Before it All - A Love Wins All Fanfic

Chapter 3 - One Spring Day

1 year 4 months before the invasion

The sun streamed through the trees warming Ji Hye's back. Spring was nearing its end; the cherry blossoms having already bloomed and fallen. The weather was finally warm enough for short sleeves and pants without having to worry about bundling up in the morning. It was the perfect day for frolicking in the flowers, but no university student had time for that.

Ji Hye sat across from Ye Joon at a small white plastic picnic table in the courtyard. It had become their main meeting area ever since the weather got bearable enough to sit outside. He sat hunched pouring over a thick book of art history studiously taking notes in a variety of colors. She couldn't look at his notes without getting a headache, all the colors and arrows barely making any sense. The sketchbook he had bought at the beginning of the school year sat open next to him; edges frayed with various papers skewed at odd angles barely holding on to the binding. Periodically, he would put down whatever colorful pen he had in his hand, pick up his pencil and add a detail or two to the sketch.

She wrote another line in her notes, each character small and perfectly in place, taking time to understand each word and how it fit into the topic. Many people didn't understand why she chose to take such perfect notes. Oftentimes getting mocked in high school for having to study for ten times longer than the rest of her classmates, only to have them turn around and gush about how beautiful her notes were and ask to borrow them so they could fill out the missing pieces in their own. In the beginning she relented, becoming one of the most popular people in her grade, but after a while she couldn't stand the hypocrisy any longer and ended up telling anyone off, quite loudly and obscenely, who had the gall to ask for them.

People quickly realized she wasn't as much of a pushover as they expected and they slowly stopped talking to her, instead choosing to whisper behind her back. But that was all okay with her. She had her two best friends that had stayed with her and had never made fun of her for the way she took notes or chastised her for telling those others off, only telling her good job after one of the public displays. They became the top three students in their year, soaring above all the other kids in their grade.

Ji Hye and her slow note taking had been awarded the scholarship while many of them were barely able to graduate high school, so jokes on them.

She stared at the article on her laptop and wrote another sentence down absorbing the information. She had been working on this research paper since the beginning of the semester and the deadline was closing in. She realized too late that the topic she had chosen had been too broad. The topics kept branching off into subtopics with even more subtopics for what felt like infinite. Staring at the jumbled mess of notes, now several different research papers, she had finally chosen a new topic from the branching mess. But much to her chagrin, it was already too late in the semester to avoid sleepless nights of research.

Reading another line, the characters started to blur together. How long had she been staring at this? Endless nights she had been studying this topic and didn't seem to be getting anywhere. She still had the other piles of homework and finals to study for too; the short essay for communications, the short essay and math sheets for chemical problem solving, the quiz on their reading passage for biophysical chemistry, and the lab report for her molecular genetic laboratory. All that with the finals that were coming up in a couple weeks.

Her breathing quickened as she thought about the looming deadlines and how far behind she was. Did she have enough time to get it all done? No, she didn't. She would fail. The teachers had made it clear how important the final grades were to their overall grade, and she would fail. Her GPA would drop. Her scholarship would be revoked, and she would be kicked out of the school.