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You have been in the same position for hours: your eyes burn every time you move on to the next line, you feel that your neck could break in two and fall on the book at any moment and your fingers, even if stained with all kinds of ink possible, reveal a painful redness. You’re not sure how long you've been bothering them with the hair tie -as if this was the direct cause of your stress- but it was the only option that didn't bother your study buddy or anyone else in that coffee shop with you. And also you don't really want to get another dirty look from the middle-aged guy all dressed up; you read in his gaze the urge to shove the pen down your throat clearly enough that you don't want to see if he's really capable of putting that desire into action.
You're focused and nothing could distract you from the topic you're preparing for tomorrow's class: neither the grave look of an employee, nor the creaking bathroom door that constantly opens, nor the fly that finds in your arm an excellent support to rest and recover from the scorching day that rages outside the Starbucks and its blessed air conditioning. But someone succeeds. The same 'someone' who got up from his seat a couple of minutes ago and you didn't even realize you lost track of. You begin to look around and the little winged companion flies away, showing you the way to find that idol who loves to go around as if he weren’t known worldwide at all. You may have told him that South Africa is certainly not Korea or Europe, but he's still a diamond among a pile of zircons. Because comparing him to an elephant wouldn't come to your mind not even to give life to a metaphor.
But Jungkook wouldn't be able to go unnoticed even if he wanted to and many times, unfortunately, that's what happens. His aura releases an energy that is too bright to be ignored. Like now, for example: he’s coming to your table holding both drinks in one hand and a saucer with delicious hyper-sugary donuts in the other and yet - in the banality of that gesture - you notice the cashier not taking his eyes off him.
The straws he holds in his mouth make him look like a walrus with a long mustache and this helps explain the staff’s curious glances and the disappearance of the wrinkles from your forehead that usually pop up when you're studying too much.
"It's 'baie dankie', right?" And you feel it, your heart dying for two simple words in your mother tongue that you never thought could have this effect on you. You've heard it trillions of times and said it twice as many in your short life but there's something in the way he pronounces it that makes it special and gives it a new, sweet, adorable meaning. Thinking that he was worried about the way he'd answered the employee behind the counter doesn't make the job any easier for your myocardium as it tenaciously tries not to totally turn to mush.
"Baie dankie" you repeat, not even remotely close to his tenderness in saying it.
"Oh, did I say it wrong?"
“No, no, no! I truly meant to say 'thank you'. To you. For buying all this." You put your reading glasses back on your nose, taken by a sudden wave of shyness. "Your pronunciation was flawless." Like every time he tries to do something, as a good Golden Maknae he is.
"All thanks to my teacher" proudly replies, pushing your glasses down in a playful gesture that wants to go far beyond appearing just as a troublemaker kid. "Come on, that’s it for today!" He then translates the subliminal message into concrete words. "You need a break. Eat something."
"Let me just finish this paragraph-" but before you can continue to underline the salient points, he has already stolen the highlighter right out from under your nose just for him to balance it above his multi-pierced ear; provocative as only the worst student would be. It’s been a while that you’ve stopped threatening him through your mad eyes: it's been a couple of months now that he seems to be immune to it. In response, he wrinkles his nose to completely disarm you and silence once and for all any insurgent rebellion of yours. But, now that you think about it, you still have another string to your bow to shoot at him: you load the elastic between your middle and index fingers and release it like it’s a slingshot. The hair tie reaches his chest and makes him jump on the chair, attracting like a magnet another glare from the man behind him; you can barely see him because of Jungkook's broad shoulders anyway.
He rubs his black T-shirt where he got hit, massaging his chest as if you've actually done something to him; you don't even believe it for a second. And that shocked face lasts no more than a blink of an eye that soon turns into a vengeful and diabolical grimace. He imitates your gestures and loads the same elastic between his fingers, aiming blatantly at your forehead. He doesn't understand how dangerous it can be: handled by him, it could even become emergency room-kind-of-dangerous. So you create a fortress with your arms and use the table for more coverage, waiting for the blow to come. Because you know how capable he is of doing it and without qualm even.
One.
Two.
Three.
Nothing.
You get up on ten before taking the courage to peek from behind the muscle barrier you've pulled up. From the breach you can see your boyfriend's big doe eyes less than a inch away from yours, bright as a galaxy of hot and eternal stars. A pair of dark locks adorn his forehead and his nose almost touches your forearm and although you can't see him, you know he has leaned across the table to come closer. Well, what else to say: you're grateful that behind him, to enjoy the view, there's that grumpy long faced penguin instead of someone else who would've definitely appreciated his curves more.
“I could never hurt my teacher,” he butters you up, tilting his head. "Besides, your skin is so delicate that it would show the bruise until Christmas."
"Christmas is in two weeks" you specify with a smile you put on display by deliberately widening the gap. You know him well enough to be sure that what he meant was a waaaay longer period of time than fourteen poxy days for a well-settled bruise of yours.
"Aish, I always forget that here winter is hot and cold weather comes with summer!" He rolls his eyes making you laugh at the climate of your own country. "You know what? We should seize the opportunity to take a trip to the beach. It's a beautiful December day and we should spend it toasting our feet in the sand and praying anxiously not to get burned under the scorching sun. And I’m talking about you, especially."
You convince yourself that the war is over and break yourself out of the shell by seriously considering that proposal. Even the part where you get home colored like a roasted shrimp.
"If you go to the beach with that shirt, you'll attract all the light of the world and get a killer sunstroke." You say pointing to the boy's black garment, dramatizing the whole thing a little.
You're genuinely worried about him: you must return him safely to HYBE. You don't want them forbidding you to have him all to yourself there, in the future. You definitely don't. This is why you’re always so strict during your English lessons and super paranoid about it, even when he doesn't seem to have the slightest bit of these toxic thoughts. This is a test planned by the company to assess whether it's wise to trust you and the anonymity that his name still seems to have in your country and nothing would have ruined your efforts.
"I guess I'll take it off, then" he retorts shrugging, annihilating the malice with a false innocent look. In response you feel your face flush but it's not a battle you can let him win.
You pick up your things from the table and stuff everything into the backpack you're about to close.
"Aren't you forgetting something?" And as if he had also become a professional magician in the last three seconds, he pulls the yellow highlighter out of your ear: don't know how he teleported it from his to yours but many of his gestures and behaviors remain a mystery to you. And you're fine with that; it all feeds the admiration and attraction you feel towards him.
He drops it inside and lets you zip it close, doing his best to clean his area too and leave the table surface clean and tidy. So you both load the backpacks on your shoulders, grab food and drinks with your free hand and head outside, leaving behind the atypical-light-wooden-structure that the Starbucks in Camps Bay offers you.
Once carefully crossed the road, you soon arrive under the palm shade of Camps Bay Beach, where you gladly take a deep breath of hot and salty air after hours of torturing your sense of smell with the aroma of coffee and whipped cream throughout the morning.
You've been walking for no more than ten meters when he states 'I don't like it this way', followed by pouty lips.
You have no clue what he's talking about so you just stop to take a look at him: maybe it's really too hot outside and, fully-loaded with books as he is, you assume he's not considering all this an ideal condition for a leisure walk. And you'd agree with him if you weren't aware of his inhumane workouts between rehearsals and nights at the gym. Therefore it must be something else.
You wait then, observing his gestures with curiosity and even a hint of suspicion: you can never be safe with Mr. Jeon. The improvised engineer takes advantage of the quick stop to place the donut on the lid of his iced americano, securing it around the green straw. He invites you to do the same with a gaze, helping you as he can to give some support. He finally grabs your hand, a sly smile on his face.
"Much better" he gloats, pleased with his stroke of genius, squeezing it even more and starting to walk again. When he takes a sip from the straw his cheeks flatten, making his lips stand out, and you're no longer sure if he's adorable or just sexy at this point.
"Excuse me, how am I supposed to eat this now?" You ask skeptically studying the sugar structure he designed for you.
“Bite all around it without touching the center. Leave that piece for last and that's it!” He suggests as a good strategist. "Look, like this!" He demonstrates by biting into the donut and leaving its hole untouched, just as he had pointed out a few seconds earlier. A glossy patina of icing stains the tip of his nose but he doesn’t seem to care and continues to chew conspicuously, emphasizing its goodness. If his purpose is to make your mouth water, bravo, he’s perfectly succeeding.
You move your hand intertwined with his to free his face from the sticky sugar but he has no intention of letting go: he stays still, clinging to your open palm with his fingers, allowing you, however -thank goodness- to clean up at least a little bit of that sweet disaster.
"You don't give a damn about being in public, don't you?" You press trying hard not to laugh and lose credibility. You love that he feels so safe and comfortable there to the point that he doesn't worry about potential prying eyes around him but your protective side is holding you back from sharing this feeling openly.
"Not when I'm with you."
"Not when we aren't in Korea" you correct him with a touch of bitterness that he reads between your words like an open book. "Or anywhere else you don't get mobbed before you even put your gooey donut-nose out the front door."
"Saam met jou is my gunsteling plek om te wees" silences you with the perfect execution of a meaningful sentence in your mother tongue which, as far as you know, he hasn’t even begun to study. But, as an extraordinary student he is, it can’t certainly end there. "Ek is baie meer myself wanneer ek by jou is" he continues, staggering in between the last words, relying on his memory which doesn’t betray him indeed.
Everything in you stops: from breath to your hand still close to the side of his face; from processing what you heard to absorbing the full meaning of what he is actually confessing.
He blinks and you hope this is enough to let him know that you’re barely alive. And you wish with all your heart that it was enough to stop him but apparently it’s not because what comes next is even worse and hits you like a train. Poor deluded girl, who believed that being described as his favorite place was the highest point of the mountain that could ever be reached.
"As ek weet wat liefde is, is dit as gevolg van jou."
If I know what love is, it’s thanks to you.
As soon as he catches the twinkle in your eyes, he swiftly wraps you in his arms, knowing everything about you, your sensitivity especially. He finds you so sweet when you get overwhelmed that protecting that sensitivity with all his heart feels like a solemn duty and a huge privilege. The sense of safety he gives you tastes like kimchi lips, sounds like choruses hummed in the dark, has the warmth of midnight chocolate cookies and the smell of Downy fabric softener. And you can't imagine a different life from the one you've had since you've been with him. Which only makes you cry harder.
"I'm sorry, I thought the surprise effect would help you not to cry!" He justifies himself by isolating the freezing sensation that he feels at the height of the stomach caused by the frappuccino that you’re involuntarily pressing against him. He caresses your head with the only free hand he has available and this helps you catch your breath between one sob and the other. You don't know what clicked inside you but you couldn't avoid it... or either explain it. But how to respond to such a declaration of love? What could you ever tell him to best express what you think?
"I kinda prepared another sentence but I think I’d better save it for another occasion, I’m good for now" that idiot of your boyfriend mocks throwing a rope to rescue you from the quicksand of tears in which you sank with your feet together. It helps. You mentally thank his black shirt -which you criticized so much before- for having made itself useful and wiped your cheeks a little.
“You made me smudge my glasses” you whimper, reaching your eyes under the lenses to rub them. Whatever you say will be stupid anyway: you might as well play the victim's card.
"I didn’t mean to?" He apologizes again, laughing at your red face which, unfortunately for you, he has witnessed several times since you’ve been together. Boyfriend’s privileges.
“Oh, but you're - you're in much bigger trouble” you mumble as your glaze falls on the two plastic cups -no longer containing a single ice cube.
"I didn't think trying to be romantic would lead me to need a lawyer" he jokes before taking another sip of the no longer icy americano.
“Having a love affair with your teacher might,” you reply, big smirk time.
"Weren't we just innocently flirting?"
“You just told me you love me and you feel more like yourself when you’re with me. I think this goes a little beyond just wooing."
Jungkook now remains silent and twists his lips into a thoughtful expression, looking for a sharp response in the air around him.
"Try to come up with something in Afrikaans again and I swear I'll dump your ass here and go home." Crying. But it was better not to add that part.
"Not that I think you're really capable of ditching me here alone but... why don't you tell me something in Afrikaans, mh?"
"Me?"
"Yup. It's your mother tongue, remember? " And suddenly it becomes his big smirk time.
You would like to weigh it up, say something that’s not too obvious and can reflect well what you would like him to know, a truth that you may have struggled to communicate openly until now but has always been a certainty for you, the basis of your relationship.
A few seconds pass before you make a decision. His eyes are still glued to your lips and you like to read impatience in them.
Expand the wait by taking your (first? Seriously??) sip of frappuccino, enjoying every single grain of sugar in it before opening your mouth.
"As ek my lewe weer kan lewe, wil ek jou gouer vind."
"What does it mean?"
“It's the main subject of your next exam, you'd better study” you provoke before getting up on your toes to leave a kiss on his thin, fresh lips. The effort you make to be able to get away from it is immense. But you do, perhaps helped by your sense of dignity just got back from what feels to be an overseas vacation.
"And you’d better run away" warns you Jungkook before sprinting, forcing you to rely on your survival instinct and start running like an idiot on the beach.
The backpack bounces like crazy behind your back and you feel your shoes sink into the sand with every step. Protect the sugary loot between both your hands but this is not enough to prevent a few drops from leaking from the small hole at the top. But you don't care, you keep running and laughing, lulled by the certainty that Jungkook will always have your back and work hard to be close to you as if being together were the most important of his goals.