul.
"Reword some stuff," Jinki said, tapping the first question. Jonghyun had copied it word-for-word. "Change it around a bit so it's not so obvious that I did the work for you."
Jonghyun stuck out his tongue, but he erased the first section and redid it. Jinki couldn't decide if the bouncing of the bus was to blame, or if Jonghyun just had terrible handwriting. Probably the latter. The notes that he passed Jinki in class sometimes were scrawled in a chickenscratch that only vaguely resembled Korean letters.
The students rushing into the school looked like flooding water, everyone in matching navy blue uniforms, coursing through the hallways and trickling off into classrooms at the ring of the bell. Jinki said see you later to Jonghyun at the stairs; he went down, Jonghyun went up.
The calculus room was at the back of the school, underneath the greenhouse where the heating didn't quite work in the winter and the a/c didn't reach in the summer. It was one of the oldest parts of the school building, all yellowing linoleum and painted concrete. There were lockers in the hall down there, but as far as Jinki knew no one used them - they were all empty, gutless, unlocked.
Today when Jinki got to his seat, he made it a point to look over and smile at Taemin. Taemin shyly smiled back. In his school uniform, Taemin looked so nondescript. His hair was longer than the school regulations, but he had it cleverly clipped back so that it looked shorter from the front, and the dark bobby pins were almost invisible against his hair. He wore the uniform exactly how the handbook specified, with his collar pressed and the cuffs folded over - probably so that the teachers wouldn't pull him aside and notice that his hair was longer than the school regulation.
Jinki was silently grateful that the teacher came in and right away started talking. Taemin was an attentive student, and with his eyes focused on the whiteboard he didn't notice - or was too polite to comment on - Jinki's staring.
Taemin had his notebook open already, all of the equations completed in ballpoint pen, nothing scratched out; he either had a perfect head for numbers, or he'd copied his homework out. Jinki couldn't stop looking at his hands. Taemin had his pen propped loosely between his thumb and index finger. His fingers were long, nails perfectly shaped and glossy - nail varnish? Jinki tilted his head to the side and tried to decide if the light that glinted off of Taemin's nails could be natural or if he had painted a clear gloss finish. Taemin's hand tightened around the pen and he scrawled a string of numbers across the top of a clean page.
Definitely gloss.
As the equation got longer, Taemin's hand moved down the page, line-by-line. His sleeve hiked up and Jinki noticed wooden rosary beads looped around his wrist. Catholic. Jinki was struck with the sudden image of Taemin's delicate hands carding over the beads as he counted out Hail Marys. The image was weirdly arousing.
That's rude. Don't think like that in class, pervert.
The teacher started scribbling a side note about infinitesimals across the board in red. The marker squeaked like a banshee. Jinki didn't even notice the sound until he saw Taemin wince as the teacher swished a 7 with a particularly loud squeak, and then he couldn't tune it out - squeak-squeak squeaky-squeak squeak infinitesimals are numbers so small they cannot be seen squeaky-squeak. Jinki sighed in relief when the teacher finished. Mr. Han capped the marker with a weird smirk, like he knew the sound had been driving everyone crazy.
"Okay, everyone," the teacher said, clapping his hands together. "Work on the problems on page forty-five. Have it finished for tomorrow."
Jinki watched Taemin write in his tiny, rounded handwriting: sonsaengnim has asked us to finish page 45 for tomorrow. Even his homework notes were sweet and polite.
Jinki shook himself out of the daze as the words that Taemin wrote registered. Homework. Right. He turned his attention to the number problems in front of him and tried to drown out the rest of the world.
Jinki liked math. It was trustworthy. It never changed. It always had a clear right answer. On any other day, Jinki could have looked at his textbook and let the numbers wash over him. There was no room for thought that didn't involve plugging numbers and checking answers.
On any other day, he wasn't so aware of Taemin's presence next to him. Taemin had one hand resting on the nape of his neck, and he chewed his lip as he concentrated on the textbook. Jinki noted, with a twinge of jealousy, that Taemin wrote in pen.
"Hyung, I'm sorry to bother you. Could I ask something?"
Taemin's voice was soft and polite, hardly above a whisper. It took Jinki a painfully long moment to realize that, yes, Taemin had just spoken out loud; he had asked a question, and was waiting, wide-eyed, for a response.
"Ah, yes. What's up?"
Taemin smiled and slid his notebook toward the centre of the table. "I'm sorry to bother you," he repeated, "but have you solved question one? I checked my answer and it's wrong, but I'm not so sure where I went wrong in the calculations."
Jinki didn't move right away, and Taemin's face fell a little. After a beat, he started to pull the notebook back. Jinki stopped him with an open-handed slap over the paper. He flashed an apologetic smile. "Yeah, of course. Let me see." Idiot, idiot, idiot! Jinki pulled the notebook closer and compared it with the answer he had just written down. "I don't know how much help I'll be," he admitted. "I got the same number as you."
Taemin frowned at the page. "Well, that can't be right..."
He leaned over to compare each line of their calculations, scooting his chair closer. There were only a few inches of space between them - Jinki could have bent his head and pressed his lips to the back of Taemin's neck. And from such close proximity, Jinki could smell Taemin's shampoo, something vaguely fruity, a low scent like cherries. There was a stronger scent on Taemin's skin, something sweet and floral. Almost like... Is he wearing perfume?
Taemin drew a little X next to the line where he deemed the mistake to be. He started over, checking the calculations on each new line. Taemin bit his lip, worrying at a raw spot, and the slow slide of teeth drew Jinki's eyes. Taemin must chew his lips a lot; there was a spot where it looked like he'd drawn blood earlier, the skin split and red. Jinki swallowed. Taemin's lips were actually perfect, like girls' lips, full and soft. When he wasn't smiling, his expression settled into a natural pout.
"Ah!" Taemin sat back, and his sudden smile played across his face like music. Jinki blinked and wondered how it was even possible for someone to be so disarmingly pretty; he hadn't noticed until he looked. "I think I've got it," Taemin said. "Thank you, hyung."
Jinki's tongue felt thick in his mouth. "But I didn't do anything. You solved it yourself."
Taemin glanced down at the page, his long eyelashes kissing his cheeks. "You did help, hyung. I don't feel so stupid for getting it wrong at first, since you did too."
Jinki was sure that there was a backhanded insult somewhere in there, but chose to ignore it in favour of the butterflies that started richocheting around his insides. He'd never felt so good about getting a wrong answer in his life.
It wasn't butterflies.
By second period, Jinki was swallowing fast, fighting the urge to puke all over his desk. He couldn't decide if the nausea was from being overtired, or something he ate. Had he eaten in the morning? Jinki didn't think so. His stomach had been too heavy then. Right now it felt like it was turned in on itself, gnawing at his insides. Maybe he'd feel better if he did throw up.
Jinki felt as though everything was in slow motion. Like watching a movie on mute with a damaged tape; fuzzy lines all over, faces blurred. Jinki's third period class was on the second floor, and halfway up the flight of stairs he stopped and tried to shake the heaviness from his limbs. His legs were just dead weight. Everything took so much effort.
Jinki thought about skipping third period, heading over to the student lounge and napping until the last bell, or at least rest his eyes for an hour or two - no, you can't! He had a student to tutor over lunch, and then a test in the afternoon that he hadn't really studied for. He should at least look over the notes.
The third period classroom was noisy, thirty voices bleeding into one senseless dialogue:
"-did you get-"
"-all of them! And then-"
"-well, she didn't say that exactly, but-"
"-didn't get the answer for-"
"-obviously not-"
Jinki sat down at the front of the room so that all of the voices behind him blended into background noise, white fuzz in his ears. He stared, tunnel-visioned, at the whiteboard as the teacher called for order. The cacophony of voices quieted down to a hum, irregular, like the chirrup of crickets at night. Jinki focused on not throwing up.
"Let's resume from where we left off last class," the teacher said. "Open your textbooks to chapter four."
Jinki built a platform out of his books to rest on, leaning on the crook of his arm on top of his calculus and Korean books. He opened his science textbook on the table and angled his head to look at the page, but the letters swam in front of his eyes and the diagrams were nonsensical. Something about jellyfish.
The room started to go out-of-focus, blurry. Jinki closed his eyes - just a minute, just give me a minute - and his weight seemed to drop, heavy-set, to the bottom of his feet. There was a roar in his ears, hollow-sounding like the inside of a sea shell.
"Lee Jinki."
Jinki startled awake, sitting up so fast that his chair screeched over the laminate flooring and almost toppled over. His water bottle hit the floor with a plastic thunk and rolled underneath someone's desk a few rows over. The teacher was looking at Jinki with a mixture of annoyance and pity.
"Lee Jinki, if you're not feeling well, I suggest you see the nurse."
Jinki bowed in apology. He quickly tossed his things into his bag, not caring that he was bending the margins of history papers and crumpling calculus notes. He bowed again, whispered, "I'm sorry; I'm not well," and headed for the door.
Hyunbin pressed Jinki's water bottle into his hands as he passed, and he thanked her - maybe not out loud, maybe he only said it in his head, a tired kamsa hamnida rattling around in his skull.
Jinki didn't go to the school nurse. He set the alarm on his cell phone for twelve - he had to meet a hoobae in the library for tutoring at twelve thirty - and then he went to the student lounge to sleep.
The manager of the department store looked like a string bean - skinny and waxy, hairless except for a wisp of a combover on his shining skull. He squinted myopically through his glasses and swallowed, the column of his throat going taut. Jinki wondered if that was the source of the damp sheen to his skin; the constant swallowing caused his saliva to overflow through his pores. It was impossible to guess his age - his skin looked like it was preserved in brine. He could have been a hundred, or thirty-two.
Manager-sshi had a nasty habit of following Jinki around the store, turning up in the aisles where Jinki was stocking something on the shelves or cleaning a mess off the floor. He tailed him during the day, watching with his clipboard clutched to his chest, waiting for the best moment to strike - when will Jinki be at his weakest?
And then just when Jinki thought that his day couldn't get any worse - his student didn't come prepared for tutoring, Jinki might have failed a test, then he almost missed the bus to get to work, and then some kid decided to throw up in the back of the store fifteen minutes before Jinki's shift was over - Manager-sshi popped around the shelf at the end of Kitchen Wares, cornering Jinki in the dead-end aisle. He had his little red shift book, pen already resting in the spine.
"Lee Jinki!" Manager-sshi huffed when he spoke, like he couldn't sustain enough breath for more than a monosyllable. "I notice that you are booked for a shift on Saturday."
Jinki nodded. It would be rude to turn away without being dismissed, so Jinki stared at the floor by Manager-sshi's black loafers and tried to keep his gaze from floating up to the sweat stains under the manager's arms. Surely the man had to know that he was melting.
"If you work this Saturday, that's overtime."
"Yes, sir." That's the point, dumb ass.
"No, no, no..." Manager-sshi pulled the pen from the bend of his shift book and clicked it open with a flourish. He made a deep swipe across the bottom of the page. "You don't need to work Saturday. Someone else wants that shift."
Jinki grit his teeth against everything he wanted to say. You stupid, disgusting, damp fuck! He needed that overtime. Eomma certainly wasn't jumping to do it. Jinki bit down on his tongue until the urge to spit in his manager's face went away. "Yes, sir," he mumbled.
Manager-sshi looked down at the mop that Jinki was holding. He tapped the water bucket with his toe. "Keep up the good work, Jinki," he said.
Why don't you rub some salt in it?
The school's main building wasn't usually this confusing, and that's how Jinki knew that he was dreaming. He walked down the winding hallways by whim, not at all worried that he was late for soccer practice. He'd find the way eventually - Coach Yongyeom probably wouldn't even yell at him, since he must know that the corridors were awfully confusing today.
There was a familiar doorway at the end of the hall, and, heartened, Jinki sped up. He half-expected the door to be locked (that's how these things always were, weren't they?), but when he tried the handle it swung open easily. Jinki walked into the boys' change room.
It was filthy - well, filthier than usual. The showers looked like they hadn't been scrubbed since the school was built, caked over with grime and built-up calcium and dirt from thousands of sweating high school boys. Jinki wrinkled his nose and side-stepped the floor. The area around the shower drains was especially bad, with scum that looked almost alive. Jinki stepped onto the benches that circled the room and balanced, like a tight-rope walker, moving around to the other side. There were two doors; one that led into the gym, and another that opened into a rarely-used supply closet.
Jinki picked door number two: the closet. Why not?
Inside, a girl was crouching, wedged between the sports equipment and cleaning supplies. Her hair was a mess, all over her face, and her shirt was sliding off her shoulder to rest just above the crook over her elbow, gaping wide on her skinny frame. The dim light highlighted the hollows of her collarbone and the taut muscles of her neck as she turned her head to squint through the light.
Jinki tried to focus, to recognize, but every time he concentrated on the girl's face it seemed to blur away. She recognized him easily enough; voice low and husky, she whispered, her lips parting with a wet sound, "Jinki..."
So it was that kind of dream.
Jinki stepped into the closet - a rapidly shrinking space - and pulled the door shut behind him. The only light came from the seam of the door, and it cast everything in strange shadows. The girl stood up, pressing against Jinki's chest, curling her fists into his shirt. Her breath was hot, and her lips were sticky with lip gloss as she pressed open-mouth kisses along the edge of his jaw.
Everywhere that Jinki touched, the girl was hard and angled, all skin and bones, not an ounce of fat. He skated his hands up her thighs, and with a desperate whine, she lifted one leg. Her skirt hiked up, and Jinki pressed his thumbs into the bend of her groin. She pressed forward, trying to get closer. Her pubic bone pressed against the bulge in Jinki's jeans and he yanked her close, eager for friction.
"Jinki," she whined. And the voice was strangely familiar.
Jinki stumbled backwards and reached for the door handle. The door came open with a click, flooding the closet with light. The girl - that's not a girl - raised a hand to shield her eyes. Her hair was stuck to the gloss on her lips - his lips, holy shit, those lips.
Jinki woke up with a painful hard-on, the front of his boxers damp and sticky. He palmed his erection with fast, impatient strokes, fisting his hand into his mouth to keep his mother from overhearing. He came to a mental image of Taemin: messy hair, sticky lips.
Funny; it was the first dream Jinki had in months that didn't involve the car splintering into pieces around him. He decided not to over think that one.
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