❝ figure me out ❞ park sunghoon

-9-

sometimes julie thinks maybe her ears will blast at this rate. she listens to music every single second of the day. she stares at the ceiling for hours not thinking of anything. and mostly her mood is bad. she feels a little like she wants to kill herself. but she never does, so there's that.

as if listening to music in her bed was not enough, she was listening to music in school that day too. she was sitting in the library, an alice oseman book open in her table but not really reading from it. she was staring at the ceiling. she applied perfume today, after maybe a few months. it smelled good, she thought. "bags" by clairo started playing when she saw sunghoon enter the library through the front door. you might be thinking most of the events in her lives revolve around sunghoon, even though he never notices her. it's kind of true. her life does revolve around him, but in a very dissociated kind of way. she doesn't really know what happens in his life but one look of him, the outfit he's wearing, how good of a grade he got in the test, the topic of his creative writing essay, these things really matter to julie. she sometimes feels sick because she cares so much, it's not a very good feeling, really. but in a very very uncomfortable sort of way, she still notices everything about him. she feels like a creep sometimes.

sunghoon was wearing green today, an unbuttoned green shirt over a white-ish(??) t-shirt. his hair was styled, maybe. but julie thought his hair almost always looked good. he sat in a desk behind her and pulled out his laptop and started typing. julie was not looking at him but the typing noise was making her sick. so she restarted her music.

after maybe an hour? two hours? she felt like sunghoon was calling her from behind. she turned to see sunghoon faintly, very very faintly smiling at her.

"hey!" he said.
julie thought for a moment. sunghoon was acting... strange. he was suddenly trying to talk to her. that day at the school ground, in his house and then asking her to come to the skating competition. but he ignored her afterwards. so she was not sure what he meant. then again, maybe she was reading too much into this.

sunghoon saw julie staring at him, fazed for about two minutes. without getting a reply he started again, "i-i was thinking.." he trailed off. she was still staring. "I was talking to your mom a few days ago."

"my mom?" she suddenly said.

"yeah." he run his fingers through his hair. "she's been telling me that your grades are bad and you're... uhm... failing."

she was chewing chips before he came and now she put another chip in her mouth. munching on it, she put down her headphones. "why would she ever tell that to you?" julie's mom is very concerned about her, or as she shows. she thinks of julie as a disappointment. come to think of it, she really is a disappointment. well, compared to her elder sister at least. she lives in the capital and has a published poetry book. she's what you would call a perfect daughter. anyways julie was chewing on another chip when sunghoon spoke again.

"so I'll just get to the point. is that okay with you?" he said.

"okay" she stopped chewing.

"your mom suggested that I tutor you."

julie felt... nothing. it was very weird for her mom to actually suggest something like that and as much as she doubted it she didn't question sunghoon. on the other hand, being tutored by sunghoon was also not something she ever thought of in her wildest dreams. she realized she didn't wanna be tutored. at least not by him. because she was very afraid of him finding out exactly how bad she was in maths and physics. well chemistry too. julie knew he would hate her even more. and he didn't wanna do it in the first place, her mom suggested it. so she said, "no."

"I didn't ask you yet."

"oh." that was dumb. she shouldn't have assumed that sunghoon would want to tutor her.

"but I was going to." he said.

she sighed.

"why did you say no?"
"I don't wanna be tutored." she said.
"why not?"
she stared at him again. he looked nervous. she has never seen him nervous. he was always very confident. she wondered what happened.
"you can not physically tutor me sunghoon. I am just that bad."
"come on. you can't be that bad."
"I really am that bad."
"really?"
"you have no idea."
"still I wanna try out."
"I don't want you to try out."
"julie please." julie really loved how her name sounded in his voice. but she ignored it.
"you would be wasting your own time. finals are a few months away."
"my preparation is good. i really can tutor you." oh to be sunghoon. his preparation was always good. how does he even do that?
"are you being for real?"
"yes"
she thinned her lips and looked around the room.
"okay." she said, without really thinking of anything. she couldn't say no to him even when she wanted to.

he smiled... for some reason.

this chapter was a mess LMAO