Welcome to the Devil's Den

“Hello, Yeosang. My name is Y/N and I will be your tutor this afternoon.” You begin scattering your materials throughout the room as you speak, a couple books and maps, a notebook and some pens. “I know you usually go to Seonghwa because you two are friends, but he referred you to me instead.”

You turn your head from where you were facing the whiteboard wall to write on it and see Yeosang giving you his “deer in headlights” stare.

“You have a very unisex name,” he whispers to himself, but you hear it anyway.

“I get that a lot,” you state flatly. “Alright, let’s begin. Tell me what you know.”

He just stares at you like he’s never seen a more bizarre sight. 

“About what?”

“You’re here for Political Science one-twenty, right?” You’re mentally going over the course catalogue for the year as you ask.

“...yes?”

“You don’t even know why you’re here?!” You drop your marker as you yell at him.

“All I know is that the class is called American Government!” He yells back at you, hands held up in surrender as he presses himself up against the wall to get away from you invading his space.

“Okay.” You rub your temples and begin pacing the room. “Tell me what you know about the American government, I don’t care if you knew it before the class or if you just learned it in class.”

You stop passing where you dropped the marker on the ground so you can pick it up and begin fiddling with the cap, noisily uncapping it.

You don’t hear him answer right away and hear an audible gulp. “I’ve missed three lectures already.”

“What?!” You turn on him again, then take a breath before you ask the question to hopefully get to the root of the problem. “Why aren’t you going to class?”

“My roommate and his girlfriend keep going at it all hours of the night.” He shrugs and averts his eyes as he says it.

“Okay, that one I understand because that was my predicament last year.”

His statement has you thinking back to last year when you weren’t in the apartment-style dorms and had basically no privacy, you could hear everything.

“Let’s work on that first. My shift is only two hours, so let’s work on this for no more than thirty minutes, and then we can get to the class work.” You plop down in the chair across from Yeosang and press your face into your hand. “Talk. Now.”

You listen to Yeosang rant about how his roommate’s girlfriend has been over almost every night and every time she’s over, they have sex for literal hours. They’ve even gotten noise complaints from neighbors in their dorm, but they don’t care.

You worked out a plan to have Yeosang ask all of his friends about if he can come over when things like that happen, set aside some money to buy quality headphones to sleep with, and helped him make an appointment to go talk to Housing because it seems that the RAs are some of the most useless people on the planet.

“Onto the coursework!” You clap your hands and get up after flipping one of the textbooks open, and slide him a pen and one of the notebooks that’s been opened to a blank page. “Unfortunately for you, this is the U.S. and the U.S. loves to make itself look better than it ever was so it’s very likely that a lot of the information that I’m about to give you won’t be talked about in class. However, you’re gonna need a lot of this for the final exam.”

“You mean, like, they make it so we fail it on purpose?” 

You didn’t know it was possible for someone to look both oblivious and terrified in the exact way Yeosang does.

“I think it’s a whole scheme to keep people here longer to drain them of money, but that’s not why we’re here right now, right?” You smile over your shoulder when you’re done drawing out the timeline.

Yeosang stares at you patiently from where he sits at the table.

“Have you ever read Roots by Alex Haley?”

“Yes?” He looks at you like he doesn’t understand why that book would matter at all.

“That’s perfect! Haley used narrative nonfiction to provide a literary demonstration of the Black experience during the height of slavery.”

You make a note off to the side of the board about the book.

“Slaves were property so they were forbidden from knowing how to read or write, which is what led to the religious sounding songs with encrypted messages, such as Follow the Drinking Gourd.”

You make another note off to the side.

“Slavemasters hated slave music unless it sounded like it was Christian worship. They would use Biblical names to refer to others such as members of the Underground Railroad like Harriet Tubman. They would also use Biblical phrases like when Moses tells Rameses to “Let My People Go.” Ironic, right?”

You look over your shoulder again to Yeosang’s wide-eyed and intrigued face.

“Why do you know all this? I thought you were a political science major?”

“I am. This is significant to my work.”

He hums and goes back to staring at you expectantly.

“Alright, so slave trade occurs. American-born and African-born slaves have this unspoken feud that goes on. This is something else that Haley references in his book.” You stop talking but continue writing. “You better be writing all of this down.”

Yeosang reaches for the pen and you can hear frantic scratching across the paper.

“In 1787, the Three-Fifths Compromise was introduced. This is both good and bad. This gave southern slave states more significant power in the House of Representatives. The number of representatives is determined by the population of the state. The Three-Fifths Compromise meant that three-fifths of the enslaved people could be counted as people, but only in the context of giving the slavemasters more political and economical power.”

You write smoothly with your marker across the board while Yeosang scribbles frantically behind you with the scratchy pen.

“Well, enslaved people don’t like being enslaved, so they run away and try to disappear, right? Well, the slave owners don’t like the idea of having to do their own dirty work on their plantations or even having to pay people for honest work. So in 1793, the Fugitive Slave Act first arrived. This returned runaway slaves to the vile people that believed they could own individuals at all and treat them like shit.”

More scratchy scribbling.

“The Fugitive Slave Act returns to government conversations again in 1850. It severely penalized the runaway slave and anyone that assisted in their escape.”

“Wait! I have a question.”

“Good, it means you’re listening.”

“What kind of penalty was considered severe?”

“Like getting necessary body parts chopped off. You said you read Roots, do you remember the part where Kunta Kinte tries to run away from his slavemaster for the third time?"

“Vaguely.”

“He’s given the choice between having his dick or his foot cut off. He chooses his foot.”

You see Yeosang shudder in discomfort at the thought.

“Remember the feud between American-born and African-born slaves I was talking about earlier?”

“Yes.”

“In 1807, the Importation of Slaves Act was introduced and banned the importation of African slaves to the U.S. starting in 1808.”

“That’s good, right?”

“Yes and no. It meant no one else could legally be imported as a slave from the continent of Africa, but it also meant that piece of shit slavemasters would get concerned about where they would be supplying their labor from. The sexual abuse of female slaves began to increase, but they wouldn’t always get to keep the babies. The babies would sometimes be sold for profit.”

You hear a page rip as it gets turned.

“Unfortunately, a setback was reached in 1857, where it’s ruled that Black Americans weren't legitimate people. And it meant that the government couldn’t prohibit slavery in any U.S. territory.”

“So more than just the continental U.S.?”

“Yup. Then we have the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863.”

“Abraham Lincoln was President then, right?”

“Bingo! But he’s very controversial because he was helpful here, but did some other wild and questionable things.”

“What?”

“More on that at a later session. Anyways, the Emancipation Proclamation freed all the slaves in Confederate states. But this freedom doesn’t last long because the Thirteenth Amendment had an easily exploitable loophole: Constitutionally, slavery was abolished, except for in use as punishment for crimes.”

“Is there where the long history of cops hating Black people comes in?”

“Honestly, this could easily be used in that argument, but I hadn’t given that part much thought. We can come back to that later too. But let’s keep moving, the Thirteenth Amendment was introduced in 1865. Amendments Fourteen and Fifteen are introduced during Reconstruction, which takes place between 1868 and 1870.”

You turn around to look at Yeosang and he just stares at you.

“Keep going, I promise I’m paying attention.”

“The Fourteenth Amendment established birthright citizenship for anyone born on continental American soil. The Fifteenth Amendment gave Black men the right to vote, but hate groups like the Klu Klux Klan would show up at polls to discourage Black individuals from exercising their new Constitutional rights. This continues well into the 1960’s, the difference is that we have better documentation of when it happened in the 60’s.”

Hwa was right, I do really love smart people, but I have to focus.

“During that mess, the Peonage Act happened in 1867, so we’re backtracking just a little. This Act abolished the ability to exploit the legal loophole in the Thirteenth Amendment.” 

When you’re done talking and writing, you turn around to face Yeosang.

“Is that all you have for me?”

“For now, yes. We need to look at your assignments and I want to refer you to our tutor that handles classes like Black Religion and Civil Rights. You should also take Introduction to Philosophy with Mr. K., he focuses a lot on the Civil Rights Movement.” You nod your head as you talk like you’ve done this eighty times before and Yeosang finds himself wondering if you have really done this that many times.

“You look really proud of yourself for this,” he mumbles and grins.

You just grin back before answering, “because I am. It means I paid attention in class.”

Yeosang sees you bounce on the balls of your feet.

“Now let me see your essay criteria. We’re not that far into the semester and I know there’s at least one essay coming up.”

You watch as Yeosang digs through his bag before pulling out a slightly crumpled couple of papers and hands them to you.

Yeosang watches your face contort as you shuffle through the couple of papers and attempt to flatten them out on the edge of the table.

He sees the exact moment you catch sight of the notes on his American Government syllabus.

Y/N is great, knows how to talk to people and super helpful for the exams!

Real sweet, delight of a person. Ask them out if you get brave enough.

You side-eye Yeosang and see his ears go red as he averts his eyes.

“Did you actually need help with class work or are you just here to see if you’re brave enough to ask me out?” You deadpan and stare at him, he easily proves to you that he could pass for a human tomato.

“...both,” he gulps.

“Well, Yeosang, I’m a take-charge kinda person, so how’s this: you come back to see me for weekly tutoring sessions because I want to keep getting paid to do my job, and we go out for lunch this Saturday? And during our next few appointments, I can give you an in-depth education on the American shitshow.”

He only nods his head at you.

“Words, Baby.”

His tank top fits a little too well and you can see the way his grey sweats stretch across his lap.

The veins in his arms look unnecessarily defined today. Can people come in HD or 4K?

"You know," you begin while watching him blow cool air on your toes. "We're gonna need to get more of this polish. The bottle's almost empty and I really like this color. What's the name of it anyway?"

He takes a breath to stop blowing and answer. "Tangerine. I saw it when I went with Seonghwa to his last nail appointment."

"I forgot about that. Does he usually go by himself?"

"No. He knew I wasn't busy and he was mad at Hongjoong."

Makes sense.

Seonghwa had practically been begging for a marraige proposal without outright doing so, but everyone ended up telling Seonghwa he needed to just say it to Hongjoong.

"What do you think about getting married some day, Youngie?" You mumble, mostly to yourself.

You hear him close the polish bottle and feel him kiss the arch of your foot before he sets it on his shoulder like the other one.

"I think I'd like to be married to you some day. And I would take you ring shopping with me because I want to make absolutely sure that you like your ring."

You feel his hand slide beneath the ankle of your leggings.

"Stop playing with my leg hair, you weirdo!" You laugh.

He lets out a falsely offended gasp. "I would never do such a thing!"

"Is this the part where you ask me if I'll let you shave my legs for me?"

"Are you offering?"

You reach down to smack him upside the head and only getting a hearty laugh in return.

He drops your feet from his shoulders and you feel him press his face into the inside of one your thighs.

"Hwa, stop it. That look is so scary and for what?" You grumble at him as you go back to finishing your last page.

He goes back to the vanity and you hear the bench groan ever so slightly under his weight, betraying how old it really is despite the well-kept state of the wood.

You hear him rustling through one of the vanity drawers, probably the one with your stuff in it, since most of the stuff in it is actually his. Such a diva.

You close your book just in time for him to walk over and grab your ankle that he uses to drag you to the foot of your bed, yanking the vanity bench over to sit in front of you.

You recognize the palette as a rainbow one that he had gotten you as a gift when you said you would wear makeup more often if you had more color options, not really enjoying the neutral palettes that he tended to prefer.

"Are we foregoing a foundation and concealer?" He pinches your cheeks into one hand and it forces your lips into a pout, unfortunately exaggerating how dry they are.

"Yersh," you mumble as he leans down to intentionally transfer some of his moisturizing gloss with a kiss.

He sighs, but reaches for the palette and dips into one of the more colorful pot options.

You giggle as you feel the brush drag against your eyelids, feeling some of the powder fall onto your cheeks with how loaded the brush is.

"Okay, now do this," you open your eyes to find him scrunching his face in such a way that causes wrinkles to appear. "I want to try something."

You do as he asks and find your thoughts wandering to what he was like when you first met him. This was not the Seonghwa you originally met at all because the one you had originally met was trying so hard to throw himself so deep into masculinity that it was obviously slowly killing him from the inside out.

With some urging from his friends, you helped draw him farther into the more feminine side of things. Asking him if he wanted to try on your "girly" clothes like skirts and do "girly" things with you like try on your lipstick to see who it looked better on.

You once purchased a tube of it that you knew would look horrible on you, but perfect on him so he couldn't really deny anything. It took up residence in the glass drawer of your vanity for a few months, on display and easily accessed whenever he felt like.

And when he felt like it was your first Valentine's Day together.

"Okay, I'm all done!" His face is still inches from yours when you open your eyes, positively beaming at his work. "What about lipstick or gloss?"