tiny mushrooms

lemons, oranges, limes.

[ SIX. ]

today i learned that jisung hated lemons by taking out a bottle of lemonade during class.

i remember that look of slight disgust on his face.

"is that lemonade?" he questioned and started at the bottle.

"yeah, is it illegal?" i half-joked.

"no, of course not! it's your choice to drink it, but i just hate lemons with a passion!" he answered, flustered by my response.

"how could you hate lemons?" i partially yelled in the middle of class.

ms. chou was not there that day to teach us any boring biology, so it was basically a free period. the class was already pretty loud on its own, so my screaming about lemons wasn't a big deal.

"i ate them by themselves once and i was puking for days," he laughed, "i don't trust those yellow little parasites with my life."

"but like...you don't trust artificial lemon flavoring either?"

"no, because you have to actually taste a lemon to understand how to make an artificial lemon flavoring—it's basically the same shit."

"i don't quite get that logic but you do you," i chuckled.

we both began laughing about the conversation, but i began to quiet down as soon as i heard his.

he's never actually laughed with noise before; usually he only smiled or made one noise, but never a full on laugh.

so when i heard him, i was quite shocked at how cute it was.

why didn't people make him laugh more often? they're missing out on something so beautiful.

"i mean, i'm not judging," i said when we were done laughing, "i personally hate oranges but i don't hate on orange lovers."

"i love oranges," jisung said with a shocked face, "it must be miserable not to eat such an iconic fruit!"

"orange juice tastes terrible for breakfast," i rebutted, "you must not have taste buds or something."

"i have taste buds," jisung nodded, "you just don't have good taste."

"maybe i don't have taste, but i do have a really important question, jisung."

his face turned serious, and i almost bursted out into laughter because of how quick he changed his mood.

"....do you like limes?" i asked, breaking the silence.

we further broke the silence by snickering at the false sense of seriousness—like any one of us would use our braincells for something that needed them.

"only a fool would hate limes..."

"we have an intellectual."