Jihyun is stuck in a love scandal with someone whom she hates. This person is coincidentally the stubborn Riki on her debate team and her favorite mainstream artist at the same time. And Jihyun is just a college girl who gets wrapped into a dating s...
The following day, Jihyun is convinced by Rohee to head to the library so that she could work on the assignment with Riki, that is if he was there in the first place, but unfortunately, he was. She narrowed her eyes upon seeing him and stepped closer to his table slowly. "So you're here."
"And you are too," Riki remarks, glancing up at her from his phone.
"I was forced to," she replies.
"Oh yeah? By who?"
Jihyun pulls the chair back to take a seat at the table, placing the packet on the surface and scooting forward. It was a lot more comfortable when feeling just a bit trapped between the chair and the table, she hated it when there was extra space because she never knew if her posture was proper or not. "Rohee—a friend of mine."
"What a coincidence." Riki clicks his pen. It doesn't help that the library is silent, because now their rigid conversation adds tension into the atmosphere. "She told me too."
"She's the one you approached, right? The one you made tell me to meet you at the park?" She asked him. The answer was obvious but she wanted confirmation that Rohee and him were connected in some way in this long string of connections. He nodded yes.
Everything seemed to be connected. Her, Shiru, and Riki—Rohee onto that—and then Taeyu and Gyuha. Everything was connected, but that's what makes a story interesting, right?
"Let's just try to get some more stuff down. The faster we get through this, the better," she says, pulling her mechanical pencil from her jacket pocket. As long as they get through this soon, then they'll no longer have to worry about working together on this. In a way, she's pretty surprised that no photo or video of them together from yesterday had been published yet, but not to jinx herself.
"We should choose theme statements first," Riki suggests, flipping through the packet to get to the last page.
"No. We should work on points first," she says, placing her hand overtop the pages to keep him from flipping them further. He immediately scoffs, thus showing his frustration, and her face scrunches. He's so quick to catch an attitude.
"We could use the theme statement to choose our points specifically—and meticulously—so everything could come together smoothly," he explains, using the end of his pen to lift her fingers from the paper.
She plucks the pen from his finger and points it at him, her eyes narrowed and the look in them angry. "But if we choose our points first, then we can make a smoother transition to our theme statement."
He takes his pen back. "Yeah, and what if you make a theme statement that doesn't relate to our points even if you make the points first?"
"What if you make a theme statement that doesn't correlate to our points?" Jihyun fires back.
"So? We're not going to remember and restate everything we write down at the competition word for word," Riki drones, slipping the packet from under her hand to resume flipping to the back.
"Then you just contradicted yourself!" She slightly raises her voice.
"Stop raising your voice. We're in a library for fuck's sake."
Did he just curse, and more importantly, towards her? Her eyebrows scrunched together, and a burning feeling boiled her alive. Riki was a package deal, surely, and she just had to bear with it until they finished.
"Then why are we doing this if we aren't going to use it?"
"Who says we're not going to use it? I never said that, Jihyun." There goes that tone again. He says her name the same way he said Gyuha's, like it was distasteful, but thinking that her level was as low as Gyuha's was disgusting. They weren't the same. She wasn't going to tolerate that, especially not from Riki.
Jihyun stands up abruptly. It's so frustrating that she could cry. She wished that she had never gone to that stupid concert and that she never discovered his music. They say to never meet your heroes, and she truly should have heeded that instead of treating it like it would never occur.
"I'm going to Taeyu. I don't care how long it will take to convince him, but I'm not working with you."
Riki hums, nonchalant. "Be my guest."
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"I have told you already. No, I'm not changing the team, Jihyun. In fact, I've already alerted the principal about this, as well as the head of the other team you'll be debating against. I advise that you try your best to work together because right now it is set in stone."
That's what ricocheted off of the boundaries of her mind, coming back to her like a piercing bullet. It was no use trying to change his mind anymore. She sighed loudly and her lungs felt restricted every time she tried to get a deeper breath. What type of joke was her life playing on her? Whatever it was, it wasn't funny, not at all.
Jihyun arrived back at the library, pushing open the doors and locating Riki's table again. As much as she dreaded sitting back down, fruitless, it was what she had to do and she did it.
"So how did it go?" He asked, mocking her, tormenting her.
"He told the principal and the head of the other team that will be the duo competing. There's nothing that we can do to back out of it now. So let's get this finished." She idly clicked her mechanical pencil, pushing the lead out and then slipping it back in. "If there's really nothing we can do. Then we should just make ourselves the best representatives of the university. Then we can continue going our separate ways when this is all over."
"When it's all over," he says, no rising intonation to indicate a question but Jihyun clarifies anyway.
"Yeah. This, the competition, and the scandal. Is that okay with you?" She applies sarcasm.
"Yeah," he scoffs. "More than okay."
"It will die out soon anyway, as long as we don't get anymore—"
"Attention students, professors, and staff. It is made final by the head of the debate club, Jeong Taeyu, that both Bae Jihyun and Nishimura Riki will be representing our university at SDC this upcoming May. Feel free to send support for our two representatives this year and good luck to the both of them for this competition."
Jihyun brings her palm to her face, sighing in defeat. At least one of them is unbothered. "Attention," she finishes.
