#joty

Journal of a Teenage Year - Chapter 4

“The winter season is considered the harshest by many, with its freezing temperatures and bitter, biting wind, but for Moon-young and Kang-tae, the season is full of warmth.“

Chapter three: 가을 | AUTUMN [PREVIEW]

Everything in Moon-young’s chest clenches at the thought that worse than him being angry or upset with her, Kang-tae seemed to just not care. 

I mentioned that I had to cut one of my favorite scenes from Journal of a Teenage Year Chapter 4: 겨울 | WINTER but here it is anyway! There are actually two scenes here, meant to be read one right after the other. The first just sets up the second. 

I decided to cut them for various reasons: 1) there were too many of these short scenes that made the story jump around too much, 2) I wanted to handle their living situation a different way, and 3) it would have dragged the story out and not pushed it forward. 

As always, these are not unedited but I hope you enjoy them still. 

As for the announcement: I’m going to be taking a small break from writing. I posted my first IOTNBO fic on July 7th so it’s been 2.5 months of writing or editing nearly every day. I’m a little burnt out, not to mention my real life is going to get a lot busier. I will still update a “tame me” and “love is a game” as I have time, but I hope this break will let me return refreshed and ready to write something new again. As I mentioned, my “to write” list is like 8 fics long so it isn’t that I am out of ideas! Thank you for all the support these last months, and I hope to meet you again in with something good in the future. 

I can’t believe that I haven’t posted this before, but Samura1pizzacat made an absolutely stunning video of SPRING from JOURNAL OF A TEENAGE YEAR. If you think these stills are cute please go to twitter and watch the video! She’s done such a beautiful job of it, with the music and everything, and it looks so much like what I had envisioned in my head, which is incredible. 

TWITTER: @samura1pizzacat << show her some love!

JOURNAL OF A TEENAGE YEAR - 겨울 | WINTER [PREVIEW]

They agree to check their statuses at the same time.

Tucked away in a quiet corner of a coffee shop, their half emptied mugs at their side, they log into the university portal.

There is a nervous energy that is zinging through him, making his fingers shake and his leg bounce. As he waits for the site to load, Kang-tae closes his eyes and slaps a hand over his wildly beating heart. 

Later that week, Moon-young corners Jaesu in the library. 

He nearly yelps in surprise at her sudden appearance. She pins him against an ancient set of encyclopedias and ignores the way he complains about her use of force and questions if she’s really a high school bully. 

“I need to talk to you,” she declares.

“You could just ask,” he retorts, brushing her arm off him. “I was wondering when you’d approach me next.”  

“Tell me what to do,” is all she says, letting Jaesu fill in the gaps. 

“Why should I?” 

Her eyes narrow. Her fists clench.

He levels a glare at her. “You hurt my friend. Broke his heart. Why should I help you?”

“It was one thing to come to me asking for help so you could apologize. It is another thing to ask me to help you win him back,” he continues. “How do I know you won’t hurt him again?” 

A fair question. And she doesn’t have an answer.

Jaesu sighs, not understanding how he got himself mixed up in the middle of this mess. 

“Just so we’re clear, I’m doing this for him and not for you.”

Her head snaps up.

“Don’t push him. He won’t respond to that. Let him come to you.”  

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Early on, I thought to have Jaesu and Moon-young have more interactions in JOTY 3 because MY needed to have more interactions with other people (otherwise it would literally just be her sitting in her room thinking about things). That is neither good for her development nor is it exciting for the reader to read. But then I had some reservations about whether Jaesu would be receptive to that kind of scheming/manipulation. Moreover, it would undercut KT eventually going to MY on his own. 

I think I mentioned on twitter that I had cut a previous little bit about MY fussing over KT because he’s left-handed and with all their studying he constantly had smudges on the side of his palm (shout out to all the leftys in the world!) and I said I deleted that because it edged toward MY really doting on KT in order to “win” him back. But there’s nothing to “win” in their situation -- “winning” implies that if she clears the most obstacles, if she gets the most points, if she comes in first, then she gets a prize. But there isn’t anything she can do that would amount to winning back KT’s trust, let alone his heart. That must be freely given, and it ultimately lies with KT to decide whether he will take the risk. 

So yeah, no Jaesu and MY team up for the same reason. Which actually made me a little disappointed since I really loved the scene in the drama where they mutually trash talk KT 😂 I had Jaesu play the matchmaker a little bit though, and allowed him to be his own schemer in JOTY 3 which I think worked out better. 

Still, that didn’t cover MY needing a friend, and i ALMOST brought in Juri. In my scribbled notes/outline that I shared earlier, under “Fall” it says “ENTER JURI” which I know no one can read because of my chicken scratch lol. But in my head, JOTY MY is still the lonely character from IOTNBO/PBIO, so I tried to show MY’s development/change in other ways (like her inability to write, and her unsuccessful attempts at getting close to KT). 

I knew MY was going to start JOTY 3 being very meek and not confident at all, but I wanted her to stand on her own by the end, and so all of her trial and error was something she needed to go through too. 

And if you’ve gotten this far, I’ll leave you not with a deleted scene necessarily, but an earlier version of the scene that ended up in the story -- in this version, KT is so much meaner and MY is so pitiful 😔 which I was not having, so that got edited out too! 

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“This isn’t a date, Moon-young.”

“I know. I know it isn’t. I just-- I am hoping that we can be friends again.”

He scoffs at that, everything in him recoiling at the thought. “I can’t be friends with you.” 

He sees the hope fade in her eyes. 

Quickly, he grabs her hand, brings it to his chest, lays it over his pounding heart. “I can’t be friends with you because I will always want more. This stupid heart of mine will never be satisfied with just being your friend. I will always want you.”

Moon-young starts to cry. 

“But I don’t know. I don’t want to lead you on, to give you false hope. But I don’t know if I can do this.”

“Then a chance,” she says, wiping her eyes. “To make it up to you. To prove myself. To earn back your trust.”