HEART2HEART

chapter 4: something in the rain

Boom!

Jungkook really didn't understand.

Boom! Clap!

It wasn't his readings that he didn't understand - he understood those with ease. And in fact, he was able to let his thoughts flow freely and brainstorm many new ideas.

Boom! Boom!

But what Jungkook didn't understand was why Jieun seemed so resistant to his ideas today. In the past week, she had been so encouraging towards him, with regards to all his suggestions. But her responses towards him today were short, uncertain, distracted. Jungkook didn't understand what had gone wrong. To him, the idea he had proposed to her today was one of the best things he had thought of in a while.

Clap!

It was truly frustrating, and the noisy thunder outside that threatened to yet also refused to rain just made things 100 times more frustrating for Jungkook. He highlighted and circled the case proposal frustratedly, wondering what went wrong with his ideas. The current methods were good, but Jungkook just knew that there was some way it could be better. He definitely could make a significant contribution to the company over the next few weeks, with how much ideas he had in his head. But then why did she react in such a way to his ideas then?

"Jungkook-ssi...?"

Was it that she was sure his ideas were bound not to work? Was it that his ideas were too abstract or too wild? Or was the problem that they weren't practical enough? Perhaps, were his ideas too out-of-the-box? But wasn't thinking out-of-the-box always welcome and even encouraged in research and development?

"Jungkook-ssi-"

Jungkook kept circling and highlighting, his eyes slowly losing its focus. Currently, their algorithm built a relationship model trained on successful relationships... but what even made a relationship successful? The metric they used was how long a relationship lasted, but could that truly be a determining factor of how good the relationship was? Maybe a relationship could be short but a beautiful memory while it lasted. There were so many factors to what makes a relationship successful. So when he brought that up to Jieun, why did she make it seem like he had said something utterly ridiculous?

"Jungkook-ssi!"

Jungkook finally snapped out of it and looked up, only to find himself staring up at the very person his thoughts were centred around. He jerked up from his chair at once.

"Sunbae-nim-" Jungkook was clearly startled. "I'm so sorry about that, I was so lost in my own thoughts I didn't even realise-"

"It's alright, I understand!" Jieun chuckled as she clutched on to her bag, being the always kind and cordial person she always was. "No worries about that, Jungkook-ssi. The first day we met, the very same thing happened to me too, remember?"

Of course, Jungkook remembered.

"Mm..." Jungkook stared blankly at Jieun, who stared back at him. "So... is there anything you need, sunbae-nim?"

"Well-" Jieun scratched the back of her neck, hesitating a little. "I just wanted to say... I think I owe you an apology."

"Huh?" The words came out of Jungkook's mouth before he knew it. "An apology?"

"Yeah-" Jieun sighed. "Earlier on when you came to my table to tell me about your new ideas, I think I was pretty out of it. I didn't react to your ideas the way I would ideally react... so I'm really, really sorry about that."

🎵 You and me - Taeyeon 🎵

"Oh, this is..." Jungkook leaned against his table, a surprised look on his face. "This is... really unexpected, sunbae-nim."