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James didn't just dislike sports—he loathed them with the burning intensity of a thousand suns.
Whenever he was forced to participate in gym class or, god forbid, an actual sports game, James flailed and flopped around like a fish that had tragically found itself stranded on dry land.
He flopped, he gasped, he prayed to whatever celestial being was listening for the sweet, merciful release of death.
His anti-athletic stance was so severe he couldn’t even watch sports on TV without experiencing severe PTSD: Post Traumatic Sports Disorder.
He was built exclusively for the sedentary lifestyle—a human burrito wrapped tightly in a blanket on the couch, where the heaviest object he ever lifted was a remote control with a low battery.
Two years ago, he had tried everything short of faking his own death to dodge the infamous afternoon basketball match with the guys.
Playing with them wasn't basketball; it was a high-stakes war zone.
It was basically dodgeball with a heavy, leather sphere of pain, played amidst a chaotic storm of flying elbows, flailing limbs, and blind passes.
Poor Seonghyeon had already taken two direct hits to the skull, left sitting on the turf completely dazed, staring into the middle distance and reevaluating every single life choice that had brought him to this point.
And then came James's turn.
WHACK
James took a rogue basketball straight to the kisser.
It was as if the ball had developed artificial intelligence, calculated his precise trajectory, targeted him specifically, and declared a personal blood vendetta against his face.
One second he was trying to disappear into the scenery; the next, he was sprawled flat on the cold, unforgiving ground like a ragdoll aggressively tossed aside by a toddler.
As he lay there, completely disoriented and seeing a galaxy of stars, he felt a strange, feathery tickle creeping down the bridge of his nose toward his upper lip.
He reached up with a trembling hand to investigate.
His fingers came away coated in a warm, sticky crimson.
"Well, isn't this just fucking fantastic", he grumbled internally, his inner voice dripping with nuclear-grade sarcasm.
As if eating turf wasn't humiliating enough, now he was bleeding out on the pavement.
"Shit, are you okay?"
A deep, velvet-smooth, husky voice cut straight through the deafening ringing in his ears.
James squinted upward, his vision swimming wildly, trying to focus on the ethereal silhouette hovering directly above him.
"God, I’m really, really sorry! Are you alright?”
“Juhoon-ah! Hurry up, what are you doing over there!” a voice roared from the court.
“Hang on!” Juhoon called back over his shoulder, still hovering over James in a state of absolute, chaotic panic.
“Just throw the damn ball back!”
Juhoon scooped up the basketball, tossed it blindly over his shoulder toward the court like a discarded piece of trash, and immediately whipped back to James.
James attempted a heroic, dignified exit, pushing himself up to walk away like a wounded warrior, but the universe had other plans.
Gravity itself got completely tipsy and decided to pull a hilarious prank.
The entire world tilted sideways on a forty-five-degree axis.
"Well, lucky fucking day for James," he thought bitterly as his head spun like a casino roulette wheel.
Before he could faceplant back into the concrete, Juhoon was there, gently dabbing at James’s bloody nose with the soft hem of his own cotton shirt, his brow knotted with deep, genuine concern.
"I'm so, so sorry," Juhoon murmured, his dark eyes wide with frantic remorse.
"I'm fine," James managed to choke out, sounding like a squeaky toy.
"Come on, I'm taking you to the nurse—"
"No, really, it's fine!" James panicked, taking a hasty, frantic step backward.
Massive mistake.
His heel caught an uneven crack in the sidewalk, sending him into a breathtakingly awkward, arms-flailing stumble.
The mental scoreboard updated automatically:
James: 0
Life: ♾️ points
"Woah, gotcha," Juhoon said, diving forward to catch James by the wrist, stabilizing him with a firm, warm grip and gently pulling him around until they were practically chest-to-chest.
James froze.
He found himself locked directly into Juhoon’s dreamy, worried gaze, and in an instant, logic completely shattered.
The mundane, gray schoolyard dissolved into a 4K, high-budget shoujo anime sequence. Slow-motion, hyper-realistic pink cherry blossom petals began fluttering down from a cloudless sky out of nowhere.
The obnoxious sparrows on the electrical wire suddenly sounded like a fifty-piece philharmonic orchestra playing a dramatic romantic concerto.
James could have sworn an angelic choir was hitting high notes in the background while glowing pink arrows rained down from the heavens, courtesy of a mischievous Cupid on overdrive.
Still completely dazed, James blindly allowed himself to be led like a helpless, confused puppy to a nearby bench.
Juhoon handed him a bottle of water and a wad of tissues, his touch lingering warmly against James's ice-cold, trembling hands.
As James dabbed his nose, his brain experienced a total system failure: "Did that leather ball scramble my neural pathways so violently that I am now trapped in a permanent romantic delusion?!"
"WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK IS GOING ON RIGHT NOW?!"
In the weeks following the incident, James’s life became a masterclass in silent suffering.
He only caught fleeting glimpses of Juhoon passing in crowded hallways or sitting across the chaotic cafeteria.
But every time their eyes locked, Juhoon would flash a warm, breathtaking smile—the kind that melted James’s knees into jelly and set a flock of frantic butterflies loose in his gut.
Driven by a desperate, shameless urge to be near his crush, James committed the ultimate betrayal against his own soul: he joined the school basketball club.
To his utter, dumbfounded bewilderment, James discovered he actually possessed a weird, innate knack for dribbling and shooting hoops.
But let’s be completely honest—he wasn’t there for the athletic glory.
He was there exclusively for the post-practice locker room ecosystem.
He would linger near his locker for ungodly amounts of time, pretending to be deeply fascinated by folding his gym socks while sneaking shameless, covert glances at Juhoon peeling off his sweat-drenched jersey.
Hands shaking like a leaf, James even snuck a few clandestine photos on his phone whenever he thought the coast was clear.
"Am I being an absolute, irredeemable creep right now?" a small, dying voice of morality whimpered in the dusty corner of his brain.
"Shut up, it's for SCIENCE!" his inner thirsty monster roared back.
"This is vital, ground-breaking field research on the male physical structure!"
Unfortunately, Juhoon soon stopped showing up to practices because he was grinding endlessly for the upcoming university entrance exams.
Desperate for intelligence, James deployed his trusty bestie and tech-wizard, Keonho, to hack and figure out Juhoon’s target university.
When Keonho finally texted him the college name—tacked on with a brazen kissing emoji and a sarcastic text telling him to "study up, dummy"—James gagged dramatically, chucked his phone onto his unmade bed, and turned to face the terrifying, mountain-sized stack of textbooks piled high on his desk.
He sat down, cracked open a thick history volume, and put on his best, most focused intellectual face.
Exactly four minutes and thirty seconds later, his brain had completely melted into a lukewarm puddle of gray sludge.
"Keonho, I can't do this!" James wailed pathetically into his phone on speaker, his forehead making a loud, violent thud as it slammed face-first into the wooden desk in absolute defeat.
"My remaining three brain cells are staging an armed revolt. This text is written in ancient hieroglyphics!"
"Oh, come on, hyung," Keonho snickered through the speaker, utterly unbothered by James's existential crisis.
"It's not even that deep. You're literally reading a history recap book designed for fifth graders."
"WHAT?!" James gasped, his head snapping upward so violently his neck gave an audible crack.
He gingerly raised his head and squinted down at the vibrant, cartoonish cover of the textbook he had been struggling to comprehend for the last ten minutes.
"Oh, shit. It actually was a middle-school study guide."
Despite his best efforts to convince himself that this was just a fleeting, silly teenage crush destined to fade with time,
James was down bad.
Devastatingly down bad.
He had kept the empty plastic water bottle Juhoon had bought him on that fateful day, displaying it prominently on his desk like a sacred, irreplaceable museum relic.
Whenever his brain fried from studying, his eyes would inevitably drift over to the plastic bottle, and within seconds, his unhinged imagination would take the wheel.
Before he could stop it, the plastic bottle cap literally morphed in his mind.
The cheap blue plastic smoothed out, stretching and expanding until it transformed into Juhoon's dazzling, sculpted face, winking at him with sparkles flying off his teeth.
Suddenly, James wasn't sitting in his cluttered bedroom anymore.
In his head, he was instantly transported to a grand, sun-drenched ballroom.
He was wearing a Victorian-era tuxedo with ridiculous gold shoulder tassels, and Juhoon—dressed like a literal Disney prince riding a majestic white horse inside the ballroom—galloped right up to his desk.
"Fear not, my sweet, academically challenged prince!" Juhoon’s imaginary voice boomed dramatically, echoing with heavy reverb as he held out a glowing, golden quill.
"Abandon these foolish fifth-grade texts! Fly away with me to college, where we shall read poetry and feed each other grapes under the moonlight!"
Juhoon swooped down from his horse, scooped James up by the waist, and dipped him so low James's hair swept the marble floor while an orchestra of violins exploded in the background.
"Wait, Juhoon-ah!" imaginary James gasped softly, clutching Juhoon's massive biceps.
"What about my midterm exams?!"
"Exams are temporary, James," bottle-cap Juhoon whispered, leaning in with intense, smoldering eyes as rose petals rained down from the ceiling fan.
"Our love... is forever."
Just as imaginary Juhoon leaned in to deliver a movie-style kiss, James snapped out of his trance, hyperventilating.
He was currently kissing the air two inches away from a dusty lamp.
"Ugh, I have officially lost my goddamn mind!" James shrieked, violently slapping his own cheeks with both hands to reboot his brain.
"That is it! No more studying today before I get institutionalized!"
...
Against all cosmic probability, the universe actually decided to throw James a bone: he got accepted into the exact same university as Juhoon.
When that glorious acceptance letter arrived in the mail, James wanted to frame it in solid gold, bronzify it, and maybe take it out on a romantic dinner date.
He felt so overwhelmingly ecstatic he nearly dragged Seonghyeon into a tight, spine-crushing victory hug.
For the first time in human history, the mental scoreboard updated:
James: 1
Life: still crushing it, but WHO CARES!
That night, James celebrated with absolute zero self-control.
Fueled by cheap, terrible alcohol and pure, unfiltered triumph, James decided he was officially done carrying the heavy weight of high school into his bright future.
In a magnificent stroke of drunken brilliance, he dragged his heavy box of old textbooks to his third-floor bedroom window, ripped it open, and began hurling books into the dark night sky one by one, roaring like a victorious Viking warrior.
"FREEDOM!" he bellowed, tossing an algebra book into the abyss.
Down below, several innocent pedestrians were bonked on the head by flying high-school literature compilations, but hey—progress requires sacrifice.
A few months later, on a gorgeous college campus, James was strolling along with Seonghyeon toward the dining hall to brave their daily dose of questionable mystery meat when a crisp, intoxicating, masterfully strummed guitar riff floated out of an open music room window.
James froze dead in his tracks.
He was an absolute, defenseless sucker for a good guitar riff, and a handsome guy wielding an acoustic guitar?
Absolutely game over.
"Hey, hyung, you coming or what?" Seonghyeon called out, taking a few extra steps before realizing his friend had turned into a statue.
James snapped back to reality, his brain desperately scrambling for a plausible excuse to ditch lunch.
"Uh—you go ahead! I... I left my... favorite pencil in my locker!"
It was, without a doubt, the single lamest, most pathetic lie ever uttered in the history of higher education.
Seonghyeon narrowed his eyes, clearly not buying a single word.
But being the chill friend he was, Seonghyeon just gave a sarcastic shrug, pretended to kick-start an imaginary motorcycle, and zoomed off toward the cafeteria by himself.
Left to his own, James executed a high-stakes stealth mission.
He tiptoed toward the music room window with the grace of a cartoon thief, carefully avoiding imaginary lasers.
The window sat high on the wall, but James was undeterred.
Rising up on the tips of his sneakers, he slowly peeked over the wooden ledge.
There, bathed in a celestial halo of golden afternoon light, sat Juhoon.
His long, dexterous fingers danced effortlessly across the guitar strings, a cute little furrow of concentration gracing his brow, his biceps flexing slightly with every rhythmic strum.
James stood there completely paralyzed, practically looking with visible heart-eyes.
Suddenly, a warm puff of air hit the back of James's neck, followed instantly by a smooth, playful voice booming directly into his ear:
"So, who are we stalking today?"
James practically leapt three feet straight into the air, stumbling over his own clumsy feet and clutching his chest as his heart nearly exploded through his ribcage.
"W-WHAT?!" he squeaked, his voice cracking violently.
The stranger leaned casually against the brick wall, chuckling.
He had short blonde hair, and a fox-like grin that practically screamed dangerous instigator.
"You were totally spying on my bestie," the boy said, his smile stretching from ear to ear with a wicked twinkle in his eyes.
"Judging by those massive heart-eyes, you've got it bad, huh?"
"WHO IS THIS ANNOYING FUCKER?!" James screamed in his head—except, due to his fried brain state, he accidentally shouted it out loud.
Open mouth, insert foot, swallow whole.
The stranger didn't even flinch; his grin just expanded into a full-blown villain smile.
"Ah, how rude of me. I forgot to introduce myself. I'm Martin Jonathan Edwards," the boy said smoothly, flashing a blinding, diamond-bright smile and extending a hand toward James.
Poor James stood there, his brain short-circuiting like a toaster dropped into a bathtub, staring at Martin's outstretched hand as if it were a strange alien artifact.
"Martin..." James finally managed to sputter out, his tongue tied into seventy knots.
"Yep, you can call me that," Martin winked, his grin gleaming under the sunlight.
"And I have a feeling you and I are going to be fantastic friends."