#j4ystar

that secret was quite tempting, if you were something, it was nosy. you pick up your phone and for a moment heeseung thinks you’re about to leave him. however you sit and type something out quickly. 

y/f/n 

is your knee okay? 

i think it’ll be best if you do the interview with someone else 

im sorry

heeseung’s eyes are carefully trained on you, making sure his eyes don’t accidentally drift down to take a peek at what you’re typing on your phone. 

“do you have to go somewhere?” 

“hm?” you jolt up. facing your phone down as you finish sending the texts to jake. heesueng looks at your with wide deer-like eyes and you shake your head. “no.” you look away, still holding your phone when you ask “so what’s your secret?” 

heeseung smiles and motions for you to come closer, you hesitantly come closer, turning your head to the side. 

“this isn’t the first time we’ve met.” he whispers. your lips part in confusion. retracting yourself away from him, you turn and ask “huh? what does that mean? we’ve met before…?” heeseung smirks, motioning for you to come closer once again so he can tell you. 

you lean in closer to him. “thats..” he breaks off “a secret!” heeseung begins laughing to himself as he gets up from the floor. your small smile drops and a face of disbelief dawns over your features. you shut your eyes tightly before getting up and shoving him lightly.

heeseung makes a run for it outside of the dance studio and into the hallway with you following closely behind him. despite his laughter, you try to keep up with him. upon nearing a staircase to ascend on, heeseung takes two steps at a time, curse his long legs, but manages to hit his ankle on one of the steps as he flies up them. 

hearing the wince, and seeing him falter, his hands coming in front of him to break his fall you frown. heeseung immediately shakes his head as you stare at him, coming to a complete stop at the bottom of the stairs.

“you..” your voice trembles. heeseung stands up, a smile adorning his face as he dances on his feet, a quick move. “got you!” your face falls yet again, breathing out slowly and playfully glaring at him. 

“don’t do that.. you scared me!” you tut at him and he flies up the stairs yet again with you following, attempting to take two steps at a time but unlike heeseung, your legs were far shorter. heeseung was already up the stairs and running away before you could even look up to see where he was. 

you get up the stairs, hating that it was a literal workout just to chase this guy around. when you reach the top, you prepare to bolt after heeseung as you see him walking leisurely down a hallway, laughing at you and your pace. however you nearly walk into someone, more like, you nearly walk into someone that was all too familiar to you. 

you tense up, freezing in your spot, non really discreetly looking at the dark headed boy before you train your eyes to the ground and then make a side eye towards heeseung who is now watching this awkward exchange of looks happen in curiosity. 

you could almost remember all too well the features of this boy. the dark hair, a slight undercut with trimmed sides, his sharp jawline. more concerningly, you saw the few cuts and bruises adorning his face. and you feel your stomach drop. 

–

you sat on the bus going home from school, it was dark out and the only people left were you, another student from a different school, and some old drunk man that was talking to himself and the imaginary people around him. obviously freaked out, you sat still and silent as he spewed incoherent words. 

a few seats behind you was this boy, you didn’t really get a good look at him but he sat glaring outside the window with a busted lip and a bandaid poorly plastered onto his face as if that would cover up the fact that there were other bruises and cuts on his face. 

while you were terrified out of your mind, this random guy staring at you from the lower front section of the bus, you tried your best not to look back at him and pretend to mind your business. the boy sitting a few seats behind you had other ideas, carefully looking between you and the guy before getting up and sitting beside you. 

you look towards him, neck craning up slightly to accommodate his rather taller figure as he sits. he doesn’t say anything, though you find it better than sitting alone. the drunk man goes back to looking at anything other than the two of you, continuing to talk about random politically concerning things and before no time, the bus reaches the station, dropping the two of you off while the drunk man gets off and begins to shuffle away, still cursing under his breath.

you and this random student stand a few feet away from each other despite the few minutes of sitting so close to one another before. you wait until the drunken man is out of sight before you turn your back on the student and prepare to make your voyage home. the weather was beginning to nip at your skin around this time of year, despite it still being manageable, there were snowflakes beginning to cascade upon the city. 

you could see your breath as you wrap your blazer closer and tighter around your body and you begin to walk towards the direction of your neighbourhood. 

“hey.” you freeze, assuming the worst in the appeared delinquent whom you figure is talking to you. you don’t turn to face him though. 

“do you wanna get some street food?” you look at him, wondering if was talking to you, there was no one else there anyway. who else would he be talking to? the student nods towards a few open street food carts and vendors just the ways down the sidewalk. 

when you don’t reply and he begins to walk past you, you assume you’d pissed him off but he stops after walking a bit further and looks at you to make sure you’re following him. he gives you an expected look and you begin to follow him to the food stands down the road. 

upon arriving to the cart, the hot food produces steam in the cold chilling nights. you come up next to him in the stall and look at the food the vendor is selling. 

“can we get one serving of spicy rice cakes please.” 

you watch as the student pours a cup of water for you, he slides it towards you. “here,” the vendor hands him the paper container of rice cakes “thank you.” he sets it down between the two of you and hands a skewer for you to use. 

“can we also get the seaweed roll please?” you ask the vendor, he nods with a smile. the boy looks down at you, a tinge of a smile appearing before he chuckles softly. “give us a seaweed roll too, please.” he reaffirms. he goes to pick up a rice cake and tries to eat it before wincing as the food was too hot for him. 

“ah..” he sighs, you crack a smile and laugh at him. 

–

jay looks down at you as you avoid his eye contact by staring at the floor before you instead. you can practically feel his eyes boring into you, deep breaths escaping his mouth as well. jay hasn’t changed a day since you last saw him. funnily enough, the first time you met him he had gotten into a fight, and from what you’re looking at now, jay hadn’t changed his tendencies and habits as he was still littered

with cuts and bruises. fresh, you’d assume. you’ll probably hear something about a fight later on with the week. 

“it’s been a while.” he says, voice didn’t change either. it was still deep and smooth. you look up, guilt striking at your heart as you stare at him. to others it would be hard to see but jay has a small smile on his face when seeing you again. albeit in these horrible conditions, he didn’t want you to have bumped into him this way just after he was just being thrown around in the tarmac behind the school. 

“have you been well?” you let out an awkward laugh. “yeah..” he nods. lugging his backpack over one shoulder he brings it back up as it had been slipping down his arm. his lips press into a thin line and he looks down at his shoes. “i’m glad.” 

“did you transfer?”

“i transferred.” 

you two talk over each other, laughing awkwardly when he just shuts his mouth to let you speak. “i transferred here yesterday.” he hums to himself, shoving his hands into his pocket and again, avoiding eye contact with you. “i see.” 

“i gotta go.” you tell him shuffling in your spot. instead of continuing towards heeseung who was still watching from afar, you return back in the direction of the dance studio. jay watches you leave with a solemn heart. 

–

sunoo continuously holds up a very well drawn and detailed portrait of you as he and jay waits outside of your school. well what they thought was your school. they were just about 100% sure because the girls exiting wore the same uniform jay saw you in that night he met you on the bus and treated you to food. 

jay leans against the school gates, exhausted and slightly embarrassed as sunoo who was more than eager to find this mystery girl that his friend was oh-so “in love” with for the past week. jay has tried taking the bus at the same time he saw you, waiting at the bus stop you were dropped off at, even asking the vendor if he had seen you again. but to no avail, it’s like you disappeared and jay didn’t even know your name. let’s say sometimes it slips his mind that students wear name tags to school.

so he did what he does best, draw. upon drawing you from memory, to the best of his ability. he was destined to find you yet again. and thanks to sunoo, who had tracked down the school from the description jay had given him, he was able to find the school that he was sure you attended.

jay argued that it was creepy to show up unannounced but sunoo affirmed him that it was romantic and cute and not creepy at all. jay hid his face as sunoo quite literally held the picture up against every girl that exited the school. 

“hey, i said let’s just go.. this is a waste of time.”  jay grumbles, bringing his phone out of his pocket and checking the time. 

“i told you to just stay put.” sunoo argues “this is why i’m the one standing here and looking at everyones face while you hide in the corner.” jay groans, head hitting the fencing behind him as he shuts his eyes and wishes this major headache would go away. 

“i’m certain this uniform belongs to this school.” 

“what have we been doing for the past couple of days? this is… borderline insane.” he retaliates, admittedly, sunoo had dragged jay to the school for the past three days in search of you. 

“if a teacher sees us they’ll think we’re creeps or something. do we really have nothing better to do?” this was sunoo’s claim to be the very last resort. “we really, really, really have nothing better to do!” the bleach blonde boy tells his friend. jay really wanted to find you, but after three days of searching there was quite literally no hope and he was beginning to accept that. 

“who even told you to draw this kind of thing anyway. do you have anything more important to do than find her? what about… i don’t know, let me think. SCHOOL?!” sunoo comes waving the drawing of you in jay’s face. frantic, and frustrated at his friend who seemed so love-struck for the past week and desperate to find you, and now becoming this depressed lug who gives up on humanity. 

“we might as well print out hundreds of these and attach your phone number on it and just spread it around the city.” sunoo says sarcastically, jay looks anywhere else than his friend who continues to throw a tantrum. “if she doesn’t call you after seeing this.. i mean who would even call, this is actually kind of creepy–” jay grabs the drawing from sunoo’s frantic movement.

“i said stop it.” he tells sunoo sternly. sunoo gives him a stank face, huffing out and crossing his arms over his chest. 

“you’re suffering because you couldn’t even ask her for her name or number.” sunoo is relentless with his words sometimes, but he’s also honest and right. “you can’t do anything without me.” he puffs his cheeks out and jay might as well submit and agree because without sunoo jay would be drowning in a ditch that he created himself. 

jay stands up and plants his weight into his feet now, looking past sunoo and straight at you. he could recognize that face from anywhere. he quickly hides the drawing behind his back as you recognize him too, a grin appearing on your face as you walk towards him and his friends. it might seem like at this moment, jay is kind of hiding behind sunoo. 

–

even a year later, you still kept the drawing he so shyly hands over to you that day he finally finds you and asks for your name and number. despite it being over a year since you last seen it. it was stuck in the back of your mind since you had bumped into him today. 

when you arrive at home, you go for a search for the drawing, staring at the unkempt shelves you’ve had for years, knowing that it was stashed somewhere in them. you remember a certain cube that you hid it in. upon seeing it again, you’re sent down a path of reminiscent memories.

–

you rip out a sneeze in the middle of class, disrupting the lesson, somehow all the heads turn to look at the cause. almost immediately, the girl sitting in front of you and the few students to the side of you move their desks and chairs forward in an attempt to avoid whatever radius your sneeze had reached. they couldn’t risk catching whatever you were floating around school with. 

“see, now i’m glad jake didn’t come to class today because he had soccer practice.” 

“is his knee really okay?” 

you look up through your lashes, curiously, head still kept down because you feared getting caught listening in on the conversation the girls in front of you were having. you can help but sniffle, the cold you were suspecting to have, it’s symptoms coming to ambush you from out of nowhere. 

see now math class was boring, the teacher was half asleep trying to teach the class as well. however upon hearing his students talking whilst in the middle of the lesson, he turns around furiously, sudden all the life seeping back into him. 

“quiet, this is going to be on the test tomorrow.” 

you yawn quietly, head turning to the left naturally as you drift away from the attention to the board. you look outside to the courtyard, almost instantaneously, you find heeseung standing dead centre of the window you were looking out, phone in his hand, pressed against his ear, and suddenly your phone is ringing in the middle of class. again, and disappointingly, disrupting the class once more. 

you want to die, or at least pinch yourself. because this seriously can’t be happening. you must’ve forgotten to silence your phone before coming to class. and now you were awkwardly shuffling and fumbling with your phone to silence the ringer.

heeseung, from outside, you see as he merely stands there, almost cluelessly. you sigh, closing your eyes, hoping that the staring and stifling laughter of the students would just shut up. 

“y/f/n.” the teacher calls out, not turning, continuing to write on the chalkboard at the front of the class. your head shoots up and stares at his menacing figure, back still turned to you. “yes?” you nearly stammer as one word has your voice shaking. “go outside.” he says. 

your eyebrows knit together in confusion. “pardon?” you’re almost in disbelief. how does he know that heeseung was waiting for you outside? you slowly stand up from your desk, fully believing this teacher would just let you go outside to meet your friend. “i said you can go outside.” he turns around, workbook in his hand, and a chalk in the other. 

“really?” 

“of course.” he gives you a genuine smile “you can go outside and put your hands up.” 

curse the world. perhaps this was how it was always going to be after all. dejectedly, you begin to walk out the classroom, sliding your phone into your pocket. an embarrassed laughter sprouts up amongst the students in the classroom and you frown. 

your footsteps are as awkward as ever, the silence was loud. sunghoon watches as you exit the classroom and just outside, you stand with your arms up. your fisted hands appear through the windows that line the classrooms. 

a few minutes later, a familiar tall boy begins making his way down the hallway and he begins to walk with a spring in his step and a smile spreading on his face when he sees you down the hall with your arms up as a punishment for your in class outbursts. 

you groan softly as you look up after hearing him call out for you, he stops in front of you and you frown at him. “your phone call caused this.” you tell him, arms still weakly held up in the air. heeseung smirks as he looks down at you. 

“maybe if you had silenced your phone…” he says it in a mocking singing voice. you roll your eyes at him. “maybe if you hadn’t called knowing i was in class.” heeseung lets out a tut, hands stuffed into his uniform pockets as he assesses you. 

“you weren’t gonna do much ‘paying attention’ in that class anyway.” he points out, you stay silence at that, perhaps proving his hypothesis to be correct. “is that why all you do is cut class and dance?” you ask expectedly, wanting to fight back with at least something. you wondered why heeseung was never in class anyway, every time you saw him he was probably the furthest away from a classroom that he could possibly be.

he lets out a chuckle “well of course!” he was shameless about his horrid habit of skipping class. “there isn’t enough time in the day to dance.” you never understood heeseung, sure, he loved dancing yet when you looked at the several portraits taken of the dance team from the past year, heeseung was nowhere to be found. but you figured you shouldn’t question it. 

you put your arms down for a moment as heeseung fleetingly walks around light-footedly in front of you, somehow dancing to some step combo he made again. always dancing. “don’t you get bored standing here all day?” he teases, leaning down, getting real close to your face before you swat him away. 

“this was because of you!” you shout quietly after him, he begins walking away, a smug smirk plastered on his face. you have the urge to follow him and so you did. 

“i didn’t do anything actually, i was just being a good friend and trying to take you out of that horrible class.” upon following him down the hallway, the bell rings and you curse under your breath, speed walking back to the spot outside the classroom before your teacher could suspect you to have left. 

however as you’re speed walking back, your teacher walks out with stacks of paper and work books in his arms in search for you. your heart nearly skips a beat when he doesn’t say anything but the vein popping in his forehead is enough to scare you to stand back in your spot with your hands jutting up into the air as fast as they can. 

your teacher says something under his breath before walking away, shaking his head disappointedly. 

following him after exiting the classroom is sunghoon. 

“ahhhh, you're causing even more trouble even after getting punished?” sunghoon laughs, teasing you as you give him a stank face. you breathe out slowly, a hand coming to your chest as it begins to ache slightly, looking at sunghoon. 

“i think you should go rest in the nurse’s office after lunch. i’ll tell our teacher.” even despite all the trouble you cause, sunghoon still looks out for you. it was clear and evident that your cold was starting to kick in. you shake your head at his proposal. “no, i’m fine.” however sunghoon brings one of your arms down and gives you an insisting look. and you admittedly cave. 

heeseung looks back after walking to the end of the hallway, ready to walk back to the dance room where he spends more of his lunches with his dance team friends. 

heeseung’s grin slightly falters when he finds sunghoon’s hands on your shoulders, leaning and twisting you in different directions as if to look and assess whether you were okay or not. he sees sunghoon mouth something to you, he was too far away to hear it. your friend presses the back of his hand to your forehead, checking your temperature. feeling his heart slightly clench, he shakes his head, hands coming

to the rested headphones around his neck, and putting them on before returning on his walk back to the studio. 

–

heeseung sits quietly on the side of the dance room, watching as his teammates practice a piece that was going to be used in an upcoming club showcase for the school. he knows the piece by heart, doing the arm movements in sync with the group however altered because he was still sitting on the ground and watching. 

however, commotion breaks lose when one of his teammates, niki, decides to take a breather on the floor, deep breaths escape his lips as he bows his head down in silence. practices have been rough for the dance team since the showcase was inching closer and closer. when the other team members call for niki to get up, the boy can seem to look up, nor get up.

“are you okay?” 

“niki? what’s wrong?” 

frantic questions are being thrown among the members and heeseung gets up to check on his friend. niki had a tendency to overwork himself, despite knowing his limits fully well, the boy still chose to go above and beyond. that’s how much he cared about dancing. even if niki was younger, heeseung swore up and down that his drive to pursue the life of dance was admirable. heeseung could never be able to push himself like that, at least not like he used to. 

a trip to the nurses office later, heeseung and a few other members come to watch as the nurse, instead of giving a tiny bit of help towards the burnt out dancer, scolds and lectures niki on the importance of not exerting himself. 

heeseung sighs as he leans against a wall. niki being pampered and tucked into one of the bed by the nurse as she rambles on about what he has to do now in order to rest. she ends it soon with handing him a bottle of water and an apple to eat. 

“... but i have to practice.” the nurse whips around and stares daggers at the younger boy. heeseung nearly retracts at her sudden speed. “practice? come to your senses! how can you practice when your body's stress response is trying to save you from shutting down?!” 

“ma’am, to be fair he hasn’t learned about that in biology yet…” 

“also there isn’t much time left before our dance performance…” intak tells the nurse desperate to find another solution to their friend's circumstance.

heeseung speaks up, pushing himself off the wall and coming to spectate. “this isn’t much, he’ll be alright after taking some painkillers and resting a bit.” heeseung didn’t take biology either. he has no clue what he’s talking about. 

niki sighs. “heeseung’s injured too… and now i got hurt. we can’t afford to lose another member!” 

“he’s getting better.” 

your ears perk at the mention of heeseung. you lay in another bed beside niki’s, covered by curtains and wooden walling to separate the beds in the nurses office. if sunghoon hadn’t dragged you all the way here… you wouldn’t even know or be curious at all to whatever is going on with heeseung. something that you didn’t even know happened. 

was heeseung sick? if he was he had a great way of not showing it. he was happy and dancing all the time, and he was busy trying to cheer you up when you were down, you didn’t even try to figure out if he was going through something either. 

“i’m fine! why are you guys being so serious all of a sudden!” heeseung chirps. you recognize his voice. niki refuses to lay in bed so intak and the nurse help bring him back to the dance room where he asks to be brought, insisting that he would rest, knowing fully well that he would probably hop back into dancing. 

“nothing’s gonna get better if he keeps worrying about me like that… i’ll heal in no time!” 

“lee heeseung!” you call out, once hearing the door to the room close. 

you hear a few footsteps before the curtain at the foot of your bed spreads open. 

“hey, it’s you!” heeseung walks into the secluded makeship cubicle, sitting on the bed adjacent from yours. he grins down at you despite your upset demeanor. you furrow your brows at him, tucking a hand between your hand and the pillow. 

“you’re injured?” you ask slowly, not making eye contact with the dancer. he grins sheepishly and scratches the back of his head whilst looking away. “looks like i got caught…” he snickers cheekily. you frown at him deeply. 

“why didn’t you say so before?” you huff at him. eyes flickering up at him again as you sit up and pull the blankets over your legs. “because there’s nothing i can’t endure.” heeseung smirks at you. ushering you to lay back down instead. he sits back down on the bed and throws his legs over the edges.

he maneuvers onto his side and lays down facing you, while on the bed adjacent from yours. you stare at him in slight confusion. “you know i didn’t get injured because of you right?” heeseung murmurs, looking at the way you stare at him with reluctance. “really! it’s because-”

“y/n..” light shuffling footsteps stop outside of the curtain as a door. the voice made your heart race. 

“i’m sorry i didn’t meet with you that day,” jay elaborates as he stands a fair bit away from the curtain. you tense on the bed, sitting up again and staring at the curtain to decipher the faint figure standing behind it. heeseung tilts his head at you in confusion, opting to stay quiet as you and jay seem to have some weird dynamic going on. 

“i didn’t mean to break that promise.” jay adds quietly. “can we talk?” he asks. 

you look back at heeseung, who is eyeing you with a frown now. something that looks unfamiliar compared to his usual smile. you stare into your lap, considering whether to open the curtain and leave the infirmary to talk to jay about those unsettled feelings. or stay with heeseung and ask more about heeseung’s injury.

ᓚᘏᗢ aj — this has been sitting in my drafts for OVER A YEAR. and now its finally coming out. i am trying to write more just because i have so many ideas in my head!!! also if u read authors notes tell me ur favorite enhypen song!! mine is attention please if it wasn't obvious hehe. thank you for all the support my writing has been receiving, i promise i will start writing more!

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“i can’t!” you tell him, you watch as his smile slowly drops “i have to go somewhere right now. i’m really sorry.” you lift yourself off the floor, your knees nearly buckling from underneath you as you had been sitting on the floor for a long time. 

“okay, bye.” heeseung stares flatly at your leaving figure, leaving him in the dance studio alone. 

–

you speed up as you begin nearing the boys locker room. stopping abruptly when you nearly walk into one of the soccer team members, still dressed in their practice uniform. you blink a few times, backing up and remembering how he yelled at you earlier for being on the soccer field during practice. he almost recognizes you immediately and his eyebrows raise at your appearance yet again. 

“stop bothering jake, or the entire team actually. he’s already having a shitty season because he hasn’t been his usual self. you being around is just going to make it worse. understand?” he towers over you. 

“understand?” you nod “okay.” you tell him simply, he passes by you. beginning to walk the other way. you wait for him to get out of sight before entering the locker room slowly. 

jake sits on the bench, alone in the locker room with his knee situated on the bench. jake struggles to wrap his knee, he cluelessly stares at the sports tape beside him. not really knowing where to start. despite being an athlete he had no clue how to tape injuries, tend to injuries, that entire sort. he was just there to bring the thunder and let his physician and doctors deal with all the limits he had pushed on his body. 

jake looks up to see you standing a fair ways away from where he was seated. you turn to your side, sparing him a side eye while you inch towards him cautiously. 

“what are you doing?” he sighs, you sit on a bench across from him, still turned to the side, yet face turned towards him but not fully looking at him. “you have to help me.” he tells you. pointing at his knee and grabbing the tape and long bandages from the bench.

“oh, no i can’t do stuff like that.” you weren’t entirely lying. you knew how to tape injuries, you remembered your parents teaching you stuff like that because of how much you got injured, plus your younger siblings weren’t doing much better with their level of clumsiness. you said you couldn’t do stuff like that because you couldn’t risk being near proximity with him again. 

“then should i not treat this injury? i don’t know how to tape.” jake ordered people around like it was nothing. part of you thought it was fair because of the injury you caused but sakura wasn’t kidding when she said his head ass was kinda far up his ass most of the time. you wondered how his girlfriend, the pretty girl you had seen earlier on the field pampering jake, would be able to deal with someone so… snobbish. perhaps it was kind of judgemental of you to assume the worst out of jake. 

you get off the bench and approach jake who lifts himself up for you to begin working on taping his knee. you struggle as you try to tape his knee from a short distance. throwing the tape roll behind his knee and trying to catch it from the side, all while trying not to get close to jake. 

jake quite literally can’t believe what he’s watching, he stares down at you, a captious look causing his eyebrows to furrow and his jaw to go slack as he watches you do the most ridiculous thing. “what are you doing?” jake inquires, you stop what you’re doing and stand up straight from your awkard and uncomfortable crouching stance. 

“what if you get hurt because of me again?” jake looks away from you and towards the bright lights in the ceiling. “i never got to apologize. i’m really sorry this all happened because of me.” jake grumbles, growing frustrated at you and he shuts his eyes, a hand coming to rub the tiredness out of them. 

“did i say it was your fault?” he’s back to looking at you, arms crossing over one another. his glare makes you want to shrink, perhaps you understood why the broadcasting team avoided him most of the time. he had a bit of an attitude problem. 

“and i heard that you haven’t been doing well this season too… because of me.” 

“can you stop saying that?” jake quips at you. you look to the side, still holding the roll of tape that was stuck poorly and folded over itself and stuck to jake’s leg. there’s a small moment of awkward silence, him looking down in realization as he had raised his voice at you. and you looking to the side again, not really knoiwng where to look. 

“and who the hell said i wasn’t doing well?” you bite your lip, looking towards the entrance of the lockeroom. head hurting at the circumstance you were in. when jake texted you to meet him in the locker room, this was not what you were expecting at all. you knew a scolding was guaranteed. 

“the guy that was standing in front of you.” you tell him, thinking about how he was standing at the goalpost, a few metres away from jake who was practicing his kicking. “in front of me? where?” you draw the shape of the net with your arms, and stand in between the imagined drawing, imitating the way the goalkeeper had bent his knees and prepared to stop the ball from flying into the net. 

“the one that stood like this in front of the net and stuff.” 

“keeper?” 

“ahh, so his name is keeper.” 

jake’s head slowly turns to yours, after pondering and looking around the room, his head turns to you at a loss of words at you being able to “connect the dots” 

“yes, keeper said that.” jake lets out a stifled laugh. “oh my god, seriously.” you frown at him, what was possibly funny about that? was telling him the wrong move? was keeper going to be thrown off the team? was jake going to beat him up? 

“just tape my knee properly this time.” jake says, the smile leaving his face quicker than it appeared. jake didn’t look half bad when he smiled, in fact, it was a toothy grin, like a puppy or something. you tear the tape off his knee and examine it. closely looking at it this time, you notice the bruises that were beginning to appear, as well as the swelling. there was no way it was broken, if it was jake wouldn’t even be standing up. 

jake notices your staring, knowing that it looks bad, he can’t help but assume what you’re thinking. he was in pain because of you. but that wasn’t how he saw it, he thought it was just a coincidence, injuries happen all the time, jake was particularly restless that day, and he was also overworking himself to an extent. it was barely even you’re fault, the only time he would begin to blame you for the injury was because you were distracting him with your big ass eyes watching him all the time. 

“you might be out of commission for a few days because of me.” 

“you need to do my chores for me while i’m resting.” that was understandable, it was the least you could do, you were so guilty for the injury you would do anything to help jake get back up on his feet, literally. 

“... okay.” you tell him, not really hesitating to agree to whatever he needed. jake laugh at this, a chuckle leaves his lips at your willingness to do things for him. you finish taping his knee, pulling your notebook pen out of your pocket and drawing a small star on the side of his knee, finishing off the tape job with a small ‘ta-da’ coming from you. 

jake laughs fully because of this, you pout, thinking jake was making fun of your small touches to his tape job. “did you just draw a star?” jake asks, bending over slightly to see the star on his knee, it was fully coloured in with small lines around it as if it were shining. 

“yeah?” 

“jeez, you drive me crazy.” jake’s head lolls back as he whole-heartedly laughs at the gesture. “you’re cute, you know?” feeling your heart beat faster, the heat travelling up from your neck to your face, you look away from his knowing gaze. 

“can you draw a puppy next time?” 

–

sunghoon sits atop a faded cube jungle gym. sitting at the very top he stares out onto the main road that leads to the school. he remains on the lookout for you, he had the routine of waiting for you at the park since you lived in the same apartment complex nearby. the park was one that the two of you would always play at when you were younger. 

sunghoon remembers how he would stare at the jungle gym in fear, fear for himself but msot of all, his fear for you as he would watch you climb up all the way to the top at the young age of 7. sunghoon was lanky and short as a child, whereas you were tall and lanky. the difference, that you were able to use your long legs to your advantage. 

“sunghoon, you can climb up here right?” you ask, shouting from the very top of the jungle gym. 

sunghoon nods, despite looking terrified for his life. that leads you to believe that park sunghoon can climb up the jungle gym. 

a voice snaps sunghoon out of his little recollection of your past. “sunghoon! what are you doing up there?” you ask, sunghoon can hear the tiredness in your voice as you call out to him. sunghoon begins making his way down the jungle gym, hopping off a bar near the ground and walking towards you. 

“why are you still waiting for me? it’s already late.” you tell him, one of your hands gently massaging your forearm as it was beginning to ache. 

“i got worried because you weren’t texting me back.” you playfully roll your eyes, scoffing at the reasoning. “surely you were worried.” you tell him, almost teasingly. sunghoon’s hand comes to ruffle your head again, messing up the hairdo you had. you try to swat him away or move out of his line of target but it’s too late. instead of a suspected ruffle, he comes to pat your head instead. 

“you really don’t know how your elders feel huh?” sunghoon smirks, knowing you hate it when jokes about how he’s older than you by just a month. even in that case, when you talk down to him informally, he would tease the ever living hell out of you and scold you. 

“stop calling yourself that, it’s weird. plus we’re the same age, just a month apart!” you try to swat at his stomach but you narrowly miss as he moves with fast reflexes. “y/n, you have to tell me when things get hard, alright?” you squint towards him, almost feeling confused as to why he suddenly became so forward and insisting towards you. 

“i’m fine? so don’t worry about it. what about you?” you knew sunghoon had a tendency to overwork himself. usually not really having time for other things other than school fucks with someones mind. 

“i’ve been having trouble sleeping these days.” sunghoon falters, hesitating, before he grabs your hand. bringing it to his chest and resting it there. 

“and this keeps pounding.” you can clearly feel his heartbeat. and he was right it was pounding. 

you never really knew when sunghoon got so tall. so much taller than you were now. just when you two were kids, he had always been the shorter one, his growth spurt scared you. but in realizing his height now, as he towered over you, whilst feeling his heart pounding in his chest. made something in your brain click. you almost begin stuttering when you try to talk.

“hey!” he gives you an innocent look “hm?” 

“you drank coffee! right?” sunghoon grows confused. “i told you not to drink that stuff.” you say, gently hitting him and attempting to put him into a harmles headlock. you had to jump in order to swing your arm around his neck to pull him down to your level. “you’re still a child! why are you putting that into your system?” you and sunghoon were infact, not children anymore, just two 17 year olds who were more than capable of handling a coffee or two. 

“alright alright! i give up!” sunghoon struggles in your headlock. despite always being the victim to your torment. you never really did any damage to sunghoon. even as you were the more playfully wrestling one, and sunghoon was the playfully bantering one, you’re strength was not compared to sunghoon. sure, sunghoon quit skating a while back, but he was still strong and lean in other ways. you strength was not keeping up with sunghoon at this point. he was just always pretending to be weak just so you could have at him. 

“give up?!” 

“yes! i give up!” 

i’ll date you if you become this much taller than me.” you tell him, going up on your tippy toes, arm extending all the way to the highest it was able to go (which was truthfully not that high) at that age, sunghoon stared at that height and thought it was not achievable in the time that he was hoping to start dating you as soon as possible. 

yet. he nods, wanting to remain optimistic because pursuing you was his ultimate dream, at the time. he holds a freshly picked bouquet of dandelions from the field beside the park and holds them out to you, to which you accept them smiling at him. 

sunghoon finds himself smiling yet again, but now, you’re standing in front of him, whining about why he was spacing out. wondering if something was really going on with him, leaving you feeling concerned for his mental wellbeing. 

“what’s with your face?” you glare at him pointedly as he smiles at particularly nothing. “nothing. what’s wrong with your face?” he mocks, he points his tongue at you. you begin waddling away, hands bringing your straps down and fixing your backpack. sunghoon follows behind you. 

–

the following days, sunghoon watches as jake carelessly nags you around constantly. sunghoon and jungwon are talking near the shoe racks on the second floor when jake and a few ther soccer players come walking past them. 

“what’s taking you so long?” jake turns to the staircase. sunghoon wants to say something as he stares at you struggling to climb the stairs with his bags of his equipment. ever since sunghoon sent you on that little mission to get an interview from jake, you began to stick around the athlete more. you barely told him what had happened that day, only sparing him the detail that jake’s knee was injured but he would still be able to walk, as well as your new found duties to help the soccer team. even if the soccer team had only accepted your help after jake insisted that you wouldn’t be causing some trouble. 

and perhaps seeing you get dragged around by jake, whatever what was happening between the two of you, sunghoon was beginning to grow skeptical… or maybe confused? 

again, the following day, you and sunghoon would always eat lunch together, however today he found you trudging across the field every time some soccer team member would use a ball to practice this net shot drills. evidently enough, they were dispensing soccer balls faster than you could run around and bring them back, making the drill go slower than usual, but more entertaining than usual. 

glaring pointedly at the scene, sunghoon stomps across the field, beginning to help you collect the balls. as you bend down to pick one up, sunghoon is able to grab it before you. standing up straight, sunghoon takes the balls from your arms and it leaves you to relax your shoulders from all labour you were doing. the drill ends at that, practice ending for the team as you’re left to collect all the remaining soccer balls left on the field. 

“do you really have to do this much just for some interview questions?” sunghoon questions. you attempt to grab the balls from his arms but to no avail as he turns away from your prying arms. 

“it’s not much, plus it makes me feel better about hurting jake’s knee. i said i would do this for a couple days anyway.” you begin walking in the direction of the other stray soccer balls. sunghoon returns the balls to the basket and follows suit after you. “i’ve got it.” he says, walking past you. looking past sunghoon, you watch that same girl leaning on the fencing of the field with jake. you watch from afar, it looked as if the two were quarreling about something, the girl using the towel to lightly hit jake as he attempts to deflect and dodge the weaponized towel. 

“i guess couples that look good together have issues to work out too.” you mutter to sunghoon you walks back to you, head tilting at your out of the blue intrusion. he turns around swiftly, looking at what you were staring at. that green monster bubbles up inside of him again when he lays his gaze upon jake. 

the two of you watch as the jake and the girl laugh loudly, joking around most likely, jake still hitting the towel away everytime she comes close to hitting him with it. 

“get your own water jake, this is literally mine.” lily scowls at jake, tightening her grip around her water bottle as jake tried to grab it out of her hands. 

“you’re literally the manager of the soccer team. shouldn’t you be looking after the players?” jake rolls his eyes, copying the mannerisms in lily’s speech. attempting to grab the bottle again, lily begins hitting him with the white towel draped over the walls of the field. 

“i thought they would be the type to be content and happy with seeing each other everyday. turns out they fight too.” you tell him. sunghoon turns to look at you now. a small glint in his eye when he see’s how infatuated you have become with the athlete. 

—

again, you are stuck having to clean up after the soccer teams mess. you drag the wheeled cart around you as you collect each ball that is conveniently spread out against the big field. your back was beginning to hurt, even knowing how the sun was beginning to set, you would get back home when it’s night time. leaving you little time to study, eat, and then get ready for bed at a reasonable time so you would be energized for tomorrows school day. 

jake comes walking out of the players bench box, watching you walk around the field. despite his knee, he wheels in a full cart of collected soccer balls and begins throwing them out back onto the field. 

with the sound of a thud on the faux grass, you look up to see a smug smirk painted on the athletes face as well as a soccer ball rolling your way. furrowing your brows and giving jake a look of dismay. he merely shrugs. though he bites his lip and reaches for the cart. 

he makes sure you’re looking when he grabs an armful of balls and starts scooping them out of the cart and onto the floor. 

“hey… jake what— are you serious?” you grab a ball from the ground, throwing it at his direction only for it to embarrassingly miss his head. you didn’t want jake to run around, at least not in the state that his knee was in, you couldn’t have him hurt his knee any further. but seeing as he was fleetingly jogging around the field as you tried to throw the soccer balls at him, his knee was getting better, and fast. 

“you have to pick these up!” jake shouts at you, laughs emitting from him as he ran, attempting to make the gap between the two of you bigger. but to no avail, throwing was not your strong suit in sports. 

“you have to help me!” you shout back, beginning to get tired form running around after jake. even with an injured knee, the boy was still faster than you. and not or jake to say that he enjoyed spending time with you, even if that meant getting attacked like that. 

jake returns to the bench after helping you collect all the soccer balls. you left momentarily to wheel the carts back into the storage room. jake couldn’t help but peek over when your phone began to buzz. jake knows he shouldn’t be looking, especially since he barely even knew you. 

a few texts were flooding in with increments of a few minutes in between each one being sent, park sunghoon, the culprit. he asks you where you are, with the use of a very specific nickname that causes jake to scoff lightly. jake quickly swipes to the left, deleting the message notification from your lock screen. you return a few moments later and walk over to jake sitting beside your backpack whilst he scrolls on his own phone. 

–

sunghoon leans back in his chair, reaching for his phone yet again, it had been an hour since he last texted you and you didn’t reply yet. you would rarely not text sunghoon back, or give him a late text back either because it simply wasn’t like you. of course it was different if he knew you were at home already, but you had told him you were busy after school so he was wondering if your late response had something to do with that. 

why am i hovering over her? sunghoon silently scolds himself for acting like such a helicopter parent. 

he stares at the last text he sent you, hesitantly thinking about what to type out next. 

lets meet at the playground. he types out carefully before confirming and pressing send. he grabs his backpack off the empty chair beside him and begins shoving his things inside before zipping all the zippers onto one side. the last thing sunghoon wanted was the zippers falling slowly to the sides, opening the back unknowingly to him. he smiles at the thought of your backpack always doing that, he told you to zip them to one side so it wouldn’t happen again but you always had a habit of bringing them to the middle. 

sunghoon checks his pockets, checking off the mental checklist in his mind especially since he had a habit of forgetting things and misplacing them. he also had to start doing it for you too, knowing you would leave important papers behind, or your phone, or your wallet.. as it had happened before, constantly. 

he begins walking out of the library, nodding goodbye to the librarian. he was always the last student to leave the library, knowing his prowess for his studies was a bit of an inconvenience to the librarian who never wanted to bother his hard studying but did it anyway. especially when it was time for the library to close. 

–

it had been two days since jake’s knee was injured, he was surprised at how fast it was healing. he didn’t want to think that it was because you magically healed it with your constant care towards it but yeah it was nice to think of it that way. jake approaches you in the storage room as you clean up stuff and organize things for tomorrows morning practice. 

“i filled everything out.” he tells you, handing you your notebook opening on the page that had the interview questions written down on them. you turn to him, smiling as you reach for the notebook with a smile, a gasp leaves your lips. does that mean your labour was finished? he crosses his arms in front of you with a small smile. “thanks…” you trail off. 

“you don’t seem to mind the rumours about me…” you bring up carefully but he cuts you off with a knowing face. “have you heard about my rumours too then?” 

your face contorts into confusion, head tilting to the side. 

“i mean… if someone tries talking to me on my game days, the team would lose. it’s kind of a bad comparison to yours but… i just use that excuse so that people won’t talk to me. also… if the team lost that day, the burden of losing would be on me and not on anyone else.” you scoff at his rumour. you had a feeling he was just trying to cheer you up. 

“what if the team was just playing really bad? or the opposing team was really good? have you ever thought of those possibilities? not everything should be shouldered on you, you know?” maybe you misunderstood, perhaps his way of viewing defeat was constantly surrounded around him. 

“yeah those definitely are the more probable contributing factors to losing a game. i like to think i’m very selfish for making up my own rumour so people would avoid talking to me.” you roll your eyes at him, jokingly. not understanding his reason for telling you this. “are you saying it works everytime? that people don’t talk to you and then you win every game?” 

“no! that’s why i’m saying its a rumour!” his hands come up in defence, you nod your head, laughing at the story now. it was kind of stupid, even you had to admit it. there was no way not one single person talked to jake on a game day. surely coaches, managers and teammates came to talk to him. 

“and i’m saying regardless of whether someone talks to me or not, i win every time.” he winks. your face scrunches up at the comment. you shake your head, laughing. “that’s ridiculous, soccer is a team sport. you can’t carry an entire team.” 

“what i’m saying is… you didn’t hurt me.” jake returns to a serious and genuine tone of voice. “it was just my mistake.” he tells you, eyes locked on yours. “anyways, thank you.” he breathes out, as if it were his first breath of fresh air upon stepping outside. 

“this was the first time i really took a break after i started playing soccer. which was a long time ago. i honestly wanted to rest.” jake tells you smiling. he combs his hand through his dark brown hair, looking between his knee, now in a recovering knee brace, and you. 

you smile at his authenticity in his words. “i’m glad you finally got to rest.” you tell him honestly. you look down at the notes in your hands and tuck them under your arm as you continue to rearrange and organize the storage room. jake can’t help but let his eyes linger on your hard working figure. you don’t need to be an athlete to be strong. 

“hey yn?” you look towards jake’s direction, his hand comes to brush your hair back, tucking it behind your ear. “follow me.” he tells you, walking towards the door, expecting you to follow him. 

you stand still in your spot, flustered from the sudden act of affection, you tuck your hair back behind your ear and unknowingly follow him. 

jake leads you to where the robot keeper machine is stored. used for soccer players who want to practice their shots in soccer when they have no keeper to practice with. 

jake brings one soccer ball with him and leads you up to a boxed in space with face grass. and an open field just before a fake machine robot with a cutout of a guy in a soccer uniform stands in the center of the goal posts. 

“if you shoot three goals into the net within 30 minutes, you can stop working for me.” 

that was not an opportunity you were gonna miss out on. despite getting closer to jake within the week that you were helping him out with his soccer chores and his knee, you also missed out on several other important things such as studying and broadcasting club. everyone had pretty much doubted you from getting the answers to the interview questions since it had taken this long and you were just eager to show them that you had in fact done what they deemed impossible. 

plus, how hard could it be? shooting three goalies with a stupid robot goalie?

“and… you can get the answers to the interview questions.”

hard, it was hard. you were shooting at this thing for the past 30 minutes and even despite jake’s instructions and guidance with how to kick a soccer ball, you had not gotten one in at all. you were pretty much slumped. you knew you were not the most athletic person out there in the world, but you knew there was no way this stupid machine could out smart you. 

jake snickered to the side as he watched from the side. each time the goalie blocked you, he watched as your face fell from disappointed to absolutely mortified. after a few more minutes, jake decides that he has had enough of torturing you and he goes to the setting screen on the wall of the practice room and switches the difficulty setting back to beginner. he comes up behind you. one last time, he would try helping you out. 

he guides you through the steps of kicking a scoring shot and alas, he leaves you to your devices before letting you try to score the shot for yourself. he watches as you carefully think about how you approach the ball. the look of focus plastered on your face makes him coo since you were trying so hard to get at least one goal. 

and when the robot goalie finally misses the block completely and the ball its the backboard of the fake goalposts you let out a gasp, almost screaming out that you managed to finally score one goal. 

“FINALLY! what the hell? that machine is probably on hard mode or something.” jake purses his lips. smiling at your excitement. 

“you’re really good! maybe you should’ve joined the girls soccer team.”

“i don’t 

—

sunghoon finds himself sitting atop the square jungle gym yet again. phone in hand, checking the time every few minutes out of anxiousness before he finally decides to climb down and head home. 

—

sunghoon’s head begins to hurt when he overhears the girls in his class snickering about you. he watches from his peripherals as they get up from their seat and crouch down with a paper written with something on them. the girl plasters the paper to the bottom of your desk and sunghoon decides that he has had enough. 

standing up from his desk, he walks over and rips the paper off your desk with a swift motion and begins reading it. his eyebrows furrow at the horrid words written on the paper. crumpling it up, he grabs the other paper from the girls hand silently.

“sunghoon, don’t tell me you like yn..?” the girl asks in a matter-of-factly tone. “she’s a literal curse.” she snickers. sunghoon places his hands on either side of the page and tears it right down the middle with a scoff. 

“don’t call her a curse.” he tells them with a stern voice. the heat rising up his neck as he begins to lose his composure. the girls give him a side eye before returning to their seats. 

“give it to me!” he whips around at the volume of your voice. you run past the classrooms, he sees you through the overhead windows lining the classroom. 

you’re chasing after jake who is adorned in his usual school uniform instead of the soccer teams practice uniform that people would usually see him in. he holds your notebook behind your back as you try to grab it from him. despite not being that tall, jake holds the notebook above his head, much further above your head too. you jump in attempt to grab the notebook from his hand but to no avail. 

jake runs away from you, a little further down the hallway and past the classroom sunghoon was in. stepping out, his legs wobble as he watches you two banter playfully. sunghoon can’t take his eyes off the scene. he feels his stomach drop, his head begins to hurt even more. what the hell was going on during those… practices that had you wrapped around jake sim’s finger? was it a bad idea to get you to retrieve those questions from jake in the first place? sunghoon should’ve known that jake was trying to pull some shit. 

he doesn’t know what’s going on but he had a bad feeling about it and it leaves him angry. 

—

jake is alone on the soccer field, stretching out his legs to see how bad the pain scales from as he prepares to do a light jog. he wants to make sure he’s not overextending himself that would cause his injury to get worse… those he assumes it wouldn’t be so bad since he would have you there to help him again. 

jake slows down his pace as he watches an unknown figure enter the field and begin to approach him. he breathes out slowly, not minding the random person, and his hands come to his knees to catch his breath. 

when he straightens himself back out again, he is faced with sunghoon who punches, swinging his right arm, fist colliding between his cheekbone and nose. the unexpected violence causes jake to stumble and topple over himself, wondering what the hell this guy he didn’t even know was trying to stir some shit with him. 

hunched over, jake’s hand comes to his nose to find red blood seeping out slowly and smearing onto his hand. looking at the reason his nose was currently bleeding, he looks past his eyelashes with semi-closed lids and stares at the familiar face of a certain broadcasting club president.. also the guy that seemed to follow you around everywhere. 

sunghoon looks down at jake angrily, fists balled at his sides. steam practically escapes through his nose and ears as if he were a cartoon character. 

“when the hell are you going to stop playing around with yn?” he seethes through his teeth. perhaps it was a bad move to try and rock an athletes shit. but how could sunghoon possibly be threatened by someone a head shorter than he was. that was besides the point, but sunghoon was certain that maybe on a good day he would be able to take jake on. 

jake winces, unable to focus on whatever sunghoon proceeded to tell him because of the pain the punch inflicted on him. 

“she wasn’t the reason you go hurt so why are you toying with her so much, hm?” sunghoon attempted to sound as intimidating as possible. in reality it was just frustration and confusion, he had no idea what the hell was happening but he did not like the feeling it left sitting in his stomach. 

jake begins to frown, eyes narrowing towards sunghoon as he straightens himself up after making sure his nose had stopped bleeding. he approaches sunghoon slowly and carefully, causing anxiety to spike in sunghoon, he is tempted to step back however he stays planted to his spot. 

“regardless of whether i’m toying with her, or we enjoy spending time together,” jake pauses momentarily, eyes meeting sunghoons and sunghoon’s stomach drops. he takes a deep breath and jake stops just before him. “why would you get involved?” 

sunghoon could come up with a million reasons as to why. one, you’ve got your head up your ass, two you playing around with her is probably just a form of bullying, three, you’re stupid and ugly and this egomaniac. but none of those vague reasons were the truth about why he felt the way he did. but no one had to know that. sunghoon bit his lip. why did he have to get involved? what does that even mean? don’t try to fool around with his best friend and then expect not to get some sort of warning from him? violence was not sunghoon’s strong suit, no, he was studious and well kept. 

so when he had punched jake, the pain was delayed for him due to the adrenaline and his knuckles began to hurt with a striking pain. he unfolds his clenched fist and aired them out, whooshing them out beside him as he winced at the unexpected pain. 

sunghoon gulps, realizing jake’s questions intentions. “w–what?” his face softens momentarily and his voice falters. “we?” jake scoffs “yes, we” a hand comes up to his hip as he tilts his head to the side. he al;most stares at sunghoon as if he has him all figured out. 

“why? do you like yn?” 

sunghoon lets out a staggered breath, one that he was unaware that he was holding. the tough and flexed posture he was holding up for show breaks and he relaxes, visibly deflating in his stance. he blinks multiple times, the words jake uses to somehow make him feel like shit, and feel like he’s soaring, at the same time, makes his brain short circuit as he looks away and stares at anything but the supposed mockery on jake’s face right now.

sunghoon lets out a final breath of hot air before facing the athlete yet again who had been staring at the sudden realization that clicked in his head just now. sunghoon decides that if he was going to say anything, it was going to be the truth. saying no, or attempting to get out of face of this confrontation would be the furthest thing from the truth to sunghoon. 

“yes…” god, did he like you. forget the caffeine, another lie that was used to distract him from the fact that it was you. “so stay away from her.” he drawls out. nostrils flaring as he straight back at jake. jake carefully squints. breathing out water vapour as the temperature drops from the spring time during soccer season begins to rise gradually again. 

“so what are you gonna do?” the soccer player questions, eyebrows raised, “cause she’s gonna go out with me.” sunghoon wants to feel defeated but he’s so sure jake was just saying things out of his ass.. as per usual, at this point. sunghoon knew you, you wouldn’t go out with someone so careless and self-centered! right? 

jake knows he scared his classmate into coming to terms with his feelings. but regardless of what park sunghoon felt or not, you were most definitely falling for jake. and sure, he could blame that on whatever ego and pride he had especially about his confidence in being able to swoon girls, but his feelings were so true and right about this particular girl. 

“what’s going on?” the two boys know your voice well enough to know you’re approaching with caution to whatever the hell is going on between the two of them. the tension in the entire soccer field was undeniably so hard to ignore. 

“sunghoon. what are you doing here?” sunghoon tears his eyes away from jake for one moment, they immediately soften after he trains them on your figure. “is it true that you two are really going out?” 

“what?” you’re bewildered at the accusation. jake’s eyes widen at the way sunghoon words it. he’s so sure sunghoon misunderstood what he said. but at this point, there’s no point in trying to reiterate what he meant to say. especially now that you were here.

“what the fuck is this guy saying?!” you blink at the way sunghoon raises his voice at you, it was not a sight usually directed towards you, sure, towards bullies that would poke fun at you, sunghoon would have your back. but no, never towards you. your lips part as you look at sunghoon with such guilt and confusion. you haven’t technically been the most truthful with him. you can’t help but tear up at his vulnerability, sunghoon never cried in front of you, through tearful talks on your part, sunghoon never cried in front of you. but seeing him with tears welling up in his eyes was more than enough for you to realize what this meant to him. 

“be straight with me.” your eyes now flicker over to jake to takes your attention away from sunghoon. 

“who is park sunghoon to you?” 

“i…” 

do you be honest with your feelings about sunghoon or do you deny your feelings for jake?

ᓚᘏᗢ aj — chat... imma be so honest. I WAS GONE FOR A MORE THAN A YEAR AND I FEEL SO BAD. anyways, little update in life, moved out of my house for university and im in my second year now!! i started this series just as i finished high school so lets just say a lot of time has passed. i'm so so so so sorry that this is only coming out NOW (my last update said that it was coming out in the next few days, IM DEAD).

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“really? surely you guys are just exaggerating. even the food poisoning incident?” 

“we’re not exaggerating. she was in charge of serving lunch that day.”

“even at the schools athletic competition last year, when she passed the baton to her teammate. she tripped and broke her nose…” 

“that’s why you have to be careful around her, getting near her or even touching her can cause you to–” 

“this can’t be true.” ms. park cleared her throat. hands clasped together on her desk as the other teachers gossiped around her. “those are probably just rumors that got out of hand.” she chuckles nervously. her coworkers give each other that stare before turning their heads back at her. 

“but it’s true.” mr. choi says, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “you have to be careful!” 

–

you stood smiling beside your new homeroom teacher. more enthusiastic than she and her students appeared to be. she had barely even looked at you as soon as you approached her on your first day at the school. you aimed to be optimistic about your first day at your new school. a childhood friend of yours attended the school, he was the one that recommended you transfer there in the first place. 

“hi, my name is y/f/n. it’s a pleasure to meet you all. i hope we can become friends fast.” you bow, coming up and raising your hand to wave at the students who looked at you with such blatant discontent, no one responds to you except for the loud and eager clapping coming from the class president, park sunghoon. the mentioned childhood friend. he stops soon though, noticing no one was joining him as well as the look of embarrassment swarming your face. he ducks his head down and stares at his desk table. 

ms. kim laughs out loud, albeit, a little obnoxiously, before she ushers you to sit in an empty seat in the far back corner of the classroom. you politely bow towards her, though she slightly stumbles back in avoidance towards the gesture. 

despite moving to a new school. you knew word travels fast. sunghoon knew it too as he stared at you manuvering throughout the classroom. the students in your class were already whispering amongst each other. “the rumors must’ve reached ms. kim too, huh?” 

upon walking down the aisle to get to your seats, the students around stopped talking to each other, not bothering to spare you a glance. your eyes flick towards the ceiling, swallowing thickly and taking in a breath before you glued your gaze to the floor and moved quickly to get to the back seat. sunghoon frowned, knowing that your first day had already been spoiled by a bunch of irrelevant people who didn’t even bother to get to know you first. he looks over at you, eyes softening as you take your seat in front of the opened window. wind slightly coming in and making you shiver. your eyes meet his as you adjust to your new seat, aka the banished corner in the classroom where you can’t see the board at all. 

you send your friend a soft smile, pursing your lips slightly. the brunette offers a bright smile back, his snaggletooth grazing his lip. he gives you a small wave. 

–

you find yourself looking at the several honor award certificates and pictures dedicated to the students in a display shelf in the hallway. most of them depicting sunghoon shaking hands with a principal whilst holding the framed certificate in one hand. you get startled when someone comes up behind you, hands coming onto your backpack. you swivel around to find sunghoon. 

“stay still will you?” you wriggle a little bit in your spot, still confused at what he was doing. only to hear the sound of your backpack zipper. you stand still before sunghoon gives a grunt signalling he had finished closing your backpack for you. turning around to face him, he towers over you with a signature toothy grin. 

“do you come to school just to get awards?” you question. “me being smart is nothing new to you. plus, why are you mentioning this just now? haven’t you noticed sooner that i was awesome?” he questions. bragging about his high grades and excellence. you click your tongue and scrunch up your face in response. “it’s been too long since i smacked you, huh?” you ask in retaliation. lightly hitting his shoulder to which he responds with an over exaggerated ‘ow!” 

“you should drop by the broadcasting room later.” 

–

perhaps if sunghoon had told you where the broadcasting room was sooner, you wouldn’t be wandering mindlessly through the school hallways in search for the studio. when the announcements began and you could hear sunghoon through the intercom system. you began to walk faster in search before the segment ended. 

but to no avail, it had been a few minutes, and you were still searching for the room labeled with a broadcasting club nametag on it. luckily, you find in on the floor you’re currently on. though the announcement was already beginning to end. you quietly enter the room, head peeking in to see if sunghoon was anywhere to be found. instead you find jungwon and a few other members inside. jungwon nods at you to enter as he points at sunghoon who is talking to a microphone inside the recording room. he spots you through the glass, despite the room being dimly lit and you wave at him, he returns the wave. 

“everyone needs to be heard. do you a friend who is willing to listen to you? it’s a monday afternoon that reminds me of a precious friend of mine. lets listen to music.” 

you watch as jungwon slides two fader knobs up, you begin to hear the music fade into the announcements and the ‘on air’ sign turns green to fully off. jungwon gives sunghoon a thumbs up and sunghoon stands up from the chair and table, and walks out of the recording room. he approaches you first. a hand landing on top of your head to ruffle your hair gently. 

“you’re here.” he beams. you nod. he turns to the other members of the club. “this is yn, she just transferred to our school. she’ll be joining the club.” sunghoon says. sunghoon was the broadcasting club president as well. nothing falls short when it comes to sunghoon and his commitments. he was the class president, part of student council, on top of that, an honors roll student and the broadcasting club president. 

“i’ll try my best to pull my weight.” you tell them kindly. sunghoon smiles down at you as you try your best to introduce yourself to your new club members. taehyun and sakura stand with their arms crossed, jungwon, being the only one giving you a welcoming smile. any friend of sunghoon's is a friend of his. 

“you haven’t even asked us if we agreed on letting another member join.” taehyun brings forward slowly. sunghoon’s brow twitches and he shoves his hands into his pocket. “we’ll we’re understaffed anyway. plus she’ll do really good here.” sunghoon says, attempting to convince his club members. you look to the ground again, staring at the carpeted flooring now. 

“yeah but you have to think about our safety too.” sakura tells sunghoon. his face falters slightly. though he regains his composure so that you wouldn’t feel discouraged to join. “it’s not like she’s an ordinary girl either.” 

sunghoon looks down at you, still unable to meet eyes with the other members. “how could you say that sakura?” she looks away as sunghoon had just called her out. sunghoon looks around. eyes landing on the whiteboard that contained most of the announcement schedules and plans coming up. written in red ink, ‘interview soccer player, sim jake’

“we still have to interview jake so–” 

“you’re not thinking on making her do the interview, are you?” 

“who else is going to do it?” sunghoon looks at taehyun. “taehyun?” taehyun shakes his head. “no no, i can’t! jake gave me a death glare when i tried talking to him this morning.” taehyun says. 

“sakura?” sakura slumps over. “he’s so conceited. he thought i was one of his fans so he gave me his autograph and left.” she says, rolling her eyes. “jungwon?” jungwon remains silent for a moment before speaking slowly. “... he told me he’d beat me up if i showed up again.” 

sunghoon lets out a huff. “if y/n can get jake to do the interview, you guys will let her in the club, got it?” sunghoon says firmly. you had never seen sunghoon so commanding before. you itched the side of your head, transferring schools meant that you started from scratch, allegedly. that wasn’t the case for your reputation. but you still had no clue who half these people were. usually there was a hierarchy in schools. popular girls and boys.. that type of stuff. 

“...but who is sim jake?” 

–

you walk into the indoor soccer field, a notebook in your arms as you go in search for the so-called star soccer player. as sakura described, he had dark brown hair, a strong nose, and looked like a puppy. it was kind of hard to understand what she meant by that but you figured if you saw him, you’d immediately recognize him. 

the field was surrounded by rows of bleachers and chairs for games and onlooking students and parents to watch during their kids’ games. it was far bigger than the simple soccer field you had in your old school. 

upon walking inside, you can hear the sounds of the game, personal and individual practice going on as you see several tiny broken up groups of the soccer players together. in one far corner a group of three girls stand in the bleachers, arms crossed over the safety bar, watching a brunette haired boy practice his shots one on one with a goalie. you begin to walk over.

jake lets out a deep sigh, hand coming to his forehead to wipe off the accumulating sweat. he stares at his teammate, a goalie standing inside the wide opening of the soccer net. running forward, he lurches his leg forward to kick the soccer ball in front of him. aiming it for the top right corner of the net. jake watches the ball completely miss the wide ranged net, flying over the top just by a hair. 

he hears his goalie teammate hit his gloved hands together, looking up, his teammates hands are rested on his hips, staring at jake in a slight disbelief. 

“jake, do you need to take a break? what’s wrong with your shots today.” 

exhausted, jake shakes his head and receives the returned soccer ball between his feet. a dark haired girl with short hair comes walking over to jake, handing him a dry towel and a gatorade waterbottle. jake fans at himself as he grabs the rag from her hands and pats his forehead and neck dry. as well as taking a swig of water. your head tilts slowly to the right as you watch her return to her seat on a bench behind the border walls of the soccer field. she was really pretty, you thought it was a little too selfish of you to think that even a little too pretty for jake.

 ready to practice his shots again, he looks over at his goalie, instead finding you standing a little too close to the net and not even behind the protective wall. 

he frowns at you, stopping the dribbling of the soccer ball. 

“hey! move, get out!” 

you look at him cluelessly, looking at the goalie who is staring at you with wide eyes. your eyes avert back to jake who is staring directly at you. he has a pained expression on his face as he points at you. voice raising a little higher now. “i’m telling you to get out of the field!” he yells. 

“hey! he is literally talking to you!” the goalie shouts, he pulls his gloves off, beginning to walk towards you. you take a few steps backwards. eyeing him before realizing that jake had been yelling at you the entire time. you tense at the sudden acknowledgement, knowing you had already embarrassed yourself and your chances in getting this interview was slim. you walk towards the door of the field wall, unlatching it open and taking a seat on the bleacher. not far down the seat was the girl that had approached jake earlier with a dry rag and his waterbottle. 

jake sighs at you, watching as you leave the field, still taking a seat down at the bleachers, though no longer watching him practice. 

–

“hi.. do you have a little time to spare?” 

jake leans his head back on the players bench. eyes shut, gripping a stress ball with both of his hands. you lean over the wall of the players box, on your tippy toes as you try to talk to him. 

“no, i don’t.” he says clearly. still refusing to look at you. “i’m in the same class as you, do you mind doing this interview?” jake’s eyes shoot open, leering over to you with a side eye. head still not leaving the bench as he relies on it for support on the strain his body has on him right now. 

“same class?” you don’t reply to him, only staring at him with big eyes. “oh… you’re the transfer student.” he straightens his back, lifting himself off the bench only to stare at you when he comes to meet your eyes yet again. you shuffle to bring the notebook in front of you. 

“the first question is,” you watch as jake barely pays attention to you, his hands are trying to relieve the pain in his shoulder, soon his hands travel down to his knees and calves where he looks to be in pain as he winces when he comes to massage them gently. “you must be really tired right now, huh?” 

jake lets out a small chuckle. “is that the first question? gotta say, that’s pretty creative.” he jokes. though you see through his little coping joke and shake your head. jake cracks a smile at that. 

“this won’t do.” you sigh. “i’m gonna go, sorry to bother you during your rest time.” your hands lower to your sides. standing back on your feet and beginning to walk away. jake watches as you walk away slowly. relaxing in his seat before he calls out to you again. he leaves the players box, coming out to meet you on the field. 

“suddenly, i really want to do this interview.” he tells you, you turn around to face him with a grin, a grin that he can’t help but smile at. a contagious smile at that, you found his smile to be quite endearing. 

“jake! we’re starting a scrimmage.” the coach yells loudly not too far away. the smile on his face is quickly replaced with that of disappointment. you pout slightly at the opportunity that was handed to you on the platter right then and there. thinking you had just missed your chance to get the interview done and over with just so that you could leave as soon as possible. getting the questions meant that the club would finally let you become a true and honorary member! 

“sorry. could you maybe wait till it’s over?” you nod, feeling compelled to just stay there until you get the answers to the interview questions. “actually, just write down your number and leave it in that bag over there.” he says, pointing towards a dark blue nike duffle bag on the players bench. 

you watch from the outside of the walls of the field. this time carefully watching how the soccer team would play. how jake would play. you definitely understood why he was called a star soccer player now. despite being awful at his shots earlier, it wasn’t really showing when he passed and snuck his way through the defensive team. you assumed jake always got the most goals in his entire team. 

it wasn’t until one faulty crossover against the opposition teammate caused jake to take a fall. a nasty fall that you though he was able to recover from quickly, but seeing as he had laid on the ground, not getting up, and clutching his knee to his chest. you figured your bad luck had seeped its way into the people around you yet again. 

his teammates crowd around him in concern. shouts and hollers being scatter across the field as coach comes jogging over. standing up, you know that familiar feeling. it was guilt. you had caused this… supposedly. 

you can’t really remember how you became so unlucky. things were just always going wrong for you. for others, a tricky and bad day brought down moral, and most of the time people didn’t always have a bad day, not to your degree where it was everyday and for the rest of your life. you hated seeing your bad luck affect those around you. for some, like sunghoon, the first person you thought of, your bad luck never affected him. unless it did and he was just hiding it really well, but for the most part, your luck didn’t manage to penetrate whatever golden shining barrier he had sealed around himself. 

you make a beeline straight off the bleacher and out of the field, exiting into the hallway where you find a secluded area, heart pounding in your chest. did that really just happen? you hated seeing jake in pain, even if he was a proclaimed snob, you knew he was overworking himself in soccer. you hated seeing anyone in pain. 

but the word spread fast, that you being around caused jake to fall and hurt his knee, if you thought that word getting around of you being a bad luck charm had gone around fast, somehow this had gone around faster. especially with the soccer teams important tournament coming up, and jake quite literally being the face and honor of the school especially in the athletic community… you knew that you were definitely going to be receiving some looks and comments tomorrow. 

you put your head in your hands, groaning, before raising it again, slapping your cheeks gently. you stand up, legs a little wobbly from all the hard over-thinking that you just went through. you march your way towards the soccer field, hoping to find the right time where jake was alone just so you could apologize to him. 

seeing that the field was empty, you walk towards the boys locker room, nearing it, you hear the vicious scolding from the soccer coach. 

“you’re an important factor to the game jake. how could this happen?” 

“actually, it was that transfer student. the one that brings her bad luck everywhere. she came to practice today and talked to jake earlier.” you stood peeking into the boys locker room, knowing that if anyone had walked in and saw you, word would probably get around that you were a pervert as well, which you weren’t! you could see jake sitting on one of the benches, one of his legs resting on the bench with an ice pack laying on a towel on his knee. his teammates stood around him as the coach towered over him, glaring pointedly at the team of boys. 

jake looks around the room, narrowly missing all the different looks his teammates are giving him. but his gaze lands on you as you crack your face through a sliver of the doors opening. he wants to laugh at that moment, but chooses not to. 

“she can’t be around here anymore. she can’t be around you, jake. no, she can’t be around any of you on the team. she’s dangerous. we can’t afford to lose more players.” 

jake feels bad, he can understand that it’s not your fault. he was the one playing soccer, it’s not like you came up to him and purposely broke his knee. sure, jake believed in superstitions, but there was no way that this was completely true. things would surely just happen because of pure coincidence. 

he felt sorry that you had to listen to all the shit that the coach had spewed on about you. it wasn’t even your fault. and that made him feel a bit guilty. through all the dirt his coach and teammates were saying about you, he didn’t even have the courage, not energy to speak up about how it was also his fault. jake slouched over on the bench, knee hurting, now back hurting. 

your gaze finally lands on jake, who is still looking at you. and you can’t help tear up. that’s when jake looks away. he looks towards his hands, his fingers fumble and fidget together as he tries not to look back up at you. or even worse, he might try to get up and talk to you. but it wasn’t like he had much leeway to get up. his knee was in pain and he would limp and not get anywhere with trying to get to you. 

—

and you were right, word had spread even after you left the field building and returned on your way to the school building. despite girls trying their best to seem subtle about their looks and words towards you, you grew self conscious about yourself. even if you seemingly did nothing wrong. in your eyes, and probably those of the people around you. doing things wrong is all they could see in you. 

you found yourself in a studio, a dance studio with mirrors lining two walls that faced each other. you were alone in the room, the dimly lit lights lighting up only portions of the room. you sat in front of a mirror. not quite tapping into the tear ducts just yet. 

unknown to you, the door behind you opens slowly, revealing that of a high school boy with a tall stature, dark brown hair, and stripped of his school blazer, leaving him in a short sleeve white button up and his pants. 

he looks at you, though he’s sure that you haven’t noticed that he had seen you. his brows are slightly furrowed at first. wondering what a random classmate he didn’t even know was doing in the dance studio. surely it was a free space, but he had never seen you before, more concerning, he was wondering if you were crying. 

approaching you with light steps, he comes around to your side, looking over and checking if you were crying. surely, you were hunched over, sitting criss-crossed, you didn’t look fine. 

he looks over looking at your face and not noticing any tears and he sighs, relieved. 

“oh good, you’re not crying.” he says, a small smile reappearing in replace of the concerned frown that he was previously showing. you flinch, startled at the disturbance in the room that you were isolating in. of course someone had to come in when you were on the verge of tears and very embarrassed. 

“who are you?” you question, turning a little to face your back towards him, he was very handsome. his attractiveness caught you off guard and you were shy to be seen in this state of mental distress. 

“i’m lee heeseung,” you turn to face him at the exposure of his name. you scan for his nametag, not finding it because it was clipped to his blazer that was being carried in his arms. he looked at you with a sort of expectancy. “i’m y/f/n.” you tell him. knowing that the name would probably cause him to stumble back, or even cause him to just leave in general. but heeseung stayed in his place, bending down slightly as he talked to you. you felt your face heat up at the distance. 

“ahhh…” you interrupt him with a pained knowing look, “i know you.” he simply says. straightening up and jutting a hand forward for you to grab. “you can trust me.” he says. you stare at his hand. “or i can sit down with you that’s fine too.” he says. taking a seat down in front of you. you twist around fully to face heeseung. 

“i just transferred here yesterday and i’m already causing so much trouble for those around me…” you frown, huffing out and putting your hands on your knees. slightly swaying left and right. unable to look at heeseung. “i wanted to make friends.” you begin feeling the tears well in your eyes and soon enough, they are beginning to cascade down your cheeks. “now all these rumors spread around the school.” you are overwhelmed with the sadness hitting you. heeseung doesn’t really know what to do in that circumstance but he feels his heart ache for you. 

“you feel better after crying, right?” he asks softly. a soft smile still adorning his face. looking at him, you wipe your tears with your sleeved wrists and sniffle. you nod at him and he nods. 

“i know how to cheer you up.” he tells you, shooting up from the floor and scrolling through his phone for something. a song begins to play, you’re unsure at what he’s doing but as he begins to playfully dance around. you don’t know how to react, but it makes you crack a smile when you see heeseung try his best to bring a smile to your face. 

heeseung wasn’t a bad dancer either, you’re quite confused as to what he was doing, going through all of this just to make sure you were okay. but you appreciated his efforts. heeseung lowers the volume of the song, deciding he was finished serenading you. 

“you know i have horrible luck. aren’t you scared of me or something?” 

heeseung shook his head, face contorting to that of a doubtful one. “not at all.” 

“are you lying?” 

“no,” heeseung pauses and crouches down in front of you. “i didn’t even recognize you at first until you told me you were the new transfer student. i just thought you were a pretty girl in the dance studio that was feeling down…” your cheeks flush pink, struggling to maintain eye contact with him as he gives you a soft smirk. “jeez… don’t say things like that.” you joke half-heartedly, thinking that this was heeseung trying to cheer you up again. 

“say what? say you’re pretty? i’m saying it because you are.” he chuckles, looking down momentarily before looking back at you. he licks his lips, breathing in deeply before speaking. 

“do you want me to tell you a secret?” 

before you’re able to reply, your phone begins to chime in your pocket. grabbing it, your mouth falls slightly agape before reading the message displayed on your phone's lock screen. 

unknown number 

hey its jake 

come to the locker room right now

you sigh, contemplating whether you want to answer jake’s texts and go meet him at the locker room, or stay with heeseung to hear what his secret is. 

do you stay with HEESEUNG or do you meet JAKE at the locker room?

ᓚᘏᗢ aj — first chapter! i hope life is treating everyone good. i've been exhausted but there's just about 2 weeks before i graduate! sorry for the long wait for the chapter, school has been very heavy on my shoulders and i am horrible with time management so aaaahhhh. the chapter following heeseung and jakes route will be posted tomorrow hopefully! ALSO I AM SO SORRY BUT THIS IS NOT PROOFREAD.

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