다시 만나

“ ––  @yujinrk 

minhee hadn’t really wanted to come. to him, the perfect christmas celebration would be the kind where nothing was celebrated. his lack of enthusiasm for such festivities isn’t something that’s a big secret, he’d just much rather stay home where it’s warm and his mum has something cooked up for him. his sisters call him a hermit but minhee would rather be a warm hermit than have to freeze out there in the cold.

still, he somehow finds himself at a party, dragged along by some old friends. he’d attempted to come up with some excuse, had already thought of something to say ( “sorry, i’ve got… homework…” ), but they weren’t the kind to take no for an answer –– especially when this would’ve been minhee’s 50th ‘no’ in a row to a gathering.

the party isn’t anything too extravagant, he sees more familiar faces than he’d expected to, and in the spirit of christmas (haha), minhee mingles with a few of them. pleasantries are exchanged, and maybe –– just maybe –– minhee’s imagining it, but he notices a lot more girls have taken an interest in him and what he’s been up to lately. “the usual,” minhee would reply, “school.” and then they’d laugh, tell him that he’s funny ( i’m not joking though? he’d think to himself ) and he’d politely smile.

to say that the party was boring would’ve been one-sided on minhee’s part; he sees people enjoying themselves and minhee’s just the type that would’ve much rather be doing something else. or talking to someone else. there’s just too many people here. he’d much rather be talking to yujin, but every time he attempts to start a conversation with her, he’s interrupted by somebody. tired of the interruptions, in his minhee-like fashion, he wordlessly walks straight towards her. 

still, she tries her best to enjoy it anyway. she’s promised herself to move on from that whole ordeal, and even if she’s still weighed down by the fatigue of practice, she finds the time to attend a party hosted by some old friends. it’s nothing big, but she has fun. it’s been awhile since she’s reconnected with most of them after changing schools, and a surprisingly high amount of them actually know about her being a trainee. it probably has nothing to do with the fact she’s been talking about it nonstop, right? it’s just to vaguely complain!

she notices minhee’s presence at the party quite early on, but never gets to properly talk to him beyond their initial greetings as they both have casual conversations of their own to hold. it’s not until he approaches her that she turns her focus. 

“oh, hey, minhee,” she smiles at him, a bit brighter than before. his proposal surprises her, but she’s been getting her social battery drained with each conversation. she finds the invitation’s phrasing a little embarrassing, though, as their small audience starts whispering. she pardons herself quickly before more people notice. 

it’s nice to see that yujin hasn’t lost any of her humor. junho laughs at the question and shakes his head immediately. “at least you’ll only have to wear them for tonight. overall, i’d say cheap was the smart way to go.” 

he nods his head. “i hope your high school can handle you.” junho grins after his slight teasing. he does wonder what it would be like if yujin hadn’t left like that. would they have been closer friends? even if he is content with his life right now, it doesn’t hurt to question the what-ifs. 

“ooooh, sure.” taking the other’s phone, he adds in his information before handing the device back over. “aside from school?” junho exhales a loud sigh. “let’s see… parents forcing me through extra tutoring and violin lessons. take a guess at which one i usually skip, hehehe.” his mind travels through all the things he usually does – which isn’t much. school, hanging out with friends, the typical stuff. “i guess i became a vlogger? i’m nowhere near famous but people are really into the videos where it’s like… ‘my daily life as a high school student’. stuff like that. i think it’s the vicarious living through others that people enjoy most of all.”

“good point,” she nods in acknowledgement. the cheap party store fangs taste horrible, but that’s the price you have to pay with a budget. not to mention they also look a bit dumb, but she thinks that adds personality. 

i hope your high school can handle you. well, yujin has an internal chuckle, more like she can’t handle it right now. she’s never been the brightest, but with how little time she’s had to attend school with the trainee schedule...nothing’s looking up there. not her grades or her social life, a big yikes if you’ve ever seen one. “it’s been handling me...well enough,” she gives him a knowing look, shaking her head. “you know how it is with me and school.”

he glances down towards the girl, and attempts to give her the best retail-im-at-work-smile he can. “that’s good,” he says, as he gently slides the book back in place. he’s glad that she hadn’t gotten hurt. more so because he’s sure that if anything had happened, management would’ve definitely given him a good telling off –– even if it wasn’t his fault. and god, how troublesome that would’ve been. 

though as he’s about to stare back, there’s some sort of familiarity about the girl that has him looking at her for perhaps a second too long. he stands there and it clicks, how he was unable to recognize her, even in that moment, he’s not too sure. but with the way his chest tightens in that second, he feels himself going back to the boy he was just a few years ago. 

he finds himself smiling, genuinely, at her question; it seems as though she’s (partly) recognized him as well, despite being unable to tell who he is. it’s fine, he thinks, if anything it gives him a little leeway to tease her. 

“what?” he asks, raising a brow as he leans an inch closer, “are you flirting with me?” she isn’t, minhee knows this, but working at the library can get boring enough as it is and there’s some form of entertainment here. he stays like that for a few seconds before he finally takes a step back, laughing softly. 

“i can’t believe you go to a fancy arts school and forget me already, ahn yujin,” he says, but there’s no malice in his voice; everything sort of feels nostalgic in an odd way. “it’s me, minhee. kang minhee,” he continues. “ah, maybe you didn’t recognize me cause i grew my hair out,” subconsciously he runs a hand through his own hair. “fancy seeing you here… at the shoujo manga section of the library,” he grins teasingly.

he seems way too casual about this—or is this normal here? she hasn’t been in the outside world in awhile, maybe customs have change? nah. this guy’s just shameless.

yujin makes herself as small as possible as he finishes up business with the top shelf. she’s just overthinking it, this whole situation. just an employee trying to do his job, whatever that is. not sure what it has to do with trapping her up against the bookshelf but hey, she wouldn’t know. why would she know? she’s just here reading shoujo manga.

his response causes her to shrink back enough that her head bumps against the shelf, her eyes wide and face red. “n-no!?” she hisses, heart thumping in her chest. there’s a fine line between teasing and flirting, and he sure is toeing the line. no way it’s the latter, even if her heart sheepishly wishes it so. the stories have rose-tinted her situation, for sure.

she opens her mouth to retort, but hearing her own name fall from his lips fills her with shame. so he obviously knows her, which means she’s known him at some point in time, and then proceeded to forget him. not sure how she could ever forget someone who looks like this, but she’s lost worse (exam answers). 

“wait...like, that minhee?” her face contorts with surprise and scrutiny, her eyes locked onto scanning his face for similarities. there are some, but his entire aura is different. for one, he’s much taller, but also less...nerdy (in a cute way!). “yeah, sure. the hair,” she repeats mindlessly, still too lost in her thoughts. his hair does look fluffy, she supposes. 

the night brings a familiar face around. he’s hung around yujin many times before, a good chunk of the time back in middle school but now they were high schoolers and it seems they had lost contact for whatever reason. but it’s comforting and refreshing to see a familiar face come around. most of the time, junho’s only hung around people that minhee’s friends with and thereby his friends only by association. but junho’s comfortable around yujin enough to think they’re past the stage of awkward, former classmates and close to not quite friends just yet. 

junho’s fiddling around with his camera when he catches her voice speaking to him and he immediately looks up with a surprised look. it quickly turns into a softer grin when he realizes the compliment and peers down at his own outfit. “hehehe, thank you. i spent a long time picking my costume for tonight but i’m glad people are enjoying it. i think your costume suits you a lot.”

he nods his head, grinning at yujin’s enthusiasm. “it’s really been such a long time, hasn’t it?” honestly speaking, junho doesn’t quite understand how they seemed to have drifted. maybe it also has to do with the fact that after entering high school, junho’s parents forced him to attend extra lessons and practice his violin to get his extracurriculars in early on. by then, he’s only had enough time and energy spent hanging around minhee and eunsang for the most part. “missed you, too and i’m glad you could come out with us tonight. it’s been awhile since we’ve all hung out together, huh?”

“ooh, lucky! i didn’t get much time to prepare myself,” she pouts in memory of the frantic costume search just yesterday. if only she had decided sooner...or rather, if minhee had asked her sooner. still, she’s satisfied with what she has. at least she didn’t show up costumeless like someone today. like, c’mon! it’s halloween! live a little! “are you calling me a blood-sucker?” she teases, flashing the fangs in her mouth before pulling them out after. “these are so uncomfortable, by the way. never buy cheap.”

minhee’s never been the kind of guy to actually enjoy festivals, or anything of that sort, but halloween was different. an excuse to dress up as anything, free candy, and just all around fun with friends. though if he’s being honest, this halloween was probably different than the last few ones he’d spent. mostly because some way or another, he’d convinced yujin to skip training and hang out with him at the festival instead.

yeah, sure, he knows that that wasn’t the best thing to do. but everyone deserves to enjoy themselves a little, and she’d been working hard (at least, that’s what he’d thought when he’d made the bold choice of asking her to go with him). he stands there, waiting for her arrival, only to be greeted with a boo! and what looked like a vampire get-up.

he turns to look at her, and almost immediately a smile makes it’s way across his face. despite trying to look scary, he found her a cute (though he wouldn’t say that out loud). “convincing,” he smiles, looking at the fangs on her teeth. “i don’t remember vampires being so cute,” ah shit, he said it out loud. he looks back down at his own outfit and attempts to explain himself in a non-embarrassing way, “a guard from area 51… my friend decided to dress up as an alien, we’re matching,” he waves his hands and tugs at the fake gun he’d been holding. “we should actually go to the photobooth to get our photos taken, it’ll be nice, a vampire and an area 51 guard,” he smiles, gently nudging her with his arm.

the less yujin is reminded of training, the better. it’s the first time she’s skipped since she’s joined, and though she’s not stranger to playing hooky (thanks to school), her time at trc has been much more professional and intimidating. she’s asked the seniors whether skipping for a day would get her in trouble, and they had assured her otherwise but she’s still nervous. thankfully, minhee had helped ease her into it, and she wonders for a moment when he started being such a bad influence on her, but whatever. it’s halloween. 

she’s no stranger to being called cute (as pompous as that sounds), but it feels different coming from minhee. she’s not sure why considering he’s definitely said it before back in middle school, but he’s changed a lot since then. “i’m not cute. i’m scary,” she jokingly pouts, lightly hitting his arm. “basic, but scary nonetheless!”

@yujinrk​

it’s a weekend and understandably, the library’s a little more crowded than it’d be any other day of the week. not that that bothers minhee much; despite the larger crowd, his job remains the same. as always, they ask him to shelve a bunch of books. somehow, minhee thinks that he’d only gotten this job because he was tall and could easily reach the top shelves (exploiting his height. it’s fine, he’s getting paid for it anyway). 

he walks around the library, placing the books at their designated areas when he comes across a few from the… manga section? personally, minhee’s never been a huge fan of animation or manga, sure he knows the basics like … dragonball, naruto… sailor moon? but he’s never been the kind of guy to closely follow those things. he picks up the book in question and furrows his brows at the title “MAID SAMA!”; but he’ll reserve his judgement for later.

sighing, he walks toward the manga section, only to find a girl there, particularly in the… shoujo (?) section. and just like he’d been instructed, he begins to place the books onto the shelves. he isn’t thinking much (not that he ever does), when he spots a book above the girl, on the top most shelf, sliding off. on instinct, he quickly rushes behind her, hand grabbing onto the book before it could touch her. 

with her nose buried in the book, she pays little to no attention to her surroundings. even as other patrons edge by her stationary figure uncomfortably, even as a staff member enters the aisle to do his job, she stays hooked onto the heart-throbbing scene. it’s cheesy, but by god is she easy to please. a handsome lead with a soft smile is all she needs to fall in love...as annoying as the thought is nowadays, but still. sometimes you just need to let go of the real world and be happy.

the impending head injury looms above unnoticed, and yujin only snaps back to reality when she sees someone approach her out of the corner of her eye. she barely has any time to react before the figure ends up right behind her, reaching upwards to tuck the slipping book back into place. she doesn’t see that, though, as she’s turned around surprise to identify the man. 

she doesn’t say anything at first. though her instinct had been to back away out of caution, there isn’t much space in between him and the bookshelf, anyway. so she’s left with the option of looking him right in the face—the face that’s way too close to hers...and way too good-looking. her cheeks flush red against her will.

with their first stop, chanyeol takes a moment to go over her previously unanswered questions, lost to the cacophany of his overly enthusiastic train sounds. “pcwyemmlof is pronounced….” he pauses, a drum roll at the tip of his tongue. “marvelous!” he announces it with fanfare and volume, well aware that none of the letters could be arranged in any way to be pronounced in such a manner, but things don’t really have to make sense in his world. “and didn’t you know? by just agreeing to this tour, you have forfeited the right to sue about anything, including losses or damages. please be careful not to touch any of the ghosts or man-eating plants along the way.”

he grins, allowing her to take in the sights and smells of the cafeteria before he continues on with his tour. he supposes it should be at least a little helpful underneath all the nonsense, since it is ultimately his goal to help her get accustomed to the place. “good choice going with the bento,” he says with a nod, picking up a pair of chopsticks and handing them to her. “and the best part? it’s completely portable! remember, lunch is the most important meal of the day, tied with breakfast and dinner!”

with another set of loud train noises, he motions her to follow him through the halls, not quite sure of where his next destination is, allowing his feet to go wherever they feel at the moment. like muscle memory, they lead him toward the studio, where he spends a lot of his free practice and independent study. “here, we have the recording studio area,” he says, sweeping his hand out toward the aforementioned space. he accompanies his bit of truth with another whopping lie. “it’s been officially recognized by the country as a national landmark, and by the whole earth as the official eighth wonder of the world due to the fact that it is where i, park chanyeol, have composed may future hit songs.”

“marvelous,” she repeats after him with a silly grin on her face. she definitely likes him. “i should’ve read the fine print. i’m used to man-eating plants, but ghosts!? that’s too much,” her voice is whiny as she shakes her head. “you think i would’ve learned after signing my first ever contract, but nooo.”

she accepts the pair of chopsticks thankfully, clicking them together out of habit. it’s still a bit of a mystery just what is in the lunchbox itself, but she’ll choose to trust that her newfound guide hasn’t chosen to poison her or anything—probably. hopefully. “hey, brunch and supper are perfectly valid too,” she’s still growing...eating as much as she does isn’t weird!

with the chopsticks now tucked in between her hand and the lunchbox, she wonders briefly when she’d be able to try the meal as they continue on. not that she isn’t enjoying the tour, of course, but the idea of food makes stomach rumble, especially after the light breakfast she had earlier. it’s fine, though. she can hold on for however long it takes with how much fun she’s having. 

“oh that’s an easy way to remember your birthday.” she responds while feeling a bit relieved that it wasn’t in the middle of the month or some day in between. when she hears yujin’s suggestion, sowon couldn’t help but to chuckle over her choice. “but i can’t blame on you the energy drinks gift. i think it’s impressive how all of us seem to be doing relatively fine despite the fact that we don’t have as much free time and sleep compared to others.”

while sowon continues to listen, she couldn’t help but think back about the first time she was introduced to the trc/g project and how tense the environment was. to her, it was the first time she had ever met the higher ups and sowon could easily tell that their employees only expect the best and nothing short of it. “i’d like to believe that receiving a compliment from them is a rarity, but it’s a well-deserved one.” the older trainee explains as she thinks of the few instances when one of the coaches have given her a positive feedback. “so like you said, you need to work hard on it if you want to hear any of them say something positive about you.”

tilting her head, sowon thinks about the number of trainees she had seen in the past. “two or three is probably the average, but it depends. i believe prior to the triple threat challenge, they have only scouted one individual per event? they did scout about four from the last season of the mgas.” she ends her statement with a question as she tries to mentally recall who she had introduced herself to. blinking her eyes, she knows that what she is about to say makes her feel old, “about one and a half years. so i’m almost at the two year mark.”

“true~” yujin hums in a sing-song voice. “not that i need help remembering it, of course, but it’s not like other people remember it much, anyway,” she laughs with a tinge of sadness in her voice. it’s honestly fine, though, she’s gotten used to celebrating birthdays already, no need for more...

or so she says.

“honestly? though i feel like i’m dying a little more every day,” she shakes her head dramatically. “it’s surprisingly not as bad as you’d think, but still pretty bad considering i’m slowly failing classes among everything else,” she scrunches her nose, feeling a headache coming already as she remembers the amount of homework she has left. “when’s your birthday, though?” she asks with a tilt of her head and a smile.

“it’s that rare, huh?” maybe it shouldn’t be something she actively works towards, but it’s in her blood to seek validation where ever possible. “is it like this in every company?” or is it just a trc thing? she leaves the last part unsaid, though it’s obviously implied in the way she looks around them meaningfully. sometimes she wonders about her decision to go with trc, considering they’ve proven their reputation of being one of the toughest companies true. maybe life would’ve been easier if she had simply, turned the contract down and waited for some other chance instead...well, it’s too late to ponder on that anymore.