Work Text:
His gym bag reaches the seat before he does.
This kind of stunt that he pulls doesn’t faze her anymore. Sometimes Yujin doesn’t even flinch at the unwelcome surprise or when he pulls out one of her earphones as he sits down next to her, like today.
“Adele so early in the morning?” asks Sungchan, raising his brows. His hair is a mess, his necktie is crooked and his tumbler is peeking out of his bag that he’s shoved down to the floor. It’s a typical Jung Sungchan morning look. “Also, can you upgrade to Airpods already? Who even still uses these wired earphones anyway?”
“Don’t use mine then,” Yujin retorts, threatening to yank her earphone back, but doesn’t.
The bus leaves the stop without taking more passengers. “Wake me up when we reach,” he tells her after making himself comfortable in his seat, head leaned back against the metal railing with his jacket bunched up as a makeshift pillow. A waft of his coconut scented shampoo that he’s been using for years floats over, filling her lungs.
She rolls her eyes. “Maybe in your dreams,” she says, and watches as the bus strolls past the scenery she could probably see in hers.
Yujin hates to talk about it, but her family has known Sungchan’s family since forever. And as a result of that, they’ve watched each other throughout every phase of their lives.
“Including the embarrassing ones?” Yuna asked over lunch when she first found out. Yujin hates to be seen with Sungchan at school, but that morning he came over to her classroom to return the side dish containers that her mother packed for his family when they came over for dinner the previous weekend. You could’ve just dropped by my house? Yujin had murmured seethingly when he did, to which he shrugged flippantly and flashed his crooked grin.
“Don’t talk about it like it’s an achievement.” Yujin made a face, trying her best to ignore the embarrassing memories that were automatically playing in her mind like a reel on her Instagram feed as she stabbed on a piece of rolled egg with her chopsticks.
“I mean, Sungchan sunbae is good looking and tall. And he’s the soccer team’s captain. He’s pretty popular, you know,” Yuna told her.
Yujin stopped chewing and gave her a look that’s a cross between horrified and disgusted. “Good looking? Jung Sungchan? Shin Yuna, I think you need to get your eyes checked.”
Yuna had laughed then. “I know some girls would kill to be you, or maybe they’d kill you first if they knew you guys were so close,” she said, and Yujin suddenly remembered running into a girl with red, teary eyes on her way to find Sungchan who was supposed to wait for her at the vending machines. She remembered giving him a weird look and asking, What did you do to that girl? “So what are you going to do about the favour?” Yuna asks now as Yujin struggles to zip her overflowing pencil case.
This morning, Gaeul suddenly caught up with her after she got off the bus. She’s a year older, and Yujin knows her because they were in the broadcast club together before Yujin quit to join volleyball instead. They’ve never really spoken to each other much beyond regular greetings, though. “I didn’t know that you two are close,” said Gaeul, and it took Yujin a moment to realize that she’s referring to Sungchan and her.
“Not really. Our parents know each other, is all,” Yujin told her, shrugging.
“Oh,” said Gaeul. “Can I ask you for a favour?”
Yujin raised her brows. “What favour?”
The thing is, Gaeul herself is pretty popular among the boys. She does the school’s radio broadcasts most days of the week and was even invited to give a report on the EBS channel last February. Yujin wasn’t sure what favour she could do for someone like her.
Halting her steps to turn to look at her, Gaeul grinned. “Can you introduce me to Sungchan?”
Yujin shakes her head slowly, unsure. “I don’t know,” she tells Yuna.
“Do you have someone you like?” Yujin blurts out while waiting for the bus three days later.
They don’t often go home at the same time since Sungchan’s practices don’t end until at least 5 in the evening, but they ran into each other outside the gymnasium at the water fountain when she was filling up her water bottle and he was on his way back from the store room. Someone sprained his ankle after being tackled during a practice match, and the coach let the rest of them go home.
“Why?” Sungchan asks without answering the question. He does it all the time, and once she was so annoyed that she ignored every single thing that he said to her the entire day.
She tries to shrug nonchalantly, purposely not looking at him. “Just asking,” she says.
“If you want to introduce girls to me, then you should know that my type is pretty girls,” he tells her, laughing, asymmetrical bunny teeth on display.
“Who said I want to introduce anyone to you?” Yujin retorts. Their bus arrives then, and they drop the topic.
It turns out Yujin never had to do anything after all. The following week, she catches a glimpse of Sungchan walking side by side with Gaeul on the bridge heading towards the opposite building through the window on her way to the laboratory.
Sungchan’s class isn’t in that building though , she thinks. It isn’t until Yuna turns around with a “What did you say?” that she realizes that she’s said that out loud.
“Earth to Yujin?” A voice snaps her out of her trance, and she turns to find Eunseok looking at her and the vending machine still blinking, waiting for her to choose. “Is deciding what to drink that hard?” he asks, corners of his lips curled into a smile.
Eunseok has been Sungchan’s friend since primary school, but is ironically the total opposite of him. He’s the kind of kid your mother compares you to, unlike Sungchan who causes troubles everywhere he goes. “Oh, sorry,” she says, embarrassed. “You can go ahead.”
“You’ve already put in money though,” he points out.
Yujin’s already forgotten that she did. “That’s okay. I changed my mind. I don’t feel like having anything anymore,” she says with a shrug, then flashes him a grin. “Noona’s treat.”
That makes him laugh. “Okay then,” he says, then presses the button for grapefruit flavoured Demisoda. It drops unceremoniously loud into the pick-up box, and he leans down to fish it out. “Is something bothering you?” he asks, sounding genuinely concerned.
She used to have a crush on Eunseok back in middle school. 12 years old Yujin was still deemed too young to be crossing roads by herself, so her mother would always remind Sungchan to hold her hand whenever they went out on their own. Once, they ran into Eunseok on their way to the mart for an errand, and Sungchan roped him into coming along. Their neighbourhood wasn’t a busy one, especially on a weekday afternoon, but Yujin habitually held her hand out when the pedestrian signal turned green.
It was Eunseok who took her hand instead, and the warmth of his palm that spread into her skin like ivy remained in her for a long while.
“What makes you think that?” she returns with another question. Sungchan’s bad habit has rubbed off on her, it seems.
“Well, you were spacing out in front of the vending machine, for starters,” he answers. “And Sungchan was talking about how you looked distracted this past week. You didn’t even notice that your earphones weren’t plugged in this morning.”
Oh. “Maybe I wasn’t in the mood to listen to anything,” she tries, already knowing that he won’t buy it.
“Okay then,” he repeats. “But if you’re in the mood to talk about it, but don’t feel like talking to anyone else, you can always look for me,” he tells her, and it makes her heart ache a little.
“Thank you, oppa,” she says, meaning it. With a smile, Eunseok presses the Demisoda into her hand and pats her head like he would when she was still a little kid before turning around, and her fingers tingle from the coldness of the can as she watches his disappearing figure.
Things start to get busy for Sungchan since there’s a tournament coming up, so his training begins early in the morning and stretches on until sundown. The only times Yujin ever gets to see him are when he’s on the field.
“I thought you’ve always wanted to get rid of him,” Yuna kindly reminds her while munching on her double beef burger. It would’ve sounded completely incomprehensible if Yujin hadn’t known her enough to be able to decipher.
“I did,” says Yujin in response before stealing a sip of Yuna’s peach ade. She went over her budget to buy a birthday present for her sister last week, and now she can only afford an a la carte popcorn dumpling. “I just feel… abandoned, somehow?”
“He’s going off to university next year. Didn’t you say he’s aiming for Seoul? You can start getting used to not having him around anymore,” says Yuna. “Besides, it’s not like you guys are gonna see each other for the rest of your life. He’s not your biological brother. It’s not like you’re friends either, right?”
Yuna’s right, and Yujin usually hates it when she is. “I know that,” she pouts.
“Wait, is this jealousy? I’ve heard the rumours about him and Kim Gaeul. We saw them together by the field yesterday.” Yujin reaches for a dumpling and shoves it into Yuna’s mouth, hoping that will stop her from saying what Yujin knows is coming next. It doesn’t, unfortunately. “An Yujin, do you have feelings for Jung Sungchan?”
Yujin shuts her eyes and covers her face with her hands, willing all of this to be a fragment of some nightmare she can wake up from and immediately forget about. “I don’t,” she replies weakly, shaking her head. It’s not a lie if she never acknowledged it, right?
“Oh my god,” Yuna continues, laughing so hard tears start welling up in her eyes. So much for being friends. “I never thought I would live to see this day. I mean, I’ve always hoped, but I never thought this day would actually come.”
Still with her hands over her face, Yujin groans loudly. “But Jung Sungchan is so annoying. He’s obnoxious and a total loser and he never uses his own earphones and always takes the last piece of meat on the plate and hid behind me the one time we went to a haunted house together and started bawling not even halfway through Train to Busan.” The words tumble out of her mouth like the M&M’s that spilled out all over the floor that time Sungchan ripped the bag with too much strength. She can probably list down all the things she hates about Sungchan in a spreadsheet and run out of columns. “There are so many other guys.”
A grin is still splitting Yuna’s face when Yujin finally removes her hands. “Yet he’s still the one you ended up falling for,” she ever so kindly points out.
Yujin’s never wanted to combust more than she does now.
“Why is it so hard to see your face lately?” asks Sungchan when they finally run into each other outside the teachers’ office on Friday after the final bell has rung. He’s still in his practice jersey, on his way from submitting his leave permission letter to his homeroom teacher.
Yujin shrugs. “You’re the busy one.”
He laughs, guilty, and she can still see the little boy that he used to be when she looks at him now. His growth spurt began later than the other boys in his year, but he ended up towering over everyone, including her. It felt weird at first to need to look up to talk to him and to hear his voice change. “I’m going to take a quick shower and change out of my clothes. Wait for me at the pine tree by the library block?”
She nods, and he quickly jogs away in the direction of the staircase.
The rest of her classmates are already gone by the time she goes back to her classroom for her bag. The late afternoon sunlight floods the corridors with the colour of kimchi jjigae that Sungchan made for her from scratch once when both of their parents came home late from work. It tasted really bad, and they ended up going to Eunseok’s house for dinner. She hates the way she’s nervous as she waits for him when they’ve spent almost their entire lives together.
“Sorry to keep you waiting,” Sungchan says, back in his uniform. His hair is still a little wet, and he smells of his favourite shampoo.
Despite her anticipation, the walk to the bus stop is quiet. He’s distracted by his phone, fingers busy typing what seems to be text messages. “Are you texting Kim Gaeul?” she carefully pries, peeking briefly at him out of the corner of her eyes.
He glances up from the phone to look at her. “No. Kim Gaeul? Why would I be texting her?” he frowns.
“I don’t know. Aren’t you two…” she struggles to find the right word. “Friendly?”
He scoffs, incredulous. “She wants me to be on the school radio after the tournament. I said no, so she’s been pestering me.”
“Why did you say no?”
“Didn’t you quit the broadcast club because the kids there were treating you badly?”
“No, I quit because Jiheon told me they didn’t have enough people on the team. Who told you that?” Yujin is the one frowning now. They’ve stopped walking somewhere along the pavement in between the school gate and the bus stop. “Did you think I was being bullied?”
“Well, I—”He’s rubbing the back of his neck, at a loss for words. In the end he settles with a “I’m glad if you weren’t” and resumes his pace without waiting for her, but even from the back she can see the way the tip of his ears has turned red. Sungchan, even after all these years, still runs away when he gets all embarrassed.
She chuckles and goes after him, the way she did when he started running away after exiting the haunted house years back. He’d bought her a churro afterwards as an apology.
The wind picks up around them as they approach the stop, carrying the faint cries of cicadas and a hiphop song coming from the car that just glided past them. The sun is the colour of a runny egg yolk in the sky. Sungchan turns to her as she stretches her neck out to catch a glimpse of any incoming bus. “Did you think I was dating Kim Gaeul?” he asks.
Yujin has already forgotten they were talking about that initially. She’s too shocked by the unexpected question that she accidentally nods. “I mean,” she tries to backpedal, “I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to think. She asked me about you, and then I saw the two of you together. Twice.” She pauses, dropping her gaze to the ground and studying the weeds between the pavers. “You said your type was pretty girls.”
Another scoff escapes his mouth. “Not all of them. There’s only one pretty girl that I like, but she’s too dumb to notice it,” he tells her.
Sungchan likes someone? Her forehead creases as she meets his eyes again. “Who?”
“Do you want to come to my match on Sunday?” He changes the topic.
“I thought you said only your girlfriend is allowed to go watch your matches?”
“Yeah, I did say that.”
She stares at Sungchan who’s staring back at her with a devious grin, like he’s telling her a secret in a language she can’t speak. A moment passes between them as Yujin’s brain turns, trying to connect all the dots and fill in the blanks that he’s left — a puzzle for her to solve. Something finally clicks. “Did you just call me dumb?” she yells.
Sungchan lets out a bark of laughter, surprised and so amused at the same time. “That’s your takeaway?”
“I mean.” Cheeks flushing, she opens her mouth but can’t find the right words to continue. She suddenly can’t look him in the eye either, especially when he takes a step forward and brings his face closer to hers, grinning. Their bus comes into sight just then, and Yujin takes the opportunity to escape.
Yujin fishes out her earphones from the front pocket of her backpack once they’re seated. They’re all tangled up now, which draws a laugh out of Sungchan. “Who even uses this kind of earphones anymore?” he says while untangling them for her.
“You gave me these,” she reminds him. Not for her birthday or anything — her upstairs neighbour started renovating their bathroom a month before her high school placement test, and he just nonchalantly passed her the box the day after he found her at the playground studying in the cold. “Remember?”
“Of course. I guess that’s why you’re so attached to them,” he says.
“That’s not true!” she lies, glancing away, feeling her face heating up again.
He places one of the earbuds, now unravelled and plugged to his phone, in her ear before sliding the other into his. “Well, I prefer this, anyway,” he says over her favourite song that’s starting to play.
The bus takes them through the scenery that’s already engraved in her memory. When she turns to look at Sungchan, he’s already looking at her. This, too , she thinks. Sungchan is already so ingrained in her and carved in every part of her. She used to wonder if it’s the same for him, but now she knows.
“Yeah,” she agrees, taking his hand that he’s held out for her while smiling, “I prefer this too.”