Chapter Text
Soobin rubbed his hands on his jeans, trying to wipe off the sweat in them. Yeonjun was sitting next to him, way too close, and the only thing between them was Yeonjun's destroyed umbrella, which really didn't help Soobin's nervousness.
“So...” Yeonjun said, breaking the silence. “You were trying to make a copy of my umbrella...?”
Soobin groaned. "Please end me."
“Why didn’t you just tell me what happened?”
“Okay, I had a reason for it, alright?” Soobin replied, staring at the floor, not really with the courage to face Yeonjun at that moment. Or at any moment, but anyways. "I felt bad for letting my cat destroy it so I looked it up on the internet, but then I found out it was 200 euros and I’m broke so there was no way I could afford that."
“My umbrella? 200 euros?” Yeonjun looked as shocked as Soobin was when finding out that information. "I paid, like, two dollars for this."
Soobin looked at him, shocked. "What?"
"Yeah, I bought it from a cheap store near my house. Why would I waste 200 euros on an umbrella?"
Soobin was trying to make sense of what Yeonjun was saying. He had paid 2 dollars for the umbrella. Not 200 euros. But the brand… "but it's from an expensive brand."
Yeonjun seemed as confused as Soobin felt. “Wait, umbrellas have brands?”
So, updating the situation: Soobin had been stressing over a destroyed 200-euros umbrella that, turns out, was actually a 2-dollar umbrella. All of his screaming and chaotic planning had zero results and zero meaning, as well. On top of that, he was there, at the shop’s front, sitting with Yeonjun closer than Soobin had ever expected and prepared himself to be, and he had to pretend as if that was a natural, every-day situation.
Soobin only made bad choices. Which was why he was currently sitting at the ice cream shop, hands sweating, waiting for Yeonjun to arrive. ‘How the hell did that happen?’, you may be asking yourself. The truth was that Yeonjun kept telling Soobin that some ice cream would really heal the hurting from losing his precious 2-dollar umbrella. And Soobin, who apparently had no sense of self-preservation, had agreed. And now here he was. Regretting everything.
The little bells on the shop's door rang and Soobin immediately looked up, only to see Yeonjun walking in. Fuck. He looked hot. He had to act normal - as normal as he could, at least. Everything would be fine, right? Only two classmates sharing some refreshment in a hot afternoon. Completely normal, nothing to overthink about.
"Hey, Soobin."
"Hey!"
Of course his voice broke. Yeonjun laughed and Soobin looked for an alien spaceship in the sky that could maybe abduct him.
“Sorry, I’m late. Have you been waiting for too long?”
“No!” Soobin nervously laughed. “I just got here also.”
A blatant lie, he had been waiting for about twenty minutes already. But Yeonjun didn't need to know that. Yeonjun smiled at him and sat down.
"You weren't in class yesterday."
“Oh… yeah, I had this huge project to finish for my Korean Literature class today. And it was only half done so… I had to stay home.”
If he was being honest, Soobin was flustered by the fact that Yeonjun had noticed he wasn't in class the day before. Which actually was really stupid, because since the unbrella incident they had been sitting next to each other in class, so of course he had noticed. Soobin was just dumb and in love.
“And did you finish it?”
Soobin thought that he would never ever get used to having some type of friendship with Yeonjun. The Choi Yeonjun. How did he go from creepily staring at Yeonjun in class to wanting to sell all of his house to buy a new umbrella for the boy to eating ice cream one afternoon with his crush?
"Yeah." They both went silent. Jesus, Soobin was so painfully awkward. "Did you finish yours?"
Yeonjun frowned, but he seemed amused.
"My what?"
Soobin noticed his question made no sense whatsoever.
"I mean, did I… yesterday… important… miss anything in class…. Yesterday?" Was it acceptable to run away now? The aliens seemed to be late for the abduction, so.
Yeonjun seemed a bit scared. Also on the verge of laughing his ass off.
"Wait a second, Yoda, you might want to rephrase that. But to answer your eloquent question, yes, you did."
"Oh, that's goo… wait, I did?"
“Yeah. You missed the opportunity to see my beautiful face.” Soobin choked on the milkshake he had ordered. Yeonjun actually laughed his ass off this time around, as Soobin tried to breath and keep any milkshake from coming out of his nose. Soobin hoped Yeonjun was not expecting any answer from him, he was too emotionally unstable to think about a reasonable one at the moment. "But actually you did miss something. Prof gave us a project, told us to do it in pairs."
"Hum," was Soobin's reply, because that was safe and there was less of a chance of him making a fool of himself if he wasn't even saying an actual word.
"And I was wondering if you wanted to pair up with me."
And there he went again, choking on his milkshake. Why was he still drinking it? Better yet, why was he even there still? Soobin felt an urgent need to scream his lungs out. If he said yes he would be stuck with Yeonjun for more time, weekly, working on some project, which meant that he would have to work harder on his psychological abilities to bear being around Yeonjun without dying. If he said no… yeah, that wasn't an option. Imagine finishing this already disastrous non-date after rejecting Yeonjun's offer.
"I, yeah, sure. That sounds great." It didn't. "What is the project about?"
Yeonjun smiled and started telling him about the themes they could choose from. Soobin totally didn't tune him out to stare out of the window already panicking about the situation he had gotten himself into.
Once they were done with their food, Yeonjun had to leave. Something about helping his friend with a pet tarantula. Soobin preferred not to know.
"Can I have your number, then?" asked Yeonjun, and Soobin might have screamed a little bit inside his head. "So we can talk about the project and stuff."
Sure, the project, of course. They needed to talk... Via text... About the project and stuff. Everything was great and under control.
"Yeah," squeaked Soobin, then cleared his throat. "Yeah."
Yeonjun laughed and Soobin thought it was really unfair how attractive that stupid boy was. They exchanged phone numbers and Soobin totally didn't save Yeonjun's number under 'the loml'. And then they were on their way. Did Soobin take twice the time he usually did to get home? Yes, he did. Was it Yeonjun's fault for making him feel like his legs were jelly? Absolutely.
Soobin was emotionally drained when he got home. Which was why the first thing he did was let himself fall face first on the couch and just lie there, unmoving. He didn't even know for how long he stayed like that, until Taehyun's voice brought him out of his thoughts.
"Are you alive?"
"No."
“Don’t tell me Puma ripped another 200-euro umbrella from your ex-future boyfriend.” Soobin was grateful that the trauma was real and extended to his housemate. Not that grateful that his dear housemate kept on mentioning that messy and horrible situation.
Soobin glared.
"No."
"Can you say something else?"
"No."
Taehyun huffed, seemingly giving up on Soobin. Good. Soobin got up from the couch and dragged himself to his room, letting himself fall on his bed. He screamed again, just to keep the habit.
Soobin looked at the ceiling and started thinking about his afternoon. He skipped over the 3442 times he'd embarrassed himself by choking on his milkshake and went straight to the fact that he had agreed to do a project with Yeonjun. How in the world would Soobin be able to deal with that situation? Not only was his first contact with his crush a total chaos, but now they were suddenly partners, which meant that Soobin would need to talk much more with Yeonjun. And considering that every small talk with that boy was so emotionally draining for his poor mind, it was set for destruction.
Soobin tried to breathe slowly, thinking about huge green fields and cute cats. He needed an action plan to get through this storm with few stitches.