off limits ✧ zb1 applyfic

✧ seventy four

If there was one lesson Jiyeon had learned in all of her life, it was that one should learn from their mistakes. Her mother, ever the romantic free-spirit, liked to tell her that it was important to experience life for herself and make her own opinions from what she would go through. That failure wasn’t death, but more of a rebirth, as long as you didn’t shy away from it and used it as a lesson. If you know what you did wrong, she would say, you won’t do it again the next time.

A lot later, Jiyeon realized that there were mistakes worth repeating. Some with heavier consequences than others. By now, she should have realized inviting Jiwoong into her room for a study date was a bad idea. The last time they'd done that, she'd been distracted the entire time, unable to think about anything other than his beautiful face. Today again, she'd invited him over. The thing was, she had self-imposed deadlines to respect when it came to her novel, but the idea of spending so much time away from Jiwoong was far too demoralizing. The two of them had spent so long apart, there was so much lost time to catch up on. This felt a bit like half-assing both of those things instead of focusing on one at a time, but... Well, this still felt like her best option.

At least, today, Jiwoong had shown up in a good mood. She'd seen it right when she'd opened the door, his smile softer than usual. Most of the time, Jiwoong was quite hard to read. This beautiful marble statue-like face of his often made him feel a little unapproachable. When it came to expressing his feelings, he was much more a man of action. This time though, there was no mistaking the serene joy on his face. Something good had happened to him.

As she watched him plop himself down on her bed, Jiyeon blew air out of her nose. "What's got you all smiley?"

"Well, it's all thanks to you," he responded instantly. "Vicky seems to be better, and whatever was bugging her seems to have been resolved. She's going back to school soon!"

"Oh, I'm glad to hear it! I knew things would get better."

She had been thinking a lot about Vicky and her predicament, and ways she could help her. Every time, she reached the same conclusion: only Ricky could do something about it. It seemed that Vicky had followed her advice, and it had, indeed, worked. Jiyeon was torn between feeling happy for the girl, and proud of herself for the wise advice she'd managed to give. It seemed she'd matured a lot after all!

"Thank you so much for intervening," Jiwoong added, his voice tender. "You really helped her. I can't thank you enough, Jiyeon."

A nervous chuckle escaped her lips. "Please, no need for that... Vicky's a sweet girl, I knew she would be alright. I didn't do that much."

"But you did. And I'll forever be indebted to you."

His voice was so low, so quiet, so gentle, it felt like a tickle upon her ears. A bit flustered by the sincerity in his words, she spun around in her chair to turn his back on him. She didn’t want him to see just how red her cheeks were getting. If Jiwoong was forever indebted to her, well, she had a few ideas of how he could work on slowly repaying that debt to her. Not that she'd ever say them out loud. That would surely derail the study session, which was exactly what she'd been intending to avoid.

Taking advantage of the lull in her conversation, Jiyeon turned her full attention to her laptop. She was nowhere near done with her first draft, but was very much hoping to get it finished before the end of summer break. Then would come the hardest part: revisions. Right now, she was having fun coming up with stuff on the spot, finding fun metaphors to describe her character's emotions, imagining in her head every detail of the locations they were in. Having to analyze every single sentence and paragraph and chapter to ensure it wouldn’t be complete trash afterwards would be a little less enjoyable.