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Jiseok has always liked girls. He was passionate about them——it sounds weird but——he was all about girls. He couldn't explain it, maybe it comes from watching his mother raise him and his brother, not entirely by herself, but with the help of her friends, of her mother and her sister and all their daughters. The only boy Jiseok ever could admire even near as much, was his brother, who helped too. He might as well have been a daughter.
Jiseok might as well have been a daughter too.
So he likes girls, and he likes girl things. He likes glittery jelly bracelets and the way girls' charms clink together on chains encircling their wrists. He likes wearing braids and the way long painted nails feel parting his hair, scratching his scalp. He likes clumpy pink knit sweaters and the way they drip over the hollow divot of collarbones.
He likes these things a lot. They make his cheeks warm and his heart flutter. He’s happy dating girls, holding their hands, kissing their cheeks, brushing their hair. No matter how much any stupid boy tells him something moronic like liking girl things means not liking girls.
How does that make any sense?
And he really likes the girl in his lecture with the long, silky black hair disrupted by a singular magenta streak. Always swaying against a broad back or tied up halfway in a colorful knot. It's almost hard to pay attention to the lecture when Jiseok is always watching her, mesmerized with her shiny hair and her hair tie bracelets and her abhorrently overworn fluffy jacket with some pink shirt peeking out underneath.
"You should talk to her," Jungsu suggests, ignoring Jiseok's critical wide-eyed gaze piercing through him. Typing away at his phone with a smile playing at the corner of his lips like a cat and yarn. "I mean, you don't usually get like this. Usually things make you smarter. She—" Jungsu glances at him sideways "—she makes you stupider." They're on a bench only a couple miles from campus, discarded sandwich wrappers wind-ruffled beside their laps.
Jiseok squawks. "How does that even make any s——Just talk to her? And say what?" He leans a heavy arm on Jungsu's shoulder, digging his elbow into the junction of Jungsu's neck, making Jungsu hiss and pinch his arm viciously. "Hey, sorry, but I've been obsessively watching the back of your head for half a semester now, can I get your number and your LOL ID?"
Jungsu pulls a face. "Definitely not that last bit," he says with distaste.
Jiseok crosses his arms over his chest, shaking his head dismissively. "Some girls play League, Jungsu. Don't be discriminatory."
Jungsu rolls his eyes. He pockets his phone and stands, slinging his backpack over his shoulder. "Well, Gunil is picking me up. I've got a class in thirty…Good luck with your dream girl, Ji." He doesn't seem all too sincere about it, walking off and stuffing his trash in a nearby bin.
Jiseok huffs, bending down and picking up a pebble off of the ground and throwing it at Jungsu's back. "Good luck with your dumb loverboy, jerk!" And all Jungsu does is turn his head and glare, the tips of his ears red in the dying sun.
So, petty and spiteful, Jiseok compromises. The next day at 15:20 when his lecture starts, he rips a pink sticky note off the pad, and furiously writes with his dull pencil, I like you .
He watches the entrance of the lecture hall, waits for his girl to appear, wearing a slightly different jacket today than usual, square wire frames obscured by her curtain of dark hair, her head down as she walks in and sits right where she always does. Right in front of Jiseok, his knees almost gracing the tips of her hair. He bounces them nervously, gulping.
Before he can doubt himself, he leans forward, taps her shoulder, and drops the folded sticky note in her lap. He looks obstinately the other way when she glances back at him, refusing to see her face and expression before she reads the note. He can hear, even as the professor greets them and the clacking of keys start up, the sound of unfolding paper, static-like and grating.
He almost jolts right out of his seat when gentle, lithe fingers tap his knee. He looks back, blinks at the sight before him. Glasses framing angled eyes shadowed by dark, thick brows. The voice that comes from between pink lips stretched in a wide, gummy grin, nothing like Jiseok could have ever expected.
"I like you too. I’m glad always sitting in front of you worked its charm."
Then when Jiseok takes too long to respond, stunned or stupefied, finally understanding what Jungsu said about him being stupider. "I'm Jooyeon. Thank you for the note, my favorite color's pink, so it’s nice."
The girl Jiseok likes, is very much a boy. A boy named Jooyeon who likes the color pink, and it feels like a found puzzle piece to Jiseok, who despite all his admiration for girls, always loved the color blue more then pink. He'd shaped it up to blue originally being a girl color, then of course, no color being a "girl color" but this feels meant to be. Somehow, all illogically.
Jiseok likes girly things. Likes long hair and pink streaks and slender wrists and polished fingernails, and Jooyeon too. Jooyeon who just happens to be a boy.
Jiseok smiles wide, a bit too wide, his heart thumping uncontrollably in his chest. He can do this, he can like a boy and try not to be stupid about it. He's smart, he's been called a genius too many times to count even though he sucks at studying. But wow does Jooyeon's smile warm his cheeks and skyrocket his pulse.
"I'm Jiseok. My favorite color is your hair."
And Jooyeon snorts like it's the funniest thing ever. Jiseok feels good being stupid. He feels good, liking a boy.
* * *
Jungsu grins at Jiseok, sly, eyeing Jooyeon’s arm linked through his. Crossing his arms and tapping one foot, he says, "What’s that about dumb loverboys?"