As the car pulls into the entrance of the school, I glance out the window to watch the bright sun rising. The corner of my mouth tugs up when I see the beautiful hue which is beginning to cast a bright glow over the usually grey landscape. Even with the barrier that is my door, I catch the sounds of excited hollering coming from both familiar and unfamiliar faces. The wheels slow down over the asphalt.
I quickly click the seatbelt off and pull my bag over my shoulder, taking a deep breath to prepare myself for the school day ahead of me. Just as I am about to get out, my dad grasps my elbow, stopping me. I throw my head over my shoulder to give him a questioning look.
"What?"
"You know that you have to learn how to drive without someone in the car with you at some point, right?" he muses, arching his brows in an all-knowing manner.
"Seriously?" I exclaim while wearing a betrayed look on my face.
He tries to avert his guilty gaze.
"I thought you liked dropping me off. You said that it helps our father-son relationship. No siblings, no mums, no sucks. You remember that, Father?"
"Yes, Seong Jin," he sighs defeatedly, "but you can't live your life in fear of driving."
His face turns sombre and the look in his eyes instantly lets me know that he's going to speak of Appa.
Like an infantile child, I petulantly sink into my seat and focus my gaze ahead. When I fold my arms over my chest, he reaches over to squeeze my shoulder slightly. Can we not talk about my deceased parent right now, my body tells him, but taking a sideways glance at him I notice how his eyes assert how necessary it is that we address this issue before it is too late. I slump. Defeated. Let's get this over and done with then, the body language tells him.
"What happened to Yeong Ho is not going to happen to you too. The weather was terrible that day. He shouldn't have driven in those conditions in the first place."
I stare up at him with my brows furrowed. What is that supposed to mean?
"I'm not saying it's his fault, but he should have known better."
"Dad, I'll drive when I'm ready. Besides, that's not why I don't want to drive. I'm not scared of getting killed or anything."
He watches me like that's exactly why you don't want to drive.
I watch him like no, it's not.
"Then why don't you want to drive?" he questions me and I open my mouth to answer him, but he cuts me off and adds, "And don't give me some bullshit about not being able to drive without instructions. When you took your driver's test you didn't need instruction."
"That's just practice. There were barely any cars around."
"What about when she made you drive with cars around?"
"I was high on crack that day, barely conscious of my surroundings."
"Seong Jin," he mutters irritably, his tone clearly conveying that he is in no mood to joke around with me.
"I don't want to drive, because I don't want the power of potentially killing anyone," I eventually admit.
The vehicle is swallowed in a deafening silence afterwards. When I chance a glance over at Franklin, I see the stunned look on his face from my confession as if that was the last thing he was expecting me to say. I shift around in the passenger seat uncomfortably when his expression morphs into concern.
"That sort of responsibility is terrifying. The fact that I could leave a family devastated the same way we were by one little mistake scares the shit out of me. What if I get distracted by the ping of my phone or I freeze up and in a panic, I hit the wrong pedal?"
We revel in the silence again.
I am not afraid of being killed… I'm afraid of being the killer.
"Seong Jin," he drawls out, that familiar fatherly tone occupying his voice as he rests a reassuring hand on my shoulder, giving it a gentle squeeze, "if you don't want to drive, I am not going to force you to even though I think you are more than competent at driving. There a worse dickheads on the road, trust me."
With an amused chuckle, I let out a shaky breath, feeling some of the tension leave my body.
"But you know, if that's how you feel about being on the road then your mum and I should try and get that car back on the market again. We might as well try to sell it to someone who will at least drive it around."
"You can't do that. I love that car."
"Then drive that car," he points out exasperatedly. "I'm getting sick of making all these trips. I'm wasting my petrol money."
I gape at him incredulously.
"I'm just gonna get out of the car before more hurtful things are said and relationships are broken, because from that statement alone, I take it that money means a lot more to you than your son. Who loves you."
I place a hand against my chest, feigning a sign of immense hurt to try and guilt trip him into dropping me off.
I do not feel like taking the bus every morning because I now have to wake up earlier to catch it. I don't think I can train my body to arise a second earlier than six o'clock. Besides, styling my hair takes a very long time and with this new bus schedule, I rarely have any time to do it. Other than my clothes, my hair is the only thing which makes me stand out in our school. I may not want to be in the spotlight, but I do want people to notice me.
"Love doesn't pay the bills, Seong Jin."
"Well, I hope you can handle aloof, Father, because that's what you'll be getting from me from now on." I huff and get out of the car.
As I am walking to the school building's entrance, I hear him calling my name behind me. Spinning on my heels, I watch as he leans across the passenger seat and sticks his head out of the half-open window. Catching the mischievous look in his eyes, my face drops.
Oh, God.
He is definitely going to do something to embarrass me, I can feel it. Franklin lives for this. It is quite literally the only entertainment he has. That is why I used to hitch rides with Yang Jin back when he was still in school. I knew that my father would jump on any opportunity to humiliate eighth-grade me.
"I love you."
The few people lingering nearby hear that and they all simultaneously glance over at me to see what I'm going to do in response.
My cheeks heat up in embarrassment and the longer I stare at the smug look on his face, I cannot help but feel like wiping the look off his face. But then I realise that I cannot. Fathers aren't people you wipe smug looks off of. Fathers are adults and adults are people you have to respect, no matter what. Adults are people who you have to say, I love you back to.
I cannot even spin on my heels and hightail it out of here because he knows that I heard him.
Reluctantly, I open my mouth and I mumble in Korean, "Saranghae."
"What was that? You know I don't understand Korean, Seong Jin."
Well, that's a fucking lie. Franklin is fluent in Korean; he's even better than me. I think it is because after he got reprimanded by Halmeoni for not taking his shoes off at the door, he immersed himself in learning everything that needed to be learned about our culture so Amma's parents could love him forever.
I sigh and say it out more clearly, "I said I love you too. Do you have to embarrass me like this?" and yes everyone hears me and bursts into laughter.
He chuckles. "See you at home, kid."
I shake my head as he pulls out of the school grounds and I begin my walk inside the school, secretly cursing everyone who throws a mocking saranghae at me.
Once I am inside the building, the strangest thing happens to the students of Mossbourne Community Academy. Every single person inside quiets down and their heads snap over to me. My eyes widen awkwardly and I hug one arm over my torso like I do when I'm nervous or when people stare at me.
Is it my clothes? Is it the shorts? Are they surprised that I decided to wear something I have never worn before? I slowly and discretely glance down and take my outfit in. Is it maybe because I'm not wearing a jacket as well? It's not even that cold today.
I bring my gaze back up and decide that if it is my shorts then they will just have to deal with it. So, with the little confidence I have, I simply stroll down the hallway to my locker. That seems to snap their brains back into action and they begin to talk and laugh and whisper while still looking over at me, making it obvious that their gossiping about me. Or my shorts. One of the two.
I get to the locker and the girls next to me who are talking, stop and look over at me. They start to giggle behind their teeth.
I furrow my eyebrows in confusion.
What is up with everyone today? Did someone perhaps take an embarrassing video of me and then post it on Twitter or something? Was it Yang Jin? He has a knack for doing that. Takes embarrassing, sleeping pictures of me where I'm drooling and my hair is a mess and then posts them on his Instagram with the caption: Little brothers. Aren't they just the cutest?
"Um… Seong Jin?"
I twist my body around with my books in my hands and my bag awkwardly dangling around my elbow. When I catch the person, my eyes replicate those of an owl.
He has changed a lot from the tenth year, even growing himself a stubble of a moustache above his upper lip. He is going to get scolded silly for having facial hair; one of the rules of the school is that boys are supposed to be cleanly shaven. His dirty-blonde hair is gelled and styled into a quiff and I realise that he has trimmed the side of his head so that the quiff can overlap there. The only thing I can honestly say hasn't changed is his glimmering green eyes. Now he's even way taller than me, probably six feet tall.
"Michael?" What are you doing up there, I want to add jokingly, but I don't.
Michael Koehler, the player that I had fallen for, the one who told me that he didn't like me back in the strangest way possible.
After tenth grade came to its conclusion, he and I never spoke to each other ever again. I think he started ignoring me immediately after I confessed to him about how I felt about him, that I liked him. Then, I too got bitter and stopped trying to get him to have a conversation with me. The same way he treated me, I pretended as if he did not exist.
I don't even cross paths with him in the corridors like I used to. It's almost as if he was just cleared from my path which made it easy for me to fall out of like and then catch feelings for James Lamar.
I still remember the day he rejected me like it was yesterday.
Michael and I are both standing in the middle of the hallway after Savannah has left him. He's watching me expectantly, those glimmering emeralds of his enrapturing me like they always do. I think I hear fireworks exploding in the background. Either that or I'm finally going crazy—that is a likely possibility.
I'm still trying to muster up the courage to tell him how I truly feel about him and trust me, it's quite nerve-wracking. It isn't as scary as it was with Dominic since back then I had a fear of being rejected. Now, that I have already been rejected and survived through it with ice cream and more junk food and romantic movies, I'm not as frightened by the thought of being rejected again.
"SJ, c'mon. What did you wanna talk about?" he asks, gazing at me with impatience glinting in his eyes. Throwing his head over his shoulder, he adds, "We're gonna be late for class and I don't want to end up on Mr Dowdy's bad side, because—"
"I like you," I blurt out while closing my eyes apprehensively, a blush splashing onto my cheeks.
"Okay," he drawls, and I peek one eye open to catch him watching me in bemusement. His lips tug up calmly as he shakes his head from side to side in question. "I don't follow."
"I, uh, I like you. As in I have romantically fallen for you," I explain, sucking onto my bottom lip as I wait for his response.
Fuck, was that the right thing to say? I have romantically fallen for you.
I force myself not to cringe as the words echo around in my head. I couldn't say anything besides that. I have romantically fallen for you? I sound like I was ejected into the twenty-first century from the Elizabethan era. I'm sure, wherever he is, Shakespeare is looking down (or up) at me, smiling in pride (or not giving a fuck since the flames of hell are licking away at his skin).
Somehow, I still have a good feeling about this. You know, with Dominic I wasn't a hundred percent sure. In fact, I wasn't even one point two percent sure. Michael, I think he likes me too. From the way he interacts with me, I'm sure he does. Just as much as I do. I think after I confess, he's going to grab me by the nape, stare deeply into my eyes and kiss the living daylights out of me. I think—
"So," he cuts through my train of thoughts and I focus back into reality, "what I'm hearing is you want to give me head."
What?
Astonishment widens my eyes and bemusement makes my face scrunch up. "What?"
"You wanna suck my dick?"
"N-No," I stammer in shock. "What? No. What makes you think that?"
"You said that you like me," he points out slowly, confused by my words for some peculiar reason.
"Yeah, but that doesn't mean I wanna have sex with you."
"Then what do you want?"
"I don't know." I shrug, eyes enlarged like saucers. "Maybe take me out on a date first."
"A date? What is this? The eighties?"
"Do you realise how many bases you've jumped? It's date first, handholding, hugs, kiss on the cheek, meeting my parents, kiss on the lips and then finally after years and years of being with one another we finally make love."
"Is that your long way of telling me that you don't wanna give me head?"
I stare at him bluntly.
He raises his brows expectantly. "'Cause if you're down, I'm down. I'm ready to go any time, SJ."
That's all he has to say after I've just poured my heart out to him like that? The only thing on his mind is me sucking his dick?
What is up with men? Can't he just stop chasing sexual acts just for a few seconds? Can't he look deep within himself to realise how he truly feels about me? How, deep down there, there is a heart and it's possibly beating for us. Can't he see how beautiful our relationship could be if he just let himself feel the slightest bit of vulnerability?
"No," I reply to him inevitably answering my questions. "No, I don't wanna give you head, Michael."
Dislike begins to arouse and brew in my chest, replacing any feeling of like that I may have had for him. Of course, he cannot like me back.
What was I thinking? He's too scared to do that. He does not trust me enough to let himself show even the slightest bit of vulnerability. You know, I thought I was different from his usual floozies. I guess I thought wrong. I am just like them to him. Another statistic to add to his body count. He will always be a player.
"Okay, hear me out here, SJ. Hear me out," he negotiates but I have already lost interest. "What if I did say that I liked you back? Would you wanna suck my dick then?"
I just stare at him dryly.
He realises that I'm not going to bend to his will. Pun intended.
"Well, in that case, I don't feel the same way. Sorry." He smiles, but it's nowhere close to being sympathetic.
I press my lips together into a thin line.
"Also, the only relationship which was between us was friendship and you've ruined it completely so thank you, Seong Jin. Maybe we could have had a good thing going, a friends-with-benefits thing, but you ruined it. Also, I'm not gay."
With that being said, he just walks away.
And now he's here, standing in front of me.