It was love.
After asking him to come to the rooftop to solve the problem, I changed my clothes in class and headed to the rooftop. I needed to talk to Jeon Jungkook to quickly solve the strange things that had happened to me recently.
"Here it is."
As I was closing my eyes on the rooftop and feeling the cool breeze, I felt a cold sensation on my cheek and turned around in surprise. He was holding two apple sodas and smiling his signature refreshing smile.
"Jeon Jungkook, I can't figure out why you do that to me, but I'm still worried about how the kids around me will react, and because of you"I hope you don't do this anymore because it's interfering with my studies."
"My friend and I don't want to do that..?"
Perhaps because he was so serious, the corners of his mouth, which had been upturned, gradually returned to their original position, and the atmosphere suddenly became heavy. After talking to him for a week, I sometimes smiled at the jokes he played, but my number one priority was my success. For that, I was currently living a life where I didn't have enough time just studying, and especially, I didn't have time to play with him, who was number one. Even knowing that I was lacking and inadequate compared to him, I couldn't keep him by my side, whether it was a sense of inferiority or whether he was someone who was big enough to change my values that I thought I had to deal with and experience things alone my whole life and didn't need friends.
"Oh, no. So why don't you stop fussing and do something meaningful?"
I spat out barbed words at the first person who approached me. Even if he were to brush against those thorns and get hurt, even if he'd dismiss them as barbs, I spat them out again and again, not caring. I didn't hate him for suddenly invading my life. If I hated him so much that I couldn't bear to accept him, I wouldn't have pushed him away for so long. But final exams were approaching, pushing me closer and closer to the edge, and I couldn't waste any more time. My choice was the best I could make, the only rational one. As I lowered my head, unsure of how he would look at me, I heard a calm voice, not my usual one.
"If you hate it that much, I can't help it, but I'll stick to what I said the first time. If you beat me, I won't ever come near you again. If you really hate it, beat me in this final exam."