High School Daze

Green-eyed monster

"What were you trying to do?" Yejin hissed, her temple almost twitching in rising annoyance as she struggled to keep her voice down.

After that embarrassing incident with the swim team captain and her good friend, Kim Nam Gil, she was furious and hurt.

"What did I do?" Hyun Bin asked, eyes widened by a fraction as he stopped in his tracks. "I am merely here for a swim after basketball practice."

The way his girlfriend's eyes narrowed couldn't be good news, he observed with a gulp which he hoped had gone unnoticed.

She was upset, very much so, but the basketball team captain wasn't quite willing to give in.

"You were embarrassing me. Bin, surely you aren't thinking I'll believe this?" Typical of her personality, the council president did not even give her boyfriend a chance to feign ignorance. "Why were you at the pool?"

"I told you, I was only walking by after practice."

"Try harder, Bin."

"Look, it was really a coincidence—" He started persuasively, only to give up mid-sentence when Yejin settled for a long, withering look. "Okay, okay, I'll be straightforward with you."

"Go on."

Closing his eyes in a futile bid to sound calm and collected, Hyun Bin started, "What Shark feels for you can't possibly be friendship."

Yejin remained silent, eerily so, studying her boyfriend's facial expression almost intently.

A few seconds ticked by, with rising annoyance on her part, and increasingly awkwardness on his.

"So that gives you the green light to behave the way you did?"

"I have no idea why you don't believe me. It's so obvious and here you are, insisting it's okay to hang out with him." The basketball team captain stubbornly muttered, stepping forward in the direction of the bus stop.

It was the Student Council president's turn to stop in her tracks, long enough for her boyfriend to turn back to look at her.

The young couple practically glared at each other in stony silence for a few seconds, until Hyun Bin's eyes softened, and he beckoned for Yejin to follow with a gentle tilt of his head.

"Come on, forget it. Let's just go—"

"I know."

Her voice was quiet and firm.

Confusion crossed Hyun Bin's features in the form of a slight frown, before an unintelligent-sounding "huh?" escaped his parted lips.

"I know Nam Gil likes me. Or at least, liked me. He said so himself, two years ago in our first year at Spackman High."

Hyun Bin's jaw literally fell open. "So...so you knew all along?"

"But that's not the problem here." Yejin continued, trying to keep her voice from wavering. "The problem isn't with him liking me."

The basketball team captain felt a sinking feeling in his gut, as a wave of irrational uneasiness engulfed him in the form of a mental barrage of 'oh no'.

"The real problem here is that you don't trust me."

Caught by surprise and the realization that Yejin had truthfully called him out, Hyun Bin fell quiet, acknowledging every word of hers with mounting guilt.

"It's not an issue of whether he likes me or not. Back then, he asked me out, and made it clear that he wished to pursue more than friendship. I didn't tell you about it, because...I mean, yeah, you know why."