See You When I See You

2 // A Fallen Prince

Sixteen-year-old Aiden Kim is the type of guy a teenage girl would bring home to meet her parents.

Captain of the Marbleton varsity soccer team and a promising Division 1 athlete, Aiden is impressive both on the field and in the classroom with a 4.0 GPA. He is active at his Korean church youth group where he plays a soulful guitar and where his mother cooks rejuvenating kimchi jjigae and colorful bibimbap for the congregation after Sunday worship. 

It's said that he inherited his impossibly midnight hair and charming gaze from his father, though no one can fully corroborate since Junseo Kim is frequently overseas in China or Japan for business. Some even whisper that Junseo has another family on the side, that Aiden is the byproduct of a shameful tryst.

Regardless of what others say, Aiden Kim is the whole package – the type of guy who takes the trash out with a smile, and the type of guy who'd never cheat on his girlfriend, especially when his girlfriend is the sweetheart of Marbleton High.

At least, that's what he thought up until Sujin Park happened.

It was his mother's idea to enroll him in that damn program for gifted and talented youth in the first place. He initially refused to attend since it meant an entire month away from Lyla and his soccer team, but Eun-sook was adamant. And so, one application and several bitter arguments later, Aiden was driving an hour away to Princeton University for a foretaste of college life.

He never hid the fact he had a girlfriend. 

After all, he carries Lyla's picture with him in his wallet and talks on the phone with her every day. At night, he dreams of the rhapsodic way she smells of velvet tangerines and lotus blooms.

It had taken him three tortuous weeks to muster the courage to approach her, after which they had their first date on Valentine's Day at a romantic pizzeria. And their relationship, which reaches the six-month mark in just two weeks – is rather smooth-sailing according to his best friend Javi Johnson, who's dated more girls than he'd ever care to count. The bottom line is, Aiden and Lyla love each other, and they are determined to be the kind of high school couple that will still be dating in and after college.

So, whether out of boredom or by ill fate, the last thing Aiden Kim expected was to lose his virginity to Sujin Park.

He noticed her at first because she was petite and cute (Aiden's kryptonite). But when Sujin interrupted a professor during a lecture to correct a mistake on his regression analysis, Aiden realized she was also smart (his other kryptonite). Lyla was smart, but Sujin was smart and assertive, something that Aiden found undeniably sexy and attractive.

What began with a casual brush of the shoulder while passing each other during meals turned into lingering touches here and there. Aiden found himself sitting closer and closer to Sujin during late-night dorm parties and rounds of beer pong, and by the time he was moving frantically with Sujin in her bed in the dark, panting her name in earnest, it was already too late – Aiden Kim was a fallen man, the protagonist of his very own Greek tragedy.

It wasn't that he was dissatisfied with Lyla. Up till then, he had been content to explore the contours of her delicate body with his hands, never pressuring her beyond what she was comfortable with because Aiden is a gentleman, and because Lyla genuinely believed Pastor Enoch's sermons about saving sex for marriage. But being with Sujin was an intoxicating collision of violet lightning and raw want, and once Aiden bit the apple, he couldn't stop.

He called Javi after it happened.

"What the actual fuck, man?!" Javi swore loudly over the phone.

"Shit, shit, SHIT – I know, Javi, I know I messed up!" 

Aiden's voice had cracked as he paced restlessly around his room. "What do I do? Lyla can't know about this!"