To Our Pure Little Beauty

Their youth part 1

Jungkook sat down on his seat, took out a few of the thicker textbooks, stacked them up on his desk, then leaned forward to sleep on them.

Lisa was a little dumbfounded. How was it so different from what she had imagined? Tri-merit student Jeon comes early in class to sleep?

Her seat was in front but diagonal to his. She was on the third column. He was on the fourth column. She was the third column’s group leader. He was the class monitor.

She pulled out the English textbook from her books, opened it up and placed it upright, then buried her head in that book. She was angling her head to the side to peep at Jungkook, staring at his ebony black hair, and the white hair whorl in the middle of his head.

She had no clue with what it was that looked appealing for her that she just couldn’t stop herself from staring, and couldn’t help but make her heart skip a beat. For a white scalp to make her heart skip a beat, the matter was truly unprecedented for her.

In every serene, beautiful moments, there would always be one or two mindless troublemaker who would break it. The troublemaker was Wang Jackson, the assistant class monitor. The first thing he did when he entered the door was to yell loudly, “Lisa, am I seeing things wrongly?”

Lisa asked dim-wittedly, “What seeing things wrongly?”

Jackson said, “You ah, unexpectedly so early.”

Lisa forced out two hollow laughs, “I just remembered there were two paragraphs in English that I still haven’t practised reciting aloud.”

Jackson suddenly dissolved into heaps of laughter, “Haha……but you……you’re holding your English book upside down.”

She turned her head to glare at Jackson, right at that moment, Jungkook slightly lifted his head from his arms as such that Lisa stared right into Jungkook’s somewhat curious and inquisitive gaze. Heat crawled up her face and broke into a million shades of red on her cheeks.

Jungkook looked at her outrageously red face a bit puzzled, she was someone who doesn’t blush when confessing, what was she blushing for now?

The people arrived in the classroom one by one, almost everyone who came in expressed varying levels of surprise at the strange sight that was Lisa arriving in class even before the bell rang. Lisa has now found out that she was actually very eye-catching.

The next day, Lisa got up ten minutes later than yesterday, she hurriedly rushed to the alley and just caught sight of the fleeing view of Jungkook with his backpack. She paused for a few seconds, inhaled deeply to steady her breathing, then strode over in big steps to catch up, “Morning!”

Jungkook’s heart jumped out of his chest from her roar, he couldn’t help but admit that Lisa was indeed a very energetic person, her deafening “morning” has sufficiently shown him the veracity of this claim.

This time, they were not the first ones to arrive in class, Jackson was already leaning on the railings, smiling at them as he said, “Lisa, do you still have to recite something in English today?”

Lisa was thinking this guy was being so annoying, and answered him irritably, “What’s it got to do with you?”

Jackson didn’t take offense, and said with all smiles, “I show friendly affection to my fellow students every now and then.”  

The classroom still exuded the smell of dirt, Jungkook was sleeping on his desk, Jackson was drumming something on his desk drawer, Lisa took out her English textbook. She read aloud a line, what are you doing, and felt that her throat was hoarse. She immediately swapped it with her language & literature textbook, and started reciting, “Mountains need not always be high, they’re famed if therein immortals abide.“

When Lisa reached the part of the poem,  “The moss creeping onto the doorsteps, turns them a greenish hue; the color of the grasses reflected through the window blinds, with verdant glow.” she furtively sighed. Her English wasn’t any good…..she was ashamed to recite aloud in front of Jungkook, always thinking that her pronunciation was not only subpar but also unsophisticated.

Jungkook felt a little irritated, she kept on stuttering when reciting aloud the text which gravely affected his early morning sleep.

On the third day, Lisa especially got up very early in the morning, she waited for Jungkook in the alley for quite a long time. When she was about to be late, only then did she quickly darted to school, worrying the entire way whether Jungkook has gotten ill.

When she arrived at the door of their classroom, the morning reading already started. Lisa bowed her head and made a sound to report attendance to the teacher who was on the podium.

The teacher crossly told her to come in.

Right when Lisa lifted her head, she saw Jungkook sitting by the window, his head was hung low as he was reading his book. A ballpoint pen was casually twirling on his hand, its metal cap glared faintly under the morning light as it spun and jumped between his long, slender fingers.

Being separated by a good distance, Lisa however, felt that the sting from that bit of reflected light was slightly making her eyes hurt.

On the fourth day, Lisa got up even earlier, it was still dark when she got up. She groggily leaned against a still lighted lamppost in the alley, and dozed off.

Jungkook caught sight of the figure under the lamppost from a distance, he was torn between being entangled with her, or to turn on his heels and return to his house. In the end, he walked forward.

She didn’t notice him when he passed by her as she has fallen deep in sleep, he already walked a long way, and didn’t wait for her to follow him.

Arriving in the classroom, he leaned on his desk to sleep, but right when he closed his eyes, the image of Lisa’s drooping head as she dozed off actually grazed his mind — the hair that was supposedly tucked behind her ears hung limply along her cheeks, a few strands of her rogue hair was all over the place on the crown of her head, with some sticking up defiantly, her entire figure under the lamppost was bathed in a dim yellow light, making her glow in a warm yellow colour.

Jungkook thought in a daze before sleep overtook him — her hair could get really messy.

Lisa’s plan of getting up early was completely abandoned on the fifth day, it was a very cold day, so cold that her throbbing little sweet heart was rendered motionless. From inside the blanket that was wrapped around her like a burrito, she stretched her hand out to press off the alarm clock, and told herself again and again, “Forget it, love depends on fate, if you force it, it will not come, if you force it, it will not come.”

Hence Lisa went back to sleep with a great peace of mind till her mum yelled at her to get up, she hastily bolted for the door to go outside, and to her greatest surprise, towards Jungkook. That kind of happiness was akin to doing badly in an examination, then wholeheartedly comforting oneself that examinations were an insignificant part in one’s life, and that scores were fleeting things, but when the test papers were then handed out, one ranked first in the entire class.

So, Lisa tailed behind Jungkook all the way to school wearing a “finally earned something” smile.

Her smile caused chills to run down his spine, so he furtively touched his face several times to check if a grain of rice was sticking on it, and also furtively looked down several times to check if the zipper of his pants wasn’t pulled up.

Before entering the classroom, Lisa finally couldn’t help it and tugged on his school uniform, fixing it about, “Wrinkled.”

Jungkook furrowed his brows, but didn’t say anything, could it be that just for this, she was happy all the way?