I Can't, I Shouldn't | Johnil

...12

Johnny had started liking Taeil ever since he transferred into Sun and Moon University on his first year master's level in Psychology. He didn't like him at first glance just like that, it took a short time for him to develop that kind of feelings towards the elder but nevertheless he ended up liking him. He always told himself, even after over two years of his feelings being unknowingly unrequited by the lecturer, that he just liked him like a harmless crush on a lecturer but when Taeil moved next door to him he finally accepted that it was more that just a 'crush'.

Even though Taeil doesn't remember, Johnny remembered the first time he had to interact with the older male and it left a long last impression on him and helped him become the confident person he was today.

It was a customary thing for Taeil to have a workshop with new incoming students that choose Psychology as there major, and Johnny was one of those students seeing that he transferred there by his parents due to not fitting in the college he had attended before. 

Johnny was a very smart, shy, soft spoken and intelligent individual which was the cause of him not fitting in; anywhere. Being an intellect certainly had its advantages but most definitely had it's disadvantages that showed more vividly. Right through his teens and early young adulthood, Johnny had hated the fact that he was smart, but he didn't tell his loved ones.

Ever since he had found out that he was gifted in that area it had been a concealed hell. The fact that he didn't realized that he was being used or manipulated by the persons he classified as close 'friends' was a result of that. Johnny was a very helpful human being, so anyone that asked him for help he'd assist them even if he was busy with his own work because he knew that not everyone was like him and grasped things easily, so he made that sacrifice of some sort.

Being brilliant meant that he had to skip a couple grades up and that's when his unbeknown torture began. He was shy and younger than everyone in his class, that was strike one because almost everyone took advantage of that. Some would taunt him and make fun of him but he didn't let it bother him because he thought that he was thick skinned and wouldn't have an effect on him; he was wrong.

They would ask him to 'help' them with  tasks like getting lunch for them or assist them with classwork they didn't understand which would ultimately ended up with him doing all of it and he was happy to do it because he wanted to help. But they didn't stop there and took it a step further and became his 'friends'.

At the time it was purely harmless to Johnny's cognitive brain but when he found out by accident in his last year of obtaining his bachelor's degree in psychology that who he considered to be good friends that truly sought his well being and cared for him were no more than liars. It was nothing but a poncey game to get good grades by using his feelings and generosity.

Not only was he used but he didn't actually have true friends that loved him like he did with them. The worst part was when he confronted them and they tried to lie to him saying that wasn't what they meant and realized that they could no longer cover up their deception and revealed the full truth to him and discontinued being his friends right after because he was of no more use to them; even the boy he liked intimately. The boy that took his first kiss.

He didn't think it would affect him but it did, common psychological logic that he didn't think would apply to him but after years of pushing it aside and telling himself that it didn't bother him, that he wasn't sensitive came crumbling down in his last lecture for the day after a week from the encounter with his 'ex' friends. The person he liked more than a friend thought it would be funny to make a mockery of him by teasing him and his body had had enough.

He covered his ears with hand, face distraught and eyes sealed shut, blocking out the inaudible laughter, voice gradually raising in pitch as he screams in repetition, "Leave me alone! Just leave me alone! Stop!" Silencing the whole classroom. Panicking because of the outburst, the lecturer had to calm his palpitating student down, refraining from touching him because he would jerk away if he reached out.