A Thousand Purple Stars (JinJi)

Kim Jisoo

He's definitely had a haircut.

Jisoo leaned against her arm languidly and sighed. Her eyes narrowed at the young man at the front of the room, scrutinizing his forehead. Jaebum looked slightly different today. She had noticed it the minute she walked into the classroom because she was a self-proclaimed expert on all matters pertaining to Jaebum's appearance. If anyone asked her how she could so accurately pinpoint the reason why her Business and New Media TA looked different, she'd probably just scoff and say that any of the other students who saw Jaebum in the classroom twice a week would have noticed, too. And she'd deny that her scrutiny had anything to do with the fact that Jaebum was drop dead gorgeous. Especially now that you could see his forehead.

"So, in this chapter we learned about social media as promotional tools for businesses," Jaebum said, reading off a paper with the professor's notes on it. "And we looked at Instagram and Snapchat 'story' features as case studies. Someone wanna give us the gist of the author's argument? What about you, Jisoo?"

The whole class looked over its shoulder at Jisoo, who was still leaning against her arm with a dreamy, far-off look in her face. She didn't seem to notice when Jaebum's face gave her an expectant look, even though she'd been staring at him. When he talked, she just kept staring at his luscious mouth.

"Jisoo?" Jaebum said again. "The author's central argument?"

"Pay attention!" shouted a boy, and Jisoo's focus was finally shook. She blinked and cleared her throat as she stepped out of her daydream and back into the dreary real world of Business and New Media.

"Huh?" Jisoo said. She hated the way her voice dipped even deeper when she was confused. She sounded like Scooby Doo. All her classmates were staring at her, and when she looked back at Jaebum, his gorgeous face was still waiting for an answer.

"Oh, sorry!" She looked down at her desk and found the magazine she'd been reading still open to her page. She snatched it away and replaced it with her eReader, hoping that no one had noticed her slacking off. Jisoo bent over and feverishly began flipping through the pages of the textbook on her eReader.

What was he saying before? What did he ask? Her skin started to feel hot and damp beneath the collar of her pressed white button-up. She could feel her classmates rolling their eyes at her.

Crap. She hadn't been paying attention at all to what Jaebum was talking about. Her forehead creased with anxiety, and she looked up slowly.

"Umm," she said, laughing sheepishly. "Can you repeat the question?"

The whole room groaned with irritation. Even Jaebum clicked his tongue with disappointment as he had to look back down at the lesson outline. Jisoo flushed with embarrassment. In the end, another student raised her hand and shouted out the answer before Jaebum had a chance to repeat his question or Jisoo had a chance to redeem herself. Their TA cleared his throat and just continued with the discussion.

Jisoo slumped back in her chair and let out a slow breath. Then she leaned forward and massaged her temples, staring up at the clock every so often. For the next half hour, she tried her best to follow along with her classmates' discussion on her eReader, but her brain started throb, sore from the effort of trying to feign interest in anything related to business at all. Giving up, she moved her eReader aside and looked back down at the magazine she'd been reading.

Jisoo had been subscribed to Embrace Magazine since she was thirteen, and she read the literary publication's romance-focused short stories and serialized novels religiously. Almost each and every one brought tears or at least a slight stinging sensation to her eyes and a heavy feeling to her heart. Stories about proud, plucky heroines falling for dark, mysterious men after going on grand adventures. Sometimes, the stories were about shy ingenues who find themselves falling for equally misunderstood outcasts. Sometimes they were about steamy romances developing between two people whose love was forbidden. No matter what the story was about, each one was always told with rich, beautiful, elevated prose that reminded Jisoo why she had to be a part of the work this magazine was doing.