Chapter Text
“Taehyung, it’s 8 o’clock, you have to get up now if you want to get there on time. You’re going to be late at this rate!” I woke up to the sweet, familiar sound of my mom yelling at me to wake up. I mentally added that to the list of things I most definitely would not be missing when I went off to school. I did, however, check the time and, to my dismay, found that it was actually just half an hour before we were meant to be leaving.
“I’m getting up, I’m getting up,” I groaned as I rolled myself, quite literally, out of bed.
I trudged my way to the bathroom, almost forgetting to grab a towel, to take my last shower in my house for a long while. It clued me in that my older sister must have already gotten ready, seeing as the bathroom was already slightly humid. A grin spread across my face, in just a few hours, I would be in college, two full weeks before my sister who was two years my elder. I hurried through my shower and lazily brushed my teeth before returning to my own room. As I was getting dressed, I checked the time again to see that it was 8:20, right on schedule. I quickly dried my hair with a towel and threw the rest of my last-minute toiletries haphazardly into my last suitcase, sitting on it so it could close all the way.
“Taehyung, Taehee, it’s time to go!”
“We’re coming, appa,” my sister called from her room.
“Taehyung?!”
“I’m coming!” I shouted as I burst from my room with my suitcase in hand.
I ran into my kitchen and grabbed two frozen waffles and held them in my mouth while I put on my black sneakers. I looked up to see Taehee rolling her eyes at me.
“Ahn eye ehl ew?” I mumbled, forgetting about the waffles in my mouth.
“Were you trying to say something?” She asked condescendingly.
I finished up tying my shoes and took the waffles out of my mouth.
“Can I help you?” This time, I made sure to enunciate every syllable for fear of her mocking me again.
“You know, maybe if you had gotten up earlier you would have been able to cook those waffles.”
“Maybe if you had gotten up later you would have gotten to enjoy the delicacy that is uncooked, frozen waffles.” I said as I defiantly shoved them both into my mouth and took a huge bite, deliberately not letting the brain freeze show on my face.
“It’s time to get in the car, kids!” My mother shouted, yet again, interrupting Taehee and my’s exchange.
I stumbled my way to open the door before my sister, grinning mischievously at her as I got there first. We continued racing into the car. Finally, we were heading off to drive to my new school two hours away. The ride started off very slowly; within five minutes I was already bored out of my mind, and I was guessing the rest of my family was feeling the same way.
“Hey, noona, how much do you even know about the college I’m going to?” I inquired teasingly.
“Well, for one, it’s not real college-”
“Yeah it is!” I insisted.
“You’re sixteen, it’s for high schoolers, it’s high school,” she pointed out.
“I’ll be taking real college classes!” At this point, I was quite indignant.
“You have curfews,” she scoffed.
“That doesn’t mean-”
“I will stop the car right now if you two don’t shut the fuck up and stop arguing,” my father bellowed.
Taehee and I quickly muttered out some apologies and went back to just playing on our phones for the remainder of the ride. A wave of calm washed over me as I realized that this would be the last of that sort of exchange for a long while. In just a few short hours, I would be free of this constant source of anxiety. I could hardly believe that it was real. Part of me expected to reach the academy and find that my acceptance had been a fluke, that I really wasn’t good enough to go to college two years early. Everything was going to be totally new, something that had never happened in my entire life. I started to panic a little internally: I had never been away from my family for more than a week before, would I be okay? I quickly shoved those thoughts to the back of my mind. I knew that things would be better at my new school and it was too late to turn back now. This was my chance to start over, to finally start being true to myself and stop having my parents breathing down my necks every step of the way. I could do this.
An hour and a half had passed, now we were within city limits of the academy. I could feel the excitement pulsing through my veins. My parents starting going over a last minute list of things they wanted to make sure I remembered. Towards the end of the list, the approached the subject of dating.
“We just want you to remember that even if you really, really like a girl, your studies have to always come first,” my mother’s tone was very calm now, a stark contrast to that of before.
“And if you like a boy, well then good luck ‘cause your school is too small for that many gay guys,” my sister joked.
“That reminds me,” my mother added, “your dad and I have agreed that we think it would be a good idea for you to not come out while you’re here. You don’t want to be known as the gay guy, do you?”
“I mean I don’t really care either way but seeing as I’m not even-”
“And especially don’t go into any of those weird specifics of your orientation like you like to do,” she chastised.
“Oh yes, my apologies for not being normal,” the words tasted bitter in my mouth, was this really how they wanted one of our last conversations before I went off to school to go?
“You know that that’s not what your mother meant,” my father stared me down through the rear view mirror. “Where do you get off on being so disrespectful?”
“Can we please not do this now?” I sighed, looking around, “We’re here now.”
I quickly texted my roommate, Michael, that we were pulling into the parking lot and to meet us downstairs. The school had provided us with the contact information of our assigned roommates. Michael was a first year as well, but over a year younger than me. I had high hopes that we would be fast friends.
Move-in day passed by in a blur, and before I knew it, my family was gone and I was left to fend for myself. The only person who stood out so far as someone I really wanted to be friends with was Jeongguk, another American-born Korean here in the middle of Colorado. I thought that there might be one or two more, but it was hard to tell seeing as half of our school was international, mostly Chinese and Korean. Jeongguk was a sporty guy I remembered from my orientation day. He was my same age and so far, we seemed to share the same sense of humor. We quickly found many things that we had in common, from being neighbors, to having to same schedule, and after a while of talking, having the same taste in boys. So much for going back in the closet.