High Tide | 김태형

01

Anticipation
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If there was one word you'd use to describe highschool, what would it be? If you can't think of a particular one that fits best, then perhaps you should go to the first word that came to your mind.

Personally, I didn't have to think. My adjective was 'boring'.
If I had to assign a class to that word, then I couldn't tell you; I'd have to paint them all as tedious.

But Monday was different. That particular Monday changed everything I thought I knew about Blackhall high, the day our small class of twenty-four became twenty-five.

"Everyone, please welcome our new student to the class, Jeon Jungkook."

He was shy, that was my first impression of him. I knew he'd fit in though; he just had one of those faces. I glanced to look as my classmates had already began to admire his features. He had a slim face, dark black hair and small lips. His eyes met none of ours, not once, as he bowed slightly and took the seat by the front of the class, only a few metres away from my own.

I watched him intently most of the lesson. First History, he sat straight, head up and following the line of chalk on the board as if it was fascinating, then through to human biology, where he worked through a textbook with pursed lips.

I eyed his pocket as he worked, noticing how his fingers twiddled with the earbud hanging out of it gingerly. He did this for a while, and it wasn't until he took his first glance around the classroom and our eyes briefly met that I realised he was contemplating a question.

So I asked for him.

"Mr Riley?" I called, and he looked towards me in curiosity, unused to my voice being the one to break the silence. "Can we listen to music?" I asked, noticing no one else wearing headphones. He simply nodded, head turning back to the papers on his desk.

But of course, I didn't have earphones on me that day. I gained a few strange glances, but I didn't care: I didn't even notice them.

I was encapsulated by the way his head bobbed along to his silent music, wondering what he was listening to. A giddy smile captured my lips when I realised the good deed I done, wondering wether he noticed or not.

But he did, as he looked to me many times that lesson, and by the start of break, we shared a smile.

That's the story of how I became best friends with Jeon Jungkook - along with many adventures in many different places, the school transforming from a tall grey concrete block of mundane activity to the place with the huge common-room at the end of the stairwell no one else knew about, the place where our mischievous duo turned to three, and then four, and eventually, seven.

School introduced me to the escapes only a youth could find. I got time away from home, from my pesky little brother and my two strict parents.

Over the months prior to meeting Jungkook, I found my adjective changed. Instead of boring, it gradually became more positive, something mixed with excitement and happiness. I think, after those months, I'd describe my school experience as gratifying, relieving; something along those lines.

But as summer was soon approaching, the school year rolling toward an end, a new face popped up into my life out of nowhere.

It was a summer I don't think I'd ever forget.

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