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1.
“A glooming peace this morning with it brings. The sun, for sorrow, will not show his head. Go hence, to have more talk of these sad things. Some shall be pardoned, and some punished. For never was a story of more woe than this of Juliet and her Romeo.” your voice resonates in the quiet classroom, your words followed by more silence as you drop to your seat and close the book, placing it onto your table. The reality sinks in as the entirety of your English literature class doesn’t dare to say a word, the moment you finish reading the oh so famous Shakespearen drama making everyone lose themselves in their thoughts.
Your professor looks you in the eye, smiling a little. “So? What did you think about it?” she asks, moving her glasses further up her nose with her pointer finger, gazing onto the few people that actually chose this class as their subject of choice just to get more credit. You liked reading, to be honest. Everything about this class seemed inviting– there were only a few people there and those that did actually care about the literature itself enough were thoughtful enough to hold a proper conversation with. You actually made friends with a lot of your classmates, your brains working at the same frequency as your shared ex gifted child burnout syndrome draped over your brains way too often after arriving to high school, making you connect on another level as you tried to soothe each other’s nerves and be there for each other. It was no secret that only the biggest of nerds went to the English literature classes, but you were okay with that idea.
You snort out a laugh, raising up your eyebrows in amusement. Your classes were always open for discussions, so you didn’t even have to raise your hand to speak– one of the perks of being the professor’s favorite. You open your mouth to begin talking, when a voice cuts you off, beginning the discussion instead.
“Well, I think it was pretty,” mumbles a boy from the corner of the room, the only one you didn’t even particularly like in this whole class, making you roll your eyes. It was hard, being in the class of your favorite professor when you had to fight over being her favorite student with Kim Seungmin himself– the devoted dandy boy, the member of the book club, the student council president. You despised everything about him only from one sole reason– he was the top of the class. That was enough for you to hate him.
You’re asking why? Well, you were supposed to be the top of the class, of course. And you were, for the main part. You didn’t share any other classes with him, making it easy for you to ignore his existence, but it just so happened that your favorite class also had to be the one where you had to see his face so often.
He was your moral enemy.
“Care to tell us more, Seungmin?” professor Jung asks, motioning for your classmate to continue speaking, to tell her all of his thoughts. You knew Romeo and Juliet must have been her favorite play by the smile on her face, eager to hear all of your reviews and thought processes while reading the piece.
“Well, I think it was quite poetic. Tragic, even. I like the way Shakespeare portrayed the prejudice and ending of a long conflict just with the power of love.” he nods, licking his lips after his bold statement, making you laugh out loud this time.
All the eyes of your classmates turn to you, even your seatmate– ever so laid-back and chilled out Han Jisung furrows his brows at your sudden outburst. You were never the one to turn attention your way in classes, the sight of you not reddening under the gazes of the people in the room nowhere to be seen surprising even you.
“Is there something funny, Y/N?” asks the professor, calling you by your first name. You liked the way it sounded, cringing at every teacher that called you by your last name as if you were a legal adult with your life figured out. This seemed more friendly– it seemed kinder, even. You liked the way it made it feel like your professor actually cared about your opinion.
“I think there is, yes,” you nod, giggling to yourself again.
“And what is that?” she seems intrigued, taking a few steps to your desk, listening to what you have to say.
“Well, I think what he said is ridiculous.” you point out, a shock spreading on your professor’s features, making you continue. “The only thing tragic about this whole play is how Shakespere portrayed the fake image of love. I mean, Juliet was only 13, don’t you think it was a bit early to get married to a man? After a day, that is?” you explain, intriguing your classmates even more.
“It was the 16th century. It was normal to get married young back then,” mumbled your enemy, Kim Seungmin from his seat, locking his eyes with you through the classroom.
“Of course I know that,” you ironically smile at him, rolling your eyes in the process and looking back at your professor with a genuine smile this time, explaining more of your point of view, “I think it portrays girls as boy-crazy. Like love is everything they are made of and that they are worthless without a partner– and that’s why Juliet chose to kill herself. If anything, I think it portrays the stupidity of the youth the most.”
“So you think she was stupid just because she killed herself upon seeing her loved one dead?” Seungmin’s brows are raised now, looking at you as if he was mocking you.
“Well, Romeo did the same thing, so yes. I think it was stupid of them. They were reckless, the whole situation was. How could they know they were in love when this all happened in one day? Nobody can fall in love that quickly.” you mutter, shaking your head in disbelief.
“I think the play portrayed love at first sight beautifully,” grins Seungmin, the teasing smirk on his face bothering you so much you want to wipe it off his face. Is he really that ridiculous?
“There’s no such thing. And what were the families doing, after all? Arguing without even knowing why? For all we know, their ancestors may have hated themselves because they accidentally took their cow and they decided to kill each other for that?” you scoffed, your voice raising increasingly.
“Now that’s ridiculous.” rolls his eyes Seungmin, taking you over the edge, your voice raising with every spoken word.
“Your view of love is ridiculous. If I knew the boy I was eyeing was my family’s enemy, I wouldn’t bat an eye before dropping him, but no, she chose to marry the guy. Did she really have such twisted morals?” you scoff, a part of your class laughing at your outburst.
You hear a few quiet, amused ‘yeah’s and ‘she’s actually right’s from everywhere around you, only flooding your ego more as you recognise that your point of view is shared by more people and you aren’t actually crazy.
“I think love is more important than rivalry.” speaks Seungmin, cocking his head to a side, teasing you just by the look on his face, your eyes scanning his features as you hear a few other comments from your classmates around you. Some girls even go as far as cooing at his romantic statement, making you laugh and roll your eyes at them. Were they all this ridiculous?
“She was thirteen!” you argue, screaming. That is all that takes professor Jung to interfere your heated discussion, clapping her hands in authority, making everyone’s heads snap to her figure standing in front of the classroom with an amused look on her face.
“Looks like we have quite the discussion here,” she points out, seeing your angered face.
“Yeah, because Seungmin’s point of view is stupid!” you grunt, making her point a scolding look into your skull that almost makes you shrink in your seat in embarrassment.
“Y/N, no one’s point of view is stupid. Literature is all about the impertretation,” she states, earning a few nods and hums from your interested classmates, “now, who agrees with Y/N’s interpretation of the play?”
A few hands shoot out into the air, Jisung’s following as you angrily nudge him into his side, making you grin. No way your friend is going to support your moral enemy’s idea– he was your friend, after all. Something inside of you is telling you that this whole feud wasn’t only about the play anymore,. You were fighting with Kim Seungmin, and that was enough to keep you standing by your point.
“And who agrees with Seungmin’s interpretation?” she asks again, searching through the classroom. It seems like the amount of people that agree with your classmate is about the same as the amount of people that agree with you, making you annoyingly roll your eyes at the realisation that you once again didn’t manage to outpower your moral enemy.
“I see the classroom has split into two teams,” she grins, nodding her head, “well, I did think you were going to have different opinions on this, but I didn’t think it was going to get so heated over here.” she points out, switching her gaze from you to Seungmin and back, as if to scold you and support you with your antics all at once.
“Yeah, well, it’s not my fault Y/N can’t appreciate one of the most important pieces of English literature-”
“I’m all about supporting, if it was actually good and meaningful-”
“Stop it, you two!” she scolds you, making both of you shut up and finally provide some silence in the room. “Well, since you all look like you have different opinions on the topic, let’s try a fun experiment. I was going to make you all write an essay on the play by yourselves, just like we usually do, but I think this is going to be much more fun for all of us.” she states, smiling to herself like a happy child on Christmas. You wonder what’s racing through her head as she searches through the classroom, locking eyes with you, then continuing.
“I want you all to write an essay and do a presentation on Romeo and Juliet– you can write about anything, whether it is your ideas, what you took from the play, what is your view-point on it. But you have to write it with the person who has the exact opposite opinion on this play. So this way, we can get the story from two points of view. Let’s see what you agree on, what you don’t, make it a discussion, I don’t care, just make it make sense. Do you understand me?” she smiles and you swear you can already feel what is going on before she says it, making your head hurt and breath hitch in your throat.
“And since Seungmin and Y/N seem to have the most different opinions on this, I am picking them as a pair– no, there’s no way for the two of you to change.” she says before you can even open your mouth to argue back, leaving you to stand up from your seat just at the time when the bell rings.
“But miss Jung-”
“I want it done until the end of this month.” she smiles, taking her things and leaving the classroom, letting the thought sink in. You lunge yourself back to your seat, defeated and left to process the fact that you now had two weeks to work on a project with Kim Seungmin– your biggest enemy.
A sigh escapes your seatmate’s mouth upon the scene, running his hand through his hair in frustration. “That’s what you get for always picking fights with him.”
2.
That’s how you end up in a coffee shop two blocks away from your house. You didn’t exactly ask for Kim Seungmin’s number– you weren’t in the 2000s anymore– you swiftly added him on Facebook in order to get this over with so you wouldn’t have to meet with him anymore. Yes, you were mad at Mrs Jung for pairing you up with him, but you still adored her and wanted to do well, so that’s why you chose to do what you had to and arranged a meeting with him.
Kim Seungmin appears in the coffee shop in his usual cozy demeanour– oversized sweater and everything, with a backpack hanging off his shoulder and a serious look plastered on his face. He places his copy of Romeo and Juliet onto the table and sits his figure into the chair right in front of you, sighing heavily as he stares at you from under his eyelashes, voice low and defeated.
“Hi.” he greets, resting his back against the head of the chair, waiting for you to take initiative. You were the one who arranged this whole thing in the first place, so it was kind of your responsibility now in his books.
“Hello,” you cleared your throat. You felt like you were sitting there with the devil himself, just begging yourself in your head not to explode like a raging volcano with every movement he made that always somehow ended up irritating you. It was like his aura was everything you despised– his collected way of discussing and his calm way of thinking getting on your nerves with every sigh he sent your way.
“So… how do you wanna go around this?” he asks, raising his eyebrows at you in question.
You sigh back at him just to show him how annoyed you are by your professor’s choice of your partner, bringing your hands to rest them on the table and cracking your knuckles in nerves. You didn’t meet his eyes, you felt too intimidated to do so in the moment, before you spoke up and managed to get your point across.
“Well, since we have to gather both of our viewpoints in the essay, I think we could just start of by telling the other one what topics we want to talk about so the other one can debunk them.” you mumble, suddenly feeling nervous by the possibility of your idea being rejected. If you could disappear on the spot, believe me, you would.
Seungmin hums from his seat, nodding. “Seems reasonable.”
You try your hardest not to let out a relieved sigh, nodding back at him. “I brought some notes.”
You did some preparation for this. Well, a lot of preparation. There was no way Kim Seungmin could catch you unprepared at your study meeting. You wanted to prove to him that you were worth so much more than sharing your grade with him and if he had any snarky or teasing remark, you best believe you mastered up a response just as spiteful, if not more than what could possibly leave his lips in the moment. You weren’t here to embarrass yourself. You were here to look smart. Smarter than Kim Seungmin.
“Perfect.” he just mutters, taking the sheet of paper you were offering to him from your hand, placing it on the table in front of him and skimming his eyes through the lines of text you scribbled down yesterday evening.
The silence makes your palms sweat. It makes you nervously bite down on your lower lip. You felt embarrassing– you were never the conservative type. All this time, you used to hate your classmate from afar. You never actually spoke to each other, all you did to express your hatred for the boy was in the way you always rolled your eyes when he spoke up in class, or you sighed when Mrs Jung was complimenting him in front of everyone, making sure he heard you. You don’t know what broke in you that day– you were quite the shy type, to be honest. You didn’t like to be the centre of attention. What were you even thinking by all of this?
“I don’t think we should mention their age as an argument,” he says, finally meeting eyes with you.
“Why?” you ask, dumbfounded.
“Because as I already said, it was long ago. People used to marry young.” he shrugs, offering the sheet of paper back to you with a judging look on his face.
“Okay and? My point still stands. They were too young and reckless.”
“I also don’t think we should talk about the sex part.” he concludes, landing his hands into his lap.
“Why? Because it’s controversial?” you teasingly grin at him, waiting for his response.
“No. Because it clearly brings nothing to the table about our arguments. It doesn’t even really play a big role in the whole thing, so I think it’s useless to mention,” he shrugs, looking at your face. It felt like his eyes were studying you, judging you. It was hard to keep eye contact with him– so you didn’t. You averted your gaze out of the window, opting to watch the passer-bys instead.
You sigh, waiting for him to say something against your notes again. Of course you could expect this– there was no way Kim Seungmin would agree with anything you’re trying to say in the matter at all.
“And the point about Rosaline is a little over the line as well…”
“What do you want me to put in the essay if you’re just going to tell me it’s unreasonable and over the line, huh?” you voice out, pinning your eyes onto his shocked figure, “it’s supposed to be an essay on everything I didn’t like about it, so that’s what I’m going to put in it and your job is to comment on my arguments. Just like my job is to comment on what you loved about this piece of shit of a play, and that’s what I’m going to do, so fuck off.” you growled, standing up and taking your things with you, too frustrated and hot-headed to continue the discussion.
Only Kim Seungmin could make you this mad and you hated him for it even more.
3.
You hear your door open, revealing your mum standing in the doorway with a mug of hot tea and a soft smile playing with her features. You sigh, playing with your pen in your hand, waiting for her to say what she needs to say and leave so you could have some silence to finally work.
“Sweetie, you should really relax for a while. You’ve been studying for the whole day…” she mumbles, taking the tea to your desk and running a hand through your hair. You fight off the urge to pull away from her, knowing damn well it would hurt her feelings, so you just opt to nod at her face and faking a smile.
“Yeah, sure, mum.” you respond, but make no effort in getting up from your chair and moving to your bed. It was already late in the night and your mum was wearing her pyjamas, signaling that she was going to sleep. She always went to sleep early, because she needed to wake up in the early hours of the day to go to work, but you usually didn’t go to sleep earlier than midnight anyway– homework was taking you too much time sometimes.
“I mean it. You’re doing great job in school, sweetie, but you have to lay off for a while or else you’ll overwork yourself.” she says affectionately, making you grunt on the inside.
“Okay, okay, go to sleep now, good night mum…” you mumble, waiting for her to finally leave you alone.
“Are you telling me to go away?” she asks with a hint of laugh in her voice that you know for a fact is fake, because the expression on her face looks hurt. You hate to see that face, because it makes you feel guilty, but you really can’t help yourself sometimes.
“No.” you mutter, shaking your head.
She just stares at you for a while, biting down on her lower lip, before she hangs her head low and sighs out. She turns around, taking a few steps to your door, turning around only for a moment when she stands in the doorway and whispers a quiet ‘good night’ at you, closing the door behind her and disappearing into her bedroom.
You feel a sense of relief coming over you. Of course you weren’t going to sleep yet, but she didn’t have to know that. She didn’t have to know a lot of things.
The small, old copy of Romeo and Juliet falls into your eyes in the corner of your desk. You had to borrow your book from the library and you hated how some pages were torn and the ink was so old it was hard to read sometimes, but you couldn’t afford to buy yourself one, because you were saving up for college and every cent counts in your household.
You take it into your hands, reading over the passages you bookmarked when you were first reading the book, wanting to refresh your memory with the lines that stood up to you and made you snort at how ridiculous the book truly was again before typing them down into the document you had opened in front of you.
“Love is heavy and light, bright and dark, hot and cold, sick and healthy, asleep and awake- it’s everything except what it is!” it says. You run your fingers along the words, the curves of the ink cutting you like a knife. Love is all of these things– it’s terrifying and it’s unpredictable. It sounds scary in your ears and you’ve seen it right in front of your eyes- love is everything except what it is.
Love isn’t heavy and light, bright and dark, hot and cold. Love isn’t sick and healthy. Love is pain. It takes everything you have, it ties you down, it makes you do things you would never do if you weren’t in love. It intoxicates you and makes you make bad decisions. When you love, you’re irresponsible. You’re like a storm.
Your mum and your dad were in love. Or, your mum always told you they were.
So if your mum and your dad were in love, they were supposed to be together through the heavy and the light. Through the bright and through the dark. Through sick and healthy. They were supposed to be there for each other.
They were both really young when they fell in love. You understand– they were reckless and they were stupid.
But did your father really have to leave you?
Love is nothing from the above. Love is sick and love is just a play. It would be stupid to be hung up on that idea that Kim Seungmin so desperately wanted to believe in.
4.
“So, how far did you get with the essay?” asks Jisung on your lunch break, looking at you with expectation. You told him about your planned meeting with Seungmin, but you didn’t get around to telling him just how it went yet.
“Oh, that…” you mumble, letting out a dry chuckle, “well, he told me my ideas are stupid, so I’m just going to write it by myself and send it to him so he can add his points into it.” you shrugged, taking a bite from your sandwich, stuffing your cheeks with the food so you didn’t have to explain any further.
Jisung sighs in front of you, rolling his eyes like every time you gush about Seungmin and how he gets on your nerves. “Can you lay off that Anne and Gilbert attitude already?”
“Stop saying that, that’s disgusting,” you scrunch up your nose, shaking your head in disbelief.
“Well, it looks like you two are doing a whole 21st century remake right in front of our eyes, though,” chuckles Jisung, teasing you further, “with that whole top of the class students that hate each other and act like children just because they don’t agree on something. It’s only a matter of time before you fall in love.”
“Ew,” you fake a gag, rolling your eyes at him, “that is so not happening.”
“Yeah, sure, tell me about it at your wedding in a few years.” he mutters.
“I am not getting married in my whole life, marriage is wack,” you roll your eyes at him for the millionth time, the gesture so familiar to you over the past few days. Everything seems to annoy you recently. Maybe you were just going through a bad patch, who knows?
“Oh would you look at that, Y/N’s acting like a Grinch again,” giggles Jisung, ruffling your hair in the process just to annoy you even more, making you pull away abruptly from his touch.
“That doesn’t even make any sense! Grinch hates Christmas, not fake images of love.” you argue back, finishing your sandwich and rolling the plastic that was covering it into a little ball, throwing it into his face to shut him up.
“Yeah, sure.” he snorts, throwing the ball back at you. You catch it in your hands with a promise to yourself to throw it out when exiting the cafeteria later, when you feel a light tap on your shoulder that makes you turn around.
The sight in front of you makes you shoot your eyebrows up in shock, leaving you flustered and surprised. “What do you want?”
“I just wanted to ask when we can hang out again to work on that essay, since it’s, you know, like half of our final grade…” mutters Seungmin, scratching the back of his neck awkwardly and pointing his eyes at you, casually waiting for your answer.
“Oh, we’re not meeting again. I’m just going to email you the file when I’m done.” you shrug.
“But that’s unfair to me?” he offers, eyebrows shooting up and his hand falling to his side.
“Why would it be?”
“That gives me less time to work on it, you know. And you have to add your comments to my work anyways, so it would mean you’ll have to write those at the last-minute.” Seungmin explains, his tone of voice calm and collected, just as always, after all, making you roll your eyes and fume up again.
“I don’t really care,” you shrug, smiling ironically at his face.
“Why- what?” he asks, looking genuinely concerned and confused, eyebrows scrunching up and his voice raising a little by an octave.
You don’t answer him, though. You’ve had enough of his snarky comments and remarks in the coffee shop– you weren’t going to meet up with Kim Seungmin again, even if it meant the possibility of getting a bad grade from your most favorite and treasured subject.
After the boy is met with silence, all he does is scoff at you, shooting his arms up into the air and shaking his head in disbelief. “You’re such a fucking child, oh my god.”
And with that, he strides off, your eyes following his every move to make sure he doesn’t come near you again. His steps are quick and angry, and this is actually the first time you’ve seen him get so frustrated with something. You take pride in getting him over the edge. You were finally even. He doesn’t look back once and you think you finally made it.
“Stop staring, Anne.” you hear from your friend sitting right in front of you, making you break away from your bubble and taking a look at him, seeing him amused and with a teasing grin plastered on his face.
“Fuck off.”
5.
“Peace? I hate the word as I hate hell and all Montagues.” Mrs Jung reads out, when you start dozing off in the class. You’ve read the play a lot of times already, making you feel bored even by the repetitiveness of your class. You understand that she is just waiting for all of you to turn in your papers, not wanting to move on from Romeo and Juliet just yet, but you find yourself slowly falling asleep under the spell of her voice and the fact that you spent the whole night studying again. The sentence startles you awake, making you chuckle to yourself.
‘Peace? I hate the word as I hate hell and Kim Seungmin himself,’ you think. If Han Jisung could read minds, he would be surely teasing you with another smart remark of how much energy you’re spending by hating the poor boy and how it’s not possible for you to not fall in love with him soon after how much time he spends in your mind, but Han Jiung can’t read minds. And even if he could, you’d just tell him to fuck off. Because he is wrong.
“Am I boring you, Y/N?” asks Mrs Jung, fully startling you awake as you straighten your back and properly sit on your uncomfortable chair again.
“Of course not!” you call out, blinking rapidly to keep your eyes from closing on themselves again.
“Oh, I thought I was, by how tired you seem by listening to me.” she just smiles at you, then continues talking and looks at the other students in your class, leaving you to blush to yourself without giving you more attention.
You chew on the inside of your cheek, looking around the classroom. You feel embarrassed. You really didn’t mean to give your favorite professor the wrong idea– you just got to bed really, really late yesterday. It happened often, but you guess that it just took a bigger stroll on you today.
Your eyes meet the orbs of your moral enemy, that just gazes into you with intensity. You quickly look away. Why is he doing that? His eyes look worried. He’s not supposed to look at you in such a way– he’s supposed to laugh at how you’ve just been scolded. He just won a few points to himself by paying more attention than you, he just got on the better side with your favorite professor, yet he doesn’t look like he’s enjoying it at all.
A small piece of paper catches your interest from the corner of your eye. You read through it, recognising the loopy handwriting of your seat-mate.
did you stay up late studying again?
You sigh, taking a pen out of your pencil case and neatly writing under it, trying not to get caught by Mrs Jung. You really don’t want to get scolded for the second time today.
yeah
you should probably relax a little, your grades are already good to begin with
You roll your eyes at the note. Of course he’d say something like that. In elementary school, your grades were good without even trying. All you had to do was pay attention in class and write what you could remember, but now, in high school, everything is a little harder for you and you suddenly weren’t good enough anymore. And yeah, you could say that grades don’t even matter that much, but for you, they meant everything.
yeah that’s bc i study jisung
now you’re falling asleep tho how is that helping
You don’t answer him. It’s not that he’s wrong. It’s just that… you’re not going to tell him that he is. Yes, you falling asleep wasn’t helping you in the tiniest, because the less you pay attention in class, the more you have to study at home, and the more you study, the less you sleep, which means you’re going to fall asleep in class the next day and it’s just an endless cycle.
sorry :( but just remember that grades aren’t everything Anne you can get an F once in a while
thanks
You write. But you don’t really mean it.
Because if you get an F, you’re not going to be the top of the class anymore.
And how will you get a scholarship if you’re not?
6.
You arrive to the library, sighing to yourself as you quickly take your coat off and smile to Mrs Kim, the older librarian that let you work here part-time for the time being. You didn’t get paid much, but you loved the job. For the most part, it was easy– there weren’t many people coming to libraries these days anymore and you could just stay behind the counter, occasionally letting people borrow books and writing them into the evidence. You had a lot of time to study there as well, it was silent and calm. Sometimes, you felt like your heart could rest a little in the small place.
“I’m sorry for coming late Mrs Kim, but the bus was late so I couldn’t get here sooner-” you rush out out of breath, dropping your backpack under the counter, ready to change seats with your employer that was done with her shift for the day.
“It’s totally okay, sweetheart, you know there’s no rush.” she smiles at you, reassuring your nerves with the gesture. You were glad you had such caring people around you. You met with Mrs Kim more than you did with your own mother– it was strange, but comforting to know that at least someone close to a parental figure was still in your life.
Maybe you just hung yourself into older, reliable people because you lost the security you had in your own mother. Or because you didn’t even have a father to begin with. You don’t know if you’re doing the right thing, but in your heart, it surely feels like you are.
You nod at her, seeing her leave and wave at you as she takes her things with her before you’re left alone with your thoughts. You sit yourself on the chair, looking around for a moment, before you take out your notes and start working on your homework. The library felt like a safe space– not that you didn’t have the silence and comfort at your own home, since you were home alone all the time anyway– but here, at least you felt like there was a reason behind your loneliness. You were at work, after all.
You wonder if things would have been different for your mum if she didn’t have you so young. Maybe she would still be happy with your dad– maybe she wouldn’t have to work a lot just to get you through life. It’s not easy, raising a child on your own when you are a child still, you realise that. And your mother does a good job– at least you think she is– but sometimes, you wish your life would be different.
You curse at your mother for being so reckless when she was young. If you’d be born later, she’d finish school. Give you a better life. Maybe, you would even have a father. You would be a little happy family, going on vacations and enjoying your lives.
Now, you’re stuck with trying your hardest to be the best at everything. To have your life figured out, because at your age, your mum surely didn’t. You know you shouldn’t blame her– you need two people to create a child, but there was no other person for you to blame.
You try your hardest to get a scholarship, because you can’t pay for college on your own. You work so your mother doesn’t have to stay at her job over-night so often just to pay the bills. You educate yourself to be smart and successful– because that will surely change your life for the better, right?
Suddenly, you hear the bell above the door of the library ring, startling you away from your thoughts. You look that way with a polite smile on your face you’ve taught yourself while working at customer service, ready to greet the customer with fake enthusiasm, when your mouth hangs open without a word. Startled would be an understatement to the feeling you feel at the moment.
“Hello,” the person greets politely, looking at you momentarily before going up to the counter with a stack of books in his hands. He looks up after placing them on the surface and that’s the moment when you see he realises your presence fully– after seeing his face fall into shock.
“Good afternoon,” you grunt ironically, taking the books closer to yourself so you can check them in, recognising his eyes following your every move from the corner of your eye, “your ID?” you raise up your eyebrows at him, annoyance apparent in your features.
“Oh, right,” he catches himself, quickly patting every pocket of his clothing, until he puts up his hand into his backpack and browses through his wallet, slender fingers offering you the little card so you can scan the code.
The computer freezes for a bit and you curse to yourself– did it really have to happen now? With Kim Seungmin watching you like an alien? The computer at your local library wasn’t the newest, per say. It didn’t even have to be, your usual customers were just as old, if not even older than that piece of machinery, they didn’t mind waiting. But now wasn’t the time for the computer to freeze. You feel yourself losing your nerves, bouncing your leg up and down, angrily glaring at the screen.
A minute passes, than another– could it even get worse than this?
“So,” clears his throat Seungmin, making you snap your head up to meet his gaze, “what’s up?” he asks, shocking you again.
“Why do you care?” you snap, glaring at him instead. How dare he act so casually after saying all those mean things to you? You couldn’t believe your ears.
“Because you’re my classmate…?” he furrows his brows, tone of voice cautious, sounding like a question instead.
“And?” you ask, watching the screen of the computer instead, cursing at the new electronic system Mrs Kim decided to install. It would have been so much easier if you could just scribble down your signature on a small piece of paper and take the books like you used to do before, but no, she was all about innovation.
“And I thought we were civil enough for a casual conversation,” he rambles, making you snort in disbelief.
“Oh, we are anything but civil.” you respond, losing your nerves, taking your hand and angrily hitting the top of the screen, as if it was supposed to make the computer work. You violently curse under your breath, hitting it a few times, each one more lightly, until the program starts to work, finally registering the books back into the library evidence.
“Why do you even hate me so much?” he asks after you stop, looking at you with annoyed eyes and a look worthy of an oscar-winning actor. He didn’t care, you knew that, but he sure looked like he did.
You just scoff at him, shaking your head.
“Goodbye,” is all you offer him, his library ID in your hand, before he takes it and rolls his eyes at you again, like many times before. With that, he leaves– just like you wanted him to– and you can finally relax.
You sigh out, taking a seat on your chair again, angirly shutting your textbooks close and grunting under your breath. You put your head into your hands, resting them on the table, breathing heavily. You won’t even be able to study now, and it’s all thanks to him.
Why do you even hate him so much?
7.
Kim Seungmin is an interesting individual. As you continue to work in the library the next week, you meet him there every single day. You don’t even have the energy to bark at him anymore– he slid into your life like a gum stuck to the bottom of your shoe. Always there, but you never get used to it and it’s still annoying when you walk around.
Kim Seungmin is your moral enemy, as we already established. He comes into the library every day and you’re convinced it’s just because he wants to piss you off, but you don’t give him the satisfaction of letting him rile you up anymore. You just silently glare at him and sigh when the timing feels right to show him how much you actually still hate his presence.
He comes back one day while you’re working on your essay, sitting at the table with furrowed eyebrows and the end of your pen trapped between your teeth. The copy of the play is sitting open right in front of you and his eyes fall into it, recognising the underlined replicas and words. You didn’t work on that essay together ever since your first meeting and the due date was nearing, all he wanted to do was review it with you to at least know what he was getting into.
“Can you even read all of these books in a day when you keep coming back for more every time?” you grumpily mumble as you check back the books you, as the librarian, let him borrow yesterday. They are quite thin, but still, you doubt he was so quick to read all of them in a single afternoon.
“Why do you care?” he asks, snickering to himself. Of course, here he is– annoying every single cell and fiber of your body again.
“Oh, trust me, I don’t. It’s just getting a little annoying.” you ironically smile at him, sitting back to your chair as you finish lending him the new stash of books. You’re not even sure where he got all of these from, since they don’t even look that interesting, but you choose not to think about it any longer as you get back to your essay, scribbling onto the lined paper.
“I like what you’ve written so far,” he says, startling you. You thought he left already– I mean, why would he even stay? But he didn’t and he was standing right in front of you, eyes skimming over your messy handwriting.
“No you don’t. You’re arguing against me.” you snap back, darting your eyes to him, seeing him sigh.
“Whatever,” he shakes his head, “I was just wondering when you’re going to finally stop being so childish so we can work on that project together, you know.”
“I’m not childish-”
“Stop arguing with me for once, for god’s sake!” he rushes out, throwing his arms in the air in nerves, huffing out in frustration. “Look, I’ll be here tomorrow. The same time. I’ll bring my things and if you still don’t let me work with you, I won’t write anything and we’ll get a bad grade together. Take it or leave it.”
And with that, he is gone.
Fuck Kim Seungmin.
8.
Turns out your enemy is a man of his word.
He truly does show up the next day– with his backpack slung on his shoulder, cute big glasses sitting on his nose and a stack of papers in his hands. He raises his brows at you upon arriving and you just let out a defeated sigh.
You put a lot of thought into this yesterday evening. Did you hate Kim Seungmin? Of course you did. Was he really annoying? Yes. But were you going to get a bad grade just because of that? Not a chance.
And so you choose to give up on the small war and let him sit in front of you, you let him casually ask you questions about the essay and surprisingly, you answer. It is kind of easy, working with a partner on the same exact level as you, because, and now, don’t get me wrong, you love your classmates, but it seemed like you did all the work all the time. It was nice to have somebody by your side that actually managed to do something and took his part responsibly.
“So, since we’re not just gonna go there and argue right from the start, I wrote a little something about William Shakespeare and his background as well in the introduction, I actually didn’t get around to writing the introduction to the play itself, but-”
“Oh that’s fine, I have it done. We can just stick that in there,” he smiles at you warmly, taking you by a surprise.
You’ve never seen Kim Seungmin smile at you. It was strange to act so friendly around him. Perhaps you were really losing your mind while studying so much.
“Perfect.” you nod, chewing on the inside of your cheek.
“I also have the general storyline written down so you don’t have to do that…” he mumbles, looking away for a while when your eyes meet. Is this supposed to be so awkward?
“Nice.” you opt to simply reply in your usual cold nature, nodding.
“Can you tell me which topics you wrote about? So I know if I need to write my part about more things…” he takes the initiative again and you’re actually kind of glad, because that means you don’t have to think of the schedule of your little meeting anymore.
“Oh, right,” you say, shuffling around in your papers, “um… I just wrote about the age aspect, how reckless their love was, the image of love itself in the play, I also wrote about how meaningless the rivalry was…” you mumble, averting your eyes to the blue ink on the paper.
“Awesome, so we have all of that done… except from the love thing. Okay, I’ll write it next time I come around, since I have tutoring in a few,” he smiles, standing up from the chair, taking all of his things with him.
“Next time?”
“Yeah, well, we still have to finish it. You’ll be here on Tuesday, right? Since the class is on Thursday, so we can have time for the finishing touches.” he proposes, leaving you staring at him, startled.
“O…kay,” you nod, watching him leave.
“Perfect! I’ll see you around, bye!” he cheers, escaping the library that now feels so much hotter than before, leaving you all alone. You notice his tall figure rushing the other way of the library, watching it until it disappears completely out of your sight.
You notice how hot your cheeks are, bringing a hand to rest against the burning surface, taking deep breaths to somehow calm down the racing heart you are only recognising now, that he’s gone.
You still have a lot of work to do before Tuesday– one of your tasks, it seems, is to try to not fall for his friendly nature and welcoming smile. Because perhaps, he was right all along– why do you even hate him so much?
9.
Kim Seungmin has always been your moral enemy– you despised everything about him, from the way he was always so calm and collected, so sweet and caring, so smart and thoughtful. You despised his composure. You despised the way he always somehow managed to make friends with everyone around him no matter who the person was.
He was everything you weren’t. You were just the quiet kid from a broken family that always had to look after herself. You were the kid that had to keep on trying to be the best one, because your mind didn’t let you accept the second place.
Yet now, that Kim Seungmin is sitting right in front of you with a sweet smile plastered onto his features and a stack of notes in his hands, making your heart race with his every move, you start to quietly doubt your silent hatred for the boy.
He makes it so easy to be likeable. You’re jealous of him.
“Okay, so, do you want to start reading? I think it might help us to have a run down before presenting this on Thursday,” he asks you, leaving you to take a deep breath in, nodding to yourself.
You skip the introduction bits– both of you know a little too much about the play and its author already, you have no reason to be reading those parts out loud. Something inside of you starts shaking at the thought of presenting your work to him. You were never really good with presentations, your quiet nature leaving you getting hot in the cheeks and stammering every time you had to read in front of the class, but now, it feels even worse with the boy staring at you, listening to everything you have to say.
“They say Romeo and Juliet describe a love that surpasses all boundaries, but a close reading of the play suggests the lovers’ feelings are more complicated than pure love. If we look, we can find plenty of evidence that Romeo and Juliet’s love for one another is, at least initially, immature. Romeo begins the play claiming to be passionately in love with another woman, Rosaline. When he sees Juliet, he abandons Rosaline before he has even spoken to his new love, which suggests that his feelings for both women are superficial. Juliet, meanwhile, seems to be motivated by defying her parents. She is unenthusiastic about her parents’ choice of husband for her, and at the party where she is supposed to meet Paris, she instead kisses Romeo after exchanging just fourteen lines of dialogue with him. When Romeo returns to see Juliet, she is focused on marriage. For Juliet, part of the appeal of marriage is that it will free her from her parents: ‘I’ll no longer be a Capulet’,” you read out quietly. The room is silent, you can even hear the passing cars outside of the window, but Seungmin says nothing. You pay a daring look to him, finding him focused on your face, which makes you shakily drift your eyes back, reading some more so you can distract yourself.
“Marriage is, also, another great aspect of the story– Juliet is only 13 in the play and even though we can argue and say that historically, she was of age to get married, I still think it is irresponsible to marry so young and so quickly. It brings a bad view of reckless love to young readers that are forced to read the play while growing up.” you continue, hearing Seungmin smirk from the other side of the table.
“‘With love’s light wings did I o’erperch these walls, for stony limits cannot hold love out’, Romeo says, however, to Juliet, all of the freedom she gets from love sparks in the idea of leaving her parents so she can have sex.” you read out, hearing Seungmin finally burst out laughing.
You stop reading, looking up to him with questioning eyes.
“Why are you so dramatic about all of it anyway?” he asks you, making you furrow your brows in confusion.
“What do you mean dramatic? I was supposed to write about my own view of it, so I did just that. You don’t have to laugh at me for it,” you shake your head, kind of feeling pathetic for the way your heart is racing. The thing is, and you know it sounds ridiculous, you actually feel kind of hurt by the sound of his laughter.
“I understand that, but why do you keep bashing the author for writing it like that? It’s like you don’t even believe in love, all you did was criticise all of the ideas he had. And so what if they were young and reckless? They were still in love, you know?” he rambles, making your blood boil again.
“You can’t just ignore all of it because it was in history. I don’t think it’s normal to marry so young and to claim you are in love so quickly, because you know what? If they survived, they would make a child. And then, they would realise how they fucked up their own life and Romeo would run away from her with a snap of his finger, because that’s what young, immature boys do. And then-” you raise your voice, not even realising how heated you got with the argument as you continue to ramble. The vision of your own parents and your own story is slowly eating you all up from the inside, when suddenly, Seungmin cuts you off again with a laugh.
“But you don’t know that. It’s not even in the play and your conspiracies are just… pathetic, really,” he shrugs, taking in your distressed state.
Pathetic conspiracies. Is this what he called your life?
“Leave.” you say, breathing heavy.
“What? We didn’t even-”
“You criticize everything I write, not even recognising that maybe I do have a reason for feeling like this and maybe I really do not want to idolise young, immature love when I know just how much damage it can make, so please, for the love of god, Kim Seungmin, leave me alone!” you yell out, standing up from your chair and pointing to the door.
“Y/N-”
“I said get out!” you scream. His deep eyes stare at you for a few minutes, startled, before he hurriedly takes his things and leaves through the front door.
Once you’re finally alone again, you sigh heavily and put your head into your hands. You feel your eyes burning, trying to desperately blink away the stupid tears filling your saddened orbs, but it’s no use as you see a few teadrops fall onto the opened copy of Romeo and Juliet on the table.
‘It’s easy for someone to joke about scars if they’ve never been cut.’, it says.
Maybe you were fooling yourself when you thought Kim Seungmin will no longer be your enemy after all of this.
10.
You raise up to your feet when Mrs Jung calls on you on Friday. You already know what’s going to happen– you’d been preparing yourself for this moment for the past two long, miserable days. You hadn’t spoken to Seungmin since that day in the library and frankly, you feel like after all of this, you have nothing to say to him. You feel like all energy has been sucked out of you, like you are just a walking cage without a soul just ready for this whole project to be over.
You scan the faces of your classmates, most of them looking interested by your essay. They must be expecting drama, an outburst of emotions as you listen to Seungmin’s words, but you won’t give them the satisfaction today. You’re just going to do your part– you’re going to read out what you have to say and that’s where it ends. You’re not wasting your energy on Kim Seungmin anymore. It’s not worth your time at all.
So you start, just like that time in the library. You make all your points, you mention all of the topics you wanted to discuss. You throw it right in front of their faces, silently confessing to them all of your deepest secrets and insecurities, because the truth is, you wouldn’t feel so strongly about the play if it didn’t affect you as much.
And when you’re done, you let your rival speak. You listen to him with curiosity, it doesn’t matter how much you’re trying to convince yourself you don’t actually care. His words flow into your ears and fill your mind with thoughts, every single one of them dedicated to his neat handwriting and his brain full of mysteries he is currently uncovering right in front of you.
“To be honest, Y/N’s words made me think. They made me think too hard. They made me question if my point of view was actually as correct as I thought it was. You see, Y/N is a smart girl. No one can deny that. Perhaps that is what made me doubt my own words so much in the first place,” he starts, looking you directly in the eye, but quickly averting his eyes to the small group of people in the classroom instead, “but still, even though there are some points of her essay that I agree with– like the age aspect, even though historically, it could be meaningless, as well as the way their marriage comes too fast, there are still things I strongly disagree on.”
He takes a deep breath, shuffling the papers in his hands until he finds the right one, and starts speaking again. “Y/N says their love isn’t as pure as it seems to be. With Romeo abandoning Rosaline and with Juliet desperately wanting to break away from her parents, it may seem that way. However, I think that yet, while the two characters may have initially fell for each other due to a mixture of convenience and lust, Romeo and Juliet’s language shows their passion maturing into real love,” he says, taking a short look at you that makes your insides burn in flames, “In their first meeting, they compose a sonnet together using the religious language of pilgrimage. They both start using astrological language to describe their love. As their relationship develops, they use less rhyme, which has the effect of making their language feel less artificial. These changes in the lovers’ language show that they are growing together. They are growing to care more deeply for each other, they are growing into a feeling of love they have for each other.”
“Another thing I disagree with Y/N on is her image of love. ‘Is love a tender thing? It is too rough, too rude, too boisterous, and it pricks like thorn,’ she quotes. Romeo asks his friend, Mercutio, this question when he feels hurt by his love. Yet, as I already mentioned, in my opinion, love is growing. And growing is a journey– in every journey, there is going to be some pain,” he looks at you again, as if to tell you that his words aren’t meant for the class, but for you and your ears only. It doesn’t look like he’s arguing with you anymore–he is simply telling you what’s on his mind. What he believes in.
“In theory, I think love is beautiful. I understand the pain and I understand the journey. And with me saying I disagree, I’m not saying Y/N’s opinion is wrong. It’s simply what she believes in,” he nods his head, locking his eyes with Mrs Jung, “but perhaps, it’s the romantic in me that believes that the image of love portrayed in this book was, in fact, beautiful.”
He clears his throat, looking at you again, but this time, his eyes don’t drift to the papers in his hand, rather speaking from his memory instead of reading out the things he had written down. “‘The brightness of her cheek would shame those stars as daylight doth a lamp; her eyes in heaven would through the airy region stream so bright that birds would sing, and think it were not night.’ Isn’t that beautiful?” he averts his eyes to the class, smiling to himself and looking to the ground.
Somehow, his words feel heavy on you. Like they hold the weight of the world, like what he said wasn’t just to prove a point to you. Perhaps Kim Seungmin saw through the hurt you feel– perhaps he tried to understand. Maybe, he even tried to make you feel better.
Somehow, his words feel like a confession. His ending ment of saying ‘thank you for your time’ goes unnoticed in your brain, everything turning blurry as the bell rings just as your presentation ends, your brain, eyes– your whole being focused on Kim Seungmin and the way his voice recitated the words with such passion in his heart.
“‘And where two raging fires meet together, they do consume the thing that feeds their fury,’” the voice of your English literature teacher cuts through your senses like a knife, the smile on her face bringing you back to reality, “Good job, you two.”
11.
A kick in a face wouldn’t hit you harder than seeing Kim Seungmin appear in the library the next day. You aren’t prepared to see him, not when all you’ve been thinking of the last night without being able to fall asleep were his words, his mind and his face. You saw him every time you closed your eyes– it was like he suddenly imprinted himself into your brain. It was crazy. You felt crazy.
Romeo and Juliet fell in love at first sight. Romeo and Juliet got married the next day.
How much time did it take you to fall in love with Kim Seungmin?
Suddenly, you have no idea. And what makes it all worse is the fact that somehow, it all makes sense in your eyes. Maybe Jisung was right when he told you that giving so much energy into hating the boy would somehow make you end up like the 21st century replica of Anne of the Green Gables and Gilbert Blythe.
“Hello,” he breathes out, the corners of his mouth slightly curving up before he bites the nervous smile down, chewing on his bottom lip.
“Hi,” you shyly greet him, noticing the book in his hands alongside with the library card, taking it from his reached-out hand. You recognise the book way too well, the hard covers a little dusty and the spine damaged from the amount of people that had borrowed this book from the library before.
You take the copy of Romeo and Juliet and place it on the table, registering it back into the database. It feels like a chapter of your life is ending. It seems like forever since you’ve been assigned the project, but in a way, you know that nothing will ever be the same.
You kept thinking of his words in the night. How in his romantic mind, love is beautiful. And it’s a journey that requires pain, in a way.
You kept thinking of how your parents were in love. And then, they were in pain. It was their journey that somehow ended up with you being born, ended up with your father leaving you because he couldn’t bear the responsibility. You kept thinking about how you used to blame your mother, even though all she ever did was raise you and love you. And in a way, you knew Seungmin was right and love was beautiful– it brought your mum pain, but she was happy while it lasted. And you were the proof of that.
You give him back his library ID, fully expecting him to leave without another word, but he doesn’t. He takes it back from your hold, slipping the card into his back pocket, giving you a meaningful look as he sighs.
“I-”
“Look-”
You both start at the same time, nervously laughing before prompting the other one to speak first. You avert your eyes away from his face, letting him know you won’t be the first one to speak this time, patiently waiting for him to start talking.
“I just wanted to tell you that I’m sorry if I ever made it seem like I hate you or anything, because, well, it’s quite the opposite, really,” he chuckles, wiping his hands against his pants, “I never had the guts to hold a proper conversation with you before, because honestly, I was too shy to do that, since you’re like… so smart and everything, but yeah,” he sighs again, shortly looking you in the eyes before finishing his little speech, “I’m just… sorry, I guess?”
You feel your lips tugging into a smile, shaking your head in disbelief before speaking up again. “No, I should be the one saying sorry, because I was the one acting like a bitch… I guess that were just my own insecurities getting in the way.”
His smile mirrors yours in no time, taking your breath away as you curse in your own head. You feel crazy. So, so damn crazy for liking it so much.
“It’s okay. I guess we both had some things that came in the way. If I wasn’t acting so cold, maybe you wouldn’t hate me as much-”
“No, it’s not your fault!” you stop him, reaching out a hand to gesture him that he is talking nonsense.
He nervously shifts his weight from one leg to another, taking a short look at his shoes, gaining all of his courage before speaking up again. “I know this may sound ridiculous, but would you maybe want to… hang out sometime?”
“Hang out?” you repeat, voice a few octaves higher than usual.
“Y-yeah,” he nods, eyes big, “I was actually thinking of asking you out on a date but since you used to hate me until now, I didn’t want to go too fast-”
“It can be a date,” you jump in. The voice in your head is screaming at you now, hell, it is running around your head and hitting the walls in anger and panic. How the hell did you end up in this position? Asking Kim Seungmin out on a date? You really must be ridiculous.
“Okay,” he smiles, urgently nodding.
“Okay.” you grin. You exchange a daring stare into each other’s eyes before he deeply inhales and scratches the back of his neck, turning on his heel and quickly pacing to the door. You almost think he’s going to leave, but he quickly looks back and stops in his tracks, shooting you one last, bright smile.
“I’ll pick you up tomorrow!” he cheers, not even letting you respond before he runs out of the door.
As the library falls into dead silence, you take a seat on the chair, sighing deeply and bringing your head into your palms resting on the table, just like many times before when Seungmin left the comfort of the library, but this time, there’s a goofy smile playing with your lips as you think of the last few minutes, chuckling to yourself. This was an outcome you did not expect from the project– but it’s an outcome you don’t mind at all.
Romeo and Juliet fell in love at first sight. How long did it take you?
It’s fair to say at least two weeks.
Maybe you were foolish and maybe it will hurt, but there’s something tempting at the warm feeling in your chest and the excitement Seungmin’s presence makes you feel, and that feeling alone doesn’t let you give up on this just yet.
Your eyes fall to the opened book of Romeo and Juliet you’d left on your table just before he arrived, meaning to return the copy of the play to the library. You’re met with a sentence that makes you chuckle at the irony, the foolishness washing over you mixed with a feeling of joy you can’t quite comprehend yet, but welcome it with your arms wide open and expecting heart.
‘My only love sprung from my only hate.’