equilibrium

weekEnd

It had been his mother’s idea to volunteer. Something about “we rarely see you anymore, this will be a time to catch up and bond”, she had said. Jimin couldn’t deny the fact that he was somewhat disgruntled over having to wake up early on the weekend, but it meant he could spend the entire day with cats and he just couldn’t say no to the look on his mother’s face anyway. Cats were always one of his most favourite animals, and he’d always begged his parents to have one but sadly his attempts at changing his parents’ minds by excessive pouting had always failed.

❝ okay! ❞ happily, thoughts of long-awaited food on his mind, he follows jimin over to the cleared table and slides onto the bench opposite his friend, jiggling his leg unconsciously under the table in barely-suppressed excitement. he’s been cooped up in the library all day and has far too much energy for one person; he longs to be outdoors, to go places & see things, talk and romp and have fun. this change of scenery is a very welcomed one; he thinks if he had been made to sit and stare at french verbs for much longer, he would have gone stir crazy. ❝ i’ll have to see about zodiac history though; i changed a bunch of my core classes my second year, so that’s basically one year i wasted on classes that don’t count for credit. ❞ why he had thought astronomy would be a good idea his first year is beyond him – something like that had to have been easy, & yet he’d found out three weeks in that wasn’t necessarily the case.

Jimin snorted at the excitable behaviour of his friend; he couldn’t blame him, not when the scent of delicious cooking was reminding him just how hungry he was. “Mm.” He replied, placing his bag down next to him on the bench before giving the younger male a nod. “I understand. I don’t even know what classes I’m gonna take next year, I just want to survive this school year first.” With a sigh, Jimin crinkled his nose before picking up a pair of chopsticks and placing them down on the table in front of him.

her eyebrows furrowed, trying to remember the scene he was describing, the words repeating in her head. stared at my ice cream… it took her more than five minutes to finally recall the memory but when she finally did, her eyes widened, her hand clamping over her mouth as if to restrict any sound from passing through. the girl’s cheeks burned red, feeling the embarrassment even though years had passed from their incident slash encounter. she had enough to worry about without dealing with her partner thinking that she was some ice cream maniac.

The look on her face when she remembered, in Jimin’s eyes, was undeniably amusing. Jimin let out a laugh at her reaction, his eyes turning into crescents as he tried not to divert the teacher’s attention to him; he wasn’t particularly setting out to get in trouble from laughing too loudly today. Nodding, he opened his textbook to the appropriate page with a hum. 

Hwayoung had been sitting in the open study room, enjoying the calm of it, something that often seem to be lacking in Caelum, although she’ll be the first to admit that she probably contributes her own fair share of trouble in the academy. But no- today was a surprisingly calm and pleasant day, the only thing she wondered was how long it would last this time. But so far so good, the only thing that could be heard in the room was the noise of charcoal against grainy paper that could be heard from the student sitting a few rows ahead of her, clearly practicing for what seemed to be the Drawing elective. But Hwayoung almost found it soothing.

Jimin took a deep breath and closed his eyes, trying his best to control his powers. It wasn’t even the frustration that was continuing to keep his powers out of control now, but rather the panic that was now coursing through his veins. If he got caught, he’d most likely get detention and that was something he most certainly didn’t want. You’d think that the teachers would be more understanding as they had once been in his position, but apparently this wasn’t the case. 

a hint of teeth showed as she sees someone walking towards her direction, the sides of her mouth being pulled into a smile. it’s become something a habit, really, to smile at other people ( even if she wasn’t feeling particularly smile-y ). ah, park jimin. he looked familiar, with his cute little eyes and ever present smile lines; like she’s seen him before, she knew she had. but where? it couldn’t be in this stupid french class because she never really paid attention to the other students. it was probably one of the classes she kept to herself, despite the constant pair work. french was exclusive.

Fiddling around with his belongings for a moment, making sure they weren’t taking up too much space on the desk, Jimin gave the girl a smile. He wasn’t surprised that she didn’t remember their first meeting - to be honest, he probably wouldn’t have remembered either - since it was so long ago. Wow, he thought, I can’t believe it’s been almost 5 years since I moved. 

He nodded along, actively listening to the other’s concerns regarding the language. “Ah yes native speakers do tend to speak a bit too fast, but le subjonctif is a bit tricky because it’s much easier to conjugate than it is to apply.” Sometimes Hugo was grateful that he grew up with French as a first language, because learning it now would be a nightmare. That was why he commended Jimin and anyone else for that matter, who decided to take on the language. It wasn’t as if the language was overly complicated to understand, it was the many rules, accents, and conjugations that made it a living nightmare. 

“It’s an actual nightmare. Don’t even get me started on le subjonctif passé, ugh.” With a crinkle of his nose, he rested his chin on his palm as he wrote a title in his workbook, just in case he were to do any practice questions later on. Jimin had always promised himself that he’d master at least one other language in his life, but right now it seemed nearly impossible. I’ll probably have to move to France, he thought, I’m gonna eat so much saucisson and brioche and talk to pretty French people and it’s gonna be awesome. Yes, this was definitely a good plan.

 caekji:

At the sound of a familiar voice, Hugo turned towards the source and gave a bright smile. “ Ah there you are Jimin! It’s no problem at all, you know I’m always glad to help!” He briefly paused and chose to take the seat next to the other. “Alrighty, so French.” He blinked and looked at the other almost expectantly. If he was being honest, Hugo had no idea how he should even begin when it came to addressing the issue at hand. It was one thing to grow up with and know French, but it was another thing to actually teach it. “Is there any particular area that you’re having trouble with like conjugations or perhaps pronunciation? Personally, I always make mistakes with spelling and pronunciation, but I’m pretty sure its because I haven’t been back home in nine years.”

“You’re honestly a life saver right now.” Jimin replied with a laugh, tapping his pen against the desk a few times before deeming it as annoying. With a nod, he turned to the book as if it would help him conjure up his list of problematic areas that had now escaped his mind. Taking a moment to think, he turned to the elder student and replied, “Well, I think the grammar is kind of hard. I mean, why is the subjunctive a thing?” Crinkling his nose in a grimace, he continued. “I think speaking is difficult too. It’s always different when you speak to a native, they speak so fast.” He remembered his first few months of French class, the feeling of completely and utter confusion had become familiar to him as he just couldn’t understand what anyone was saying in the listening practices. He’d gotten better, but he still wasn’t at the level he’d like to be.

Yoojung was calmly studying in her room, situated on her bed, lying down with her stomach down, legs sprawled on top of her pillow, head rested on her palm with an opened textbook in front of her until her door bursted open, revealing a frantic Jimin screaming at the top of his lungs. Eyes widened in surprise, Yoojung listened to the male ramble before he stopped, realizing what he had done. “Jimin-oppa, calm down,” she responded as she stood up from her bed. “Don’t worry, I’ll try to find out what’s wrong.”

Jimin nodded, clutching the remote to his chest as Yoojung offered to help. He was thankful, especially since he knew very well that she could have just yelled at him for bursting into her room in such a chaotic manner over something so mundane. Leading her back into his room, he handed her the remote and stood to the side so that he would bother her as little as possible. However, a loud groan escaped his lips when the true cause of his lamenting was discovered.